Liberals tried to educate us all about the HST? Some of us (like me) looked at the evidence, and decided that the HST wasn't that bad. The good may have, indeed, outweighed the bad.
And then we voted against it in the referendum anyway. Because we wanted to punish the Liberals for their behaviour, and that was a handy stick with which to smack them.
People have repeatedly shown in experiments that if, say, someone steals $5 from them, they are willing to lose $10 to punish the offender. People who violate norms of fairness, who are seen to be deceitful and lying, should be punished, says something deep in our ape brains.
We want justice, and we are willing to give up more than we have already lost to get it.
In the old Soviet Union, there was this idea that a collective lifestyle and goverment-run economy would create something called the New Soviet Man. He would not be motivated by gain, but only by idealism, and a desire to help his fellow human beings.
I don't need to tell you how badly the grinding, paranoid, badly planned, and corrupt Soviet system failed to create anything like a New Man.
Our leaders are trying to force Homo economicus into existence, and with just as much success.
Matthew Claxton is a reporter with the Langley Advance, sister paper to the Burnaby NOW.
