Friday 30 August 2013

Friday Morning Ramble: The ‘Guns of August’ Edition

toy-soldiersWhen you make a threat—“do that again and you’ll be punished!”—you have to carry it out if they do do it again, or you’ll begin to be taken for granted. Every parent knows this. That’s the “line in the sand” that now confronts Mr Obama as he contemplates sending Tomahawk missiles into a Syrian civil war.  But send them in to do what?  To support whom? And into a hornet’s nest that, with every one of the world’s major powers taking an interest, could end who knows how?
Can this possibly end well?

So it’s war; or is it?
Two Minds on Syria – George Packer, NEW YORKER
What’s Wrong with Going into Syria – Robert Spencer, FRONT PAGE
Cameron backs down on urgent Syria strikes – TELEGRAPH
Syria crisis: France is no longer shoulder-to-shoulder with US – INDEPENDENT
The Syrian Military Theater Of Operations In Two Charts – ZERO HEDGE

What moral authority?
Syria vs. the Waning Superpower – DR MICHAEL HURD

At times, it’s hard to tell truth from satire…
Obama Promises Syria Strike Will Have No Objective – Andy Borowitz, NEW YORKER

How’s the intelligence this time?
Intelligence on Weapons No "Slam Dunk" – ASSOCIATED PRESS

Former top officers are baffled by Washington's telegraphing of its strike on Assad.
Did Obama Administration Leaks Already Spoil the Syria Attack? – FOREIGN POLICY

Are Islamic forces are going to take over Syria? If so, should the United States avoid helping to remove Assad?
Podcast with Yaron Brook – PEIKOFF.COM

Does this explain why dictators like Assad just can't quit while they're ahead?
The Supervillain Syndrome – FOREIGN POLICY

Bring me the head of Bashar al Assad.
Stephens: Target Assad – Bret Stephens, WALL STREET JOURNAL

Obama isn’t the only one who needs a wag-the-dog day. “Kevin Rudd is increasingly desperate to conscript Bashar al-Assad as an ally in his attempt to win the 7 September election. How else can one explain his increasingly strident remarks about Syria when Australia is both impotent and irrelevant when it comes to changing the Syrian regime?”
The Syrian diversion – CATALLAXY FILES

“This U.S. attack on Syria could turn out to be an Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo moment.”
Like a monkey with a grenade: Russia warns of "catastrophic consequences" if U.S. and U.K. hit Syria for al-Qaeda – JIHAD WATCH

“If you do a one-and-done and say you're going to repeat it if unacceptable things
happen, you might find these people keep doing unacceptable things. It will suck you in."
- Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, former commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East

Maybe it’s time to watch this again…

David Cunliffe speaks…
I am deeply concerned about me – David Cunliffe, THE CIVILIAN

“So now we know the truth; Labour hung David Shearer out to dry last Tuesday.”
Nice show of support Labour; not – KEEPING STOCK

The government department responsible for the regulatory regime changed its name to escape responsibility.  The government’s building research laboratory that approved the materials was made exempt from responsibility. So builders, designers and ratepayers were made to assume the responsibility for houses that failed. But now the Ministry of Ed wants the suppliers of the materials that failed to assume responsibility. Which might prove a precedent.
Firms sued in test case on school leaks – NZ HERALD
Cladding firms in the gun at last – Policy Parrot, WHALE OIL
Leaky Homes, Part 2: What's going on inside your walls – NOT PC, 2009

Well, wasn’t that nice for Ngati Toa.
Government rewards genocide and cannibalism with taxpayer dollars – 1 LAW 4 ALL

So The Economist ranks Auckland as the world’s 10th most liveable city. But scores us better on culture than Melbourne, Sydney and Vienna! (Go figure.)  So what should we do now? “More infrastructure!” says the Transport Blog.
Auckland ranked 10th most liveable city once again – AUCKLAND TRANSPORT BLOG

Minister Judith Collins becomes blogger Judith Collins. But will she answer questions?
News Flash: Judith Collins to join No Minister – NO MINISTER

“The majority of NZers believe that John Key is a liar but they still think he's the best man to lead the country. What does that say about standards and ethics?”
Honesty is now irrelevant in New Zealand? – AARDVARK

“Blogger-on-a-mission Sarah Miles explains very well what this week’s Quake-Outcasts case was about.”
Quake Out-Casts go to the High Court – a Summary by Sarah – SARAH MILES

What else do 7 out of 10 The Economist’s top scoring cities have in common?  They’re also severely unaffordable…(So is a city truly “liveable” if it’s not affordable?)

image

Embedded image permalinkEdward Snowden: hero or villain? Philosopher Leonard Peikoff in top form in two podcasts:

  • “Q: Is it moral for a person to expose secret government programs which violate citizens’ individual rights, even if this may harm strategies which the government states are essential to national security? In other words, what is your estimate of the NSA now?” Download & Listen
  • A follow-up to Dr. Peikoff’s previous podcast: An interview with Amy Peikoff on the NSA programs. Download & Listen

“So, “GCSB assistance” is basically “NSA assistance”, so when the Police asks for GCSB help, it’s actually getting NSA help.”
BTW, the NZ Police can use PRISM against you now – Keith Ng, ON POINT

“$500 billion, 16 spy agencies & 107,035 employees unable to provide critical information.”
U.S. spy network’s successes, failures and objectives detailed in ‘black budget’ summary – WASHINGTON POST

‘“The damage, on a scale of 1 to 10, is a 12,” said a former intelligence official."

Five years after the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, economists are still starkly divided as to its causes.
That Savings Glut vs. Those Low Interest Rates – David Howden, MISES DAILY

When the mainstream goes Austrian….
Financial Times: "World Is Doomed To An Endless Cycle Of Bubble, Financial Crisis And Currency Collapse" – ZERO HEDGE

It’s one of this century’s most important economic ideas, so how come you’ve never heard of it.
Creative Destruction—The Best Game in Town – Robert Higgs, CIRCLE BASTIAT

“Bubble markets are particularly attractive to apartment developers and speculators.”
Highrise Harry: Rising property prices good for all [developers] – MACROBUSINESS

“Perhaps even more amazing is that the increase in proved reserves dramatically outpace that of oil extracted from the ground.”
Frackers Generate Greatest Annual Increase in U.S. Oil Reserves Ever – OBJECTIVE STANDARD

“The true soldier fights not because he hates what is
in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”

