"Whenever I begin to debate certain issues such as the war in Iran or the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, I am confronted with the fact that the side I support has done some pretty stupid (sometimes evil) things. America supported the Shah, who was an oppressive dictator. Israel enabled the rise of Hamas by supporting Islamist social and charitable organizations within Gaza in order to create a counterweight to the secular Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). And then there allegations of even more sinister actions, ranging from the plausible to the ridiculous. It is easy to see why so many people retreat to a kind of neutrality. They shrug and say both sides have some valid points. Who can know which is worth supporting?
"Without a well-grounded philosophical framework, there really IS no way to know. ... if you’re not thinking conceptually, it might be hard to make a distinction between this group dropping bombs and that group dropping bombs.
"You might be tempted to view the conflict in terms of who is the underdog. Who is the David fighting Goliath? Of course, even on these terms, it’s pretty bizarre to view a nation of about 10 million (Israel) as the Goliath when they are facing down Iran (a nation of about 90 million) or the entire Arab world (around 500 million) or the entire Islamic world (perhaps as many as 2 billion).
"But regardless, this is the wrong way to look at the conflict. Instead, we should be thinking in terms of what kind of civilisation does each side represent? What values would we like a society to uphold — and which of these 'sides' [if any] better represents those values? ... it does mean understanding the fundamental distinction between [semi] free and unfree societies — between good societies that sometimes makes mistakes, and fundamentally bad societies that (like all societies) have many good people in them who are just trying to live their lives.
"Once you understand the distinction, you might come to understand that the only way to 'Free Palestine' or to truly support any of the “underdogs” in the world is to free them from the ideological chains of their terrible belief systems. Fundamentally, these people are not angry at the West because they have (sometimes legitimate) grievances about particular actions, but because they resent the example that even a semi-free society presents. While we can’t force people to be free or even to believe in freedom as an ideal, we can (and should) show them the utter futility of continuing to support the death cult of Islamism. It was only utter defeat that discredited Nazism in Germany and emperor-worship in imperial Japan — and allowed them to develop into much happier, freer, and more prosperous societies. That is what I wish for Palestine, Iran, and all the oppressed people of the world."~ Stewart Margolis from his post 'Who Deserves Our Support?'
Thursday, 16 April 2026
'Who Deserves Our Support?'
Deregulation in Argentina: Milei Takes “Deep Chainsaw” to Bureaucracy and Red Tape
Argentine President Javier Milei has lowered inflation, drastically reduced government spending, and dismantled large parts of the federal bureaucracy. But as Ian Vásquez points out in his guest post, one of the most far-reaching efforts by his administration has been its deregulation push, with officials implementing about two deregulations per day on average since he took office, and using ingenious ways to discover where most needs deregulation. It's an Example for the World, if only New Zealand were not too sclerotic to learn from it ...
Since assuming power in December 2023, Milei has been slashing government to that end. His priorities have been to get spending under control and to deregulate. Milei cut the budget by about 30 percent and balanced it one month into his term. That facilitated more disciplined monetary policy and the reduction of inflation from 25 percent per month when the president came to office to 2.2 percent in January 2025.
The success that Milei’s economic stabilisation has had so far is now widely acknowledged. The president took an economy from crisis to recovery much faster than most people expected: Growth returned in the second half of 2024, wages have increased, and the poverty rate, after having initially risen, has fallen below the 40 percent range that the previous government left as part of its legacy.
How much Milei has been deregulating, however, and the role that deregulation plays in Argentina’s success, is less widely appreciated—yet it is every bit as important as cutting spending. To understand why, it helps to know something about what makes Argentina’s politics different from that of most countries.
Argentina’s Peronist System
For more than seven decades, Argentina has had a corporatist system that Perón set up using Mussolini’s fascist Italy as a model. Under that system, the state organises society into groups—trade unions, business guilds, public employees, and so on—with which it negotiates to set national policies and balance interests. It’s a kind of collectivism that erases the individual, centralises power in the state, and incentivizes interest groups to compete for government favoritism through public spending and regulation.
This system gave rise to a proliferation of rules intended to protect and promote particular sectors through price controls, licensing schemes, differential exchange rates depending on type of economic activity, capital controls, preferential borrowing rates, compulsory membership in (and support of) guilds, and other interventions.
The system that the Peronist party set up discouraged free exchange, competition, and productivity but became deeply entrenched. Privileges accorded by regulation were politically difficult to lift. Legal scholar Jorge Bustamante, moreover, notes that regulation plays a more significant role in redistributing wealth in Argentina than fiscal policy does. He adds that “the waste of scarce resources caused by regulations is more serious than the direct activity of the state in the economy itself [fiscal policy], which is known to be in deficit.”
Unions in particular gained immense political power. Such was the case that Bustamante describes the Argentine system as one that “converts the unions into organs of the state when the party to which they belong [the Peronist party] is in power or converts the state into a prisoner of the unions when the party is in the opposition.”
Federico Sturzenegger, Argentina’s minister of deregulation and state transformation, made a similar point at the Cato conference we held in Buenos Aires in June 2024 with President Milei and other leading classical liberals. “The Peronist party,” Sturzenegger said, “is the manager of the status quo.… It is the manager of the vested interests; it is the conservative party of Argentina.”
The Peronists may want to conserve the system, but Milei is right in cutting it down. According to Cato's Human Freedom Index, the Argentina that the president inherited is one of the most regulated countries in the world, ranking 146 out of 165 countries in terms of the regulatory burden. As of last year, it ranked 81st.
Milei’s Cuts in One Year
Since coming to power, Milei has made wide-ranging cuts to Argentina’s bureaucracy. In his first year, he reduced the number of ministries from 18 to 8 (eliminating some and merging others), fired 37,000 public employees, and abolished about 100 secretariats and subsecretariats in addition to more than 200 lower-level bureaucratic departments.
The president has also aggressively pursued deregulation. Using a conservative methodology, my colleague Guillermina Sutter Schneider and I calculated that during Milei’s first year in office, he implemented about two deregulations per day. Roughly half of the measures eliminated regulations altogether, while the rest modified existing regulations in a generally market-oriented direction.
Milei has implemented these reforms legally and constitutionally, and they have resulted mainly from two broad measures. First, Milei began his administration by issuing an emergency “megadecree” that consisted of 366 articles. Emergency decrees are consistent with Argentine law if they meet certain conditions. They are also reviewable by Congress, which has the right to reject the orders within a specified period of time. Since the legislature did not object, most of the deregulations in the megadecree went into effect.
Second, Congress approved a massive bill (“Ley Bases”) last June that allows the government to issue further deregulatory decrees for one year. Most of Argentina’s deregulations are taking place under that authority and have been led by the new Ministry of Deregulation that began operating the following month.
