"Expensive karaoke"

"I am not here to prosecute Michael Jackson or Michael the film (I won’t be seeing it), but it has driven me to once again say: we need a moratorium on musical biopics. ...

"In recent years we’ve seen biopics about Bob Dylan, Elton John, (two about) Elvis, Robbie Williams, Bruce Springsteen and Amy Winehouse. In production currently are FOUR Beatles biopics, with a separate feature film planned for each member. As with a lot of these movies, the conversation tends to revolve around who is playing the character, how much they look like them or not, how much they sound like them or not (anyone remember months of conversation about Austin Butler’s Elvis voice?), whether the movie is true to life, and so on.

"The main characters of biopics are so familiar to us that the discussion and viewing experience often centres on comparison over content. These are people we are already familiar with, stories we already know, performances we’ve already seen the real versions of. The worst result is essentially expensive karaoke.

"Aren’t we tired? Wouldn’t it be a good time after four individual Beatles movies to have a break from this genre? ... At least Robbie Williams tried something new by making himself into a monkey. ..."

~ Rebecca Shaw from her column 'Please stop making music biopics. We need a break from this tired genre that is essentially expensive karaoke'

"All this might not be so bad if musician biopics weren’t so fake. The whitewashing of Michael Jackson is just another example of the phoniness. I’m now old enough to watch films of this sort where I knew personally some of the people portrayed onscreen, and the gap between the film and reality is wider than Snake River Canyon—and way too wide to jump if you care at all about the real artists and real history behind these films."

~ Ted Gioia from his post 'The Hottest Musician in 2026 Is 'Problematic' Michael Jackson'

UN's IPCC withdraws alarmist scenario, local media continues alarmist news

Take a quick look at the most consequential graph of the last two decades, below.

But first, the news: the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Change (i.e., the IPCC, the organisation promoting the Climate Scare) has officially withdrawn the warmist scenario known as RCP8.5.

This (below) is roughly what the IPCC's RCP8.5 predicts:

For context (and contrast(, here's the actual satellite record of temperatures for the last few decades:

So what's this RCP8.5 then? The simple answer is that it's the scaremongering scenario sold to "policymakers" as their "business-as-usual" scenario. Here in New Zealand it's become "their main planning scenario with authorities planning for 'managed retreat,' forced abandonment of settlements, and insurance companies refusing to insure."

As Quico Toro explains, if the RCP8.5 scenario were comparable with models used to design bridges, it would result in bridges designed to take around 250 M1 Abrams tanks all at once. Not just unrealistic, but illusionary. 

The “8.5” in RCP8.5 refers to the amount of added solar energy the atmosphere will trap by 2100—specifically, 8.5 watts per square meter. That’s very high—likely to bring about a shocking 5 degrees of global warming above pre-industrial levels.

RCP8.5 was the kind of climate scenario lurking behind Greta Thunberg’s accusation, in her September 2019 speech at the UN Climate Action Summit, that “we are in the beginning of a mass extinction.” It’s the kind of pathway young people in England were thinking about when they decided they needed to launch “Extinction Rebellion.” It’s been a fundraising bonanza for climate activist groups from Adelaide to Zurich, the main player in every single alarmist climate critique you’ve read in the last 15 years.

And it’s been the default setting for literally thousands of climate science papers—Google Scholar lists more than 30,000 published since 2018 alone. It was from this kind of research that we got lurid papers like “Future of the human climate niche,” where respectable Dutch climate scientists claimed that one in three human beings live in regions that will become unlivable in the next 50 years. It was this kind of research that gave rise to countless breathless headlines about how outdoor labor was about to become impossible across much of the tropical world, and alarmist documentaries claiming the ocean was about to end up without any fish. It was RCP8.5 that turned David Wallace-Wells’s “The Uninhabitable Earth” into the most read story in the history of New York Magazine, and later propelled the book version to the top of the New York Times best-seller list.

The story of RCP8.5 is ultimately the story of what goes wrong when people convinced they are defending “The Science” catastrophically misunderstand how science works, and when politicized activists glom onto legitimate scientific tools and insist on ramming the round peg of probabilistic forecasting into the square hole of fundraising emails.

As we say above, here in New Zealand millions of words have been written based on the RCP8.5 scenario leading to authorities planning for 'managed retreat,' for forced abandonment of settlements, for insurance companies refusing to insure, for governments slowly but surely strangling our production of energy.

In the month since this became news however, there has been precisely ONE mention of RCP8.5's withdrawal in the local media. One.

What does that tell you?

Choosing careers in an AI world

The daughter of a Microsoft AI tech bloke was choosing careers, so he ranked them. 

First problem: how would she even get started?

The most important thing to understand [he discovered] is also the most counterintuitive. AI is not demolishing careers from the top. It is removing the bottom rungs of the ladder first.
    Think about how almost every professional career develops. A “Big Four” trainee at the accountancy firms Deloitte, KPMG, EY or PwC reconciles spreadsheets and drafts standard documents. A junior solicitor reviews contracts. A graduate analyst builds financial models. These are the apprenticeship stages. They are how young professionals develop the judgment that eventually makes them irreplaceable.
    AI performs many of those tasks faster and more cheaply.

So that's a potential problem for the first in modern history: a whole generation graduating without a clear way to become experienced. An apprenticeship without the material on which to learn.

So is it time to give up?

Robots are going to take your job? No doubt. 

What if robots take all the jobs?  Hint: They can't.

Comparative advantage tells us that "new kinds of jobs will appear, as they always have when technology advances."