― G.K. Chesterton

Ahead of the Australian election on the result of which bookmakers have already paid out, Catallaxy Files asks readers to rank recent Australian governments from most competent to least competent. Some surprising results!
Special Catallaxy survey – ranking of Governments (until 7 September) – CATALLAXY FILES

Zurich Sex Boxes Switzerland
Drive-in Swiss brothels: can you translate?
The Signs Are Hilarious At Switzerland's New 'Drive-In Brothel' – BUSINESS INSIDER

Just a reminder in case you’ve forgotten.
How Obama Got His Tomahawks – David Stockman, ZERO HEDGE

So how good was Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy really?
A DIM History of American Foreign Policy, Part 8: Ronald Reagan 
– Scott Powell, POWELL HISTORY RECOMMENDS

"..racism invalidates the specific attribute which distinguishes
man from all other living species: his rational faculty"

-Ayn Rand

Some of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s ideas resonate beautifully and widely and appropriately in America--and some other of King’s ideas do not. And that might be good.
Martin Luther King's real message – Jonah Goldberg, L.A. TIMES
King’s Dream and Today’s Racial Nightmare – Ed Hudgins, SOLO

Jobs and justice? Don Boudreaux too has a dream. See:
I, Too, Have a Dream – CAFE HAYEK

“If people start being judged by the content of their character, I’m screwed.”
50th Anniversary Of ‘I Have A Dream’ Speech – THE ONION

Ten really cool skybridges. Like this one:

Could be useful? Eleven Signs You Might Be Dating a Sociopath.
Who does this remind me of? – Steve Kates, CATALLAXY FILES

Sound advice on food blogging – or other kinds of blogging, for that matter – from Prick With a Fork via Tim Blair:
    Write honestly (and well).
   
Photograph discreetly.
   
And don’t be a jerk.

The Cuddle Mattress is divided by a series of slats. Sleepers can wedge their arm in between these slats for better snuggling.What a cool idea (right)!
A Mattress That Makes It Easier To Cuddle – NPR

Tyler Cowen calls it “a new and not very trustworthy proposal for the funding of science.”
Put your money where your citations are: a proposal for a new funding system for science – SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN

“During the late nineteenth century, the modern apparatus for schooling everyone was put in place.”
Progressivism and ‘getting it wrong’ in the history of Education – LITERACY NZ

Science catches up with pedagogues.
Learning a New Language Alters Brain Development – SCIENCE DAILY

“Be ready for a wild ride.”
Imagine that the Universe is not expanding – REFERENCE FRAME

“Of course ‘twerk’ comes from the German ‘Gesamtkunstwerk,’ the fusion
of all the arts into a single medium of dramatic expression.”
Jeff Greenstein

Welcome to the world’s tallest slum.
The world's tallest slum: Rare look at an illegal ghetto in the sky – ARCHINECT

“India's caste system is relatively recent—and before that, all different racial and ethnic groups in India intermixed.”
What DNA Testing Reveals About India’s Caste System - TIME

Who knew!
Tom Waits: ‘A Day in Vienna,’ “terrific, little-known late 70s TV documentary – DANGEROUS MINDS

Four books by four friends: they’re just out, and they’re red hot!  (Click the pics to go to their Amazon pages.)

    image   image   image

[Hat tips Stephen FranksCafe HayekMarginal Revolution, Geek Press, Small Dead Animals, Walter Olson, Oliver Ding, Kiwiwit, Simon Kringas, Joe Noonan, Virginia Murr, Kelly Rek, Ayn Rand Institute ‏, The Onion, Melius Mutari, Russell Brown, Jacob Kwena Motadi, Matt Nippert, Ayn Rand Revolution, John Shepard, Robert Tracinski]

Thanks for reading.
Have a great weekend!
PC

Thursday 29 August 2013

New report says bring back phonics to fix widespread illiteracy

Ministry_of_Miseducation

I posted this morning about the complete and calamitous systemic failure that happens when government departments go wrong.

Here’s one of the biggest, confirmed by just-released Massey University research: the minimising and belittling of phonics in teaching reading (begun by “The Look-Guess Lady” Dame Marie Clay and spread though govt Teachers Colleges, and govt schools with govt-mandated curricula) which has been disastrous.

Here is the research that proves it, with the blame squarely laid at the feet of government programs, including the $40 million-a-year Reading Recovery programme begun by Marie Clay herself to fix the flaws created by her own failed educational philosophy. The programme, says the report, is “fundamentally flawed.”

The problem created by Departmental obsession withe Clay’s methods is huge. Generations of New Zealanders have left school functionally illiterate without even the basic ability to read a newspaper or bus timetable.  “New Zealand’s relatively ‘long tail’ of literacy underachievement was a major concern for educators and policy makers that grew during the 1990s,” says the report. 

It was.

The comprehensive 1996 International Adult Literacy Survey surveyed adults worldwide from 16-65. The New Zealand portion of that survey found that for prose (the “ability to understand and use information from text”) a staggering 66.4 percent of Mäori were “functionally illiterate,” unable to meet the “complex demands of everyday life and work” and an equally tragic 41.6 percent of non-Mäori.

This represents more than half-a-million New Zealanders who were functionally illiterate. Nothing has changed since to improve that.

imageProfessor James Chapman says … “The current approach is not working for too many children  – and we need to change it.”
    He and his colleagues say the failure of the strategy is not the fault of teachers and principals, but the result of misguided policy decisions. They recommend major scientifically-supported changes to New Zealand’s approach to literacy education.

What caused this monstrous failure?  As the report notes, the unquestioned victory in policy meetings of Marie Clay’s look-and-guess method of teaching illiteracy, for which the effect on young NZers has been all-too-often disastrous:

New Zealand has followed a predominantly constructivist approach to literacy education for the past 25 years. In this approach literacy learning is largely seen as the by-product of active mental engagement. There is little or no explicit, systematic teaching of phonemic awareness (the ability to reflect on and manipulate the phonemic segments of spoken words) and alphabetic coding skills (the ability to translate letters and letter patterns into phonological forms). Yet, both phonemic awareness and alphabetic coding skills are essential for learning to read successfully.
  Underpinning the constructivist approach to literacy teaching is the “multiple cues” theory of reading (sometimes called the “searchlights” model). According to this view, skilled reading is a process in which minimal word-level information is used to confirm predictions about the upcoming words of text based on multiple sources of information (Clay, 1991). Learning to read is seen largely as a process in which children learn to use multiple cues in identifying words in text. Text-based cues (i.e., picture cues, sentence context cues, preceding passage context, prior knowledge activated by the text) are used by students to predict the text yet to be encountered. Letter-sound information is generally used only to confirm word predictions or guesses and for self-correction (Clay, 1998).