The ministry is literally in a race against time, and its sense of urgency is palpable. When I visited Minister Sturzenegger and his team in November, they showed me a countdown sign outside his office that read “237 days left,” indicating the time remaining for the government to continue issuing deregulatory decrees. Sturzenegger’s team—made up of legal experts and accomplished economists—also has a clear sense of mission: to increase freedom rather than make the government more efficient. When reviewing a regulation, therefore, they first question whether the government should be involved in that area at all.
Following that approach, the government implemented deregulations in sectors of the economy ranging from agriculture and energy to transportation and housing.
Deregulation in Argentina: Milei Takes “Deep Chainsaw” to Bureaucracy and Red Tape
by Ian Vásquez
At the heart of Argentina’s chronically crisis-prone economy is a political system that encourages unconstrained public spending and overregulation in the extreme. It is the system set up by Juan Domingo Perón in the 1940s that strengthened in subsequent decades, and that President Javier Milei promised to cut down with a chainsaw and replace with classical-liberal policies of the kind that made his country one of the most prosperous in the world a century ago.
At the heart of Argentina’s chronically crisis-prone economy is a political system that encourages unconstrained public spending and overregulation in the extreme. It is the system set up by Juan Domingo Perón in the 1940s that strengthened in subsequent decades, and that President Javier Milei promised to cut down with a chainsaw and replace with classical-liberal policies of the kind that made his country one of the most prosperous in the world a century ago.
Since assuming power in December 2023, Milei has been slashing government to that end. His priorities have been to get spending under control and to deregulate. Milei cut the budget by about 30 percent and balanced it one month into his term. That facilitated more disciplined monetary policy and the reduction of inflation from 25 percent per month when the president came to office to 2.2 percent in January 2025.
The success that Milei’s economic stabilisation has had so far is now widely acknowledged. The president took an economy from crisis to recovery much faster than most people expected: Growth returned in the second half of 2024, wages have increased, and the poverty rate, after having initially risen, has fallen below the 40 percent range that the previous government left as part of its legacy.
How much Milei has been deregulating, however, and the role that deregulation plays in Argentina’s success, is less widely appreciated—yet it is every bit as important as cutting spending. To understand why, it helps to know something about what makes Argentina’s politics different from that of most countries.
Argentina’s Peronist System
For more than seven decades, Argentina has had a corporatist system that Perón set up using Mussolini’s fascist Italy as a model. Under that system, the state organises society into groups—trade unions, business guilds, public employees, and so on—with which it negotiates to set national policies and balance interests. It’s a kind of collectivism that erases the individual, centralises power in the state, and incentivizes interest groups to compete for government favoritism through public spending and regulation.
This system gave rise to a proliferation of rules intended to protect and promote particular sectors through price controls, licensing schemes, differential exchange rates depending on type of economic activity, capital controls, preferential borrowing rates, compulsory membership in (and support of) guilds, and other interventions.
The system that the Peronist party set up discouraged free exchange, competition, and productivity but became deeply entrenched. Privileges accorded by regulation were politically difficult to lift. Legal scholar Jorge Bustamante, moreover, notes that regulation plays a more significant role in redistributing wealth in Argentina than fiscal policy does. He adds that “the waste of scarce resources caused by regulations is more serious than the direct activity of the state in the economy itself [fiscal policy], which is known to be in deficit.”
Federico Sturzenegger, Argentina’s minister of deregulation and state transformation, made a similar point at the Cato conference we held in Buenos Aires in June 2024 with President Milei and other leading classical liberals. “The Peronist party,” Sturzenegger said, “is the manager of the status quo.… It is the manager of the vested interests; it is the conservative party of Argentina.”
Milei’s Cuts in One Year
Since coming to power, Milei has made wide-ranging cuts to Argentina’s bureaucracy. In his first year, he reduced the number of ministries from 18 to 8 (eliminating some and merging others), fired 37,000 public employees, and abolished about 100 secretariats and subsecretariats in addition to more than 200 lower-level bureaucratic departments.
The president has also aggressively pursued deregulation. Using a conservative methodology, my colleague Guillermina Sutter Schneider and I calculated that during Milei’s first year in office, he implemented about two deregulations per day. Roughly half of the measures eliminated regulations altogether, while the rest modified existing regulations in a generally market-oriented direction.
Milei has implemented these reforms legally and constitutionally, and they have resulted mainly from two broad measures. First, Milei began his administration by issuing an emergency “megadecree” that consisted of 366 articles. Emergency decrees are consistent with Argentine law if they meet certain conditions. They are also reviewable by Congress, which has the right to reject the orders within a specified period of time. Since the legislature did not object, most of the deregulations in the megadecree went into effect.
The ministry is literally in a race against time, and its sense of urgency is palpable. When I visited Minister Sturzenegger and his team in November, they showed me a countdown sign outside his office that read “237 days left,” indicating the time remaining for the government to continue issuing deregulatory decrees. Sturzenegger’s team—made up of legal experts and accomplished economists—also has a clear sense of mission: to increase freedom rather than make the government more efficient. When reviewing a regulation, therefore, they first question whether the government should be involved in that area at all.
Following that approach, the government implemented deregulations in sectors of the economy ranging from agriculture and energy to transportation and housing.
Looking at Prices
To help prioritise those reforms, the ministry looks at prices. If the cost of a good or service is significantly higher in Argentina than internationally, the regulatory burden often explains the price differential. Sturzenegger reports that deregulation in Argentina has tended to make prices fall by about 30 percent. The ministry has also set up a web portal called Report the Bureaucracy that takes recommendations from businesses and the public, resulting in numerous reforms.
Some of the reforms have been procedural. For example, government inspections are now sometimes conducted after a firm begins engaging in business (on the assumption that it is following the law and may be subject to inspection), rather than before any business is allowed to even go forward. This “ex-post” inspection of the labeling of imported textiles, for instance, led the price of textiles to fall by 29 percent.
Some of the reforms have been procedural. For example, government inspections are now sometimes conducted after a firm begins engaging in business (on the assumption that it is following the law and may be subject to inspection), rather than before any business is allowed to even go forward. This “ex-post” inspection of the labeling of imported textiles, for instance, led the price of textiles to fall by 29 percent.
The government has also instituted a “positive administrative silence” rule affecting several activities by which requested permission is considered approved if the government bureaucracy does not respond within a fixed period of time. In yet another example, Milei prohibited legally sanctioned hereditary positions that had become normal practice at numerous government agencies.
Much of the impact of the deregulations has not yet been measured, but the hard or anecdotal evidence that does exist suggests that the reforms are making a significant difference. The following are some accomplishments from Milei’s first year:
Year Two of Milei: The “Deep Chainsaw” Begins
In his address to the nation on his one-year anniversary as president, Milei explained that the cuts he’s made so far are only a beginning. “We will continue to eliminate agencies, secretariats, subsecretariats, public companies and any other State entity that should not exist,” he promised, and then went further: “Every attribution or task that does not correspond to what the federal state is supposed to do will be eliminated. Because as the state gets smaller, liberty grows larger.” Milei declared that he would now begin applying the “deep chainsaw.”
