Having just joined up (I'll post in the introductions forum when I get a moment spare), I'm getting a few people asking what our policies are outside of our core policies.
In addition someone has raised the question on the mailing list, specifically around Evidence-based policy.

While the narrow core policy focus defines us, and what we stand for, I feel would should come up with something to cover our stand on other policies, even if general. It strikes me as a likely question to be raised often as we continue in our goals as a serious party.

As a starting point, I'd like opinions on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence-based_policy, as a suggestion of a general approach to non-core policies.

Hello Truth, welcome aboard.

Certainly I'm all for evidence-based policy (I hadn't heard the term 'evidence-based policy' before, but I'm all for policy based on evidence). However, at the same time, I don't think evidence provides a complete basis for policy. Evidence alone doesn't actually tell us what we should do, it tells what would happen if we did, but a moral judgement is required to decide whether this is a good thing or not. This is often called the 'is-ought problem', and associated with David Hume. I note the wiki page on evidence-based policy describes an approach that begins with the step: "Define a clear, overarching policy objective."--the approach described doesn't provide us with a method of obtaining this, and I think this is a contentious issue in itself.

I think the debate over alcohol law may reflect this to an extent. The Government collected evidence about what policies would reduce the harm caused by alcohol, and implemented some of these policies. There are those on the one side that say it is absurd to ignore some of the evidence, and thereby not implement all policies, but there is actually an assumption here... that whatever policies would reduce the harm caused by alcohol ought to be implemented. This is a crucial step, which evidence alone does not conclude. In fact, I think those on the other side do not generally argue with the evidence so much as they argue that it is not always right to do things for the greater good if this places impositions on individual liberty. In the context of alcohol, I think it's generally put something along these lines "I drink responsibly, so why should I be punished for other people's actions?"

I think greater good vs. individual liberty is essentially 'left' vs. 'right' in politics. It's a long-standing disagreement, and, IMHO, one that can't be addressed by any amount of evidence. I'm quite left myself, but there are others in the party who are quite right, and I'm not going to tell them they're wrong. So I think there's something in the position in the wiki:(PPNZ Wiki FAQ)

BTW this issue even comes up with our core policy. Research suggests the economically optimal copyright term is around 15 years. We can roughly equate 'economically optimal' with 'greater good', and so the question again is how much should we sacrifice individual liberty for the greater good. (I think most of us agree that copyright is not an intrinsic moral right, so there's no grounds for a term over 15 years.) Being fairly left, I'm in favour of a relatively long term in comparison to some other members (although more importantly, I'm in favour of a relatively long term for the pragmatic reason that I think we've got a major challenge to change people's mindsets, and I'm afraid over-ambition might reduce the party's chance of success--some suggest this as another possible reason that National might not have implemented all the alcohol policies too).

Here's my concerns with 'evidence-based policy';
1) There's not enough evidence. We can't look at a country with no copyright laws and see what the result would be, because there are none. The best we can do is look at examples of countries who've ignored copyright for a while and see if it helped them get ahead (China, the USA when it was first founded, etc) .. but they got ahead by freely copying the ideas from other countries. We can't find an isolated example of a developed community with no copyright laws.

2) Evidence is one thing, but we still need to decide what the goal is too. There may be evidence that 15 years is 'optimal' for creating the most amount of money or the most amount of 'creativity' from copyright (I'm not even sure which of these was the goal in the 15-years study, but I suspect the goal there was making the most amount of money from copyright). If our goal is to make sure that the greatest number of people have access to as much creativity as possible then the optimal copyright may be none at all. The overall amount of work created might be less but all of it would be available to every person immediately, not just those who can afford to pay for it.

My take on evidence based policy would be as follows:


1) Every new policy is accompanied by a set of measurable criteria by which its success can be judged.

2) If it does not meet these criteria within a given time-frame, then it is automatically (without debate) repealed.

This would allow us to get away from "moral" decisions (which is too subjective a basis for agreeing anything) and would instead focus us on results.

I think (maybe) this might also get us away from "moral" arguments, and shift the focus to what works/doesn't in other countries... and maybe offer some sort of intellectual platform for trying policies out in limited spheres - rather than inflicting them carte-blanche upon the entire country.

-- the "measurable criteria for success" formula should also be applied to all existing law.

Yea, there are http://falkvinge.net/2011/04/11/impressions-from-a-country-without-copyright/

We can also look at specific industries - eg: Fashion, Comedy... which don't (as far as I'm aware) patent or copyright... and are amazingly dynamic and diverse as a result - reputational damage being enough to keep plagiarism in check.

We can also look at different periods in history... has dynamism of innovation correlated to restrictions in IP?


But really - there are too many potentially interefereing factors to make any of this terribly scientific. What's needed is experiment.

