Monday 31 March 2014

The Internet Party: Mostly Clowns

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The magic of German megalomania continues to transform journalists into either sourpusses, sycophants or clowns.

Mostly clowns.

Last week was another political and journalistic circus, with both DotCom and the commentariat turning themselves into clowns.

The circus started with Dotcom’s “confession” he owned a book, and continued with his party “launch.” A “soft” launch, you’d have to say, since virtually the only thing we heard about it was that DotCom owned both a book and an MP.

About the book, a signed copy of Hitler’s Mein Kampf, a breathless herd chased down the “story” as if by their endeavour alone they could apply Godwin’s Law and spike an election campaign.

Possibly the worst two were Colin Espiner and the self-satisfied TV3 muckraker with a face that looks like an arse. Espiner’s drivel on how owning a book makes you a Nazi was reinforced by staunch analysis like this:

Some detailed policy may help protect the party from accusations it is nothing more than a vanity project for an ego maniac concerned only about his reputation and avoiding spending time in a US jail cell.
    So far there's been nothing but meaningless platitudes such as "a party for people who care about a digital future" and the hoary old "breath of fresh air … dose of common sense". The Internet Party promises more jobs, cheaper broadband, more modern schools, and, quite possibly, free apple pie.

Funny as a fight. A shame the alleged journalist overlooked a fairly substantial policy that other parties would do well to pick up: ending the surveillance state.

I find it curious too that Espiner isn’t alone in making up the party’s policy position on this: most other media  also  ignored that fairly substantial policy plank, just as they continue to ignore the rise and rise of the surveillance state itself.

Much easier just to go through a fat man’s rubbish bags.

Fortunately, former Fair Go presenter Brian Edwards did for journalism what he once tried to do for honest commerce, castigating Espiner’s “mindless shit,” and pointing out the irony of journalists “exhibiting the mentality of book-burners”:

They are people who believe that a man’s character may be judged not merely by the contents of his library but, in this particular case, by his ownership of a single book. Their logic, as I argued in my previous post, is that if the contents of a book are evil then the ownership of such a book is itself evidence of evil:
    
   ‘Kim Dotcom owns and has read a copy of Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Hitler was the founder of National
     Socialism and one of history’s most evil men. Ergo: Kim Dotcom must be an evil Nazi.’

    The Dotcom/Mein Kampf story was first given national prominence by TV3 journalists Brook Sabin and Patrick Gower who confidently predicted the end of Dotcom’s political aspirations and, one might assume, of his hopes of remaining in this country, as a result of his owning a priceless historical document, signed by Hitler himself and dedicated to his cellmate Hermann Esser.
    So the first irony lies in journalists, traditional advocates of free speech, if not actually promoting book-burning, at least fanning the embers.
    But then, in the current climate of New Zealand commercial television, sensation mongering is precisely the journalist’s job.

You could even call it “braindead.”

* * * * *

Full disclosure: I once owned a 1941 Wermacht belt buckle, a copy of a Leni Reifenstahl movie, a World War 2 era  British helmet and campaign medals, and a scale model of a T34 Russian Tank. But I am neither a Nazi, an imperialist, or a sympathiser of Stalin. Just so you know.

[UPDATE: This is not to denigrate the entire profession of journalists, some of whom still do excellent work . Like Rebecca MacFie’s thorough summary of the series of events leading to the collapse of the CTV building.
[Hat tip Eric Crampton]

Mispresented, often, but at least she isn’t ignored…

From this morning’s NZ Herald:

So, who is Ayn Rand? I’m glad you asked.

[Hat tip Julian D.]

Talk about a false alternative… [updated]

Two British leaders, both wrong:

[Hat tip Russel W.]

Pretending to Solve Housing Affordability

Guest post by Daniel Silva of the Importers Institute.

Import News from the Importers Institute: Pretending to Solve Housing Affordability

The government is finding it difficult to have a real impact on the affordability of houses. It has now come up with some pretend solutions.

The issue is actually quite simple. Some City Councils are run by people who believe that we should all be living in high rises near train lines, so we can ride a bicycle to the closest lentil-and-soy-latte shop. To achieve this vision of life in East Berlin circa 1975, they prohibit people from building houses where they want. Then, the cost of the remaining land goes up, astronomically. As it would.

The government does not seem to have the stomach to stem the ideological onslaught from the central planners, so something else is needed to try to convince people that they are doing something. Minister Nick Smith put out a consultation paper that suggested exempting building products from anti-dumping laws. Apparently, plaster-board from Thailand and nails from China were found to have been sold too cheaply in New Zealand, so the local manufacturers persuaded an earlier government to protect their profits by slapping a large protective tariff against competition from imports, using the arcane anti-dumping laws.

The Minister is right when he says “I worry that high duties on some imported building products, combined with limited competition in New Zealand is allowing excessive margins by building product manufacturers”. That is just as true when the same tariffs are applied to canned peaches, diaries and hog bristle paint brushes which are all subject to anti-dumping duties.

The Ministry said, “there is no intention to reform the fundamentals of [the anti-dumping] regime, such as by introducing a full public benefit test which would measure the impact of anti-dumping duties on New Zealand consumers”. So, they propose to change it just for building products, presumably because housing affordability is always in the news.

The Minister also proposed to corrupt the duty concession system, which exempts duty on goods without locally manufactured equivalents, again just for building components, again just to be seen to be doing something (other than the obvious). This principles-free approach to public policy reminds me of Muldoon who, when confronted with the problems caused to our exporters by the high costs of protecting local manufacturers, offered to eliminate duties on agricultural tractors.

* * * *

Daniel Silva is the head of the Importers Institute, an informal national association of New Zealand importing companies keeping members informed on topical issues of interest, and representing importers’ interests before policy makers and the public.
This article was first published in The Exporter magazine, and appears here by permission.

Friday 28 March 2014

Just who exactly are all these taxpayers?

Cartoon by Nick Kim

Here’s a question to contemplate this morning: Just how many actual taxpayers do you think there are in New Zealand?

You know who I mean, the brave souls actually paying for the whole dog and pony show, the ones keeping their brothers in milk and cream. Let’s see if a broad brush can deduce it down to the nearest dozen or so, eh?

