Secondary boycotts: The ghost of policies past

Apparently the current government is boycotting building companies with unacceptable labour practices.

http://www.smh.com.au/business/workplace-relations/clock-ticking-for-builders-to-avoid-black-list-20170208-gu8bp6.html

I wonder if this is different from a secondary boycott, both legally and in principle?

http://workplaceinfo.com.au/resources/employment-topics-a-z/secondary-boycott

Noting that the Liberal government appears to think that the use of secondary boycotts to further political aim is unfair

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/companies-to-get-protection-from-activists-boycotts/news-story/eb4805c2ea3b622d125e20d61ca75a7d?nk=cb62514c812ba9831627b7a4a864bb80-1486774384

I suppose it could be argued that a building company's employee union is not a third party to the relationship between the government and the building company, but in any case, it does seem to me to be a tactic that doesn't make sense unless the government is engaged in class warfare.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-04/budget-2016-live-blog-reaction/7380888

Free advice for a serious young PhD

Hello, young serious PhD.

I am one of these scientific staff you're irritated with, and although I no longer keep a twitter account, I have some free advice for you:

Nobody gives a shit about what you do. Nobody cares about your science. You're one of seventeen bazillion young scientists, and you'll be increasingly desperate as you recognize that the eleventy-hundred bazillion older scientists are not conveniently retiring or dying or otherwise vacating their jobs. And it's probably as it should be, no one caring about your science. It's a minority of the population who will understand, even in the most general terms, what you do, and frankly it's unlikely that what you do will be terribly important scientifically. If you're lucky you'll have one or more "contributions" that actually contribute, rather than larding a journal so you can get a job.

The thing is, though, you want money. You want people to give you quite a lot of it to do what you do. Since none of your mentors have won a war or mapped the oceans lately, the people handing over the money aren't as keen on science as they might be. I mean to get real public enthusiasm you've got to win a big one for the team. And if you're halfway honest you'll have to admit that they aren't wrong: yes, *you* like knowing lots of things about the universe, and finding out new and quite useless things just for the hell of it, but most people don't, really, and the promise of "it might be fantastically useful someday" falls a little flat when housing costs what it does. It's not unreasonable to ask why science spending shouldn't go to a select half a bazillion young people rather than all of you, since some of you surely waste more money than others do.

So unless you're really keen on the ideas of self-funding and small science, it's *really not a bad idea* to talk to the nonscientists who're actually interested in science, and let them advocate for you. It's not a gigantic group of people, but it's also not small or without influence. It's also not a bad idea to learn how to talk easily and off-the-cuff about your work in English, and talking about your work on social media is a good way of practicing.

As you go on in your work, by the way, you'll find you're being called on to do all sorts of things that aren't actually doing science. You'll be asked to teach, formally and informally, which involves more than reading a lot of powerpoint slides aloud. You'll be asked to help in the project of showing people why science is worthwhile -- science in general, not just your bit. You'll have administrative and departmental responsibilities. You'll have to be a mentor, and it's terrible to be a bad mentor. You'll be called on to be aware of social realities you want nothing to do with, but you'll have to, because science is a social enterprise. You'll probably be asked to engage in various types of fraud and taking-advantage of young people, too, and you'll have to figure out what to do about that.

None of this is specific to science. There is no work, no serious work, that does not also involve sales and hobnobbing and administration and teaching and fraud, one way or another. Your facility with these things, and your wisdom in navigating, will determine in part what real work you're able to do.

/free advice

Two "extremist" political foundational theories combine to justify everything they are against

Premiss 1:

Libertarianism: https://www.lp.org/platform

Article 2.7:... We defend the right of individuals to form corporations, cooperatives and other types of entities based on voluntary association.

plus Premiss 2:

https://anticorruptionsociety.com/2013/03/30/the-united-states-corporation-a-big-plantation/

OUR GOVERNMENT IS REALLY A COMPANY AND ALL OF THE STATES, COUNTIES, MUNICIPALITIES, AND TOWNSHIPS ARE FRANCHISES

equals Conclusion:

We defend the right of individuals to form governments...

(And, by the way, if you would rather not voluntarily subject yourself to internal corporate policy, aka "the law", which includes voluntary contributions called "taxes", you must at least respect 

Article 2.1 As respect for property rights is fundamental to maintaining a free and prosperous society, it follows that the freedom to contract to obtain, retain, profit from, manage, or dispose of one’s property must also be upheld. 

which also means "No trespassing on corporate property".