In other words, instead of using phonics to acquire the ability to easily decode words, in Clay’s “system” it was generally only to confirm (somehow) a child’s guesswork.

Astonishing.

The report notes that “the scientific community has firmly rejected the constructivist/multiple cues model of
reading,” and highlights research indicating “that for progress to occur in learning to read, the beginning reader must acquire the ability to translate letters and letter patterns into phonological forms.”

Without that ability …

MENYKIDSFINEDWREEDINGHAADATHANYAWFINEDINGITNOW.

They find it hard because the phonic codebook was ripped away from them by the misguided decisions of misguided policy wonks in a misbegotten government ministry who watched all this happen and did nothing arrest it. 

One of the main changes this report recommends is to bring phonics back to their place of importance in early reading, and urgently.

Let us hope this time they succeed.

  • The report’s 11-page summary is here.  The full report is here.

New_Maths

The myth of Colin’s deregulation disasters

“One of the methods used by statists to destroy capitalism
consists in establishing controls that tie a given industry hand
and foot, making it unable to solve its problems, then declaring
that freedom has failed and stronger controls are necessary…”
Ayn Rand on Today’s Crisis

Colin Espiner is the latest clown on point.  “In the wake of the Fonterra debacle,” says a Colin Espiner jumping Bernard Hickey’s shark into the pool of pro-regulation tadpoles, it’s “become obvious … light-handed regulation has … been an unmitigated disaster.”

Poor Colin. Turns out overnight that the “Fonterra debacle” on which he hangs his hat for the perils of light-handed regulation was “a false alarm,” the result not of private disaster but of government fuck-up. Don’t just take my word for it, listen to the voice of the Labour Party…

Revelations today that no botulism was found in Fonterra's whey protein is "a complete systems failure by the Ministry for Primary Industries," says Labour's Primary Industries spokesperson Damien O'Connor… Our failure to ensure the highest standards of testing, monitoring and auditing means the damage has been done to New Zealand’s international reputation.

“A complete systems failure by the Ministry for Primary Industries.” A failure by government inspectors. How does that fit with Colin's newly-discovered thesis that Ministries never fail?

I point this out not just to poke Colin’s thesis in the eye with a sharp stick, but to raise the important point that government departments fail too—and when they do the “complete systems failure” they cause can be catastrophic.  The department’s “complete systems failure” in this case means “damage has been done”—big damage—to New Zealand’s international reputation.”

To be fair to Colin, he cites more than just this debacle to make his argument against his new-found foe.

Colin argues that this country fell into a dangerous free-market hole in the 1980s and 1990s through the buzzwords "deregulation", followed by "light-handed regulation" and its kissing cousin "self-regulation.”

_Quote5Why employ big expensive government departments full of people who have to check everything [says Colin] when you can replace them with slimmed-down ministries that set policies and then tick off the completed forms sent back to them by employers?
    Get rid [says Colin] of the people who check planes, mines, workplace safety, food safety, telecommunications and other infrastructure, weights, measures, building standards, and everything else. And then make everyone do it themselves… The idea was simple, if crazy with the benefit of hindsight….
    It's taken a good 20 years for the sheer magnitude of the stupidity of those "reforms" … to become obvious [says Colin].

The result of these “reforms,” says Colin, was “the meltdown of our finance companies, the fleecing of thousands of investors of their retirement savings, a $6 billion leaky homes fiasco, the worst and least competitive telephone service in the western world, some of the highest electricity prices, the deaths of 29 miners at Pike River and most recently, the severe shock to our dairy industry.  Light-handed regulation has, in short, been an unmitigated disaster.”

For Colin, the “Fonterra debacle” was his last straw in this drive he identifies to getting rid of “big government departments” that check weights, measures, building standards, and everything else.

  • So what was that big government department doing testing Fonterra’s whey when according to Colin it doesn’t even exist? 
  • Where did all the dismemberment of Telecom come from, and what does the forced dismemberment say about who has more power in NZ today—politicians or businessmen and -women? (Q: How do you get a nice small business?  A: Take a large one, and make David Cunliffe the minister in charge.) And while that dismemberment was happening, telecoms companies weren’t inventing in big telecoms? No wonder. As I've said over and over again, "No one but an idiot or a cabinet minister would expect to see businessmen or women making a long-term investment in infrastructure when theft of such an investment is imminent, or the breakup of that investment is on the cards."
  • What are all those building inspectors doing crawling all over buildings checking to see if we’ve followed the rules set out in the welter of regulations that kept coming ever since that non-existent deregulation? What is that government department doing checking out all building materials to decide whether or not we’re allowed to use them? And check out the complete systems failure they caused when the materials they said were okay weren’t.
  • What did the government’s Reserve Bank (the biggest big-government department on The Terrace, so Colin surely can’t miss it) think would happen when they opened up their credit spigot and tipped out all that counterfeit capital? What was the government’s Reserve Bank doing shovelling out money so cheaply finance companies could rent it out not-quite-so-cheaply and think they had a business model going instead of a paper pyramid? And what was the moral hazard created by the govt’s Retail Deposit Guarantee Scheme really and truly going to encourage?1

And what about Colin’s shroud-waving over the death of 29 men in the disaster in Pike River? I could point to the big government department that nixed the company’s preference to open-cast the mine instead of creating a bomb with one exit. I could point out the mining disasters in the parts of the world who follow Colin’s prescription today—Australia (Moura and Beaconsfield), Chile (Copiapó), Poland (Halemba), Russia (Ulyanovskaya), Canada (Westray), United States (Quecreek and Upper Big Branch) and South Africa (too many to mention)--not to mention the wholesale disasters of the past in the Soviet Union and China.

And I could point out the 181 people killed in NZ in coal mine disasters long before this mythical age of deregulation (the last before Pike River being the 19 miners killed in the Strongman mine in 1967).

imageBut perhaps the most important point to make is about risk and why people take it—and why they take more of it when they think someone (especially a government) has their back covered. That’s why many finance companies thought they were safe enough to take risks—they  had the government’s guarantee to protect them. That’s why builders, architects and home-buyers thought they were safe and weren’t taking risks—they had the Building Act, the Building Industry Authority, the Department of Building and Housing, the New Zealand Building Code, the Building Research Association of NZ and the consent processes and inspections of Territorial Authorities to protect them. That’s why so many banks thought they were safe to be pumping out all that counterfeit capital to keep the housing bubble going—because the govt’s Reserve Bank and credit-rating agencies with govt-granted monopolies told them all was well, al was safe, all was under control, when it wasn’t.