Team New Zealand: Sailing in Subsidised Waters

Did you see a government department released a report yesterday informing us that government spending our money supporting Team New Zealand made us all $50 million richer? Yeeha! If only they’d spent even more.

Economic Development Minister Steven Joyce says the $36 million of taxpayers' money pumped into the last America's Cup challenge directly benefited the New Zealand economy to the tune of $87 million.
    Joyce … released two evaluation reports, both an
independent evaluation [sic] of the Government’s investment in Emirates Team New Zealand… and an evaluation of New Zealand Trade and Enterprise’s leveraging programme in San Francisco.
    "The economic benefit from our investment in Team New Zealand is considerable. From a $36 million taxpayer investment,” Joyce said, “the evaluation shows an estimated positive impact of $87 million to the New Zealand economy."

Yeah right.

First: reports prepared for, and and paid for by government departments, are not independent – no matter what their press releases say.

Second: Even if you believe the figures, the “us” that was allegedly made much richer is a different group of folk to the “we” who were plundered on their behalf. But if you think a net gain to Grant Dalton makes up for your net loss, I invite you to knock on his exquisite front door and invite yourself in as if you own the place. You’ll find You’ll find that’s a form of redistribution Mr Dalton et al is unwilling to contemplate.

Fact is, only in government accounts, where (as our sailing-brother’s keeper) all our wealth is measured together, can a forced redistribution from long-suffering taxpayers to high-earning subsidised sailors be measured as a net gain to all of us.

Third: neither the report on subsidised sailing nor the other on corporate welfare, both touted as “cost-benefit” analyses,” properly address the cost to taxpayers. Or to put it in a way the report’s authors wouldn’t, the benefits that might have accrued to taxpayers if the the $36 million of taxpayers' money pumped into subsidising sailors had been left instead in taxpayers’ pockets

It estimates the “value added” by the spending of every one of those $36 million, but estimates not at all the value that might have been added by taxpayers themselves if it hadn’t been taken from them and distributed as high salaries and high-tech yachting equipment.  As if, you know, government subsidy is all benefit, whereas if they’d kept their own money Jack and Jill Taxpayer would have just, like, baked it into pies or something.

The alleged “economic impacts” of sailors’ spending their $36 million building and racing boats, buying houses, and paying restaurant and hotel bills is ramped up in the report by the international sponsorship it attracted and spent here by the even bigger spending in NZ of Oracle and Luna Rossa sailors (every dollar of which it explicitly assumes was only spent here because of every taxpayer dollar), and by a “multiplier effect” that inflates the effect of every dollar spent by the amount of “re-spending” of that dollar – while ignoring whatever “multiplier” might have applied to whatever productive spending you and I might have done with our own dollars if left in our own pockets. 1

That spending on restaurant and hotel bills by the way is significant. Despite the talk of boatbuilding benefits and the like, the report informs taxpayers that “the sector receiving the greatest share of [Team New Zealand]’s domestic operational spend was ‘cultural and recreational services.’” And they don’t mean the cost of Maori concert parties.

Thursday 27 March 2014

And the crowd went … mild

That awkward moment when you do a show and only one person bothers to clap.

[Hat tip Bosch Fawstin for both video and quip]

The Triumph of Ethics over Practicality: A Tale of Two Cities

With a hat tip to reader Mark, and a big thank you to writer Jerry Kirkpatrick, here three years after Christchurch’s destruction is a topical Guest Post comparing the progress of two cities one year after devastation by tornado.
The results are as clear as that of any well-set-up laboratory experiment. Which model do you think is being followed in Christchurch ?

My title this month—the triumph of ethics over practicality—is sarcastic because I believe, as Ayn Rand taught, that the moral is the practical. My reference is to the continued unquestioned acceptance and dominance of altruism as the equivalent of ethics. And just as unquestioned, the premise that self-interest is bad.

The two cities are Joplin, Missouri, and Tuscaloosa, Alabama. About a year ago [at time of writing], both were hit with devastating tornadoes. A year later Joplin is thriving, largely revived and rebuilt. Tuscaloosa, on the other hand, still has un-demolished ruins, vacant lots, and businesses awaiting permit approvals to rebuild.*

This is an old story, of course: West vs. East Germany, South vs. North Korea, the US vs. the USSR. Why is the lesson never learned that capitalism works and socialism—central planning of any kind, including urban planning—does not? The answer once again is ethics, especially the primacy of altruism.

What Is Capitalism?

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Since my blog strapline promotes capitalist acts for consenting adults,  every now and then I like to answer the question: What is capitalism?

Don’t worry if you can’t answer the question yourself. Most of capitalism’s critics, and even many of its alleged supporters, can’t answer it very well themselves.

Capitalism is too often either confused for something else – cronyism, gangsterism, the hampered market – or blamed for iniquities engendered by the mixture of tonic and poison that is the mixed economy we live in, or damned for being immoral, destructive, alien to human life.

Such confusion is endemic.

So what is capitalism really? If you don’t know yet, no matter, because there’s more to the question than you might think, encompassing questions like:

Wednesday 26 March 2014

I am a diminutive monster of death and destruction.

Stepping out of a shower using hot water from an electric heater, wearing clothes spun by a mechanical weaving mill, typing on a laptop manufactured in a complex assembly plant from components shipped around the world on large ocean-going vessels, publishing using a very complex electronic network of switches and routers, and relying on a complex set of computers and infrastructure made of resources obtained from and powered by petro-chemicals,* environmentalist George Monbiot declares in an article he hopes “will inject you with a venom” that human beings are "diminutive monsters of death and destruction."

It would be tempting but facile to simply say to the Moonbat “speak for yourself, arsehole.”

It should be simple enough to explain to the diminutive fruitcake, if he weren’t an anti-human arsehole, that

Insofar as the essential nature of production and economic activity is to improve the relationship between the chemical elements constituting the earth and man’s life and well-being, it is also necessarily to improve man’s environment, which is nothing other than those very same chemical elements and their associated energy forces. The notion that production and economic activity are harmful to the environment rests on the abandonment of man and his life as the source of value in the world

It would be helpful if he could occasionally reflect on his misanthropy for a moment, to consider that human beings are part of the planet too, with a right to breathe and live free. That men and women who have moved mountains to make the human environment we (and he) enjoy today deserve praise and respect, not several helpings of bile from a dwarf dipped in man-hatred.