Ironically, most of the jobs people are afraid of losing -- such as programming jobs or truck-driving jobs -- were themselves created by technological advances....
    What new types of job will be created? I can no more project that than a man in 1956 could have projected that today there would be jobs in something called “social media”; or that money can be made by driving for Uber and by renting out living space through AirBnB.

One estimate is that alongside all the jobs displaced, around 170 million will be created. "The net picture is not collapse. It is transformation. And transformations reward the families who understand them early."

What's to understand, says the tech bloke, is the four things in which human beings do have a comparative advantage over any machine: Emotional intelligence. Creative vision. Physical dexterity. Ethical judgment. Based on that insight, the tech bloke ranked careers 

across nine categories including emotional intelligence, creative thinking and vulnerability to AI tools. A score closer to 100 per cent means the role depends heavily on things AI cannot replicate. A score closer to 35 per cent means much of the work is already within reach of automation.

Biggest winners: 

• healthcare 
• education
• skilled trades
• creative industries (for genuine creatives)
• tech, finance and law (for those at the level required to exercise judgement)
• diplomacy

Biggest losers are box-ticking jobs, "where tasks are most predictable and repeatable" -- oddly those where intelligence is least demanded:

• paralegal
• accountant
• data entry
• admin

And in this age of transformation, the biggest new career paths might just be something sitting "in the intersections between disciplines" -- something requiring "deep knowledge in a substantive field combined with genuine AI fluency."  A good metaphor for what that looks like, suggests author Derek Thompson, is how Alexander Dumas used to write his fiction, with a zillion research assistants and a writing programme looking like a small factory, "industrialising what he saw as the boring parts of his creativity—research structure, workflow—freeing his brain to do the thermonuclear storytelling." In other words, putting the "AI‑accelerated firehose of information" in the service of creativity, without losing that spark along the way.

And after all that, what did our AI-engineer's daughter decide to do in the end? "After many dinner table conversations, Thea said something that stopped me cold: 'Diplomacy cannot be outsourced to robots, Dad.' Instead of finance she chose to do international relations: learning how humans negotiate, build trust and resolve conflict. Every one of those skills is in the 90th percentile for AI resistance."

His final words of advice:

We are facing a particular moment in history. It is not one that will announce itself. There is no letter from school, no official notification that the world your child is preparing for has quietly become a different one.
    The families who will look back on this decade without regret are the ones who had the conversation early and trusted that a child who understands the world they are entering is far better equipped than one protected from it. Here are some first steps:
    If your child is 10 to 12, build the foundations: teach them to be curious by reading carefully and arguing a point. Curiosity is the hardest quality to automate.
    If your child is 13 to 15, have one conversation this week. Not a lecture. Ask what they think AI is doing to the world. Help them begin using AI tools, not to do homework for them, but to understand what these systems cannot do. That understanding is the first superpower.
    If your child is 16 to 18 and making real choices, look hard at where the four human superpowers appear in the careers they are considering. AI fluency is not optional any more. The wage premium for those who have it is visible and growing fast. “Wait and see” is not a neutral position. It is a decision. The data says it is the wrong one.

NB: The Economist magazine's analysis suggests AI may already be harming some graduates’ job prospects

We found that graduates in fields more exposed to AI have suffered markedly worse outcomes. Between 2022 and 2024 graduates in the least-exposed quintile—studying subjects such as education, philosophy and civil engineering—saw their average full-time employment rate fall by just 1.5 percentage points. Those in the most exposed quintile—including computer science, computer engineering and information science—suffered a 6.6 percentage-point drop (see chart 1 above). ... the trend continued for the class of 2025 (see chart 2 below).

RELATED:

"Which jobs can AI learn to do? We examine this for every occupation in the US economy."

What Jobs Can AI Learn? Measuring Exposure by Reinforcement Learning - CORNELL UNIVERSITY RESEARCH PAPER, 4 May 2026 

"We investigate the potential implications of large language models (LLMs) on the U.S. labour market."

An Early Look at the Labor Market Impact Potential of Large LanguageModels - UNI OF PENNSYLVANIA, Aug 2023

 

The poison pill smuggled in with the Indian FTA

Another Constitutional Trojan Horse: advancing change through political stealth

FOR ALL THE FOOLISH NONSENSE about "tsunamis" talked about the Indian-NZ Free Trade Deal, there is a genuine issue that Gary Judd KC has identified in reading through it, and it's not about free trade or butter chicken. It's about a poisonous clause inserted at the obvious behest of the NZ negotiators. 

"The striking feature of this Free-Trade Agreement," notes Judd, "is that it brings the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) into the text of a trade treaty. That is not a side issue. It is a political and constitutional declaration inserted into an agreement that is supposed to be about trade. ... New Zealand’s Free-Trade Agreements with the United Kingdom and the European Union refer to indigenous rights and Māori participation. But the India agreement goes further. It is the first to affirm UNDRIP expressly. That is a significant escalation."

Why the hell is it there?

Everything points to this UNDRIP wording having been included at New Zealand’s initiative, not India’s. India appears to have agreed only on condition that its longstanding reservation was recorded. There is no obvious reason why India would want UNDRIP written into a trade agreement with New Zealand. ...

If it truly changed nothing, it would not be there. The obvious reason for including it is not trade with India but politics within New Zealand. A trade agreement is being used to advance a domestic constitutional and political agenda. That is an abuse of the treaty-making process. A provision with no real trade function, but clear ideological value at home, has no legitimate place in a Free-Trade Agreement.

Once this affirmation is in a ratified treaty, it will inevitably be invoked inside New Zealand as proof that the country is committed to UNDRIP in a serious and operative way, not merely in some airy symbolic sense. Lawyers, activists and judges will be invited to treat it as yet another marker of state commitment. To dismiss that as mere technicality would be naive.