1) I think we can classify results from scientific theories built on evidence as themselves being 'evidence' for this purpose. In any case, regardless of the definition we use, what we should be looking for is the best available information, IMHO.
2) Yes, I fully agree that we need to decide on the goal. Given the same information, if our goal was 'maximise overall social benefit from copyrightable works (within a traditional copyright system)', I think the answer for the ideal length of copyright would be about 15 years, whereas if our goal was 'maximise individual liberty', then the ideal answer would be precisely 0 years, and any length of time between these two values would be an 'ideal answer' for some weighting of the comparable merit of individual liberty and overall social benefit. (BTW, I started reading the first of the articles to check, and I'm pretty sure it sounds like they are aiming to model utility, not just production, but good point, I hadn't considered this.)

Yes, but you still have to decide on the measurable criteria that make something 'successful', and this is a moral question, not an empirical one. What do you value? Freedom, or maximising the overall social benefit from copyrightable works? This is not an empirical question.

those aren't measurable criteria.

I'm talking about things like:

Reducing the number of abortions or
Reducing the number of people taking drugs.

as examples of something measurable.

At the moment we're attempting to tackle with both of those questions on a moral basis, and it's leading to damaging laws or wedge-issues that are never ever resolved. The "debate" would shift from arguing morality, to at least focusing on an outcome - so in both of those cases above, the debate would shift to whether those are the right outcomes... or whether the outcomes should be:

Reducing the harm caused by unwanted pregnancy or
Reducing the harm caused by drugs.

If we're focused on simple measurable outcomes - and people know what they are... then we've got a much better shot at achieving them.

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In the case of copyright the measurables would probably be something to do with:

an increase in the volume of works created or
an increase in the number of artists able to make a living from what they do.

-

I received a letter from a Tory MEP this morning (I'm British as well as NZ) saying how he was pushing for the extension the copyright term to 95 years... for all sorts of specious reasons, not least of which was that a study by PWC said that it could boost the music industry by £3.3 Billion over the next 50 years.

Now this is complete shit. What is actually happening here is that our common-culture - something that ALREADY belongs to the us... is being stolen from us, and given to corporations to sell back to us.

And they're fucking foreign corporations. EMI (a cornerstone of this drive, because the beatles stuff is about to become public domain... that's what the panic is over)... EMI are owned by Citigroup... one of the corporations responsible for driving the economy over a cliff.

And this Tory Bank-Poodle has all his framing and rhetoric sorted out... talking about "unprotected works" etc... but the only measurables are that corporations should get more money. If measurables actually made up the structure of the bill it would be a completely different conversation.

--

In a way though, copyright is a tough one to experiment with... to isolate whether it's the law that's having an effect or... something else - the internet say. Which leads me to:

3) - if no measurable criteria for success can be arrived at then the law is thrown out on the spot

Or in other words, if we can't find suitable measurable criteria for judging the success of copyright, then we scrap it.

I beg to differ. Look at the articles by Rufus Pollock linked from the Policy page of the wiki for maximising the overall social benefit from copyrightable works. And for determining how much liberty people are willing to give up, ask them.

You must know you're wading into a quagmire with abortion. Since some people believe a life begins at conception, they consider the harm caused by abortion at any term to include death.

The latter makes as much sense as setting the level of tax to maximise the number of public servants able to make a living. The former would have sounded right to me prior to Edison Carter pointing out that there would be no point having more works if the price is that people can't actually use as many works.

But there are two issues here: one is more focus on measurables, but the other is picking meaningful measurables, and the latter is still a moral question.

If that's ultimately what people want, then I wouldn't object, although I do think it's best to make change in steps, if only so we don't suddenly end up with a million copyright lawyers joining the dole queue all at once.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve
[ if tl;dr try this link instead http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxPVyieptwA ]

'maximum tax revenue' is theoretically raised at around a 70% tax rate. I'm not sure what the effective actual rate is for most people (income+GST+rates+all the other little taxes, licences and registration fees) but I'd hope it's significantly less than 70% because the purpose of government is not supposed to be finding employment for the greatest number of public servants and I think we're constantly progressing towards that.

Which brings me to an interesting question. If we were to set an evidence-based goal for the purpose of government, what would it be? Do we want the minimum amount of services and administration that is absolutely necessary, or the greatest cost/benefit ratio (no government == chaos, too much government == high internal costs, inefficiency, diminishing returns) or somewhere in between that?

This is where evidence-based policy gets hard. We still have to decide on a goal and criteria for 'success' in that goal.

Yup, absolutely. Even if it were determined that substantial government control could create a more 'advanced' society by any number of measurable criteria, I might still prefer to live in a society that is less 'advanced', but in which the government isn't breathing down my neck. [EDIT: This is our land. A land of peace and of plenty. A land of harmony and hope. -- 1984]