Hubris

If I told you that I'm prepared to sacrifice long-held positions on things like privatizing the police force, legalizing all drugs, and moving copyright down to a 10-year window to negotiate a National Freedom Strategy with the government, you'd rightly wonder if I were some kind of lunatic. Perhaps a lunatic for seriously considering those positions, but more likely a lunatic for thinking that the government might be happy to see me, the weirdo academic, back down from these positions if only they'd negotiate some compromise strategy with me.

Run the Nash Bargaining calculus when one player has no threat point.  Heck, my three year old has a better bargaining position when he insists that he doesn't want to have a nap than I'd have on insisting that the government enter into negotiations with me on a National Freedom Strategy. At least the three year old has a threat point.

And so the news this morning on Radio New Zealand was mildly amusing:

Professor Jim Mann from Otago University says while diabetes management is a national health target, there is no overarching programme to battle its cause - obesity.

He says one of the reasons for that is the short-term mentality of politicians.

"Doing something about reducing the risk of obesity and its consequences is not something that anybody is going to see in a single electoral cycle."

Professor Mann says he would be willing to sacrifice long-held positions on things like taxes on unhealthy food and social marketing, to negotiate a national obesity strategy with the government.

How many divisions does Professor Mann have?