You'll remember that Helen Clark, as Prime Minister, was astute enough to have her UN representative vote against the Declaration -- one of only four nations to oppose.  (As Judd notes: "India voted in favour (see here) but immediately made it clear that it did so subject to an important reservation. That same reservation now reappears in the FTA.")

It was John Key who blithely acceded to signing up simply in order to bolster his parliamentary support from Pita Sharples's Maori Party. 

What Key casually signed away was not trivial, as we saw when Ardern's Labour Government began drawing up the He Puapua document under UNDRIP's impetus. "He Puapua is not a minor discussion paper," Judd reminds us. "It is a blueprint for major constitutional change, including forms of co-governance. One example is paragraph 15: 'If they choose, Maori must be able to participate in Crown governance."

Clark's objection to the Declaration was principled, and what Clark's UN representative  Rosemary Banks said about it then is as valid now: Four provisions in the Declaration in particular were [and still are] "fundamentally incompatible with New Zealand’s constitutional and legal arrangements, [with] the Treaty of Waitangi, and [with] the principle of governing for the good of all its citizens."

What were those four provisions?

• Article 26 stated that indigenous peoples had a right to own, use, develop or control lands and territories that they had traditionally owned, occupied or used. For New Zealand, the entire country was potentially caught within the scope of the article, which appeared to require recognition of rights to lands now lawfully owned by other citizens, both indigenous and non-indigenous, and did not take into account the customs, traditions and land tenure systems of the indigenous peoples concerned. The article, furthermore, implied that indigenous peoples had rights that others did not have.
• The entire country would also appear to fall within the scope of article 28 on redress and compensation. The text generally took no account of the fact that land might now be occupied or owned legitimately by others, or subject to numerous different or overlapping indigenous claims.
• Finally, the Declaration['s articles 19 and 32] implied that indigenous peoples had a right of veto over a democratic legislature and national resource management, she said. She strongly supported the full and active engagement of indigenous peoples in democratic decision-making processes. New Zealand also had some of the most extensive consultation mechanisms in the world. But the articles in the Declaration implied different classes of citizenship, where indigenous had a right to veto that other groups or individuals did not have.

In short, the Declaration set up two standards of citizenship based on race, and a legal veto over other's property based on ancestry. Clark understood that. Key was too dim.

And so too are Luxon and Todd McClay, who either called for this clause's insertion in the Indian FTA themselves, or were insufficiently astute to have seen it there and taken out.

The He Puapua programme itself was begun without explicit acknowledgement of its goals. Those goals, indeed its very existence, were only revealed when it began to seem that some underlying framework was at play in Willy Jackson's and Nanaia Mahuta's legislative agenda.  Turns out there was. Media organisations uncovered the document, who then obtained it under the Official Information Act, and it was finally released only in April 2021 after pressure from the Ombudsman. "That is not transparent government," points out Judd. "It is disclosure dragged out by resistance."

The irony is that the same thing is happening here. 

Neither Government appears ready to argue openly for setting up two standards of citizenship based on race and ancestry.

Instead, they have to do it by stealth.

Gary Judd explains the danger in detail here, including illustrations "why ratifying the FTA in its present form is not a harmless gesture." I recommend the read.

He concludes:

What is most objectionable in all this is the contempt it shows for ordinary New Zealanders. Constitutional change of this magnitude should be argued for openly, defended honestly and submitted to democratic judgment. Instead, it has been advanced by ministers, officials and sympathetic elites through opaque processes, delayed disclosure and legal increment. That is no way to alter the foundations of a country.

The obvious remedy is greater democratic control. If politicians, officials or judges wish to drive constitutional change, they should have to defend it before the public in clear terms and win consent for it, not smuggle it through advisory reports, bureaucratic process or the fine print of a trade treaty.

That is the real issue raised by this agreement: not trade, but whether constitutional change in New Zealand will occur by democratic choice or by political stealth.

"AI is creating a crisis of authenticity."

"Like it or not, generative AI is becoming increasingly embedded in the process of seeking information, sharing ideas, and producing images. ...

"But I’m not sold on the narrative that generative AI marks the democratisation of communication, a new creative renaissance, or even a particularly good thing for productivity properly defined. As Neil Postman put it almost thirty years ago: “The question, ‘What will a new technology do?’ is no more important than the question, ‘What will a new technology undo?’” And given that AI is frequently pitched as a replacement for any human speech mediated through a screen, it stands to undo quite a lot. What’s at stake is nothing less than authenticity itself. ... AI is creating a crisis of authenticity.

"Why should we care? Because authenticity is foundational to trust, the thread that ties human relationships together ...

"[R]egardless of [a message's] content, knowing that [the sender] did not engage in the deliberative process of writing makes the message ring hollow: No matter how well-intentioned the messenger, it is not ultimately their message. It’s the seed of a thought filtered through an algorithm developed by a tech company. And you wouldn’t be wrong to feel demoralised about that. ...

"Trust does not simply materialise out of thin air ... It requires trustworthiness. ... [W]e might say that in a high-trust space, a well-adjusted person would presume authenticity unless given good reason not to. Unfortunately, knowing AI use is widespread, rarely disclosed, and often occurs without regard to context, it’s much harder to assume authenticity in online communication. ...

"[J]ust because authenticity is difficult to quantify, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t value it at all."

~ Talia Barnes from her article 'You Can’t Trust Anything Anyone Writes'

"The danger to 'the West comes not from a handful of terrorists crossing borders, but from the millions of university graduates crossing from academia into adulthood."