Minister Sturzenegger is leading the charge. A decree in February instructed all ministers to review all laws and regulations under their purview and recommend comprehensive deregulations within 30 days. In a country with nearly 300,000 laws, decrees, or resolutions, that is no small task. But according to Sturzenegger, the government has cut or modified 20 percent of the country’s laws; his goal is to reach 70 percent. He adds that the pace of firing public employees will increase.
Regulatory reforms have already picked up pace. In January, Sturzenegger announced a “revolutionary deregulation” of the export and import of food. All food that has been certified by countries with high sanitary standards can now be imported without further approval from, or registration with, the Argentine state. Food exports must now comply only with the regulations of the destination country and are unencumbered by domestic regulations.
That innovative reform, which outsources regulation, is intended to generate “cheaper food for Argentines and more Argentine food for the world.” But it is also an example of how the ministry takes input from Argentine citizens about the need to change nonsensical regulations. As Sturzenegger explained: “Countless companies have told us of the incredible hardships they had to go through to meet local requirements that were not required by the destination market. A producer who needed to certify a sample to see if he could enter the US market was asked to set up a factory first.”
In another case, Argentina required a watermelon exporter to package his product in a way that was different from what the recipient country required. So, in practice, the exporter would load the ship in compliance with Argentine law and, once the cargo left port, the watermelons would immediately be repacked.
Other examples abound. A decree in February facilitated farmers’ use of new seeds by eliminating the requirement to conduct extensive testing of those seeds. As Sturzenegger observed, in a country where agriculture plays a significant economic role, those restrictions were especially perverse: “Brazil has tripled its soybean production, largely with seeds made by Argentine researchers, working in Argentine companies but based in Brazil. The dramatic thing is that the increase in production in Brazil sinks the price of the grain while we are relatively stagnant because we cannot access our own technology!”
Another decree reduces the cost of warehousing imported containers awaiting customs inspections by an estimated 80 percent because it allows importers to keep their goods in competing locations during that time rather than solely in places run by the customs service. That cost reduction, like countless others that result from accelerated regulatory reforms, will be passed on to Argentine consumers. And to the extent that the chainsaw really does go deeper and faster in year two, the benefits will be even more pronounced.
An Example for the World
Milei’s task of turning Argentina once again into one of the freest and most prosperous countries in the world is herculean. But deregulation plays a key role in achieving that goal, and despite the reform agenda being far from complete, Milei has already exceeded most people’s expectations.
Much of the impact of the deregulations has not yet been measured, but the hard or anecdotal evidence that does exist suggests that the reforms are making a significant difference. The following are some accomplishments from Milei’s first year:
- The end of Argentina’s extensive rent controls has resulted in a tripling of the supply of rental apartments in Buenos Aires and a 30 percent drop in price.
- The new open-skies policy and the permission for small airplane owners to provide transportation services within Argentina has led to an increase in the number of airline services and routes operating within (and to and from) the country.
- Permitting Starlink and other companies to provide satellite internet services has given connectivity to large swaths of Argentina that had no such connection previously. Anecdotal evidence from a town in the remote northwestern province of Jujuy implies a 90 percent drop in the price of connectivity.
- The government repealed the “Buy Argentina” law similar to “Buy American” laws, and it repealed laws that required stores to stock their shelves according to specific rules governing which products, by which companies and which nationalities, could be displayed in which order and in which proportions.
- Over-the-counter medicines can now be sold not just by pharmacies but by other businesses as well. This has resulted in online sales and price drops.
- The elimination of an import-licensing scheme has led to a
- 20 percent drop in the price of clothing items and a 35 percent drop in the price of home appliances.
- The government ended the requirement that public employees purchase flights on the more expensive state airline and that other airlines cannot park their airplanes overnight at one of the main airports in Buenos Aires.
Year Two of Milei: The “Deep Chainsaw” Begins
In his address to the nation on his one-year anniversary as president, Milei explained that the cuts he’s made so far are only a beginning. “We will continue to eliminate agencies, secretariats, subsecretariats, public companies and any other State entity that should not exist,” he promised, and then went further: “Every attribution or task that does not correspond to what the federal state is supposed to do will be eliminated. Because as the state gets smaller, liberty grows larger.” Milei declared that he would now begin applying the “deep chainsaw.”
Minister Sturzenegger is leading the charge. A decree in February instructed all ministers to review all laws and regulations under their purview and recommend comprehensive deregulations within 30 days. In a country with nearly 300,000 laws, decrees, or resolutions, that is no small task. But according to Sturzenegger, the government has cut or modified 20 percent of the country’s laws; his goal is to reach 70 percent. He adds that the pace of firing public employees will increase.
Regulatory reforms have already picked up pace. In January, Sturzenegger announced a “revolutionary deregulation” of the export and import of food. All food that has been certified by countries with high sanitary standards can now be imported without further approval from, or registration with, the Argentine state. Food exports must now comply only with the regulations of the destination country and are unencumbered by domestic regulations.
That innovative reform, which outsources regulation, is intended to generate “cheaper food for Argentines and more Argentine food for the world.” But it is also an example of how the ministry takes input from Argentine citizens about the need to change nonsensical regulations. As Sturzenegger explained: “Countless companies have told us of the incredible hardships they had to go through to meet local requirements that were not required by the destination market. A producer who needed to certify a sample to see if he could enter the US market was asked to set up a factory first.”
In another case, Argentina required a watermelon exporter to package his product in a way that was different from what the recipient country required. So, in practice, the exporter would load the ship in compliance with Argentine law and, once the cargo left port, the watermelons would immediately be repacked.
Other examples abound. A decree in February facilitated farmers’ use of new seeds by eliminating the requirement to conduct extensive testing of those seeds. As Sturzenegger observed, in a country where agriculture plays a significant economic role, those restrictions were especially perverse: “Brazil has tripled its soybean production, largely with seeds made by Argentine researchers, working in Argentine companies but based in Brazil. The dramatic thing is that the increase in production in Brazil sinks the price of the grain while we are relatively stagnant because we cannot access our own technology!”
An Example for the World
Milei’s task of turning Argentina once again into one of the freest and most prosperous countries in the world is herculean. But deregulation plays a key role in achieving that goal, and despite the reform agenda being far from complete, Milei has already exceeded most people’s expectations.
His deregulations are cutting costs, increasing economic freedom, reducing opportunities for corruption, stimulating growth, and helping to overturn a failed and corrupt political system. Because of the scope, method, and extent of its deregulations, Argentina is setting an example for an overregulated world.
* * * *
Ian Vásquez is Ian Vásquez is vice president for international studies at the Cato Institute, holds the David Boaz Chair, and is director of Cato’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity. He is a weekly columnist at El Comercio (Peru), and his articles have appeared in newspapers throughout the United States and Latin America.
His post first appeared at the Cato at Liberty blog.
Wednesday, 15 April 2026
How regulation works
Above a certain size, building new homes in France requires a registered architect.