Helpful, but unlikely, because the Moonbat is just another in a long line of man-hating misanthropes who consider human beings as little more than, to paraphrase another arsehole, a cancer on the planet for which we can only wait for the right virus to come along.

A very, very, very long line indeed ….

* Hypocritical litany supplied by Michael Davé. Hat tip for story to Robert Tracinski.

Quote of the Day: On Milk…and More

If I may simplify for a moment, when the Swiss want wheat they produce watches; when Japan wants oil they produce cars. The magic of international trade does the rest.

Here in New Zealand, when we want Japanese cars, Swiss watches, Saudi oil and Chinese electronics goods we turn grass into milk. But think how much we take milk, and our friend the cow, for granted. Jeffrey Tucker reminds us:

Humankind lived 6,000 without a reliable source for milk. Milk spoils. It must be transported before that happens. Before trains and refrigeration, you were pretty much out of luck, unless you owned a goat or cow, or someone close by did. We underestimate what a seminal moment it was in the history of civilization for milk to be delivered to your doorstep back in the 1930s and 1940s. It was wonderful practice and culturally significant commercial institution, displaced only with the mass spread of electric refrigeration in the 1950s. If you think about it, we are only a few generations into a period in which people could reliably keep things cold in all months of the year. Milk was and is a luxury good.
    There was no plan. There was no government push. It happened because of private enterprise operating in the spirit of freedom: “people need stuff so let’s get it to them.”
    Now to the source of milk itself. It comes from cows. Modern socialists hate cows because they seem implausibly inefficient. They eat vast amounts of grain and grass, take up huge swaths of land that could be used for farming, and otherwise consume an enormous amount of resources. To keep one alive just to milk is a big expense, one requiring the accumulation of capital and long-term planning.
    Think of this: no central planner, a person who assumes that he or she knows better than the market, would ever approve of a cow. On the face of it, there would be no way to know for sure, in absence of market prices and a profit-and-loss system, that a cow should be allowed to live.

No central planner would ever approve of a cow.

Perhaps that’s why Russel Norman despises them.

Strange Bedfellows: Christchurch Mayor Lianne Dalziel & the Rockefeller Foundation

Guest post by Hugh Pavletich

Former Mayor Bob Parker Goes … A Great Start …
Former Mayor Bob Parker threw in the towel mid-2013 (knighted thereafter for his services to public relations and for bending the knee to central government), and in the subsequent election nine of the 13 members of the Christchurch City Council were either replaced or withdrew themselves. Since then however new Mayor Lianne Dalziel has struggled in the job.

The Peoples Protest .. Clear Direction Forward …
The clean-out of the Council had its foundations in the 4,000+ strong Peoples Protest on 1 February 2012, with its demands clearly set out within their Christchurch Protest Committee letter to Nick Smith . These was later amplified with the op-ed ‘Christchurch: The Way Forward.’

In essence they  were at the time …

  • a fresh mid-term election
  • a replacement for the Chief Executive
  • restructure council from a centralised top-down agency to a “One City – Many Communities” model
  • affordable land for housing and business
  • affordable rates

It was clear to the citizens of Christchurch, if not to the new Mayor, that the “top down” layered bureaucratic approach to the recovery has been a total failure.  It was also clear that if a sound recovery was ever to get underway then a focused approach restoring control back to the people and their communities would be essential.

International Research Clear … Top Down Doesn’t Work …
There was already abundant international evidence that the “bottom-up” approach is the only way to go. For a recent illustration, see: Beito and Smith: Tornado Recovery—How Joplin Is Beating Tuscaloosa.

Strangely, the biggest disaster has not been the earthquakes themselves but the political and bureaucratic response. It still is. A series of earthquake events that should have cost around $15 billion will now be seeing costs upward of $40 billion, with delays commensurate with that magnitude (refer ‘Christchurch earthquakes: Council stalled recovery’).

With the capitulation of former Mayor Bob Parker last year, the resignation of then Chief Executive Tony Marratt and the unravelling of the team around them, a political vacuum was created into which Dalziel has been drawn.

Tuesday 25 March 2014

Chch council planners telling businesses to bugger off [updated]

[UPDATE:  Eric Crampton says it way better than I can. Read him first.]

With Christchurch CBD owners shut out by the army, then council planners, then by the confiscations following on from Gauleiter Brownlee’s Central Plan – and with EQC and CERA and CCDU between them doing their level best to ensure few there or anywhere else will rise again -- one of the few things to celebrate in Christchurch's non-recovery has been the way businesses keen to survive have kept on keeping on.

With few places downtown to which to relocate, businesses have been setting up anywhere they can find a bit of space and a roof over their business’s head – in containers, in garages, and in workshops, offices and outbuildings all around the ring of Christchurch’s inner and outer suburbs.

It’s been inspirational to watch.

But from Day One the planners’ plans and prohibitions were doing nothing to help or encourage either new building or these relocating businesses. And today, they’ve announced they intend to actively and purposively harm them.

ECONOMICS FOR REAL PEOPLE: The Rise, Fall and Modern Revival of Industry Policy in NZ

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Here’s what’s up this Thursday evening at the Auckland Uni Econ Group. Should be a cracker!

Hi everyone,
Remember the Trekka (right)?
Remember Think Big?
Professor Tony Endres does – and many other failures of government “industry policy” besides.
We are very excited to have Professor Endres presenting to us at this week’s Economics Group seminar. Tony Endres is a Professor of Economics at the University of Auckland, whose research interests include New Zealand economic history and the history of economic thought.
This Thursday evening, Tony will be presenting on the topic “The Rise, Fall and Modern Revival of Industry Policy in NZ”. Professor Endres will discuss the structure of the New Zealand economy over the past century, looking at some of the policies and circumstances that have determined this structure and growth.
Tony is a lively and engaging speaker so come prepared for what will be a very interesting presentation.
    Date: Thursday, 27 March
    Time: 6pm-7pm
    Location: Case Room 4, Level 0, Business School, Owen G. Glenn Building, Grafton Rd
All are welcome to attend (plenty of parking in the Business School basement, entrance off Grafton Rd).
We look forward to seeing you there!