"Globalisation is here and cannot be stopped. With cheap and easy transportation around the globe (unless a country walls itself off--like North Korea--with similar meaning and consequences), the differences in race and culture of 100 years ago are going to melt away.

"Take the worldwide growth of English, and American English in particular. The French reportedly hate the growing use of English words. It cannot be stopped. Take the growth of interracial marriage, unheard of 60 years ago. It cannot be stopped. Neither can interfaith marriages and other 'mixed marriages.' ...

"You may bemoan the loss of national or regional identity, but it cannot be stopped.

"Generally, what goes into the mixing process are the best elements of each culture. Or so it seems to me, and it makes sense: why would people of culture B value the things about [a] culture A that are objectively inferior? ...

"So, to the extent that people feel turned off or threatened by people coming into their country who look different and act differently, that concern is going to fade into the background over the next 20 years.

"Differences over ideas, not foods or dress, are an entirely different matter. The difference between Islamic jihadists and [others] is a matter of literal life and death, not something optional. Even there, globalisation will have a big impact. The ultimate defeat of Islamism will be accomplished by young people in the Islamic countries seeing the rational values of the West. That's unless the West commits suicide---a distinct possibility.

"The oft-noted "moral weakness of the West" has become "God damn America!" [and god damn the West]. The cause is not immigrants; the cause is the (Kantian) ideas taught in our schools and universities.

"The danger to [the West] comes not from a handful of terrorists crossing the border[s], but from the millions of university graduates crossing from academia into [adulthood]. ... "

~ Harry Binswanger from his post 'Immigration—some mostly new thoughts'

Triumph of the dumb-arses: "The Right returned culturally, but with an intellectual vacuum at its centre"

“This ... has come to define much of the New Right across the West. And ultimately, it is a problem of ideas. The return of the Right in 2016 and again in 2024 was not an intellectual revival. It was not driven by theory or political philosophy, but by visibility and reach: Jordan Peterson debating feminists, Charlie Kirk confronting campus socialists, Donald Trump dominating the podcast circuit. The Right returned culturally, but with an intellectual vacuum at its centre: most notably, a lack of serious economics.

For classical liberals looking back decades from now, this revival of the Right is unlikely to inspire them in the way Thatcher and Reagan still do today. The politicians of the 1980s were what George Will called ‘conviction politicians’: figures who entered politics with a coherent social creed. Politics for them was not merely about remaining in power, but about pursuing a broader mission of prosperity. That mission was not to control the economy toward a collective goal, but to empower individuals to make their own decisions.

Today’s Right, by contrast, is dominated by political entrepreneurs: figures highly skilled at attracting attention and mobilising voters. By nature, they are populists, and populism is the direct translation of public emotion into government policy. Without intellectual grounding, politics becomes purely oppositional. Today, lacking any clear sense of direction in economics, the Right is often effective at identifying problems but incapable of solving them.”

~ Mani Basharzad from his article 'Has the Right given up on economics?' [hat tip Samizdata]

More Houses, More Choices

A new report from economists at the University of Hawai‘i makes a point that many of us have known all along: If we want to end the housing crisis, anywhere, we need to build more homes -- everywhere. That’s because each new unit creates a chain of housing openings....

More Houses, More Choices

by Keli'i Akina

A new report from economists at the University of Hawai‘i makes a point that many of us have known all along: If we want to end the housing crisis, we need to build more homes.

That’s because each new unit creates a chain of housing openings. A family that moves into a new house leaves behind an older one that is slightly less expensive, which another family moves into, freeing up another home at a lower price point, and so on.

This is often referred to as a “filtering effect,” or "churn," and it’s not just an optimistic theory—research has revealed it to be true.

Most recently, the UH economists studied the impact of a particular condominium building next to Ala Moana Center.

By tracking who moved into the building, who moved into the units they vacated, and so on down the chain, they found that the houses people left were “substantially cheaper than the new units and spanned diverse locations and housing types.” What’s more, they determined that the income-restricted units in the building led to fewer so-called secondary vacancies.

Likewise, a 2019 study published by the Michigan-based Upjohn Institute found that new housing construction “reduces demand and loosens the housing market in low- and middle-income areas, even in the short run.” Additionally, a 2023 study published in the NYU Law and Economics Journal—aimed at “supply skeptics”—found this chain of moves also benefits renters by making more rental properties available and reducing or slowing rental rate increases.

These results run contrary to the belief that addressing the housing crisis requires more controls, bans, restrictions, taxes and other burdensome measures that have been shown over decades to only exacerbate the problem.

These studies only confirm what we already knew. So why are we still debating what is the best way to ease the housing crisis? My belief is that too many lawmakers are focused more on the definition of affordability than simply allowing people to build more homes.

Simply allowing people to build more homes will result in more housing at all levels, without spending a cent of taxpayer money. All that is needed is the political will and courage to get harmful regulations out of the way.

* * * * 

Keli‘i Akina, Ph.D. is president and CEO of the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii. 

Adapted from the article first published by by the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, and republished by the Foundation for Economic Education.

"But love of power is not connected with goodness..."

"In order to get power and retain it, it is necessary to love power; but love of power is not connected with goodness but with qualities that are the opposite of goodness, such as pride, cunning, and cruelty."

~ Leo Tolstoy from his 1893 treatise The Kingdom of God Is Within You

Judith Collins's legacy: image over reality.

A career summarised: no ideas, no direction, no success -- and not one car crushed

What does a career in politics achieve? 

This afternoon Judith Collins will give her valedictory speech in Parliament. Journalists call her career "colourful." They call her "Crusher." Let's review what she's done there over the years.

