Zagorath

Zagorath, 2 hours ago

Speedometers are required to be +10% plus 4km/h, -0 km/h. If your speedo says you’re doing 60 and you’re actually doing 61, your speedo is uncompliant. On the other hand you could be doing as little as 50 km/h. If it reads 100, you could be doing as little as 86 km/h or as much as 100.

Zagorath, 3 hours ago

That article itself explains the shortcomings of the concept of political capital in the 2013 political environment, and I think those shortcomings have only grown over the decade since it was written.

I also think there’s an additional issue at play today that wasn’t present (or at least wasn’t as significant) in 2013, which is a deeper sense of discomfort with the overall status quo of politics. A sense of unhappiness that may be reason that taking more bold action, accompanied with a sufficiently strong explanation, could be much more viable than it would have 20 years ago. This isn’t necessarily incompatible with the theory of political capital; it could be described as a factor that significantly reduces the political cost of implementing those policies. But it does just add more on to why discussions of political capital are less valuable than they would have been in Keating’s day.