“A falling interest rate is deadly poison to business.”

Here’s something counter-intuitive that might help you feel better about rising interest rates: “A falling interest rate is deadly poison to business.” 

Making the point is Keith Weiner, who argues the trillions of dollars pumped into the financial system by central banks since 2008 in an effort to push down interest rates, has not just spilled over into markets but led to deadly unintended consequences even on its own account.

An artificially low interest rate is bad enough, as it hurts savers and retirees on a fixed income. However, a falling rate is deadly poison to business. This toxin operates by two different mechanisms…
    The first mechanism of falling rate toxin is layoffs across the economy…
    The Fed’s rate suppression has a second path of attack… when the Fed pushes down the rate of interest, the rate of profit tends to follow, with a variable lag.  The end result is not wealth creation, but profit margin compression.

The low interest and compression of profit margins between them encourages competition, but competition of a particularly unproductive kind:

Consider a restaurant, Sleepy Steak & Potatoes. Sleepy borrowed at 5 percent to build a nice store. What if their competitor, Hip Hotpot Fusion can borrow at 2.5 percent? Hip Hotpot builds a bigger place with taller ceilings and high-end finishes.  Former Sleepy customers switch to Hip. This is churn—one business simply supplants another, creating little or no wealth.

As just one example of this: Cisco’s decision this week to spend $1 billion of mostly borrowed money to go head to head with Amazon and others to offer cloud computing  -- a business (as Weiner points out) with already thin margins that are obviously shrinking.

This phenomenon, churn, is not the normal “creative destruction” of wealth production when new technologies supplant the old, instead it is non-creative destruction with the end result of higher debt with  little to show for it but higher churn and severe market dislocations.

    It’s pretty obvious that lower interest rates encourage more borrowing, and we’ve looked at two ways that each downtick incentivizes businesses to load up on more debt.
    The effect on the stock market is not simple. Rising profits tend to push
stocks up, but that’s not the whole story. Higher debt makes companies more dependent on credit market conditions, and lower profit margins make them more sensitive to consumer spending. Companies and their stock market valuations become brittle, vulnerable to small changes. Stocks can crash if credit stops flowing, like it did in 2008.
    When the next heart attack strikes, the Fed deserves the full blame.

Read Keith’s whole commentary here to understand How the Fed Poisons The Stock Market – FORBES

Let the Data Speak: The Truth Behind Minimum Wage Laws

Guest post by Steve Hanke

President Obama set American chattering classes abuzz after his recent unilateral announcement to raise the minimum wage for newly hired Federal contract workers. During his State of the Union address in January, he sang the praises for his decision, saying that "It’s good for the economy; it’s good for America." As the worldwide economic slump drags on, the political drumbeat to either introduce minimum wage laws (read: Germany) or increase the minimums in countries where these laws exist — such as Indonesia — is becoming deafening. Yet the glowing claims about minimum wage laws don’t pass the most basic economic tests. Just look at the data from Europe:

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There are seven European Union (E.U.) countries in which no minimum wage is mandated (Austria, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy, and Sweden). If we compare the levels of unemployment in these countries with E.U. countries that impose a minimum wage, the results are clear. A minimum wage leads to higher levels of unemployment. In the 21 countries with a minimum wage, the average country has an unemployment rate of 11.8%. Whereas, the average unemployment rate in the seven countries without mandated minimum wages is about one third lower — at 7.9%.

This point is even more pronounced when we look at rates of unemployment among the E.U.’s youth — defined as those younger than 25 years of age:

Friday 21 March 2014

FRIDAY MORNING RAMBLE: St Patrick’s Week edition

Q: Why do the Irish wear green on St Patrick's Day?
A: So that later we can CGI ourselves out of the embarrassing videos.
-
Iowahawk

Maybe that could work for the Greens, who “like to think they’re friends of the earth but aren’t so keen on all its earthlings.”
Enemy of affordability – HOME PADDOCK

And Labour donors of an evening are also partial  to a wee portion of xenophobia.
Selwyn Pellett blaming the Chinese – KIWIBLOG

Mind you, so are  the New Zealand Government. “New Zealand is actually quite strict when it comes to permitting foreign investment. We are actually one of the more restrictive countries in the OECD.”
Foreign Investment – BRENNAN McDONALD

And in case you haven’t noticed..
The Music Just Ended: "Wealthy" Chinese Are Liquidating Offshore Luxury Homes In Scramble For Cash – ZERO HEDGE

The big government folks won't like this one.
Why Small Government Reduces Income Inequality (And big government increases it) – AGAINST CRONY CAPITALISM

Mind you, cronyism is only rife in China. Doesn’t happen here.
Inside the Shrine – HARD NEWS

Debt, There Is A Limit: The Japanese Government Edition. An edition consisting of more debt than they can handle…

So there was this study, right, about … oh, I forget.
Common Myth About Marijuana Busted in Scientific Study – CAPITALISM IS FREEDOM

See, men in late-night bars know this stuff.
Women want as much sex as men – STUFF

Beer, people, a good time. Give a man a clipboard, and he can even kill that.
Popular Beer Festival Damaged by Excess Compliance & Over-Regulation – Neil Miller, BEER & BREWER

Source: Armalite

“Florentine patrons didn't commission David statues because he had a hot body. But advertisers see only a nude.”
Michelangelo's David Has a Right to Bear Arms – Virginia Postrel, BLOOMBERG VIEW

Since these smears are still circulating…
Lying about Ayn Rand and Social Security – CLASSICALLY LIBERAL
Smearing Ayn: Rand, Nietzsche and the Purposeless Monster – CLASSICALLY LIBERAL

“The best solution to a great many insoluble pains and problems is a bath.”
The consolations of a bath – Alain de Boitton, PHILOSOPHER’S MAIL

“Poverty is driving nuclear family break-up? I say it's vice versa.”
This isn't a chicken or egg scenario – LINDSAY MITCHELL

I love the sort of debates they still have in The Times. Where else can you get publicly impassioned about the definite article?

