India’s currency chaos

 

So what’s going on with the Indian government’s crackdown on cash?

Their sudden decision to demonetise 87% of the country’s currency (notes of Rs. 500 and Rs. 1000 all in people’s personal possession) is as historic a decision as it is destructive --- messing up the country’s financial system; denying wages to the millions of day labourers paid in cash; destroying the perishable stocks of farmers and vendors suddenly unable to sell fresh produce – not to mention that close to 50 deaths have been attributed to the sudden demonetisation. This has affected the life of every single person in the country, for whom their wealth in the form of the government’s paper is now under threat of simply disappearing.

Not to mention their confidence in the very medium of exchange that makes their economic system’s division of labour possible (in India, over 90% of all transactions are (or were) conducted in paper currency). In a paper-based system with no commodity backing, then as Milton Friedman once noted

private persons accept these pieces of paper because they are confident that others will. The pieces of green paper have value because everybody thinks they have value. Everybody thinks they have value because in everybody's experience they have had value.

This is not trivial. When that confidence in that value has gone, well, that’s when paper money goes away and dies.

So something this patently destructive must have a reason, particularly when (as even the wreckage’s supporters readily concede) the note cancellation will do little to remedy tax evasion, corruption, or illicit commerce. And there is a very plain reason, as economists Larry White and Shruti Rajagopalan make clear: The demonetisation represents “a massive one-shot transfer of wealth from the private to the public sector."

If there is anything that explains Prime Minister Modi’s sudden and hitherto unconcealed enthusiasm for currency cancellation, then this unprecedented one-off wealth transfer to his government is surely it.

Since every government in the world is desperate to keep their ships of (welfare) state afloat, yet all are evidently running out of the readies, these raids on people’s wealth by the likes of the Indian and Greek government (who simply did an overnight raid on savers’ bank accounts) should be understood as precursors of the destruction to come further afield – so their effects should be fully grasped. White and Rajagopalan list three, all hidden:

1. Effects of transition away from old notes

2. Fiscal impact of transition into new notes

3. Impact of the non-uniform injection of the new notes into the economy

Of the first they point out that Modi’s surprise announcement imposes “a one-time wealth loss on currency holders who are unable or unwilling to convert their entire holdings of old notes.” In that the stated aim is to eliminate “untaxed wealth,” this effect is intentional.

Modi seems to have underappreciated, however, that in so doing his policy creates a serious shortage of currency. This shortage blocks ordinary currency transactions, blocking honest ordinary people from making a living, thus reducing national income. The biggest impact is on the poor, who have few substitutes for cash transactions…
    [So] a policy ostensibly intended to inflict losses on tax evaders and criminals is imposing, at least in the transition, much greater losses on honest users of currency.

Of the second, they note the hidden gain to the government in the imminent issue of new notes.

The most striking implication is that the Indian government enjoys a one-time revenue gain. Suppose that, as the government purports to believe, a large share of the old currency is “black money” held by tax-evaders and professional criminals who will be penalised by the cancellation because they do not want to face the scrutiny that will accompany the exchange of too many old notes for new. They will simply eat their losses.

This on its own could represent nearly half of the value all the invalidated currency notes issued: i.e., Rs. 7.2 trillion, or US$106 billion. So without any new increase in the money stock, the government can now spend into existence US$106 billion on any pet project without any inflationary consequence whatsoever.

It’s easy to imagine any finance minister or adviser hopping with delight when they figured that one out. Little would they have worried that this effectively represents a giant capital levy, “a massive one-shot transfer of wealth from the private to the public sector.”

In blunter words: outright theft.

But this injection of new notes will not be even: as with the injection of all new money, especially in a corrupt commonwealth, the new money is spread unevenly through the economic system. Importantly, it is the cronies who get the new money first.

Those who receive the new currency notes first can buy goods and resources at depressed prices. The terms of trade turn against the unbanked sector, and the relatively wealthy banked population receives a transfer from the relatively poor unbanked population. The skewing of relative prices and incomes will persist until the access to new currency notes flows throughout the economy.