• she was one of 23 MPs who rented their home to themselves at taxpayers' expense
• she was always ready to give the trough a decent nudge -- costing us in 2023 more than $24,200, made up of more than $6000 for accommodation and just over $18,000 on travel (a massive saving for us from 2009 when her limos and international travel were costing us nearly $200,000)
• need we mention using her position to help the export business for which her husband was a director?
• brought down for the first time (of many) by her own Entitle-itis, one wag suggested 'Trougher' Collins would be a better nick than 'Crusher'
• as Police Minister she continued to ensure that gangs could make decent profits on illegal drugs, while also ensuring police focus more on revenue-gathering than resolving real crimes (cementing an image as tough but crushingly ignorant)
• as the #DirtyPolitics saga did reveal, she maintained a disinterest in ideas, and a consequent obsession with scandals and (ineffective) dirty tricks
• and as Police Minister (her only real job) what did she actually do beyond asset confiscation; suspension of your right to silence; and expanded search and surveillance powers for an extraordinary range of government departments? 
• apart from, of course, bringing in pathetic new laws to "crush" cars instead of simply applying laws already on the books -- the main goal of which "seems to be the generation of positive media coverage for Judith Collins"
• as opposition MP in 2007 she stood up on the steps of Parliament to swear total opposition to the anti-smacking amendment; and then one month later filed obediently into the lobbies to vote for it
• in any competition between real action or spin, it was almost always spin she favoured -- even if it made us less safe
• as Opposition MP in 2005 and desperate to be noticed, she did point out that the Labour Government's Working for Families package is an election bribe paid being paid for with voters' own money -- and then as government MP and minister continued to administer the bribe
• keeping alive the tradition of promising and reneging, Collins was happy to be photographed firing a pistol to court the gun lobby (posting one on her own Facebook page in case you missed it); before  being the only National MP to support banning semi-automatic weapons for civilian purposes, and to boast about it
• as Corrections Minister she drove the reintroduction of private prisons -- for the actual privatisation of force, an unconscionable mixing of the dollar and the gun, with all the temptation to corruption and abuse that goes with it
• as Opposition Leader, Collins did promise the National Party would reverse any attempts by the Ardern government to criminalise speech beyond the threshold of "inciting violence," and warned against ending up with "UK-style hate speech legislation that has ended up with people being criminalised and even imprisoned for foolish and silly comments." All good, except that as (In)Justice Minister she had already drawn up much the same thing under her Harmful Digital Communications Act which hit us in 2015
• as Police Minister in 2016 she did correctly observe that the primary welfare problem to solve is not a poverty of money, the premise behind Labour's Working for Families programme, but "a poverty of ideas, a poverty of parental responsibility, a poverty of love, a poverty of caring. ... it is not just a lack of money, it is primarily a lack of responsibility." And then sat back as her Government and Party kept the policy, and did nothing to arrest the real poverty she'd identified
• And just to be clear: 'Crusher Collins never even crushed one car. Not one. (Only three cars in total were crushed under her legislation, all of which were after she was moved on from the job.) Which could be her real legacy: one of image over reality.

On the credit side, 

• she did, as opposition MP, do a mini-Rosa Parks in walking out when women were refused permission to powhiri except from the back of the room
• she did, as leader, once proclaim National to believe in property rights (despite it being National who introduced the property-rights-destroying RMA) and did accurately point out that the ACT Party did not, saying "there they are arguing for more planners doing more planning rather than actually letting people get on with building their houses"
• she did, as leader of that same National Party, lead it to its second-worst-ever election defeat in 2020, with a 19% swing against
• she was one of the two National MPs who signed up to the bi-partisan accord on housing that helped lower rents and begin the blessed fall in over-priced house prices -- and then disgracefully remained silent has her new boss kicked it into touch, delaying real housing reform now for nearly four years.

Judith Collins arrived in Parliament after a decade in law and (govt-appointed) directorships as a young, fresh-faced MP in 2002, eager to solve the country's problems and to advance her own career. Without any ideas to guide her however she did nothing to solve anything, helped expand the role of government, and spent a life in service to the trough.

So, more exposure than most, but in the end no different to any of the other highly-paid beneficiaries there, really.

And now she's off to another taxpaid trough at the Law Commission ...

Collins in 2002: all promise, no substance

NB: Ele Ludemann posts a contrary assessment ...

The Shopping Cart Theory

“The shopping cart is the ultimate litmus test for whether a person is capable of self-governing. 

    "To return the shopping cart is an easy, convenient task and one which we all recognise as the correct, appropriate thing to do. To return the shopping cart is objectively right. There are no situations other than dire emergencies in which a person is not able to return their cart. 

    "Simultaneously, it is not illegal to abandon your shopping cart. Therefore the shopping cart presents itself as the apex example of whether a person will do what is right without being forced to do it. No one will punish you for not returning the shopping cart, no one will fine you or kill you for not returning the shopping cart, you gain nothing by returning the shopping cart. You must return the shopping cart out of the goodness of your own heart. You must return the shopping cart because it is the right thing to do.

    "Because it is correct. 

    "A person who is unable to do this is no better than an animal, an absolute savage who can only be made to do what is right by threatening them a law and the force that stands behind it. 

    "The Shopping Cart is what determines whether a person is a good or bad member of society.”

~ anon. but widely attrib. to Glenn Danzig

"The True Gentleman is the man whose conduct proceeds from goodwill and an acute sense of propriety, and whose self-control is equal to all emergencies; who does not make the poor man conscious of his poverty, the obscure man of his obscurity, or any man of his inferiority or deformity; who is himself humbled if necessity compels him to humble another; who does not flatter wealth, cringe before power, or boast of his own possessions or achievements; who speaks with frankness but always with sincerity and sympathy; whose deed follows his word; who thinks of the rights and feelings of others, rather than his own; who appears well in any company, and a man with whom honour is sacred and virtue safe."