Embedded image permalink

Idiocy comes in many forms.
Not just physics, Indigenous Australian physics – Natalie Solent, SAMIZDATA

No, it’s not just meta-data.
NSA surveillance program reaches ‘into the past’ to retrieve, replay phone calls – WASHINGTON POST

“It is nine years since James Bartholomew published The Welfare State We're In. It has recently been re-published and  includes an introduction looking at what has changed in the interim. You can read it here. ‘The good news keeps coming and the bad news gets worse. Much has changed and nearly everything stays the same.’”
Update on Britain's "welfare state" – LINDSAY MITCHELL

“Germany's €100 billion in subsidies for solar (providing 0.7% of energy) will delay global warming 37 hours by 2100.”
Germany’s energy policy is expensive, harmful and short-sighted – Bjorn Lomborg, F.T.

“Noam Chomsky has been venerated by the left for years as their most important ideologue, but in the book Diary of an Anti-Chomskyite, author Benjamin Kerstein takes on the leftist powerhouse's ‘political evil.’”
Noam Chomsky: The Last Totalitarian – Michael Totten, WORLD AFFAIRS

Interesting.
Today's #Dailychart reveals the countries that buy and sell the most weapons – THE ECONOMIST

Charles Bukowski would have recognised these. Entrepreneurs wouldn’t.
The Ultimate Cheat Sheet For Dealing With Excuses – ALTUCHER CONFIDENTIAL

Writing a novel? Simple.

Keynes v Hayek, Round Ten: In which wins this round hands down, and our hero fails the red line test.
Keynes & Hayek: Prophets for today – ECONOMIST

“Because at some point in the not so distant past, someone said ‘hey maybe there’s a better way to run busses, trains and the taxi system’. And those people then found a way to make it happen.”
The Technology That Makes Public Transport a Dream to Use… – Sam Volkering, MONEY MORNING

An architect who rents, is happy to rent, and has no desire to buy or build his own. 
Why I Rent and Would Never Buy – Ben Pentreath, F.T.

“If Krugman/Keynes were advising the Pharaoh during
Joseph's time, he'd have advised against saving grain.”

- Johnson Nderi

“Reading the daily news, you would be hard-pressed to find mention that there is still an employment crisis unfolding in many industrialised countries… The only problem is, nobody seems to care much anymore… The current economic malaise is reminiscent of what the Great Depression was like.”
The Failure of Keynesianism – James Miller, MISES CANADA

“’We never should have painted ourselves so deep in this QE corner in the first place,’ chides David Stockman, ‘because the whole predicate [of Fed policy] is false.’”
"The Cacophony Of Fed Confusion," David Stockman Warns Will Lead To "Economic Calamity" – ZERO HEDGE

“Film critics review movies as if they were stories that merely happen to be told with a camera. What happened to analysing films as films?”
Film as film – PROSPECT MAGAZINE

And as for music!
Music Criticism Has Degenerated Into Lifestyle Reporting – DAILY BEAST

At least the economics of award-winning TV and movies is getting better. Or maybe it’s the analysis…

Mind you, is that as important as naked skateboarding?

CLICK TO GO TO VIDEO

Or an almost listenable Lou Reed and Brian Eno mashup?

This has been nagging at me for weeks. (Of course it starts quietly. What do you expect, it’s a sunrise.)

Didn’t know it’ d gone.

[Hat tips Suzuki Samurai, Sandrine L., Libertarian Alliance, David Slack, Peter Namtvedt, ian leslie, The Economist, Jesselyn Radack, James Stevens Valliant]

Thanks for reading,
Have a great weekend!
PC

PS: Westboro Baptist bigot Fred Phelps died this week:

“Even Mr. Alighieri could not tell you what
circle Fast Freddy Phelps dwells in today.”
-
Dennis Miller

Thursday 20 March 2014

Timber!!

Courtesy of Michael Green Architecture
Courtesy of Michael Green Architecture

Sure, you can build a multi-story timber building if you want to. That’s two concepts above. And here’s a design for one  in Stockholm:

C. F. Møller designs world's tallest wooden skyscraper

Here’s another concept, for somewhere in the US, by architect Michael Charters:

Wednesday 19 March 2014

Big success with the big bang!

To give you some context, after thirty-five years scientist Andrei Linde had his hypothesis about the birth of the universe confirmed this week. Wonder no longer that must have felt like, as “Assistant Professor Chao-Lin Kuo surprises Professor Andrei Linde with evidence that supports cosmic inflation theory. The discovery, made by Kuo and his colleagues at the BICEP2 experiment, represents the first images of gravitational waves, or ripples in space-time. These waves have been described as the ‘first tremors of the Big Bang.’”

This is what it looks like to see your life’s work vindicated:

Alex Epstein commented on this video shared by physicist Eric Dennis...

QUOTE OF THE DAY: On the cause of cronyism

Get your Chinese tattoo translated first

And you think Chinglish on signs and T-shirts is hilarious. What about having “chicken soup” tattooed on your chest in Chinese? Or worse?

buzz-tatto-fails.jpg

ECONOMICS FOR REAL PEOPLE: Going Scottish

imageWhat’s on at this week’s Auckland Uni Econ Group? Thanks for asking:

In this week’s seminar we’ll be looking at an economic idea developed by an eighteenth-century Scotsman that changed course of history. An uncomplicated idea presented through a simple story with history-making implications.
What was the story?  And what can this sixteenth-century Scotsman teach both modern-day Peruvian hill tribes and today’s economists?
We’ll see that this idea provides the foundation for the whole field of economics and can be used to help us answer almost all questions related to economics.
    Date: Thursday, March 20
    Time: 6pm-7pm
    Location: Room 040B, Level Zero, Owen G. Glenn, Business School
All welcome.
We look forward to seeing you there.