Very nice if you’re a crony.

But that’s not all.

There is also a geographic skewness. Tea vendors in the city of Mumbai, for example, where new currency is appearing relatively promptly, are less hard-hit than tea vendors in the rural villages of Maharashtra.

And,

The currency shortage may also cause structural imbalances in the economy for longer production processes.

Crops need to be paid for and sown (“Close to half of Indian families are engaged in agriculture, and it accounts for 16% of the GDP.”) Commodities need to be bought as inputs. And in construction, (“almost entirely a cash-based industry”)  current projects “are already being postponed until new currency notes become sufficiently available. This postponement will have effects on housing supply and prices for several years ahead.”

So not just an immediate one-off destructive effect, but destruction for some years to come.

What makes it the ideal government project however is that the cause of these long-term destructive effects will be hidden, the gain them in scads of ill-gotten lucre is immediate. For a politician, what could possibly be more motivating.

That the government no doubt understood much of the destruction the project would cause, yet went ahead with it anyway, attests to the desperation that all governments will have when they face their own financial emergencies.

Be warned.

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Castro’s Dead: Here’s What His Tombstone Should Say…

 

Fidel Castro, as you certainly know by now, is dead. And, says Chris Campbell in this guest post, there are some things that really must be inscribed on his tombstone.

---

Although we’re not ones to engage in schadenfreude or death celebration, we certainly won’t act like Fidel Castro was some kind of hero.

But that’s just us.

The US Green Party’s Jill Stein, who just won the lottery (what is it? $7 million now?) by tricking people into funding her “recount” (and, surprise, missing the Pennsylvania filing date), tweeted this about Castro: “Fidel Castro was a symbol of the struggle for justice in the shadow of empire. Presente!”

Actor Jack Nicholson said Castro was a “humanist like President Clinton.” And Chevy Chase said Cuba is “proof socialism sometimes works.”

Erik Loomis, a history professor at the University of Rhode Island, called Castro, Che Guevara and Ho Chi Minh, “an inspiration for billions of people around the world seeking freedom from colonial overlords.”

[And read: ‘Fidel Castro died as he lived: to the sound of useful idiots making allowances for his crimes.’]

And there’s the rub. In a perfect world, or in a void, Castro certainly wouldn’t have been great in any non-sociopath's eyes. Certainly not if any of these people lived under his regime. Why, being the intellectuals and personalities that they are, most of these limelight-hunters praising Castro probably would’ve been killed, or at least persecuted, by him.

But relative to the mightiest colonial overlords, they say, Castro wasn’t so bad. Principles be damned. Carlos Eire, a Professor of History and Religious Studies at Yale explains this unrequited love for Castro in, of all places, a Washington Post Op-Ed:

Because deceit was one of Fidel Castro’s greatest talents, and gullibility is one of the world’s greatest frailties. A genius at myth-making, Castro relied on the human thirst for myths and heroes. His lies were beautiful, and so appealing.
    According to Castro and to his propagandists, the so-called revolution was not about creating a repressive totalitarian state and securing his rule as an absolute monarch, but rather about eliminating illiteracy, poverty, racism, class differences and every other ill known to humankind. This bold lie became believable, thanks largely to Castro’s incessant boasting about free schools and medical care, which made his myth of the benevolent utopian revolution irresistible to many of the world’s poor.

Fortunately, there’s been plenty of opposition to this “Castro is a hero” narrative. Take, for example, the backlash on which Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has found himself on the receiving end.

Castro was “a controversial figure,” Trudeau said during his eulogy. But he was also “A legendary revolutionary and orator” who “made significant improvements to the education and health care of his island nation.”

The Twitter trolls instantly jumped into action. The backlash was no less than epic. Under the hashtag #TrudeauEulogies, (albeit dark) hilarity ensued:

“Today we mourn painter and animal rights activist, Adolf Hitler. His death also highlights the need for suicide awareness.”