In short, the more government regulation there was, the less folk thought they needed to regulate themselves—because if Big Brother is doing it as swimmingly as Big Brother says he is, why need we do so ourselves?  So roll on that short-term thinking that causes disasters. 

Mark Thornton observes about the phenomenon:

The public is told that regulators do not cause problems; they prevent them. They police the economy. They are the watchmen that have been endowed with the wisdom, ability, and selfless devotion to the public good.
    There are indeed many people who work as government regulators that are very smart and well-trained that have public spirit and the public good in their hearts. There are also plenty of cads and knuckleheads that work as regulators [some of them now scurrying for their lives in the Ministry for Primary Industries].
    The problem with government regulation is that you cannot fine-tune the regulations: nor can you perfect the regulatory work force in such a way to make regulation work in anything but a superficial way. The truth is that regulation instills confidence in the public so that they let down their guard and makes them less cautious while at the same time distorting the competitive nature of firms in the marketplace.
    After every economic crisis there are calls for new regulations, more funding, and more controls.
Economic wisdom dictates that we be ready to contest those calls when the next crisis of the interventionist state occurs.

Colin is speaking in good faith about the effect of all these disasters, and in good faith he thinks he sees both the cause and the solution, but his failure to clearly analyse their causes and his proposed solution is a disaster for someone who sells his commentary as professional analysis.

Perhaps the clearest point illustrating his obvious ignorance is his invocation of poor old Adam Smith as the man responsible for all this. The “one lesson” Colin thinks we should all draw is “that pure market theory, Adam Smith's Invisible Hand … is bunk.”

Poor old Adam Smith and his little-understood metaphor, invoked by so many to prove their arguments that are otherwise so lacking.  Colin just joins a long list of folk who berate the metaphor while never learning what Adam meant by it.

"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest," said Old Adam. The butcher, the brewer and the iPod-maker "direct [their] industry in such a manner as [their] produce may be of the greatest value," and we are the beneficiaries of their labours and their trade -- each intends only his own gain, but by the blessing of trade he is, said old Adam, "led as if by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention."

The “invisible hand” of Colin Espiner’s nightmares is simply a metaphor for the process in which people voluntarily buy and sell, in which process is discovered who values what the most—who is prepared to put their money where their values are, how much that makes resources worth, and what (therefore) producers should produce more of.

And contra Espiner, that is the only real place and process in which to discover exactly how much (or maybe how little) people value what we go out every day to produce. The more government regulation there is in the way of that process, the less coordination there is between brewer and baker, and the less do those values get reflected—and the more does self-regulation get thrown out the window.

Not to mention the extent to which, as Adam Smith most famously recognised, the extent to which the brewer and baker and building materials suppliers will embrace with enthusiasm the rent-seeking and monopoly grants available to them by regulatory capture.  (“To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers,” he obseved.)

And these are the real risks of Mr Espiner’s new-found paradise on earth. Far more real than the myth of deregulation he’s digested from those who know (or should know) better.

* * * *

NOTES:

1. The Myth of Deregulation is so all-fired powerful that even hard-bitten journalists who think they’re immune to such things have bought the myth wholesale. Despite the obvious evidence right in front of their eyes, they’ve bought the idea, especially, that for the last decades we have had “completely free markets and capital flows.”  Free markets! What are they smoking! These hot-shot economics reporters are apparently blind to the fact that in the markets of the last decades there has been virtually no price or profit relationship left untouched. You think the age of Muldoonist price controls and interference with profits are dead?  In the last few decades the “orthodoxy” worldwide has overseen:

  • interest rates controlled by an economic dictator with powers Muldoon would have killed for;
  • specific interest rates, such as home mortgages, manipulated through subsidies as well as price controls;
  • indirect currency controls virtually everywhere;
  • direct government manipulation of the gold market by both world govts and the IMF;
  • asset price floors—in addition to the ‘Greenspan put,’ we’ve had money printed and “toxic” assets bought, anything to keep asset values raised ;
  • wage floors, essentially a guarantee of widespread unemployment in a downturn;
  • wage ceilings, especially for executives;
  • direct price controls, especially in medicine and education;
  • good old-fashioned protectionism—not just currency manipulation, but outright tariff and non-tariff barriers;
  • the dismissal of business bankruptcy and liquidation as “old-fashioned”;
  • pumping up illusory profits by inflating the money supply, creating an inflationary illusion of profitability and prosperity;
  • the grant of virtual monopoly powers to the very credit agencies that didn’t know a bad thing even when it was held right under their nose.*

These are just a few of the means by which govts ran price controls and interference with profits in recent decades—and still are.  But Colin Espiner, Bernard Hickey, Fran O’Sullivan and hundred of thousands of others trained to view all this as part of a “free market” are too braindead to see them for what they are, and  with the failure of this system of control they call instead for the controls to be tightened!

They have the frankly braindead notion that somehow the people in govt responsible for creating, overseeing and extending this economic disaster need to “take back” the reins they never gave up.  They have apparently either lost the brains they once had, or have now reached the point (as it has with most educated in mainstream economics) where the real world has outstripped their learning, so have resorted to the siren cry of the braindead everywhere: “Bring me more big government! Now!!”

The Complete Idiot’s Chart to Understanding the Middle East

You got that?  Because it will all be in the exam.

Seriously, and scarily, you could have drawn a similar sort of chart about the Balkans a century ago. And we know how that ended up…

[Pic from Washington Post, hat tip Stephen Hicks]

Wednesday 28 August 2013

Martin Luther King’s dream: how are we doing after half a century?

So as of today it’s now exactly half a century since Martin Luther King expressed his dream that his four children would one day live in a world where they would be judged not by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.

Half a century since he expressed the idea that character is all; that skin colour is just something you're born with; that recognition of that fact should not be just a Dream.

So how are we doing after half a century? Have we reached that day?

Looking around me just in this country—looking around at race-based law, race-based preference, race-based settlements, race-based “cogovernance” arrangements, race-based quotas, race-based seats and race-based political parties—I can only say, “I wish.”