And that, my Dear Reader, is how we justify Communism, or at least Socialism.

======

General conclusion (support only, not proof): you can justify any political system you have a mind to.

People (including me)

Sometimes I do things and sometimes they seem to be happy.

Sometimes I do alternative other things and sometimes they seem to be sad.

Sometimes they do things and sometimes I feel sad.

Sometimes they do other alternative things and sometimes I feel happy.

Sometimes I do things and sometimes they do things.

Sometimes I do other alternative things and sometimes they do alternative other things.

Sometimes the world seems to be this way and sometimes they seem to happy.

Sometimes the world seems to be that way and sometimes I feel sad.

And there might be some significant correlations.

But mostly I seem to feel surprised or confused.

Because many of the apparent correlations

Are not particularly reliable.

Which means they aren’t really correlations after all.

Some people seem to think that there are correlations.

Are they geniuses or fools?

Or neither.

And what should I do about it in either case anyway?

- Dr Thomas

Corporate ethics

Companies, via their senior management, make strategic value judgments all the time about what type of activity the company should engage in and what sort of investments the company buys into. The filters of "corporate identity" and what constitutes "core business" apply quite strong biases to these decisions. It is likely that in some cases this results in a bias towards generally more profitable activities, but other times the bias may be generally towards less profitable activities. 

However, there is so much uncertainty about what affects overall long term corporate profitability that imposing essentially arbitrary limits on activity as part of corporate "strategy" or "core values" is typically regarded as good management practice, in order to simplify the complexity of activity options and decision making. It is unrealistic, and quite rightly not expected, that even though companies avoid activities that are legal and profitable, but not consistent with corporate strategy, they will neither disclose that fact and nor will they calculate approximate foregone profits. 

Making a decision to engage only in (more or less) "ethical" activities (according to a particular ethical perspective) is similar in principle to any other strategic filter. Estimating the "ethical impact" of any particular type of corporate activity is not a simple matter, but it's something that is possible to do. To believe that it is not renders the entire not-for-profit / charitable sector (and politics) entirely irrational.

While regulators and legislators define what is legal, it is not clear that everything that is legal is (or even ought to be) ethical within the mores of the time. (That is, not everything that is unethical is illegal). In fact it is often argued that it is inappropriate for legislators to be too prescriptive regarding what is ethical and what is not. It follows that there must be some role for the corporate sector to have an input into what type of activities are ethically acceptable. 

As investors, our activities have many consequences that impact on the real world (indeed, the utility generated for customers is typically provided as the ethical justification for free markets and the resulting rewards of profit to investors) and so we do, via our investment choices, have the ability to influence the sort of social and political world that we live in. As investors we have every right to spend our investment dollars where we want to and we might rationally wish to take particular ethical considerations into account in making those decisions. In the same way, we might decide where to spend our consumption dollars based solely on the goods or services that we directly receive, or alternatively we can choose to be influenced by whether or not we wish to support the activities in the corresponding supply chain. 

While it might be conceptually convenient to keep an intellectually purist separation between acting as a financially motivated profit maker as part of an economic sector, and acting a politically motivated person with a social consciences as part of the charitable sector, the distinction in practice is a little fuzzy. Principally economic activity has social impacts beyond the value enjoyed by customers, and charities need access to sufficient resources to be able to realise the social objectives that motivate their existence. 

Just as responsible donors to charities, when choosing to spend their charity dollars on particular charitable causes, will take into account their financially viability and financial efficiency, it doesn't require a radical change in perspective for investors, when choosing to spend their investment dollars on investments, to also take into account their wider social (and/or environmental) impact beyond that which is captured by the single measure of profit only.

Obsessive-compulsive qualifier

I am professionally incapable of making an unqualified statement about anything. For example, the previous statement is not strictly correct, but holds true for only most of the interesting matters. There are a few unqualified statements that I can make as a professional, but these are mostly trivially true, uninteresting tautologies.

- Doctor Thomas

A Pome

A Sun-powered Cyclist,
a Boule-tossing Swede
boosts Solar film cell Current
with a Shrewd worldly Deed.
"Adjoe, linden Stick"
"g'day, Gum twig." the Trick:
Antipodal Oscillation
at Sidereal Speed!

How to Save the Environment?

I think the main source of environmental damage is people having little munchkins.