“Mr. Stalin’s greatest achievement was his eradication of obesity in the Ukraine through innovative agricultural reforms.”

“Jim Jones provided shelter and hydration to hundreds of Americans and, for that, we will remember him fondly.”

“While a controversial figure, Mr. Gacy entertained many children at birthday parties.”

Today we mourn the death of Jeffrey Dahmer, who opened his home to the LGBTQ community and pushed culinary boundaries.”

In a just world, rather than those in power praising a tyrant, the truth about Castro would be left to no ambiguity.

In a just world, says Eire, “these 13 facts below would be etched on Castro’s tombstone and highlighted in every obituary, as bullet points -- a fitting metaphor for someone who used firing squads to murder thousands of his own people.

• He turned Cuba into a colony of the Soviet Union and nearly caused a nuclear holocaust.
• He sponsored terrorism wherever he could and allied himself with many of the worst dictators on earth.
• He was responsible for so many thousands of executions and disappearances in Cuba that a precise number is hard to reckon.
• He brooked no dissent and built concentration camps and prisons at an unprecedented rate, filling them to capacity, incarcerating a higher percentage of his own people than most other modern dictators, including Stalin.
• He condoned and encouraged torture and extrajudicial killings.
• He forced nearly 20 percent of his people into exile, and prompted thousands to meet their deaths at sea, unseen and uncounted, while fleeing from him in crude vessels.
• He claimed all property for himself and his henchmen, strangled food production and impoverished the vast majority of his people.
• He outlawed private enterprise and labour unions, wiped out Cuba’s large middle class and turned Cubans into slaves of the state.
• He persecuted gay people and tried to eradicate religion.
• He censored all means of expression and communication.
• He established a fraudulent school system that provided indoctrination rather than education, and created a two-tier health-care system, with inferior medical care for the majority of Cubans and superior care for himself and his oligarchy, and then claimed that all his repressive measures were absolutely necessary to ensure the survival of these two ostensibly “free” social welfare projects.
• He turned Cuba into a labyrinth of ruins and established an apartheid society in which millions of foreign visitors enjoyed rights and privileges forbidden to his people.
• He never apologised for any of his crimes and never stood trial for them.

Yes, Castro did great evil. [And read: ‘Why The Left Loves Totalitarians Like Fidel Castro.’]

And, as Bryan Caplan writes on FEE.org, he continues to do evil by “charismatically inspiring sympathy for this psychopathic path to a glorious future.

“We need to get rid of all sympathy for Castro,” says Caplan.

But, he says, that’s just the first step: “Our ultimate goal should be to get rid of the errors that Castro has come to represent. Castro was a villain straight out of 1984. And in a just world, Orwell's words would adorn his tombstone:

“One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.”

---

Chris Campbell is editor of the Laissez Faire Today newsletter, where this post first appeared.

FURTHER READING:

• Inside Fidel Castro’s life of luxury and ladies while country starved – NY POST
• Castro Undeniably Impoverished Cuba – FEE
• Why The Left Loves Totalitarians Like Fidel Castro – THE FEDERALIST
• ‘Fidel Castro died as he lived: to the sound of useful idiots making allowances for his crimes – L.A. TIMES
• Fidel Castro’s Dupes – CAPITALISM MAGAZINE
• Cuban Army Honors Fidel Castro With 21-Gun Firing Squad – THE ONION

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‘Broken Window Fallacy’ on Radio NZ

 

I was heartened to discover through RNZ podcasts that Frederic Bastiat’s Broken Window Fallacy made an appearance back on the 17th. Shamabeel Eaqub was there to begin a regular appearance on the afternoon programme talking economics, and for his first visit he talked about the fallacy of disaster economics:

The idea there is an upside to natural disasters – that they are good for the economy - is ‘a figment of our imagination’, economist Shamubeel Eaqub says.
    We shouldn’t celebrate natural disasters or war or things that are destructive because ultimately what we find is the net impact is we are worse off than we would otherwise have been.
    Eaqub told Afternoons there is a tendency to think there is a net-economic gain as a result of natural disasters such as earthquakes, because they prompt lots of visible economic activity such as cleanup, construction and repairs.
    He says it's akin to digging a hole and then filling it up again.
    “It frustrates me a great deal because it is a figment of our imagination.”