50 years later, even to talk about the dream of one law for all is to see yourself branded as something you’re not.  It seems clear that, as Thomas Bowden says,

we still need to focus on the proper antidote to racism and the proper alternative to racial thinking: individualism. We need to teach our children and all our citizens to look beyond the superficialities of skin colour and to judge people on what really matters, namely, "the content of their character."

Could we make a start today?

How to admire a cat’s arse, by Chris Trotter [corrected + updated]

Chris Trotter is once again banging the drum for the man with a face like a cat’s arse to be Labour leader. “The Happy Warrior” he calls David Cunliffe—the man his own caucus colleagues call, but not to his cat’s arse, “Silent T.”

Why Trotter would want to saddle Silent T with a nickname previously associated with Democratic time-servers Al Smith, Ted Kennedy and Joe Biden is a question you would have to ask him yourself (perhaps because it’s better than ‘Silent T’?), but he is so all-fired out for Cunliffe you wonder what he’s been taking.

This is a man, says a Trotter on his knees in homage, who “has never shied away from the challenge laid down in John Bunyan’s classic protestant hymn “To Be A Pilgrim.” The sort of politician who “does not hesitate to do battle with the allegorical ‘lions,’ ‘giants’,’ “Hobgoblins” and ‘foul fiends’ that regularly assail his party on the road to the Holy City.” A man who “offers Labour’s core vote a voice” –and not just a voice but “the only voice that can rouse the Labour vote from its disillusionment and despair.”A voice whose “words marked him out as a politician with something different to offer.” A voice “to begin again the task of building Jerusalem in New Zealand’s green and pleasant land…”

Phew.

Leaving aside the hyperbolic Jerusalemism if we can (and did those feet in ancient times really walk upon New Zealand’s mountains green?) just what words have so distinctively marked out this man of such rabid and “swashbuckling eloquence”?  What Jerusalemic vision does he harbour that might rouse the Labour vote from its disillusionment and despair?

The best chance to experience the visions of Silent T came in his tub-thumping road trip last year that Trotter et al also talked up (“intellectually brilliant” Brian Edwards called his performance before rolling over and asking for his tummy to be rubbed) in which in his first speech Cunliffe outlined a plan for the economy in which the only thing missing was the plan, in his second he recited history that wasn’t so and economics that never could be, and in his third he suggested nothing so much as a bidding war being under way for Russel Norman’s fact-challenged speech writers.

So not so hotso after all.

I still maintain his future lies in poetry.

Here is a photo of someone else admiring a cat’s arse (Chris Trotter on his knees not in frame).

image

[Photo from Yersina at Flickr]

CORRECTION: Links fixed.

UPDATE:  A truly bizarre press conference announcing his leadership candidacy…

“I’m guilty of gross violation of equality of opportunity, racism and possibly sexism.”

Professor Walter Williams admits he is  guilty of gross violation of equality of opportunity, racism and possibly sexism, as charged by his university's Office of Equity and Diversity Services who require him to “complete the in-person Equal Opportunity and Prevention of Sexual Harassment Policies and Procedures training.”

He won’t be going. He won’t be going because people discriminate all the time. Because “George Mason’s Office of Equity and Diversity Services has far more challenging equity and diversity work than worrying about the re-education of Professor Williams.” And because:

Ideas such as equity and equal opportunity, while having high emotional value, are vacuous analytical concepts. For example, I’ve asked students whether they plan to give every employer an equal opportunity to hire them when they graduate. To a person, they always answer no. If they aren’t going to give every employer an equal opportunity to hire them, what’s fair about forcing employers to give them an equal opportunity to be hired? […]
    Allied with the purveyors of equity, diversity and inclusion are the multiculturalists, who call for the celebration of cultures. For them, all cultures are morally equivalent and to deem otherwise is Eurocentrism. That’s unbridled nonsense. Ask your multiculturalist: Is forcible female genital mutilation, as practiced in nearly 30 sub-Saharan Africa and Middle Eastern countries, a morally equivalent cultural value? Slavery is practiced in Sudan and Niger; is that a cultural equivalent? In most of the Middle East, there are numerous limits on women — such as prohibitions on driving, employment, voting and education. Under Islamic law, in some countries, female adulterers face death by stoning, and thieves face the punishment of having their hand severed. Are these cultural values morally equivalent, superior or inferior to those of the West?
    Western values are superior to all others. Why? The greatest achievement of the West was the concept of individual rights. The Western transition from barbarism to civility didn’t happen overnight. It emerged feebly — mainly in England, starting with the Magna Carta of 1215 — and took centuries to get where it is today.
    One need not be a Westerner to hold Western values. A person can be Chinese, Japanese, Jewish, African or Arab and hold Western values. It’s no accident that Western values of reason and individual rights have produced unprecedented health, life expectancy, wealth and comfort for the ordinary person.

This last point is so crucial I’ll say it again: One need not be a Westerner to hold Western values. Western values are able to be embraced by anyone. They are inclusive, not exclusive. They are held by choice, not by race.

As George Reisman points out, Western civilisation is not a product of race:

Once one recalls what Western civilization is, the most important thing to realize about it is that it is open to everyone... The truth is that just as one does not have to be from France to like French- fried potatoes or from New York to like a New York steak, one does not have to have been born in Western Europe or be of West European descent to admire Western civilization, or, indeed, even to help build it. Western civilization is not a product of geography. Indeed, important elements of "Western" civilization did not even originate in the West."Western civilization is not a product of geography. It is a body of knowledge and values. Any individual, any society, is potentially capable of adopting it and thereby becoming Westernized."

I once gave Tariana Turia the example of how western values are open to everyone: After talking with her I was off to a concert in which a piece of music written by a Russian was about to be played by a Chinese soloist, under a Peruvian conductor, in front of an orchestra containing Jews, Asians, Africans, Arabs and who knows what. Their race was irrelevant; their musicality wasn’t. That’s an example of western values in practice: they are open to anyone who wants to embrace them.

This is the real antidote to racism.

I thoroughly recommend a good reading of Reisman’s essay in which he makes the argument most thoroughly: “ Education & the Racist Road to Barbarism.”

Miley and modern journalism

So why was Miley Cyrus all over the world news yesterday for a dance at an awards show?

The Onion asked the Managing Editor Of CNN.Com to explain.

