To: Maurice Winn who wrote (19119 ) 5/19/2002 8:19:55 AM From: mcg404 Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 74559 Mq: <<we have the Resource Management Act here and it's costing a fortune and achieving nothing.>> Can’t you at least say “achieving little”? Your obvious exaggeration makes me question your objectivity (see how open minded I can be, to suggest your objectivity is still in doubt) << We have Tree Protection Acts which will result in deaths as trees fall on people>> Tree protection extremists make the ultimate tree protection sacrifice and you blithely characterize it as tree-on-human violence? And I thought the kiwis didn’t know how to spin a story…(g) << We have government committees and waste on a grand scale on environmental issues. >> Having spent most of my working life as a government regulator, I don’t need anyone to tell me about waste and government inefficiency. I see it ever day I go to work. Anyone can create a laundry list of regulatory programs that cost time/money and accomplish little. Or worse, make matters worse and/or create new problems. But that’s just the nature of government. Staggering inefficiency that is arguably simply a reflection of the large number of competing interests in a society. But to suggest that business interests are not well represented, or they relinquish their interest in the face of public condemnation (as you did in your earlier post)….seems unlikely (to me). How can you suggest these un-informed, emotionally-driven, wild-eyed maniacs are so effective in thwarting the benevolent actions of the capitalists? Ok, so the wild-eyed market (society) bid yahoo up to $200+/share…but then it saw the error of its ways and we bid it back down too. Just like the market, the collective decision making of society takes issues into overbought or oversold territory - but it always corrects itself, no? <<In my youth it was the opposite and harbours, rivers, beaches, air, brains and a lot more besides were destroyed and damaged with little care and much ignorance. >> and so the pendulum swings… <<The whole CO2 industry is wasting a fortune with a LOT more to waste. NZ is seriously considering signing up to the Kyoto CO2 deal which will cost us heaps for no benefit. >> I can get 1000 analysts (opps, I mean scientist – same difference) to say the theory of global climate change is going to fry us. You can easily get 1000 to say it won’t. Among all those well-informed but widely divergent opinions, we should trust Mq to have picked the correct answer? Isn’t it obvious the true answer is unknowable? So how do we position our “porfolio” in the face of that uncertainty? (my guess: do what humans have always done. Live for the moment. Keep our fingers crossed about tomorrow.) john