...and at what level of income do you reckon UK firms are legally obliged to register for VAT...
Take a wild guess: what size do you reckon that is ...
In the same vein, at what number of employees do you reckon French firms are obliged to unionise ...
...and what happened in Georgian Britain when they taxed windows ...
Here are The Beatles ...
Tuesday, 14 April 2026
"And what we have now are English professors saying that, you know, Taylor Swift is as good as Mary Shelley."
"Q: 'So I want to ask you about Philistines and how Philistines have taken over the culture. I think the phrase you used is ‘Philistine supremacy’?'
"A: 'That's right. A lot of the time, when we talk about Philistines, we mean, oh, that awful person I know who doesn't appreciate the high arts. And it's a kind of snob thing. I'm not interested in that. Everyone's a Philistine, right? I'm a Philistine. You're a Philistine.
"'The really important thing is whether the literary elite are Philistines. And what we have now are English professors saying that, you know, Taylor Swift is as good as Mary Shelley. And the guy who runs the New York Times book review section hasn't read Middlemarch and doesn't think it's a problem. And there are just so many examples like that—that sort of suggest that the elite tier has kind of given up on being elites in a way.
"'I think part of it is we had what was called prestige TV, and people wanted to write about that and talk about that.'
"Q: 'Let me play Devil’s Advocate for a moment and say, no, 'Succession' is really good. The writing is very interesting. The cinematography adds a new layer to its presentation. The storytelling's good. It gives you room to explore various themes in a way that a play doesn’t because of its runtime and multi-season arc. Tell me why that’s crazy.'
"A: 'There are two questions here. Is Succession good? And is Succession the sort of thing that merits the cultural elite giving it the kind of attention that they have? And those are separate questions.
"'Maybe Succession is good. I neither know nor care. I found it boring. I couldn't watch very much of it. Personally, I think the cinematography is hugely derivative. ... But should we be talking about it in partnership with King Lear? Should we be devoting the kind of space and the kind of critical attention that we give to it, that we also give to the great works of fiction and drama? That’s obviously a no. Even the advocates can't really make a serious case for it. And, you know, King Lear is 400 years old at this point and is acknowledged as one of the great masterpieces of the West. No one's printing out the Succession scripts and doing a close reading. ...'
"Q: 'What would you do specifically about Shakespeare?'
"A: 'So the first thing I would say is, you’re not at school and you’re not that person anymore. And there are a lot of things you did and didn’t like at school that are no longer relevant. So just move on. Put that to one side. That’s over. Shakespeare’s the best. People get a little fussy about, can we say the best, and can we have rankings? Whatever. Yes, he’s the best. He’s the heart of the English canon. He’s the best reading experience you can have. You owe it to yourself to see or read some Shakespeare in the way that you would travel to see amazing landscapes, amazing buildings, have the best food of the world, hear the best music of the world. No one thinks it’s crazy to jump on a plane for eight hours to go and do something incredible on the other side of the world. But spending three hours with this book is too scary?'"~ from an interview with Henry Oliver on developing literary taste in an age of TV binge-watching and dumbed-down mass culture: 'How to Be a Serious Reader'
"Observe the nature of today's alleged peace movements...."
"Observe the nature of today's alleged peace movements. Professing love and concern for the survival of mankind... Yet these same peace movements do not oppose dictatorships. The political views of their members range through all shades of the statist spectrum, from welfare statism to socialism to fascism to communism. This means that they are opposed to the use of coercion by one nation against another, but not by the government of a nation against its own citizens. It means that they are opposed to the use of force against armed adversaries, but not against the disarmed."~ Ayn Rand from her article 'The Roots of War' [hat tip Objectobot]
Monday, 13 April 2026
TOFU Trump
A brief update for you on last week's summary post:
Brief Trump summary of the past weeks:-“Open the Strait”- “Help us open the Strait”- “We don’t need the Strait open”- “Open the f’king Strait or I destroy you all”
Friday, 10 April 2026
How to get me into a voting booth
When it comes to election time my general approach is "Don't encourage them, don't vote." I've never been disappointed with that considered choice.
But Henry Olsen has an idea that might get me into a booth: a negative vote.
We know exactly who we cannot stand and why the other lot would be a disaster. But our positive support for any party is probably lukewarm at best. ...
Perhaps the voting system should reflect that.
Imagine this: ... You head to the polls and discover that, not only can you vote for a party, but you can also vote against one.
Instead of adding to your preferred party’s vote count, you could bring down the count of one you hate. Now that voters have finally mastered MMP, this would take democracy to a whole new level.
Are you a middle-aged farmer worried about the Greens’ alternative Budget, or a young college graduate mad at the Coalition for reducing Auckland’s housing construction allowance? Use the negative vote to express your anger!
No one would be obliged to use their positive vote, so all votes could be negative. The party with the fewest negative votes would then win the election.
I like it. It could be that all parties are so hated, we could have a Prime Minister leading a party with more negative votes than positive. Just fewer negative votes than all those other bastards.
Then let's see them talk about their bloody "mandate."
PS: Which of the bastards would you be voting against?
Infinite Voices and Narrow Minds
"[There is now a] strange coexistence between an unprecedented variety of opinions that are strongly represented in the public square and the rigid worldview that constrains the beliefs of the most influential people in our society ....
"Never before have so many opinions been at our fingertips—and never before have so many professionals felt unable to voice theirs. What explains this paradox [of infinite voices and narrow minds], why does it matter, and what can we do about it?
"It is impossible to understand the recent politics of the Western world without considering a giant sociological transformation ...: The bourgeoisie has switched sides. ...
"Karl Marx called on the workers, not on the lawyers or freelance illustrators, of the world to unite. The origins of Germany’s Social Democratic Party, of Britain’s Labour Party, and even of the modern-day Democratic Party in the United States lie with factory workers and trade unionists. ... But of late, these realities have started to shift ...
"Plumbers are right wing but lawyers are left wing. Cab drivers are right wing but university professors are left wing. Police officers are right wing but civil servants are left wing. And though many professions claim to be apolitical, the plumbers and cab drivers and police officers increasingly suspect that the lawyers and professors and civil servants are letting their political values influence their work. The decline in respect for 'experts' is in part owed to the blatant lies spread on social media; but it also has its roots in the real ways in which the consensus within these professions has increasingly come to adhere to a narrowly progressive—and often lamentably erroneous—set of assumptions about the world. ...
"The resulting state of affairs leaves both sides equally unhappy. ... What one side perceives as flagrantly unjust domination by the well-credentialed, the other interprets as the perils of revanchist demagoguery."~ Yascha Mounk from his post 'The Bourgeoisie Has Switched Sides: What happens when elites all believe the same thing'
Thursday, 9 April 2026
Trump’s “victory timeline” claims (actual quotes)
Jan 2, 2026: threatens a "locked and loaded" military intervention if Iran kills peaceful protesters.