It’s a good question. And the answer is pretty simple. It was an attempt to get you to click on CNN.com so that we could drive up our web traffic, which in turn would allow us to increase our advertising revenue.
    There was nothing, and I mean nothing, about that story that related to the important news of the day, the chronicling of significant human events, or the idea that journalism itself can be a force for positive change in the world. For Christ’s sake, there was an accompanying story with the headline “Miley’s Shocking Moves.” In fact, putting that story front and center was actually doing, if anything, a disservice to the public. And come to think of it, probably a disservice to the hundreds of thousands of people dying in Syria, those suffering from the current unrest in Egypt, or, hell, even people who just wanted to read about the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech.
But boy oh boy did it get us some web traffic. Which is why I, Meredith Artley, managing editor of CNN.com, put the story in our top spot.   

Satire. It’s the tribute humour plays to truth.

Or asMatt Nippert said, “The best critique of online journalism ever - and it's a spoof.”

Tuesday 27 August 2013

Syria? Or bust?

“The whole of the Middle East is intimately related. Beneath the smooth
surface of British rule and the slender garrisons which normally sustain it are
smouldering the antagonisms of centuries. There are always feuds and animosities.
There are always scores to be settled and fanatical thirsts to be slaked.”
- Winston Churchill, 1929

American sabre rattling has started over Syria. Will President Obama now send troops, tanks and planes to intervene? As commentator Robert Tracinski wonders, “Maybe he will, maybe he won't, maybe it's already too late. Maybe he'll wait for the French to do it.”

But if he does, which way would he have them point their guns?

The Syrian regime has been helping the Iranian revolution go nuclear, helping Hezbollah send missiles into Israel, and (arguably) helped itself to Iraqi chemical weapons and technology before and during the Iraq war.  And last week, and maybe months ago as well, it reportedly helped send out a gas attack killing thousands of anti-regime Syrians.

And the rebels opposing the Syrian regime? They’re the same brand of Islamists ousted so violently in Egypt because they were in the process of rapidly setting up an Islamic dictatorship.  "Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of." And those fighting forces you can speak of fly the black flag of Al Qaeda—no less brutal than Assad, and even more virulently opposed to the West.

Tragic though the conflict is then, the West has no dog in this particular civil war.  It has nothing for which to support the regime, and no reason to support its (and our) long-term Islamist enemies.

Perhaps the only role for the West here is the one counselled by Margaret Thatcher in Yugoslavia once Tito died and the scab was ripped off a century or more of tribal hatred: “End the arms embargoes and seal the borders.”

I fear however the West is instead about to arm its enemies.

[Hat tip for links and quote to Robert Tracinski and Robert Spencer]

Russel Norman still wants you to be poorer

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He said in June he’d backed down on his plan to print money, but Russel Norman is still a limbless man in a pile of paper dollars.  Only now he wants to cheapen your money not by printing millions of paper dollars, but by having them borrowed into existence at an ever greater rate by having the Reserve Bank Governor slash the “official” interest rate.

“By keeping the Official Cash Rate higher than it needed to be to manage actual inflation, the Reserve Bank Governor has kept the dollar higher hurting exporters and export-led growth,” the Ginger Whinger said this morning.  “The Bank had additional scope to cut the Official Cash Rate,” he said.  “The New Zealand dollar was overvalued and needed to come down,” he said…

What does that mean in plain English? It means he still wants to make the country richer by making you poorer. Somehow. That he still wants to make bankers richer by making your money less valuable. Any how. And above all he still wants to drive down the NZ dollar to make imports more expensive, which means (given that so much of what you and I buy both locally and imported is priced in terms of overseas buyers) he wants to see real wages drop.  By means, it seems, of of any artifice necessary.

This man still wants to be finance minister in the next Government.

Can some vigilant journalist please ask David Cunliffe, Shane Jones and Grant Robertson if they would rule that out. Pretty please?

#WhatEveritTakes

I must confess I never knew Everit myself, but whatever Everit took was clearly sufficient inspiration for the coaches and administration of the modern-day Essendon Football Club that they took it for their motto:

#WhatEveritTakes

Not only have they been taking whatever they think Everit might be taking himself, they’ve boasted about taking whatever it takes all over their signage and advertising.  After disappearing for part of the year, you can see it below in one of the Essendon Football Club coach’s many press conferences about what Everit took, or didn’t take:

James Hird

To tell the truth (and, like Essendon Football Club’s coach James Hird, one should never let yourself and truth become a stranger for too long) I’m not exactly sure which press conference from 26 turbulent months is pictured above. It might have been the press conference when he said he wanted us to know all the facts. Or it might have been the one where he put on his pinstripe to say the release of the AFL’s facts was an “ambush,” making him “a victim of trial by media.” Or perhaps it was his from-the-heart after last Saturday’s game, when his words covered things like regret (for “certain aspects of what happened in 2012”) and remorse (in the future, “obviously”) and being 99% right (infamy, infmay, everyone’s got it in-for-me), while his body language said something different altogether.

So who might Everit be to have him made a motto for a football club trying to bring back the glory of older times?  Maybe he was the patient who left behind the mysterious Mexican Muscular Dystrophy drugs that proved so tempting for Essendon’s biochemists. Maybe he was on the drug that killed River Phoenix? Or maybe he once rode wingman for US Postal, or was the fellow who cleared out their bins after the pre-match injection session?

But whatever Everit was taking is not at all good for football. Or footballers. Or football coaches.

Because Whatever Everit Takes and whatever Essendon’s footballers took, or didn’t take—or took allegedly or allegedly didn’t take—in the end this has become all about the football coach.  About James Hird.

At this stage my New Zealand readers will be wondering who the hell he is, and why does Radio Sport care? (It’s not like the bastards bother to report the actual football here in NZ.) So who is he, this James Hird character? That’s easy. He’s the fellow who employed the spin doctor to make sure he became the story, while the facts did/didn’t get out there.  So let’s leave the last word to him:

"I think we can really grow from this as a football club."

Let’s see about that.

Monday 26 August 2013

New book by Lindsay Perigo: ‘The One Tenor’

Before the Three Tenors, there was just one. Lindsay Perigo tells the story of the overpoweringly charismatic singer of screen and record whom today’s singers still revere, and who has somewhat eluded biographers hitherto. From the new book’s Amazon description….

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The One Tenor is a labour of love for life-long Mario Lanza devotee, New Zealand radio and television broadcaster Lindsay Perigo.

