Found on a rudderless ship: libertarianism, economics, and putting people into boxes

How are you feeling about New Zealand politics generally?

I recently moved overseas, and now I find I have a different perspective on New Zealand politics. Now that I’m no longer immersed in it—I really just see the front-page issues—it does seem like New Zealand often argues over seemingly trite and trivial things. My immediate reaction, frankly, is to say ‘who really cares’ to a lot of it. And that’s also because I look at the major parties’ positions and no longer feel very affiliated with any of them. That’s changed: I used to feel affiliated with Act and National, but much less so now.

If you had to vote today, who would you vote for today and why?

Because I don’t align myself closely with any party these days, this would be a very hard decision. There are certain things about each party that I like and dislike. I still probably wouldn’t vote for Labour, but that’s also hard to say because Hipkins is pretty much making it into a centrist party. I also don’t think National is putting up a strong opposition, and I don’t think much of its leader. I like Act’s positions on certain things, but I really dislike their positions on other issues. So it’s hard: I find myself on a rudderless ship, really.

How would you describe a party that you would vote for, in terms of the major issues that matter to you?

Straight off the cuff, some issues that come to mind are, first, the economy. That’s such a broad thing to say, but within that I think about the fairness of New Zealand’s economy for people at all levels. That’s partly about wealth inequality, but I’m also concerned about everyday New Zealand people becoming increasingly poorer as everything gets more expensive. That’s a huge issue. Another issue is the sorry state of health care—the public health system is ingenious, but the system is also broken in many ways. A third is public infrastructure and the under investment in public transport for so many decades. (This, incidentally, is one of the more important climate change issues in terms of who I vote for: I mean climate change more generally is obviously very important, but this is an area where the State can actually do something and have a significant impact.)

Are there particular issues that would stop you feeling at home in the Act / National side? What are they missing or doing wrong?

There are two areas where I take issue with Act. First, despite its general social liberalism, Act takes a very tough on crime stance; to me, this is not sensible and is unsupported by any evidence. The second area is around the Treaty of Waitangi and the place of Maori—the divisive views that, if not expressly communicated by the leaders, are still associated with the Party. So those two things turn me off a bit. In terms of National, I think they’re pretty blind to wealth inequality and they always have been. It drives me nuts that people get so divisive on this. I don’t see why we can’t come together and agree that there are people who are struggling, who cannot afford the basics, and they just need help. National sometimes seem blind to that, and instead engages in a blame game around how those people got into that position in the first place.

Do you sometimes feel that your opinions on politics are misconstrued? What would you want people to understand that they often don’t get right?

The fact is that everyone focusses on different issues that they especially care about or have particular knowledge about. But then people assume that those issues are the only important issues to you, and that you don’t care at all about what’s important to them. But we’ve all got limited bandwidth, and I’d be depressed if I tried to engage with and form a considered opinion on every issue; I’ve had to take myself off Twitter for just this reason. The truth is that society would become myopic, or perhaps cycloptic, if we all cared about the same issues. We need different people to bring up different things. In fact, that’s part of what the oppositional nature of politics contributes. But it becomes problematic when we put people in camps based on what they prioritise. I care a lot about economic and tax issues, for instance. Now, I know and have thought a lot about these topics and so my views are nuanced. They don’t clearly align with any one party. But sometimes I feel I am judged negatively, or at least stereotyped in certain ways, simply because I make the economy (rather than say climate change or social justice issues) a major basis for my voting decision—but regardless of my actual views on these issues.

What are your core principles and values that guide your thinking on these various issues?

I’m heavily socially liberal and focused on individual rights. This is a lens through which I assess most political issues—I’m always asking, ‘does this policy approach let people live their lives how they want to live it without undue interference’? And that social liberalism in many respects flows into my economic perspective: a general preference against over-regulation. Although I’ve noticed I am changing my tune on this. I’m increasingly seeing that Government has a role to play in pushing economic levers and making decisions that improve individuals’ lives—even where those decisions might interfere with and impact on businesses. In some cases, the Government quite properly tells companies, through strong regulation, what they can and cannot do. But the goal is still to do the least possible to allow people to live their lives as they want to. Libertarians have always argued about who will pay for the streetlights, and sometimes carved out exceptions in these areas. I guess I’m increasingly seeing more areas like this where the Government has a role in collecting taxes and redistributing in various ways, to support people to live freely. Public health care is such a strong example, because health underpins so many of your individual rights and so much of your ability to live life as you want to. So Government has a clear role to play here.

What do you think about the state of New Zealand’s political discourse and what can we do to improve it?

My number one recommendation is for people to stay off Twitter, that hotbed of divisive takes! I mostly mean that facetiously, but still, people do have a tendency to run towards party lines on Twitter and I think that obscures the more important focus on policy perspectives. The broader point here is that it’s very easy to take a party mindset, but it’s not necessarily always helpful. Someone who has aligned themselves with a certain party might just be inclined to agree with them on all issues, even one they haven’t really thought about. That makes a certain amount of sense because, again, we only have limited bandwidth. But it becomes highly problematic when people become stuck in the mud, not open to discussion or changing their views. So I think we should try to avoid the trap of being so staunchly on one party line or the other; instead we need to engage on the actual issues. I’ve been guilty of this mistake myself. We should also avoid characterising others along party lines. We are often too quick to jump in and say, ‘oh that’s a left-wing view, or that’s an Act Party view’ etc., rather than hearing the full complexity of someone’s position. We also have this tendency to put people into boxes based on just one of their views, assuming it is indicative of all their views. And finally, as we talked about before, we sometimes characterise people based on the issues they prioritise, even regardless of where they actually come down on the issue. In each of these ways, siloing people along party lines weakens the policy discussion.

Don’t get me wrong, we benefit from a major two-party system where we can debate and go back and forth on issues. I’m not saying we always need bipartisan collaboration. No: we need necessarily to be opposed to each other on many issues. You can find examples of where this hasn’t happened, and it has led to bad outcomes. Emergency management legislation is a fantastic example. When it comes to emergencies, the Parliament is often not sufficiently oppositional but votes together to push something through with haste … only to realise a short time later that it’s not right. So I’m making a distinction between how we relate to each other at the individual level—where we should try hard to look beyond the party labels and see the complexity—but then at the same time, at the Parliamentary level, there’s a functional purpose for the oppositional friction in the political discourse.