Jan 13: "Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING - TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!!... HELP IS ON ITS WAY"
Feb 13: Regime change "would be the best thing that could happen" in Iran
Feb 24: "We are in negotiations with them. They want to make a deal, but we haven't heard those secret words, 'We will never have a nuclear weapon.'" "My preference is to solve this problem through diplomacy. But one thing is certain, I will never allow the world's No. 1 sponsor of terror to have a nuclear weapon."
Late Feb: "I'm not happy with the fact that they're not willing to give us what we have to have."
Feb 28: [Oman says a deal is "within reach."]
Also Feb 28: Trump releases an 8-minute video on Truth Social announcing strikes have begun, saying Iran's "menacing activities" endangered the US and its allies; cites the Iran hostage crisis, support for Hamas and Hezbollah, the killing of protesters, and Iran's chanting of "Death to America." He called on the Iranian people to overthrow their government.
Mar 2: "First, we're destroying Iran's missile capabilities… and their capacity to produce brand new ones. Second, we're annihilating their navy… Third, we're ensuring that the world's number one sponsor of terror can never obtain a nuclear weapon… And finally, we're ensuring that the Iranian regime cannot continue to arm, fund, and direct terrorist armies outside of their borders."
Mar 3: Iran is building "powerful missiles and drones to create a conventional shield for their nuclear blackmail ambitions."
[IRGC kills 36,000 protestors to March. No "help" appears.]
Mar 2: "First, we're destroying Iran's missile capabilities… and their capacity to produce brand new ones. Second, we're annihilating their navy… Third, we're ensuring that the world's number one sponsor of terror can never obtain a nuclear weapon… And finally, we're ensuring that the Iranian regime cannot continue to arm, fund, and direct terrorist armies outside of their borders."
Mar 3: Iran is building "powerful missiles and drones to create a conventional shield for their nuclear blackmail ambitions."
Mar 3: Iran poses an "imminent threat" because it is going to retaliate against US forces when Israel attacks.
Mar 3: "We won the war."
Mar 7: "We defeated Iran."
Mar 9: "We must attack Iran."
Mar 9: "The war is ending almost completely, and very beautifully.
Mar 10: practically nothing left to target
Mar 11: “You never like to say too early you won. We won. In the first hour it was over.”
Mar 12: "We did win, but we haven't won completely yet."
Mar 13: "We won the war."
Mar 14: "Please help us."
Mar 15: "If you don't help us, I will certainly remember it."
Mar 16: "Actually, we don't need any help at all."
Mar 16: "I was just testing to see who's listening to me."
Mar 16: "If NATO doesn't help, they will suffer something very bad."
Mar 17: "We neither need nor want NATO's help."
Mar 17: "I don't need Congressional approval to withdraw from NATO."
Mar 18: "Our allies must cooperate in reopening the Strait of Hormuz."
Mar 19: "US allies need to get a grip - step up and help open the Strait of Hormuz."
Mar 20: "NATO are cowards."
Mar 21: "The Strait of Hormuz must be protected by the countries that use it. We don't use it, we don't need to open it."
Mar 22: "This is the last time. I will give Iran 48 hours. Open the strait"
Mar 22: "Iran is Dead"
Mar 23: "VERY GOOD AND PRODUCTIVE CONVERSATIONS REGARDING A COMPLETE AND TOTAL RESOLUTION OF OUR HOSTILITIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST."
Mar 24: "We’re making progress."
Mar 24: We "won" the war. Iran wants "to make a deal so badly."
Mar 25: “They gave us a present and the present arrived today. And it was a very big present worth a tremendous amount of money. I’m not going to tell you what that present is, but it was a very significant prize.”
Mar 26: "Make a deal, or we’ll just keep blowing them away."
Mar 27: "We don’t have to be there for NATO."
Mar 28: No major quote
Mar 29: Claimed talks were progressing
Mar 30: "Open the Strait of Hormuz immediately, or face devastating consequences."
Mar 31: Claimed a deal was "very close" and that Iran would "do the right thing"
Apr 1: "Regime change was not our goal. We never said regime change, but regime change has occurred because of all of their original leaders' death. They're all dead,"
Apr 1: "We’ll see what happens very soon."
Apr 2: Repeated that a deal was likely, while warning of continued strikes if not
Apr 3: "Something big is going to happen."
Apr 4: Said Iran must comply "immediately" or face further consequences.
Apr 5: "Open the fuckin' Strait, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah."
Apr 6 : "...a whole civilization will die"
Apr 6: "We may even get involved with helping them rebuild their nation."
Apr 7: Total and complete victory
Apr 8: "Double ceasefire ... We have already met and exceeded all Military objectives"
[Hormuz Straits that were formerly open will now be tolled. Iranian regime continues nuclear programme. Iran regime continues political executions at the rate of nearly 6 per week.]
So what was achieved ... ?
"The Greens are proposing one of the most aggressive tax regimes of its kind anywhere in the developed world..."
"The Greens are proposing one of the most aggressive tax regimes of its kind anywhere in the developed world, resulting in a broad-based raid on Kiwis who’ve worked hard, saved, and built something over a lifetime.
"The idea this only hits the wealthy simply doesn't stack up. One in five Kiwi homes is held in a trust, and the Greens would tax those assets from the first dollar. In Auckland, that means an annual bill of over $18,000 on a mortgage-free family home, or $3,600 for first home buyers with a twenty-percent deposit.
"And it doesn't stop there. A 33 percent death tax would force many families to sell farms, homes, or businesses just to pay the bill. Inheriting the average dairy farm would trigger a $1.2 million tax bill. There is nothing fair about taxing grief, or taxing the same income again when it's earned, saved, and finally passed on.
"Most countries that have tried wealth taxes have scrapped them because they drive investment and talent offshore. Death taxes are even worse, New Zealand tried one and abandoned it in 1993 because it crushed farming families and raised almost nothing.
“This package is light on evidence, heavy on populism, and green with envy.”
~ Austin Ellingham-Banks on the Taxpayer Union's 'NEW REPORT: Green With Envy: Wealth, Death, And Trust Taxes Examined'"One 'solution' to inequality ... is the wealth tax. ... This taxing away of capital means less means of production and thus less production and higher prices. At the same time, it means less demand for labour and thus lower wages. [The] programme is a call for mass impoverishment....
"Taxing wealth is not merely a levy on individuals but a direct seizure of the capital required for production, which ultimately harms everyone's standard of living. ...
"As [Ludwig Von] Mises observed* ...., almost all of the technological advances of the last centuries are available to and can be fully understood by engineers in even the most impoverished corners of the world. What stops the implementation of those advances is not any lack of technological knowledge but a lack of capital. Thus, a farmer in India who has seen a tractor on television can easily understand the value of using one. What stops him from using one is certainly not any lack of technological knowledge. It is certainly not that he does not know how to operate a tractor or could not easily be taught how to do so. What stops him is that he cannot afford a tractor. He does not possess the capital necessary to buy a tractor and cannot find a lender to provide it. This is a lack of capital that probably could not be made good by any rise in the local capital/income ratio. It reflects generations of insufficient local capital accumulation."