It is the bringing together of his best Lanza-related essays, critiques and interviews over the years, with significant new material exclusive to this book, including Perigo's take on the theory that Mario Lanza suffered from Bipolar Disorder. This theory was first touted in the biography of Lanza by Roland Bessette, with little explication. In The One Tenor Perigo interviews Bessette, who elaborates on his theory for the first time. Perigo responds in his stellar chapter, "Mario's Magic Madness."

The author stresses in his Introduction that The One Tenor is not a biography, but a chance to meet the overpoweringly charismatic Mario of screen and record who, in Perigo's opinion, has somewhat eluded biographers hitherto. Perigo argues that the uniqueness of Lanza lay in both his voice and soul, and that any portrait that fails to capture the latter is significantly incomplete. Soul abounds in The One Tenor.

The book is exceptional for its musical literacy. Perigo uses his own background as a singing student and connoisseur of voices to maximum advantage. In his time as a broadcaster, Perigo presented a series for New Zealand's National Radio called “Singers of Renown,” devoted to the great recordings of all great voices. He conducted extended interviews for that show and on TVNZ with Joan Sutherland, Sir Donald MacIntyre, Dame Malvina Major, Luciano Pavarotti, Jose Carreras, Licia Albanese and Anna Moffo, along with Mario Lanza's conductor and accompanist, Constantine Callinicos. (The Callinicos, Moffo and Carreras interviews are below.) His wealth of knowledge about the vocal art permeates this entire collection.

Among the diverse features of The One Tenor are Perigo's critiques of several Lanza CD releases of recent times, including the very latest, out just this month, Mario Lanza—The Toast of Hollywood. Youngsters studying voice will find Perigo's observations about Lanza's technique and style illuminating, but these observations are not so technical as to baffle the layman.

Perigo's insights into Lanza are further informed by his friendship for many years with Mario's son, the late Damon Lanza, of whom Perigo writes movingly here in “Remembering a Buddy.”

Another gracious feature of the book is that Perigo makes way for another Lanza-buddy and internet radio personality, Jeff Rense, to write a touching guest-memoir.

 

The One Tenor boasts two Forewords, both by outstanding singers: Perigo's co

mpatriot, pre-eminent contemporary Wagnerian tenor Simon O'Neill, and one of the Irish Tenors now enjoying a distinguished solo career, Honorary President of Lanza Legend (see Lanzalegend.com), Anthony Kearns. Both speak glowingly of being awed and inspired by Mario Lanza.

Coinciding as it does with the release of the new CD capturing what Perigo calls simply "The Voice" in some of its

 

most dazzling performances, The One Tenor is a worthy addition to the Lanza literature and timely salute to Mario's magnificent voice and spirit.

Buy your copy at Amazon.

And while there, why not buy Perigo’s earlier collection of his writing, The Total Passion for the Total Height

Turning Crisis into Opportunity: Rebuilding Without Repeating Costly Planning Mistakes.

It is still not too late to rescue our cities from the “planners,” says Guest Poster Phil Hayward—not even in Christchurch.

THE URBAN PLANNING PROFESSION today is completely unmoored from reality, and at loggerheads with the economics profession, in so far as expert economists have been critiquing the outcomes of popular planning policies.

There are some economists ideologically allied with the “planners.” And most local body politicians blindly follow the “planners’” shallow assumptions despite them being demonstrably invalid, as demonstrated by both international experience and academic research, some of which was identified by last year’s NZ Productivity Commission Inquiry into Housing Affordability.

There is actually a strong case to be made, economically and environmentally, for a city with low densities, low cost land’ mixed land-use with localised employment / residential “balance,” and  good road connections between multiple “nodes.” (Refer for instance to the papers in the afore-mentioned database, authored by Prof. Alex Anas of the State University of New York at Buffalo.)

Having a strong “centre” in itself is nowhere near as important as having “nodes” biased towards the centre of the “greater city” with good connections across the centre between those nodes, as well as "ring" connections between them. 

Bad “sprawl” on the other hand has higher density “nodes” at the fringe (unintended consequences of planning fads: refer the papers of Alain Bertaud, World Bank Chief Urban Planner), a CBD that is a “choke” to cross-region mobility, and congestion resulting from "everybody trying to go the same way at the same time."

Dispersed employment and urban form is a reality in the evolved city, in developed nations anyway. The main "Ring" roads and "Radial" roads should have fly-overs where they intersect, so that cross-town travellers can always select a route where they will conflict minimally with "cross traffic."

The road network that carries inter-nodal traffic has much higher utilisation rates than a radial highway network because traffic travels on it in both directions at both ends of the day, and expansion of capacity is less prone to the return of congestion because traffic loads are dispersed. “Stop-start” congestion lowers road throughput to well below the throughput that was the norm when traffic demand was lower and traffic was free-flowing. No wonder “decentralisation” is such a strong force in urban land markets where road capacity has been neglected and misdirected.*

CHRISTCHURCH HAS THE ENVIABLE feature of having abundant flat land around it, so that obviously beneficial ideas like these can be put into practice without pleading geographic obstacles (as planners do in Wellington especially). Land that is geologically unsafe can be utilised as Green space.

Christchurch's airport, currently on one edge of the city with abundant rural land beyond, is still an obvious "fulcrum" for strategically placed new "nodes."

Land inside the planners’ artificial city boundaries are jacked up well above lands’ market rate in the absence of the planners’ “urban fence.” Even the best agricultural land outside the urban boundary costs only a fraction of urban land inside under conditions of zoning restrictions and growth boundaries.  Also, there is so many times as much agricultural land than urban in NZ that our cities could be doubled in size with only a minimal impact on agricultural production.

Christchurch home-buyers, Christchurch businesses and their workforces would be greatly assisted right now if inexpensive land for “Greenfields” development were thrown open to them. It is unconscionable to have denied them this opportunity for so long.  The cost and delays involved in “maintaining existing urban form” etc. are unreasonable to insist on in the crisis that still confronts us, and inhuman to impose on those still being made to suffer from 2011’s disaster.

Christchurch businesses and their workforces cannot even be easily absorbed into other NZ cities, because all those cities are all pursuing urban containment strategies as well. Inflated urban land prices are already a serious drag on NZ international competitiveness, and businesses and workforces relocating from Christchurch will only drive these prices up further—unless, of course, other cities like Invercargill and Hamilton and Palmerston North were to adopt “no growth restraint” policies to encourage cost-effective relocation, something no council has demonstrated any sort of willingness to even contemplate.