~ John Walter Wayland (1872-1962), American historian and educator who submitted 'A True Gentleman' to The Baltimore Sun in 1899 as part of a competition for the best definition of a true gentleman. His was crowned the winner.

“Once the principle is admitted that it is the duty of the government to protect the individual against his own foolishness, no serious objections can be advanced against further encroachments."

“Once the principle is admitted that it is the duty of the government to protect the individual against his own foolishness, no serious objections can be advanced against further encroachments. ...

"And why limit the government's benevolent providence to the protection of the individual's body only? Is not the harm a man can inflict on his mind and soul even more disastrous than any bodily evils? Why not prevent him from reading bad books and seeing bad plays, from looking at bad paintings and statues and from hearing bad music?”

~ Ludwig Von Mises from his 1949 magnum opus, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics (chapter 27, section 6, 'Direct Government Interference with Consumption')

Why good ideas are oft-born as twins

"We often praise ideas for their originality and criticise other ideas for being insufficiently novel. So, what do we make of the fact that most important breakthroughs in sci-tech history—the telegraph, telescope, and transistor; the laws of calculus and gravity—were 'simultaneously invented' by independent people around the same time? (Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray notoriously filed for a telephone patent on the same day.)
    "Which is to say: Some of the most important ideas in the world weren't 'new' when the inventor we credit came up with them.
    "It's even more uncanny than that. Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace didn't just independently come up with the basics of evolution. They both cited the exact same essay—Malthus's infamous 'Principle of Population'—as inspiration for thinking about species evolution as a competitive game where unforgiving environments shape genetic survival. As @DavidEpstein writes in today's essay, adapted from his ... new book Inside the Box, the frequency of idea twins in history suggests that once a problem is framed by a generation of thinkers with sufficient clarity and precision, the answer almost 'wants' to be found."

~ @Derek Thompson summarising David Epstein's essay 'Why Your Best Ideas Aren’t Original'

"All abstract knowledge depends, for its meaning and validity, on other knowledge that sets the context for it. For example, algebra depends on addition, and calculus depends on algebra. The more complex the knowledge, the more extensive the knowledge that must precede it.
    "One major aspect of the fact that knowledge depends on other knowledge—the aspect most relevant to and most violated in education—is that more abstract knowledge depends on less abstract knowledge. This is the principle of the hierarchy of knowledge."

~ Lisa Van Damme from her article 'The Hierarchy of Knowledge: The Most Neglected Issue in Education'

"Valid concepts [once discovered] function as a 'green light' to induction, permitting [further] generalisations from observed particulars, while invalid concepts block or distort the process."

~ summary of the inductive process given in David Harriman's 2011 book The Logical Leap: Induction in Physics & Philosophy

"[I]nherent in this is that concepts are future-looking. A concept is like a policy or a commitment. It’s like forming a file. ... A file, if you have a filing system, does not only organise and condense data that one already has, it does so on the premise of keeping up with this method of organisation. ... 
    "[T]o form a concept [then] is to institute a policy of applying what one knows from the study of each instance to the study of each other instance, to regard the instances as interchangeable, at least within a certain context, within a certain, you know, varying in degree. And this policy applies to information yet to be discovered, as well as to the information one already has ..."

~ Gregory Salmieri from his 2006 essay 'Objectivist Epistemology in Outline'

The shirt that outlasted the Standards Authority

The lettuce outlasted Liz Truss. And the T-shirt has outlasted the Standards Authority at which it poked the finger.

In a move that sees this blog praise this Government twice in one week -- an unheard of anomaly -- Media and Communications Minister Paul Goldsmith has decided that adults can be adults without needing a nanny to oversee their media and comms. (This week the Broadcasting Standards Authority, next week the Classifications Office?)

The T-shirt was 95bFM's two fingers to the Authority, accompanying a not-so-quiet Public Notice to listeners about the standards to expect on the station.

“At this radio station [said the on-air notice)] we do our utmost to abide by the Broadcasting Standards Authority and their rules and guidelines.

“If you seriously think we’ve crossed the line on air, give us a call on 309 4831 and tell us about it. We’ll be able to help you out and tell you the procedure if you wish to make a formal complaint to the Broadcasting Standards Authority.

“Fuck-knuckles, cock and piss, balls. Thank you.”

It did take 25 years. But it did finally get one complaint. 

(PS: get your own piece of history here.)

And meanwhile, the Iranian regime continues political executions at the rate of nearly 6 per week ... [updated]

"Only Trump could be stupid, ignorant and immoral enough to start a (just) war against an evil regime, and to leave them better off and more powerful than before the war. What a complete pile of shit he is."

~ @RyanSchenck

"I am still shocked that Secretary Rubio announced that 'The operation is over - Epic Fury,' without achieving any of their war objectives: 

(1) no removal of enriched uranium and elimination forever of Iran's nuclear program, 

(2) no constraints on missile production, 

(3) no end of funding for terrorists & 

(4) without liberating the Iranian people..

"Epic Fury is going to be remembered as Epic Failure."

~ @MichaelMcFaul

TRUMP, Jan 13: "Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING - TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!!... HELP IS ON ITS WAY"

"Donald Trump promised to come to the aid of Iranian protesters if the regime used lethal force against them. This undoubtedly played a role in their rising up. Now, possibly thousands lie dead ... this is another low point in a presidency of low points: making promises without the means to back them up, and now people lie dead. Shameful. This is the issue with a presidency incapable of thinking through second- and third-order effects. ...
    "Trump was very specific in the support he offered. 'Knock hell' out of the regime. It is clear that promise was made when the US was not in a position to deliver."

