\Last week there was a rare bit of good news in Australian politics. After a review of the greyhound racing industry, the current (right wing) NSW government unexpectedly banned greyhound racing. Of course the industry will fight this big-time, but within my bubble-of-a-circle-of-friends the reaction was unanimously positive.
To me the decision is clearly correct since the industry’s an ethical clusterfuck. But it’s important not to make policy questions too one-sided. I can’t endorse this entire post from Less Wrong (or the website as a whole) but it has an important bit:
A policy may legitimately have lopsided costs or benefits. If policy questions were not tilted one way or the other, we would be unable to make decisions about them. But there is also a human tendency to deny all costs of a favored policy, or deny all benefits of a disfavored policy; and people will therefore tend to think policy tradeoffs are tilted much further than they actually are.
What kind of costs are we talking about? Well Costa A, a pretty big leftie cartoonist had it right in his FB post:
Um. This is mind-blowing? Often right-wingers pitch nature vs economy. Baird, however, just destroyed an entire industry and a bunch of jobs to save animals? I wish he’d be this brave for other environmental issues (stop coal mining or big land-clearing) but.. damn, well done?
PS. It is not a binary, you can help nature and the economy. Die binary, die.
PPS. This is about the dogs. Congrats dogs!!!
Yes, this is Big Government destroying an industry. As (right wing) Daily Telegraph is keen to remind us, this would mean up to 10,000 jobs lost in NSW. It’s not enough to make me think we should keep greyhound racing, and yet 10,000 people losing jobs is a major negative.
Another op-ed in the Guardian talks about the social costs:
It becomes part of your life, and going to the dog races once a week to catch up with friends and have a pint of beer and a punt on the doggies – it’s what keeps people sane.
In rural areas there just isn’t the same number or diversity of social activities as there are in the metro regions, and going to the dogs once a week to watch your dog race with some friends is – for many people – the absolute highlight of their week. Greyhound racing, the great leveller, is an integral part of the social fabric of this state.
Go on, deny the reality of that negative. ‘Splain about it to people in rural areas about it, especially if you’ve never lived in one. Dismiss people for whom it’s the social highlight of their week as losers. Go on, I dare ya.
Globalisation’s destruction of entire industries and economies in the last decades have produced some pretty crappy results. As a million think-pieces point out recently. While I don’t want to pin too much of the blame for Trump, Brexit, Pauline Hanson etc on the abandonment of blue collar, rural people it is a factor. Without a plan for additional work opportunities (and in this case additional cultural opportunities) there will be another vacuum which is terrible.
We should also go beyond the stereotype of both the left and the right being ok with leaving a vacuum, as long as it’s the right industry getting destroyed (greyhound racing vs solar energy) or the destruction happens using the right method (government intervention on ethical grounds vs capitalist creative destruction).
Greyhound racing is an industry that shouldn’t exist. But there are lots of those; shoulds are easy.
The meat industry shouldn’t exist. The arms industry shouldn’t exist. The fossil fuel industry shouldn’t exist. Transitioning to a better world requires getting rid of all those and more. And yet if you look at just the world’s top 20 oil & gas companies (just one branch of the fossil fuels industry), that’s 2,232,832 jobs.
We can’t pretend that what the world needs doesn’t require tremendous social upheaval. We can’t pretend there’s no genuine social cost. Improving the world for us all requires wiping out entire sectors and people’s livelihoods & dreams. We need to admit this and deal with it. Things won’t be right unless we start worrying about these people’s futures a helluva lot more than we are.
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