~ George Reisman from his comment on 'The Problem with the Wealth Tax' and his 'Piketty’s Capital: Wrong Theory/Destructive Program' [emphases mine]
"New Zealand’s productivity challenges are strongly linked to low capital intensity. ... New Zealand’s slowing labour productivity growth is likely to reflect both slowing growth in innovation and declines in the capital to labour ratio. ... New Zealand’s capital intensity [already] lags other countries...."~ Treasury from their 2024 report 'Causes of New Zealand’s low capital intensity'
* Ludwig Von Mises, in his chapter 'Capital Supply & American Prosperity'--in which he observes that "the average standard of living is in [America] is higher than in any other country of the world, not because the American statesmen and politicians are superior to the foreign statesmen and politicians, but because the per-head quota of capital invested is in America higher than in other countries."
Wednesday, 8 April 2026
"No such thing as a low-energy high-income country"
A gentle reminder for everyone: You may have a low-energy low-income country or a high-energy high-income country ---- but you will go a very long way to find any place with that link reversed.
Tuesday, 7 April 2026
But how are these things measured?
"New Zealand has just been ranked one of the happiest countries in the world. This is obviously good news. But there is something badly wrong beneath that glossy headline, especially in terms of loneliness and youth.
"The 2026 World Happiness Report, released last month, ranked New Zealand 11th out of 147 countries – up one spot from last year, and the highest-ranked English-speaking nation. On the surface, that sounds pretty good. Better than Australia, better than the United States. Finland, inevitably, came first.
"But buried inside the report was the figure that actually matters. For changes in happiness among 15-to-24-year-olds, New Zealand ranked 126th out of 136 countries. Young people’s happiness over the last decade has been plunging. We sit alongside the United States, Australia, and Canada in what researchers have labelled the 'NANZ' group: affluent nations where youth happiness is in freefall while older generations report world-leading life satisfaction. In contrast, according to the report, 85 of 136 countries saw youth happiness increase."~ Bryce Edwards from his post 'Are we “bowling alone”?'NB: How are these things measured? In short, the rankings come entirely from how ordinary people in each country rate their own lives on a 0–10 scale -- it's self-reported wellbeing, not a composite of economic or social statistics.
1 in 4 people born in New Zealand live elsewhere by age 30
Some fascinating research by Tim Hughes and his team at Treasury reveals that "25-30% of people born in New Zealand are living elsewhere by age 30."
We find that only about a third of emigration each year is of the NZ-born, and about 40% of NZ-born emigrants return to live in NZ again. Those with the highest qualifications are most likely to leave but also the most likely to return. Those who return earn more and pay more tax than those never to leave.
Yet much emigration is permanent and the diaspora is still substantial, with 25-30% of each birth cohort living elsewhere by age 30. Approximately $4b of public investment in human capital [sic] each year is ultimately lost to emigration, needing to be replaced with migration from other countries.
Complementary research further reveals that this "human capital [sic] is replaced via migration of people born elsewhere.
Foreign-born residents contribute a disproportionate share of personal tax revenue, reflecting their age structure and other factors.
In 2024, foreign-born NZ residents made up 32% of the population, and paid 38% of the personal tax.
This analysis helps demonstrate the growing importance of migration policy settings for fiscal sustainability.
[hat tip Eric Crampton]
Sunday, 5 April 2026
FOMO leaves little time for reflection
"I must hold it for the greatest calamity of our time, which lets nothing come to maturity, that one moment is consumed by the next, and the day spent in the day; so that a man is always living from hand to mouth, without having anything to show for it. Have we not already newspapers for every hour of the day! They publish abroad every thing that everyone does, or is busy with or meditating; nay, his very designs are thereby dragged into publicity. No one can rejoice or be sorry, but as a pastime for others; and so it goes on from house to house, from city to city, from kingdom to kingdom, and at last from one hemisphere to the other, all in post haste."
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, from his posthumous 1833 Maxims and Reflections, reflecting "that a culture of constant news eviscerates the past and the future, leaving you no time to metabolise lessons or sketch out a plan, always pulling you into the whirlpool of Something Important Happening Somewhere."
Saturday, 4 April 2026
Is it Gustav Holst we have to "thank" for heavy metal
Who's to blame for heavy metal? We have a new data point.
Robert Fripp -- guitarist extraordinaire and King Crimson leader now for nearly 60 years! -- was just sent a passage from the Geezer Butler autobiography (he of Black Sabbath, whose first album appeared in 1970) which contains this observation under the heading 'The Devil in Music' ...
A breakthrough came in May 1969, when I saw King Crimson at Mothers club. As part of their set, they played a version of "Mars," from Gustav Holst's Planets suite. I was dumbfounded, couldn't believe what I was hearing. The following day, I went out and bought The Planets on LP, and I couldn't get enough of "Mars, the Bringer of War." I'd never had much of an interest in classical music, but this was angrier and more menacing than most rock music I'd ever heard.
At our next rehearsal, I was playing the main part, the so-called tritone, on bass, when Tony started playing a tritone riff (in medieval times, the tritone, because of its sinister, foreboding sound, was known as diabolus in musica, or "the devil in music"). That song would eventually become "Black Sabbath."
Naturally enough Fripp's eyebrows were raised.
I've seen it written that Holst invented heavy metal [says Fripp]. That might be stretching things a bit, but you could argue he inspired heavy metal's first riff. And since we wrote that song, the tritone sound has become synonymous with metal.But did Black Sabbath even invent heavy metal? Nah, says a commenter on Fripp's post. "If he saw King Crimson in 1969 and they played 21st Century Schizoid Man then Heavy Metal had already been invented!"
In any case, the first time the term "heavy metal" was used in print was arguably in a November 1970 Rolling Stone magazine article on the new Humble Pie album, calling them "a noisy, unmelodic, heavy metal-laden shit rock-band."
It's a shame the term "shit rock" didn't take hold instead.
Here's Stravinsky's Rite of Spring.
Here's Stravinsky's Rite of Spring.
Friday, 3 April 2026
How the world's climate promises became a new way to keep Africa poor
"[The world] today says ... 'Net Zero by 2050. ...
"Banks sign net-zero pledges and quietly stop funding energy projects in Africa (while continuing to fund the exact same projects in America, Canada, and Norway). The African Energy Chamber has a term for this: financial apartheid.
"Meanwhile, NGOs run campaigns ... to pressure Western financiers out of ... a project Uganda and Tanzania are building to export their own oil. The European Parliament actually passed a resolution against it in September 2022. ... And every quarter, investors publish sustainability reports full of net-zero targets that have almost nothing to do with whether anyone in sub-Saharan Africa can turn on a light."Africa is responsible for about 4% of global CO₂ emissions. Four percent. No serious calculation says that cutting off financing to the continent that contributes the least will change the trajectory of the climate. ...
"Back home, 600 million people on my continent don’t have electricity.