The New Zealand Left Needs To Reinvent Itself [updated]

Guest post by Hugh Pavletich

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This week’s big local political news is NZ Labour’s Travails. A fairly balanced Otago Daily Times editorial summarises, asking rhetorically:

Can it get any worse for Labour leader David Cunliffe … six months out from the September 20 general election?
    The results of the Herald DigiPoll survey released this week put Labour's support down to 29.5%, the lowest it has been since Mr Cunliffe took over the leadership from David Shearer in September last year, and Mr Cunliffe's individual support down to 11.1%, lower than the worst DigiPoll rating of former leader David Shearer (of 12.4%).
    The results will be frustrating and concerning for the Labour Party and Mr Cunliffe. His popularity has taken a major dive from the early days of his promotion (where he polled 37.7% in a DigiPoll survey).
    He has also been criticised for his performance in the House, where deputy leader David Parker, Grant Robertson and Shane Jones are the Labour MPs most visibly making an impact and confronting the National-led Government on issues. Even in election year, Labour seems to be stuck in the one role, that of attacking and denigrating, while failing to offer viable alternatives…
    In contrast, National's popularity remains strong (50.8%) and it seems Mr Key can do little wrong - his personal popularity is up to 66.5%, his best second-term rating, albeit down from first-term highs of more than 70%. And even with the fallout from Judith Collins' Chinese business meetings, the Government's continued asset sales push despite their substantially reduced revenue, controversy over the SkyCity deal and illegal spying, several contentious education sector issues, privacy breaches, and continued heartache and frustration for many Christchurch residents still battling with post-quake bureaucracy.
    How can National remain so popular, Labour must wonder?

The question is particularly pertinent in a media environment so saturated with the same big-government sympathies as the Labour left that they find the very question incomprehensible.

Perhaps the divergence is in large measure due to the expansion of the internet, with people having access to better quality information, and the enhanced ability to converse and debate public policy issues.

The declining heritage media is increasingly losing the capacity to control the flow of information, to push its own political agendas (most often favouring the failed interventionist  Left) and to protect institutional power and special interests.

The tool of the internet could be described as a “disinfectant for democracy.”

One result is that government is increasingly being seen as the problem, not the solution. (The irony, given the National Government’s own big-government failures, is that they are increasingly seen as best representing this growing view.)

As just one glaring example of obvious failure, the Christchurch earthquake non-recovery has been a cruel lesson for many in the incompetence of Government, both at central and local level. An lesson obvious to everyone except the media and political elites.

Tuesday 18 March 2014

So, these German thinkers walked into a room…

I know what you’re wondering. You’re wondering what might happen if four of the most well-known German thinkers sat down to play Monopoly…

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Read on here at Existential Comics for the politically-charged ending!

[Hat tip Stephen Hicks]

Say’s Law and the Permanent Recession

Guest post by Robert Blumen

Mainstream media discussion of the macro economic picture goes something like this: “When there is a recession, the central bank should stimulate. We know from history the recovery comes about 12-18 months after stimulus. Central banks stimulated, they printed a lot of money, we waited 18 months. So the economy ipso facto has recovered. Or it’s just about to recover, any time now.”

But to quote the comedian Richard Pryor, “Who ya gonna believe? Me or your lying eyes?” A Martian economist arriving on earth would have to admit the following: the US economy has experienced zero real growth since 2000. This is what I call the permanent recession. Permanent, because, unlike past downturns — there will be no recovery.

Speculation [updated]

When the facts reported change every day, then on what facts can you base any hypothesis?

On what actual facts are you basing your speculations?

UPDATE:  “Frankly at this point, you’d be better off reading Tintin than watching the cable news reports.”

Monday 17 March 2014

East v West in 18 simple infographics

A picture is worth a thousand words" href="http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/a-picture-is-worth-a-thousand-words.html" target=_blank>A picture is worth a thousand words” Confucius didn’t say.  But Chinese graphic artist Yang Liu ingeniously saves many thousand in illustrating cultural differences between Chinese and westerners. These are my faves.

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And for anyone who’s ever eaten Yum Char…

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Head here for all 18.

[Hat tip Stephen Hicks]

On the Education of a PM as a Crony [updated]

The place in which PM John Key learned about business was a business dedicated to sucking the marrow out of special privilege, says Charles Morris from Reuters (linked to this morning by David Chaston at Interest.Co.NZ).

Merrill Lynch were the crony’s crony, and they died of it.

Between 2001 and 2008, [says Chaston] …. they paid out US$50 billion in salaries and bonuses, and sold out to Bank of America.

A “sell-out” made at the point their modern business model had collapsed, at the height of the 2008 Crash. Indeed,

Can Economists Ever Get It Right? [updated]

What do economists do all day, and why should anyone care?

Working economists promote their “science” on the basis of their forecasts.  But are their forecasts any better than throwing a dart at a board?  Recent reports say “No.”

It's hard to find nice things to say about economists. Their detachment from the real world of human activity is matched only by their enormous influence over it, and by their unearned assumption that this arrangement is well deserved.

Both unearned and undeserved, as a new OECD report on their own economists’ reports makes clear enough. Translate this from economists’ blancmange, and this is damning:

The OECD economists looked at their own work forecasting the direction of the world economy over the last several years and admitted: “GDP growth was overestimated on average across 2007-12, reflecting not only errors at the height of the financial crisis but also errors in the subsequent recovery.”
   The passive voice in the first clause of that sentence is squirmy; a flat assertion in the first person -plural would be more seemly and more accurate. But give them credit for the rest of the sentence. How big were the errors? Pretty big. 
    In May 2010, for example, with one-third of the calendar year already over, the OECD economists predicted the U.S. economy would grow 3.2 percent for the year. As it happened, gross domestic product grew 1.7 percent. Note that this is not a small error. That 1.5 percentage point spread between the two numbers means the original projection was off by nearly half. It’s as if you thought you saw a car go by at 60 miles per hour while it was actually going 30.

And it’s not just the OECD’s alleged economists who get it famously wrong.

In late 2009 the economist William McEachern impishly looked back at the previous year’s forecasts by the Wall Street Journal’s panel of economic experts. The Journal surveyed its experts in September 2008 when U.S. unemployment was at 6.2 percent; the average prediction among the economists was for the rate to stay more or less flat. By the following September the unemployment rate was 9.8 percent. At the same time, the average prediction among Journal economists was that growth for the last quarter of 2008—the quarter, you’ll note, that was just about to commence—would be 1.2 percent. Instead it was -2.7 percent.

Local economists are no better. No, really.