The existing Christchurch CBD should be relegated to “node” status and a pattern of new nodes allowed for, especially through the provision of intelligent and high capacity road connections.  Some of these nodes could be in existing popular growth “suburbs” (mini-CBD’s) and some should be on “Greenfields”. Known earthquake and other natural risks should be taken into account. 

Flexibility is important; agglomerations of certain economic and social activities occur spontaneously and planners have a poor track record of anticipating and controlling them.  Temporary rapid “churn” of land use does NOT indicate “failure” of planning or markets, but healthy functioning of markets to ultimately efficient ends.  The ultimate character of each “node” should not be pre-determined by “planners,” but “rightS of way” and so on for future roads and infrastructure should be put in place for low-cost ultimate provision of efficient infrastructure to support successful “node” growth in the future.

The need now to purchase “built out” land for roads, new infrastructure, etc. years down the track, DOES represent a costly failure of previous “planning.”

Generally, Greenfields infrastructure is lower cost than upgrading existing built-out areas in the case of increased density or disaster reconstruction.  The NZ Productivity Commission Inquiry into Housing Affordability included an excellent appendix of academic references on this subject, and this writer has several more. Existing areas possibly might be reconstructed efficiently at new LOWER densities, with many structures simply removed and turned into “green space”. 

The existing CBD could still be maintained as “heritage” much more practically by abandoning unreasonable notions of rapidly returning previous business activity to the area, especially under the utterly unreasonable uncertainties and cost requirements being imposed on businesses in the process. The existing CBD should be allowed to “heal” and rejuvenate on an indeterminate time frame. The money WILL ultimately be forthcoming from private investors seeking to “buy in” to the area, which will not cease to be a tourist attraction and a centre for cultural and artistic activity.  It is merely unreasonable to expect funding for reconstruction according to strict heritage maintenance requirements, combined with safety standards, to come all at once, right now. 

There are numerous international precedents for long-term self-rejuvenation of what were even once-blighted areas but still having the “potential” of a certain “period” charm.  Christchurch’s CBD’s potential will be glaringly obvious, including to serious international investors, bearing favourable comparison to some of the international urban “rejuvenation” success stories that were far from obvious at one time.

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HAVING DRIVEN UP THE price of urban land in cities, “planners” have now moved on to take "regional" control of development, to prevent people from living in lower-cost rural areas and commuting very much further than historic norms, to city jobs. But had urban land prices been kept lower in the first place, much LESS development would move to rural areas and to "fringe node" development, and the infill of “fragmented” land would take place faster. (Shlomo Angel et al find this in comparisons of Houston with Portland, in their paper “The Fragmentation of Urban Footprints.”)

It is said that many CBD property interests favour the proposed but still long-delayed government-favoured “rebuild” of the central city. CBD property interests do not care however what the broader cost-benefit of a particular project is, as long as the benefit to them exceeds the cost to them. The correct way to fund light rail systems, conventions centres, and sports stadiums however is not to to soak taxpayers and ratepayers. It is to levy special assessments on the interests who expect to turn a profit, particularly the nearest property owners. If it was clearly understood that this was to be the funding mechanism, the “support” for these proposals would evaporate. What usually happens however is that the costs are, say, $4 for every $1 of benefit, but the $1 of benefit is reaped by the nearby property owners, while the share of the cost borne by them is 50c or less; the other $3.50 being wealth transfer and deadweight loss borne by the region’s households and businesses who do not benefit. 

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Roger Sutton himself pointed out early on that the Canterbury region’s GDP had barely blipped with the disaster, and the Airport and the Port were busier than ever. What I believe, is that ChCh has become, completely by accident, a working example of a city that is more efficient without a traditional dense CBD at all. Sir Bob Jones’ intuitions in his various writings are absolutely correct. ChCh’s “Plan”, if it really was going to be bold and objective and futuristic, should involve going with the flow of the ever-powerful economic forces of urban decentralisation.

One of the many distortions of policy that CBD property-owning interests are historically responsible for, is the “radial” nature of all transport planning. I have a copy of a very interesting paper that discusses the policy debates that took place in the USA when the Interstate Highway System was being planned. At the time, there was an enlightened fashion among urban planners in favour of investment in inter-suburban arterial networks and “parkways” to support the already-evident trend to decentralisation. Victory went to the interests that advocated for the highways that connected cities, to penetrate right to their CBD’s. Of course this was regarded as “free” Federal money; just another example of the hazards of excessive central government powers of taxation and spending. (Federal subsidy of Commuter Rail is another example today).  

Prof. Peter Gordon’s latest papers (University of Southern California) have been concentrating on the point that urban economies, when they are allowed to, find their own balance between agglomeration economies, congestion diseconomies, transport costs, and land prices. He suggests that this underlies the high productivity of US cities, whether NYC with its skyscrapers and high finance, or cities with lower-density industry and workforces. Refer Gordon, (2012): “Thinking About Economic Growth:  Cities, Networks, Creatitivy & Supply Chains for Ideas.”

ChCh should position itself as an enlightened city that has abandoned the old radial and monocentric ideas that are mainly a result of rent-seeking by the property owning interests involved.

Generally, local businesses and developers, as opposed to incumbent land-owning investors, have much more practical ideas for development and progress. It is misguided in the extreme for politicians and advocates to be in bed with the latter, at the expense of all others. The wealth transfer that takes place away from first-home buyers and renters is an indictment of our loss of moral compass.

There is actually no “democracy” like the free market. Exponentially more people vote with their feet and their money, for stand-alone family homes and suburban malls, than would ever bother to participate in “planning” processes to put up a fight in favour of such things. Contemporary “consultation” processes are no more than a sham that enables busybodies with too much time and taxpayers money, to impose their ideological beliefs on society.

A common complaint in these post-enlightenment times is that humans are failing to conserve their environments. Yet land converted to urban use has frequently had chemical fertilisers routinely spread on it and cattle and sheep defecating on it, with far worse effects on local waterways and groundwater than urban developments have. Furthermore, agricultural production has low value-to-bulk ratio and requires far greater provision of transport per dollar income generated, than the economic production of urban areas. If agricultural production was so important to the nation’s economy, agricultural land would be sufficiently expensive that it would not be worth converting to urban land. Such basic and glaring economic principles should not be beyond our discernment.

Phil Hayward is a Wellington housing researcher and commentator.

* Those opposed to car use should reflect that bus public-transport efficiency is greatly enhanced by the same features that enhance mobility for individuals in cars.  Rail public-transport however  is completely incompatible with economically competitive urban structure in any low-population nation like NZ:

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