"The WHO estimates that cooking with wood and charcoal kills around 800,000 people a year in Africa from the smoke alone, most of them women and children.
"The solution is LPG, which comes from natural gas, but building the gas infrastructure to distribute it gets caught in the same net-zero 'logic' that chokes everything else.
"Nigeria sits on some of the largest natural gas reserves in the world yet its power grid collapsed again in February 2026. At Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital in 2025, three ICU patients died during a blackout because the hospital had gone days without power. Twenty-six percent of health facilities across sub-Saharan Africa have no electricity at all. And the people signing those net-zero pledges in London and New York will never know their names.
"No single bank executive decided to keep Africans in the dark. But the world's net-zero pledges created a structure where not funding African fossil fuels became the easy, compliant thing to do, and funding them became a career risk. ..."I grew up in Senegal, and I remember my grandmother cooking over fire because there was nothing else when the power went out. Cutting off Africa’s energy doesn’t save the planet. It just guarantees that the next generation grows up the same way mine did.
"That’s what I’m working to change through Prosperity Not Poverty — because African nations have the right to use their own resources to build their own futures."~ Magatte Wade from her post 'The Lie Keeping Africa in the Dark'
Thursday, 2 April 2026
Scratch a conservative, find a statist
The newly minted Dr Matthew Hooton slithered into print on Friday last to make the case for state control of international trade.
Did I say make a case? Not a bit of it. The ever-odious doctor in conservative ideology simply told us that solutions to the international diesel dilemma will, and I quote, "require some sort of state control over international trade that we haven't seen since 1984."
"Diesel rationing," says the sickening spin doctor, "needs to be implemented urgently."
Reasons for this sudden need to abandon free trade, the price system and our minimal and ever-decreasing freedoms? Nah, just rhetoric: "If we run out of diesel," says his fire-filled column, "Covid will look like a rehearsal."
Covid, if you remember, was when government locked us up. There are people who enjoyed that -- and who still look with rosy-eyed affection at every over-bearing measure taken back then.
This repellent reptile is clearly one of them.
"Wars are the second greatest evil that human societies can perpetrate."
"Wars are the second greatest evil that human societies can perpetrate. (The first is dictatorship, the enslavement of their own citizens, which is the cause of wars.)"~ Ayn Rand from her 1967 essay "The Wreckage of the Consensus," collected in her 1967 book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal [ read it here on p.249]
"Globalisation encourages the capitalist engine of growth."
"Globalisation encourages the capitalist engine of growth. If people understood how generous that engine has been they would have less enthusiasm for protectionism or socialism or environmentalist or economic nationalism in any of their varied forms. Most educated people believe that the gains to income from capitalism’s triumph have been modest, that the poor have been left behind, that the Third World (should we start calling it the Second?) has been immiserised in aid of the First, that population growth must be controlled, that diminishing returns on the whole has been the main force in world economic history since 1800. All these notions are factually erroneous. But you’ll find all of them in the mind of the average professor of political philosophy."~ Deirdre McCloskey from her review of Thomas Friedman’s The Lexus and the Olive Tree and John Gray’s False Dawn
Wednesday, 1 April 2026
It's Shitty Anniversary time
 A year ago, Donald Trump stood in the Rose Garden, surrounded by charts nobody understood, and declared war on mathematics. One year later, not even the Rose Garden remains. |
This, above, was one year ago today when Donald Trump stood in the White House's Rose Garden to shoot himself and world trade in the foot.
Today, we 'celebrate' the anniversary of one man's gut feelings over economic reality...
One Year On: The Greatest Economic Own Goal in Living Memory
by Gandalv
One Year On: The Greatest Economic Own Goal in Living Memory
by Gandalv
One year ago, Donald Trump stood in the Rose Garden, surrounded by charts nobody understood, and declared war on mathematics. He called it Liberation Day.
The Financial Times, along with every economist who has read more than a bus ticket, is marking the anniversary with a verdict that should be carved into marble: it failed. On every single front. Spectacularly. Completely. Embarrassingly.
Let us be precise about this.
Measured against Trump’s own three stated goals, making foreigners pay for doing business with America, narrowing the trade deficit, and punishing China, the tariffs have clearly failed. Not partially failed. Not failed with asterisks. Failed the way a man fails when he drives a Reliant Robin the wrong way onto a motorway and acts surprised when it rolls.
And everyone said so. Economists said so. Trading partners said so. His own party said so. The entire field of international trade theory, developed over roughly two centuries by people who actually read things, screamed it from the rooftops. [Even this humble blog said so.] But Donald Trump, a man whose relationship with economics appears to consist entirely of gut feeling, cable television and 6 casino bankruptcies knew better.
The average American household paid an extra $1,700 due to tariffs. Over 65 percent of Americans reported that everyday goods became significantly less affordable. This is what happens when you run the world’s largest economy on instinct and vibes.
One year after the Rose Garden ceremony, factory jobs are down and inflation is up. The precise opposite of what was promised. And promised with extraordinary (and wholly unjustified) confidence.
Then the lawyers arrived.
The Supreme Court found that Trump had exceeded his authority, ruling that the declared emergency bore no rational connection to the trade measures imposed. In other words, the legal foundation was nonsense. The government had collected $166 billion in tariffs from over 330,000 businesses on grounds the Supreme Court found unconstitutional. The refund process is now underway. One hundred and sixty-six billion dollars. Collected illegally. From American businesses.
The financial markets, bless them, responded with the only appropriate tool available: mockery. The meme “Trump Always Chickens Out” refuses to go away, and the TACO index is now actively used by analysts to price in the president’s chronic habit of retreating.
Every serious voice warned this disaster would happen. Trade economists. Former Treasury secretaries. The IMF. The WTO. The EU. Canada. Japan. Basically anyone who had spent more than forty minutes studying how global trade actually works. The man who ignored all of them had previously run a casino into bankruptcy and considered that a learning experience. He was not, it turns out, a fast learner.
One year.
Zero of three goals achieved.
One Supreme Court ruling.
One $170 billion refund.
A world economy paying more for everything and making less of it.
Liberation Day. What a name for it.
Who's to blame for high power prices? It's the usual suspects, of course.
"[I]it frustrates me that our politicians have become victims of short-termism and tribalism. ... But those with the biggest chequebook in town are still responsible for the decisions they make. And this includes 100% responsibility for our high power prices.
"Why are politicians to blame? Because they retain 51% public ownership - and 100% control - of our three biggest power companies - Mercury, Genesis and Meridian.
"And, since they were listed on the stock exchange, no subsequent Government, blue or red-led, has allowed the gentailers to raise the money required to meaningfully expand the supply of power. And this has meant higher power prices. It’s a simple supply and demand thing. ...
"[S]uccessive Crown Ministers have become addicted to the juicy gentailer dividends. Treasury estimates them to have been a combined $5.4 billion since listing. Quid quo pro. And successive Governments have (cunningly) left any political fallout from higher power prices to be their successors’ problem.