Economists make excuses for their failure. They say accurate forecasting is not the role of a forecaster. They use words like “endogenous.” They say things like “it’s not the numbers that matter but the qualitative analysis of risks and market direction.” And they complain about things from the real world that throw off their neat models like “oil prices, fiscal policy, the course of the euro crisis … turning points in the business cycle, the beginning and end of recessions, changes in trends in productivity,” “the impact of new banking regulations …), global droughts, earthquakes in Canterbury, snow storms during lambing in the South Island, and government policy change.”

But the world is full of stuff that changes every day – either things they can’t foresee so don’t model, or things (like recessions) they should but don’t.

Most events that occur—even the actions of governments, sometimes—are beyond the control of economists, much as they might like to daydream otherwise. But isn’t that the point? This admission just begs the question of why anyone should pay attention to their wizardry to begin with. The forecaster’s chief conceit is that by feeding numbers into one end of a statistical model he can see the future come out the other side. The conceit touches off a phantasmagoria of argument in Washington, where politicians and policymakers sift the numbers from one set of econometricians or another, and then use their favourite figures to determine how they will orchestrate the activities of the folks back home. In thrall to economists, government policy-making is a fantasy based on a fantasy.

Read the whole article:  “Wrong Again: The Economists’ Confession,” by Andrew Ferguson, WEEKLY STANDARD

[Hat tip Jeff Perren Novelist]

RELATED READING:

7 Things Anti-Interventionists Forgot to Tell Putin

It’s good advice, says Robert Tracinski, only the people who need it aren’t listening.

‘This is the fundamental naiveté of the anti-interventionists. They offer excellent advice, just not to the people who need it. You might call this the paradox of pacifism: the reasonable counsels of peace find their most eager audience among those who least need to hear them, while being ignored by the fanatics and strongmen who actually drive most of the world’s conflicts.
So all of this advice just ends up restraining the good guys and letting the bad guys run wild—until we are forced into a much bigger intervention in the future.’

Read 7 Things Anti-Interventionists Forgot to Tell Putin

QUOTE OF THE DAY: On the Ideal Conditions and Myths of Creativity [updated]

“Baby, air and light and time and space
have nothing to do with it
and don’t create anything
except maybe a longer life to find
new excuses
for.”

- Charles Bukowski, from his 1992 poem “Air and Light and Time and Space,” which cartoonist Zen Pencils has creatively adapted for comic book. Probably while working 16-hour days in a coal mine.

UPDATE: Scientist and science fiction writer Isaac Asimov makes a similar point less poetically:

“I was once being interviewed by Barbara Walters in three segments, all at once, though they were to be run on three separate days. In between two of the segments, she asked me how many books I had written, and I told her. She said, ‘Don’t you ever want to do anything but write?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Don’t you want to go hunting? Fishing? Dancing? Hiking?’
And I said, “No! No! No! and No!’
She said, ‘But what would you do if the doctor gave you only six months to live?’
I said, ‘Type faster.'"
—Isaac Asimov from Asimov Laughs Again

[Hat tips Human Ability, Jim Matzger]

Friday 14 March 2014

FRIDAY MORNING RAMBLE: It’s Alright Ma, It’s Only an Election

David Cunliffe is going to "lead" NZ on a top-down "economic upgrade... a journey from volume to value." How? Compulsory KiwiSaver, Capital Gains Tax and thinking "outside the square." Oh, and subsidies.
This is not satire.
David Cunliffe’s speech to the New Zealand Institute – SUB-STANDARD

She’s losing her house over a political protest about rates, even as Incapable Brown tries to extract even more from long-suffering ratepayers.
Activist faces forced house sale – STUFF
Brown's bold tax plan – STUFF

“The ACT party – or at least its biggest funder – was in the news last weekend for expressing some of his views for the party at their annual conference. Of note was this line ‘I’d privatise all the schools, all the hospitals and all the roads…’”
Privatising Roads – TRANSPORT BLOG

This is probably a fairly important point, don’t you think?
Edward Snowden: NSA Too Busy Spying To Catch Terrorists – HIT & RUN

I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.
Head of Dutch Libertarian Party Arrested Just Weeks Before Election – I.S.I.L.

Obama's appearance on Between Two Ferns confirms his status as the king of the celebrity politician. This is not an endorsement.
Obama: the king of celebrity politicians – Rob Lyons, SPIKED

“Correctly noting that, "the political left's avowed concern for minorities [is being] definitively exposed as a fraud", Thomas Sowell details its war on charter schools… Sowell also observes that, "public schools are often run as if their main function is to provide jobs to teachers".”
Government Favours Aren't – GUS VAN HORN

“Unlike ‘public’ schools, which receive their customers and revenues by force of truancy laws and taxation, private schools must earn theirs. A business can thrive only to the extent that it produces quality products or services at prices people are willing and able to pay. Lacking the coercive power of government-run schools, private schools must continuously strive for excellence...”
Teacher Accountability Follows from Genuine Market Activity – OBJECTIVE STANDARD

“What kind of people want to ban the word bossy? Bossy people.” 
Bosch Fawstin

Hmmm.
“The first batch of Chinese February data was out over the weekend and showed some staggering shifts. Exports collapsed 18.1% year on year…”
China default special I: Hard landing fears 
“The default of a tiny corporate bond in China appears to have triggered larger ripples for commodity markets…”
China default special II: Commodity ripples 
“In paper markets, 12 month swaps smashed any support level and are in free-fall… In physical markets, iron ore is eyeing mid-last year’s low of $110.4o and will probably go through it like molten steel through butter.”
China default special III: Iron oreful 
“The most dynamic 37% of global output is having its Keynesian training wheels removed.”
Schumpeter comes to town

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“During her own lifetime, Ayn Rand became a famous and controversial figure. A best-selling author, she also carried her message to university classrooms, to Hollywood, to Congress, to the editorial page, to talk shows and radio programs. Explore who she was at the new AynRand.org.