~ @AndrewFox

"If this deal is actually signed, it would be a fitting end to a campaign that began as 'Epic Fury' and is ending as 'Epic Disaster.' What started as a war supposedly aimed at toppling the regime and dismantling its nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities may instead leave Iran’s regime stronger than before — empowered by sanctions relief, still retaining significant missile capabilities, continuing support for its proxies, and almost certainly preserving uranium enrichment on its own soil. And then there’s the additional 'bonus' nobody even mentioned at the outset: the Strait of Hormuz is now firmly back at the centre of global strategic risk. The truly grim reality is that this may still be the best available option for the administration out of a set of deeply flawed alternatives. At least Iran is [possibly] unlikely to obtain a nuclear weapon in the immediate future. But the central question remains: what was the strategic logic of launching a war whose end state may ultimately be worse than the conditions that existed before it began? A failure from beginning to end."

~ @Danny(Dennis)Citrinowicz

"Of all the objectives floated before and after the war began, almost none have been achieved.
    "Yes, the US and Israel destroyed a lot of Iranian military assets. But strategically, Iran still holds the uranium, the regime, and the Strait. ...
    "What I see is an American president desperately looking for a way out of the mess he created. So the administration is trying to put a bow on it ...
    "This whole catastrophe rested on a false assumption that the regime would collapse once the supreme leader was killed. Everybody knew Iran would try to block the Strait. You cannot just bluster through everything and expect reality to bend to you."

~ former Commander General USArmyEurope Ben Hodges

"[A]n end to the conflict and long-term peace requires an end to the evil Islamic regime of Iran. Any 'agreement' is just a new Munich Pact of 1938 with the failed promise of 'peace in our time'."

~ @AdamMossoff 

UPDATE:

We're all still talking about Iran as if the only relevant thing is the price of a barrel of oil ...

"Freedom is not entitlement."

"This is because we believe in freedom. ...

"Freedom is not empowerment. Empowerment is what the Serbs ha[d] in [1990s] Bosnia. Anybody can grab a gun and be empowered.

"It’s not entitlement. An entitlement is what people on welfare get, and how free are they? It’s not an endlessly expanding list of rights — the 'right' to education, the 'right' to health care, the 'right' to food and housing. That’s not freedom, that’s dependency. Those aren’t rights, those are the rations of slavery — hay and a barn for human cattle.

"There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences."

~ PJ O'Rourke from his 1993 'Liberty Manifesto'

RELATED:

• Cue Card Libertarianism: Rights - NOT PC 

"Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good."

"Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good. In area after area – crime, education, housing, race relations – the situation has gotten worse after the bright new theories were put into operation. The amazing thing is that this history of failure and disaster has neither discouraged the social engineers nor discredited them."

~ Thomas Sowell from his 1993 book Is Reality Optional?

"Emotion has its place. You might argue that it was appropriate in crisis situations like the pandemic, the Christchurch shooting, and the White Island eruption. ...
    "But emotion can only go so far, because wanting something to be true, because it's kind, is not the same as it actually being true."

~ OJB from their post 'I Blame Women!'

"It is not kind to keep borrowing against future generations’ futures. It isn’t kind to promise the world and deliver sweet F all. Remember Ardern was going to house all of NZ’s homeless within 4 weeks of becoming PM, end child poverty, and build 100,000 houses? How wonderful! And what happened? ..."

~ Ani O'Brien

Nicola Orwell [updated]

Over the weekend, we were watching the recent George Orwell doco Orwell 2+2=5 on DocPlay. Worth it, except to the extent it (deliberately?) confuses economic power with political power -- the very important distinction, as Harry Binswanger explains, between, the Dollar & the Gun. (And the film's own language does get somewhat Orwellian itself towards the end.)

Anyway, two quotes from the great man came to mind as I read Finance Minister Nicola Willis attempting to explain why her government spending more is nonetheless a 'saving.'

"What [her] Government has largely done,"explains Luke Malpass, "is to cut in some areas to fund increases in others." In her words:

It is not a saving in the sense that we are spending less as a government; it is a saving in the sense that, in the absence of making those savings, we would not have been able to fund increases to health and education and essential services without borrowing more.

As Orwell writes:

Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

And:

When one hears a politician using a word like 'socialist,' 'communism,' 'freedom,' 'patriotic,' 'realistic,' 'justice,' and the like, one is not sure what he is saying, but it is clear that he is not saying anything meaningful.

Add to that last one the word 'saving.'

1984 was not supposed to be an instruction book; it was supposed to be a warning.

Look! Look! Come see how much 'saving' Nicola has been doing year on year! 

[Source: NZ Treasury's official Financial Statements]

UPDATE: To put some more context into what Willis's 'savings' look like, here's Matthew Horncastle, who's been reading the NZ Govt's Financial Statements, which say that last year, Willis's government took in $169.8 billion in revenue.

The majority of that is taxes. Forced. Compulsory. Taken from working people, business owners, and families under threat of legal consequence. There is no opt out. 

    They spent $183.5 billion. That is $13.7 billion more than they collected. 

    Net government debt is now $182.2 billion. That is $140,000 for every household in New Zealand. The interest bill alone is $8.9 billion a year. Every single year. That is more than the entire budget for law and order. More than defence. More than housing. Just interest. Just the cost of the debt that already exists. 

    And debt is still growing. In 2019 net Crown debt was $58 billion. It is now $182 billion. In six years the government tripled the national debt and handed every New Zealand household a $140,000 bill they never agreed to. 

    That is not governance. That is generational theft. 