"There is a horrible irony in all this. Politicians, with 51% ownership and 100% control of the gentailers, get to blame their management and directors for our high power prices. But, as the majority owners of the gentailers, it’s actually their fault. It’s like your manager making a mistake, but publicly shaming you.
"And there is only one loser in all this: everyone who pays their power bill. ....
"[We have neither] 100% Government ownership of our power companies ... [nor] 100% private ownership. ... Instead, we have a horrible middle ground. 51% ownership by the Government -- with 100% control -- yet starving them of the capital to increase power supplies. Yet, if you were to believe the politicians, high power prices were the greedy gentailers’ fault. Rubbish. ...
"Make no mistake, high power prices are 100% the fault of our successive governments, blue and red. They’ve been starving our power companies of the food they require -- capital -- while also milking them for dividends. Ask any dairy farmer how that works out."~ Sam Stubbs from his op-ed 'Who should we blame for high power prices?' [Emphasis mine]
Tuesday, 31 March 2026
AUT's dean steps down to go away and work quietly in a corner [updated]
Judd is fortunately still with us. And Quince, still unapologetic, is now stepping down as dean to go away and work quietly in a corner. Her legacy however remains: that those wishing to take up law as a reasoning discipline should try to find a university with a faculty whose leadership has greater respect for that argument.
Khylee Quince’s belittlement of Judd KC raises important questions about the lessons we impart to the next generation of lawyers. Are we equipping them to confront and counter challenging viewpoints effectively? Or are we teaching them to resort to personal attacks?
So let's leave the personal and look at law. As Judd pointed out, quite simply: tikanga cannot be "first law" because tikanga is not law at all, it is a collection of beliefs; to tell students it is law is cultural indoctrination.
[T]ikanga” ... is a set of beliefs, principles of a spiritual nature, a way of life (“the right Māori way of doing things”). When beliefs result in people consistently behaving in a certain way, the behaviour may become customary. Then, in certain carefully confined circumstances, customs may attain the status of law.
If “tikanga” were confined in its meaning to customs which had attained the status of law, there would be no problem. Introducing a regime which would impose beliefs, principles of a spiritual nature, a way of life of some of our people, on the nation as a whole is a completely different proposition. Beliefs and principles of a spiritual nature are not law. The way of life of some is not part of the law of the land. ...
Where tikanga beliefs have been acted on, they may have given rise to customary behaviour and those customs might [mature] into a species of customary law applicable for specific purposes, for example for determining who owns Māori land, but [one cannot simply declare] that tikanga [is] first law.But they are not yet law, let alone first law. And hissy fits still won't change that.
Calling tikanga something which patently it is not, not only offends reason but undermines the value of what it actually is. Making a falsehood a fundamental part of the description of its nature is not a good way to ensure its survival. ...
Beliefs, even if common to the entire population, are not law. However, beliefs may cause people to act in a certain way. Those actions may become customary and may even mature into customary law.
UPDATE: Her time is up, literally -- her five-year term has expired. But judging by the results of last September's AUT staff survey, it looks like few of her colleagues will be mourning. Kiwiblog reported:
I have been leaked a copy of the latest staff survey from AUT Law Faculty and it is very clear that it is a very unhappy place. Here are some of their results:Would recommend AUT as a great place to work 45%
- AUT is in a position to succeed 42%
- Have confidence in senior leaders at AUT 35%
- AUT has a thriving research culture 35%
- Am comfortable reporting inappropriate behaviour 30%
- Workloads are divided fairly 25%
- Innovation is recognised and rewarded 20%
- At AUT we are good at learning from our mistakes 20%
- The right people are recognised and rewarded 20%
- If someone is not delivering in their role we do something about it 5% ...
As you can see [in the above Powerpoint screenshot] the results for the Law Faculty are much much lower than AUT as a whole. So this would suggest the major issue is not the central administration, but the faculty management itself. I [David Farrar] am told by sources that everyone knows what the major problem is, but people are too scared to say so.
Rent Control Always Fails—Argentina Shows a Better Way
As virtually every economist has told us for decades, “In many cases, rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city except for bombing.” Politicians keep promising the same thing not so they can actually fix the problem -- even the most inept political reptile is aware of this -- but to win votes from people who still think that emotions can trump the reality of a rent cap.
As Marcos Falcone points out in this guest post, it's not even necessary to understand the reasons for rent control being do destructive. In contrasting the experience of Spain and Argentina, where xxx, he shows what the Greens and Green voters should realise before helping to destroy rental accommodation here...
Rent Control Always Fails—Argentina Shows a Better Way
by Marcos Falcone
On Friday, March 20, in light of the Iran war, which has pushed up energy and other prices, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced measures to lower the cost of living. Rent control was included among those measures, even though it is already failing in Spain.
Reportedly under pressure from one of its left-wing coalition partners, Sánchez decreed a nationwide contract extension at current prices for rentals about to expire, effectively amounting to a rent freeze. He has also instituted a 2 percent annual cap on rent increases through the end of 2027, which will apply to existing contracts currently indexed to inflation.
Ironically, a report published by the Instituto Juan de Mariana the same week as Sánchez’s announcement shows the extent of the harm that various forms of rent control are already causing in Spain. Following the introduction of rent caps in the region of Catalonia in 2024, the supply of rental housing has declined by 23 percent. Even more dramatically, the city of A Coruña and the region of Navarra saw rental supply fall by 44 percent and 51 percent, respectively, only six months after they designated certain areas as “stressed” housing markets and also imposed rent caps.
In a country with an estimated deficit of 700,000 housing units, rent control is making things even worse.
Rent control in Spain not only cuts supply but also fails to improve conditions for renters. As the Instituto Juan de Mariana shows, wherever rent control has recently been introduced, average rental unit space has decreased, and prices per square meter have either stayed the same or increased—in Barcelona, for example, prices reached a record high in the third quarter of 2025.
The Spanish experience contrasts sharply with Argentina’s, which has adopted the exact opposite approach since Javier Milei became president in December 2023.
Before then, listings had plunged by a massive 53 percent following the passage of a rent control law in 2020. But after Milei repealed it ten days after taking office, supplies rose by a staggering 180 percent less than a year and a half later. (My colleague Ryan Bourne and I documented that extensively here).
As of December 2025, rental prices in the city of Buenos Aires were still almost 30 percent down in real terms from two years before, and supply has not declined.
Rent control does more harm than good, as Ryan Bourne explains in The War on Prices. Hopefully, Spain will correct course as Argentina did before things get much worse.
* * * *
Marcos Falcone is a policy analyst focusing on Latin America at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity. His research interests range from contemporary public policy in his home country of Argentina to the history, theory, and language of classical liberalism. His essays have received awards by the Mont Pelerin Society, Caminos de la Libertad, and the European Center for Austrian Economics, among others. His columns appear frequently in Argentine and US media.His post first appeared at the Cato at Liberty blog.
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