“Why does man need morality? The typical answer is that we must learn to deny our own interests and happiness in order to serve God or other people—and morality will teach us to do that. Rand’s answer is radically different…”
Self-Interest – AYN RAND.ORG

“We’re told that the gap between the poor and the rich has widened. Many decry the “injustice” of income and wealth inequality. But is it actually a problem and are the proposed remedies truly just? What is a fair “distribution” of income and wealth? Is “equality” a valid concept?”
"Is inequality fair?" – Carl Svansberg, VOICES FOR REASON

“So far, every prediction in the modern era that mankind’s lot will worsen, from Thomas Malthus to Karl Marx, has turned out to be spectacularly wrong… Capitalist economies have been spectacularly efficient at enabling growing consumption of private goods, at least over the long run. When it comes to public goods – such as education, the environment, health care, and equal opportunity – the record is not quite as impressive.” And the correct conclusion is?
Malthus, Marx, and Modern Growth – Kenneth Rogoff, PROJECT SYNDICATE

“…when 'work is punished' the demise of 'opportunity' will continue...”
The Demise Of The American Dream (In 2 Charts) – ZERO HEDGE

“Raising the minimum wage is a formula for causing unemployment among the least-skilled members of society. The higher wages are, the higher costs of production are. The higher costs of production are, the higher prices are. The higher prices are, the smaller are the quantities of goods and services demanded and thus the number of workers employed in producing them. These are all propositions of elementary economics that you and the President should well know.”
Letter to Secretary of Labor Perez Against Raising the Minimum Wage – George Reisman, GEORGE REISMAN’S BLOG

“Why does the minimum wage fail to alleviate net poverty? Sabia points to two reasons: adverse employment hours and effects, and because few minimum wage beneficiaries actually live in poor households.”
Stating the blindingly obvious – LINDSAY MITCHELL


“My world would get very small if I lost my car, shrinking to the area covered by bus routes. In another sense it would get very big: my… internship on the outskirts of town may as well have been in outer space.  I wouldn’t be going there.”
The Great Emancipator vs. the Green Menace – Deborah Sloan, AMERICAN THINKER

“"Some years ago, the FDA held a news conference and proudly announced, 'This new heart drug we’re approving will save fourteen thousand American lives a year!' No one stood up at the press conference to ask, 'Excuse me, doesn’t this mean you killed fourteen thousand people last year—by delaying its approval?' No one asked that because reporters don’t think that way, but that’s what the FDA’s announcement meant. If the drug saves 14,000 lives a year, then 14,000 people died each year while the drug awaited approval." —John Stossel
How the FDA Violates Rights and Hinders HealthOBJECTIVE STANDARD

“If you haven't seen The Dallas Buyers Club, which took home three Oscars last Sunday, you should. It's the most flat-out libertarian movie since Ghostbusters and one of the best message movies I can think of..”
Kill the FDA (Before It Kills Again!): Dallas Buyers Club – Nick Gillespie, HIT & RUN
Dallas Buyers Club and Economics – RYAN’S RANTINGS

“The debate around Crimea is no longer centred on international law: Russian President Vladimir Putin has publicly recognized that he does not feel bound by it and does not care if the rest of the world deems Russia’s actions illegal. What is not clear is whether Russia’s economy can bear the burden of Putin’s objectives in Ukraine.
Putin’s Imperial Road to Economic Ruin – Sergei Guriev, PROJECT SYNDICATE

So, apparently, Crimeans get to vote about Russian takeover… [cartoon by John Cox]

bearhug.jpg

Let me rewrite this tagline: “You may have seen these successful libertarians in movies, concerts, and even in the wrestling ring. That said, you may have had no idea they were libertarian. Or cared. [Disclaimer: I only knew four of them, and cared less about the rest.]
9 Successful People You Never Realized Were Libertarian – CAPITALISM IS FREEDOM

File:Última Cena - Da Vinci 5.jpg

“…forgetting to eat and drink, painting all the time … wrapped in contemplation … ”
How artists work: Leonardo anecdote – STEPHEN HICKS

The hottest new thing in art has never gone away: the fight for figurative art “that touches us on a human level” is reaching a new plateau. “Throughout decades of wondering, wishing, and hoping that the direction of art would change, that we would begin to see work that touched us on a human level, that a sense of integrity would emerge, we did not imagine that we would ever experience the sort of coming together, the kind camaraderie that was experienced at The Representational Art Conference last week in Ventura.”
Signs of the Reconstruction: Representational Art Conference 2014 – Brandon Kralik, HUFFINGTON POST

“The model is part of an exhibition at the museum through June 1 — “Frank Lloyd Wright and the City: Density vs. Dispersal” — a kind of coming-out party for a vast archive of Wright’s preparatory work, drawings, correspondence and writings that was acquired in 2012 from the Wright Foundation by MoMA and Columbia University’s Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library. Researchers say the archive is already providing a deeper understanding of Wright’s work since the materials made the trek from Arizona and Wisconsin, where they had been little seen.”
Models Preserve Wright’s Dreams – NEW YORK TIMES

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One of the great headlines…
‘Access Hollywood’ Reporter Vows To Get To Very Surface Of Story – THE ONION

“Film critics review movies as if they were stories that merely happen to be told with a camera. What happened to analysing films as films?”
What’s the point of movie criticism? – PROSPECT MAGAZINE

“It's as if thinking in principles has been outlawed. Or the ability to do so has been destroyed.”
The Anti-Philosophical Nature of Today's Intellectuals – MIKE’S EYES

“Feeling blue? Being truthful and ambitious can get you down. Provided the requisite introspection and action follows, it could be good for you.”
Can Depression Be Good for You? – PSYCHOLOGY TODAY

“Why do we listen to our favourite music over and over again? Because repeated sounds work magic in our brains.”
One more time – AEON MAGAZINE

Random pic of engineering history: Brunel’s Clifton Suspension Bridge outside Bristol, which opened in 1864 [pic by Tural Bapho]:

Random lampoon of utilitarianism [pics by Existential Comics:

Don't worry, I did the math. The amount of pleasure I got from writing this terrible joke outweighs the suffering it caused from people having to read it.

Here’s some more of the Bs in my head this week.

Bob:

Bruce:

Brel (and translation):

[Hat tips: Phil O'Brien, Lukas Schroeter, David Slack, Stephen Hicks, Alex Epstein, Nelson Brackin, Guy McCallum, Arts & Letters DailyScientific American Blogs]

Thanks for reading,
Have a great weekend!
PC