Tuesday 26 November 2013

Referendum: Can’t vote, won’t vote

The question asks:

image

My answer is, “No I don’t.” Which would no doubt please David Cunliffe, Russel Norman et al if I voted that way, which is the only alternative the voting paper allows me.

But my full answer is “No I don’t, because I support the Government selling off 100%…”

The 49% is a pathetic and destructive halfway house, offering none of the benefits of removing businesses from government management, and all of the problems. It maintains the fiction that government is a good manager of real assets. It maintains all the monopolistic nastiness associated with government control of a market in which it dominates. It disallows the possibility of entrepreneurial management of the assets controlled, finding maximum value out of some very important assets. It sucks away what would have been real investment capital and uses it instead to bolster the teeming red ink in government accounts—more welfarism, in other words, instead of more investment.

It is, in short, worse than selling nothing or everything, which my voting paper doesn’t allow me to say.

Which is the main reason it has just landed in the bin.

7 comments:

ngapaki said...

“No I don’t, because I support the Government selling off 100%…”

Ditto. Which is the main reason it has just landed in the 'recycling' bin.:-)

homepaddock said...

I'd be happy for them to sell more too. The whole thing is an expensive exercise in futility - nothing more than self-promotion for the opposition.

Paranormal said...

Whilst I agree with you that government should not be running businesses and should sell off 100% of these and other assets, the referendum is not about that. It's about politics.

That's why I'll be voting yes. To tell Cunliffe, Norman and their fellow travelers to go take a hike. Just like the public voted against Winston in the superannuation referendum, it would be good to 'send them a message'.

Shane Pleasance said...

Our local Green man has
13 reasons why you should vote against

Of course, it must be 100%.

Anonymous said...

You people are all wrong. The only way these outfits can morally be returned to the public is to allocate shares to those who paid the taxes that built them. The shares ought not to be charged for but handed over free of charge. Putting shares on the market and expecting people to pay for them (effectively paying a second time) is analogous to conversion of stolen property. That is not right. The thieves must not benefit from this transaction. Give the property back free of encumberances to those who paid for it already.

Amit

Craig said...

Amit, unfortunately if you want to allocate out government assets freely to taxpayers you will have to do the same with government debt.

Anonymous said...

Craig

No. That debt was acquired by those who made the decision to run it up. That they claim to have done it in the name of others does not make any other persons liable. Making the victims of theft responsible for paying off the debts of the theives who stole from them victimise double! That is not right.

Amit