    Free people should not be working to service the borrowing habits of politicians who will never personally bear the consequences of what they have spent. 

    Get the books back to surplus. Cut spending. Stop borrowing. Let productive people keep more of what they earn.
    This is not complicated. It just requires the courage to do it.

"Ironically, New Zealand First did not place New Zealand first."

 

"We are discussing the soon-to-be ratified NZ-India free trade agreement and the opposition by Messrs Jones and Peters. It’s proving a popular strategy, but it has been my observation, perhaps unfairly, that New Zealand First can sometimes be a little, shall we say, imprecise when it comes to their interpretation of the facts. ...

"[T]he treaty allows for 1000 software engineers, 1000 civil and mechanical engineers, 700 construction managers, 500 teachers and 1200 nurses. That’s 5000 in total. This isn’t 5000 a year. It is 5000 at any one time. And then they have to go home. ...

"[W]hat [else] do we get in this agreement? ... We are talking hundreds of millions of dollars. Not billions. And without dairy this isn’t a game-changer as the Prime Minister describes it but it is, for those industries affected, transformational.

"The other nonsense being peddled by NZ First is the obligation to invest US$20b into India; this is not what the document says. The wording is clear; we shall promote foreign direct investment '…from investors of New Zealand into India with the aim to increase investment by US 20 billion dollars within 15 years…'

"This is an aspiration, not a commitment. I suspect that this was included to give New Delhi cover to justify the internal political cost of reducing tariffs. ...

"It is significant that the Labour Party stepped up to support a treaty that was in the nation’s interest. They [belatedly] placed country ahead of party and for this Labour deserves our appreciation. Ironically, New Zealand First did not place New Zealand first. ...

"Like the trade deal with China, the initial document isn’t the final one. It opens a bilateral economic engagement that will improve the quality of life for residents of both countries.

"Luxon and his trade minister deserve respect and credit for this achievement."

~ Damien Grant from his column 'Reading the NZ-India free trade agreement made my stress levels rise'

Envy

"Socialism is driven by envy of the rich, not concern for the poor."

~ paraphrased from George Orwell's Road to Wigan Pier

"[The envious] do not want to own your fortune, they want you to lose it; they do not want to succeed, they want you to fail; they do not want to live, they want you to die; they desire nothing, they hate existence, and they keep running, each trying not to learn that the object of his hatred is himself. '''

~ Ayn Rand from 'Galt's Speech'

These days, they're just skulling the hemlock

Being an insightful entrepreneur is no guarantee of any other smarts.

Turns out too many tech-bros are talking up turning off. Where Socrates famously told his jury in the case for his life that “the unexamined life is not worth living,” too many Silicon Valley so-called "thought leaders" are advocating the un-examined life as the ultimate productivity hack.

Ted Gioia has the story:

At his trial in 399 BC, Socrates faced the death penalty on charges of impiety and corrupting the youth. But in reality, philosophy and free inquiry were put on trial. Socrates had spent his life asking too damn many questions. And now the authorities wanted him to shut up.

Socrates was given a chance for a rebuttal. He had gotten himself into this mess by talking too much—and now he had one last chance to talk himself out of it.

His response ranks among the greatest moments in the history of Western culture. In a famous phrase, Socrates told the jury that “the unexamined life is not worth living.”

That was why he asked so many questions. “Examining myself and others” is the “greatest good” of which we are capable, he insisted. If we abandon introspection and critical thinking, we descend to an animal life—and that is unworthy of us as human beings.

The jury was unconvinced. And a short while later, Socrates was put to death with a dose of poison. His days of asking questions were now over.

It’s now up to us ask questions in his place. In many ways, that is the story of Western culture.

It used to be. And now what's happened?

A prominent venture capitalist [let's call him Marc Andreessen] recently boasted that he aspires to “zero” introspection—“as little as possible.” This mindset, he claims, is a huge productivity boost. The less time wasted on thinking, the more time you can spend on doing.

“If you go back 400 years ago,” he adds, “it never would've occurred to anybody to be introspective.”

That’s an odd statement, and reveals a total ignorance of Socrates’s plea for an examined life—which is, to be blunt about it, the origin story of Western [reason], philosophy and science.

No introspection. Total ignorance. Who would have thought there'd be a connection.

Without Socrates and his legacy, there is no Silicon Valley. There is no venture capital. There is no IPO on the NASDAQ.

What does a life with introspection even look?

A good example might be Forrest Gump ...

All this leads to the obvious question: How do we spend our time after we give up introspection. We’re fortunate that tech bro influencers are already offering solutions....

This viral video—with more than one million views!—recommends staring at walls for extended periods. “Believe it or not,” explains Luke McCarthy, “this helped me have one of the most productive weeks of my life.” ...

Is this really a productivity hack, or just incipient mental illness?

"Commerce first taught nations to see with goodwill the wealth and prosperity of one another."

"[C]ommerce first taught nations to see with goodwill the wealth and prosperity of one another. Before, the patriot, unless sufficiently advanced in culture to feel the world his country, wished all countries weak, poor, and ill-governed but his own: he now sees in their wealth and progress a direct source of wealth and progress to his own country. 

    "It is commerce which is rapidly rendering war obsolete, by strengthening and multiplying the personal interests which are in natural opposition to it. And it may be said without exaggeration that the great extent and rapid increase of international trade, in being the principal guarantee of the peace of the world, is the great permanent security for the uninterrupted progress of the ideas, the institutions, and the character of the human race"

~ John Stuart Mill from his 1848 book Principles of Political Economy, under the heading 'Indirect benefits of Commerce, Economical and Moral; still greater than the Direct'