Great to hear good sense and Bastiat on the local wireless.

LISTEN HERE: The fallacy of disaster economics [audio] - RNZ

No new parliamentary building for MPs, says NOT PC: Make room downtown instead

 

Some years ago back when Rodney Hide was busting perks rather than enjoying them, he busted the government’s plans for a new parliamentary building that was going to cost taxpayers millions. (This may be the only service he ever performed for the country.)

The plan to give hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to Wellington builders and interior designers didn’t disappear like his morals, however, it just slumbered. And with the lease on  Bowen House soon to expire, Sleeping Beauty has been dusted off – this time with the boast that it will cost “only” $100 million this time. Plus cockups.

Naturally, the Government’s David Farrar is big on the boasting, arguing it’s better not to pay foreigners $6 million a year to rent Bowen House to house MPs, and to build big instead. A commenter there identifies the false alternative however, and with it calls the National blogger’s bluff in a way that saves us both costs: given that National had promised to slash bureaucrat numbers, surely it’s better to use one of the many government buildings that should now be sitting empty for lack of staff to fill them? And if there are not, then why not.

And since we know that rather than slashing numbers as promised the Key Government has instead raised them, perhaps some genuine opposition to the government could extract some sort of a promise from them: that instead of either building big or renting again, that it has until the Bowen House lease expires to find office space in Wellington by laying off enough surplus staff to make room for Bowen House’s soon-to-be ex-tenants.

Tick tock.

PS: If anyone thinks the cost of building for MPs is ever cheap, they need to read (or re-read) the story of Europe’s most costly building of its size ever constructed. Situated in Westminster and connected by tunnel to its parliamentary host, just like Bowen House, the cost of Portcullis House became so rapidly inflated by all the extras that British MPs desired for themselves that the palace was built (eventually) at a cost of £1.2m for each MP.

And they’re still suing.

[Pic from the Government Blogger]

[Pic from.

Goff dreaming up new ways to pick your pocket

 

I can’t help thinking Phil Goof’s focus as mayor is somewhat the same as his predecessor’s: picking your pocket for more millions on his pet projects.

Yesterday’s brainfart: dunning tourists while pledging to “peg” rate rises to only 2.5 percent a year. Len Brown pledged the same thing with rates–even the same number—and we saw how well that peg worked, didn’t we.

Given the way rates and debt both exploded under Pants-Down’s round, any pledge to “keep rate increases below inflation” now is like a strangler promising only to suffocate you more slowly. And that’s even if the politician were to keep his promise. (Q: How do you know a politician is lying … )

So I can’t help but think that the touted tourist tax is just a way, just one small way, to help fill the very large pot he needs to gets his own monuments out of the ground (new stadia; new train sets; who the hell knows what else) and pay for his not-inexpensive pledge to raise the wages of most people employed by the council..

The fair city of Sydney has used this ploy for some years to help it pay off the Olympics. The costly event has long gone, but its debts and room-tax remain, raising room rates for everyone who roams there while turning their hosts into tax collectors.

Goof wants to use it, he says, to pay for more tourist promotion – which has as much credibility as that from Brown that the petrol tax he toyed with would help him build more motorways. Goof has plans for his own spend-up, and he needs to fill the pot.

Notice that in addition to this touted tax he’s already flagged both a petrol tax and a tax on “large-scale developments” that are increasingly struggling to get off the ground financially – both of these to be paid in the end by you and I [UPDATE: Plus he’s “bidding for a significant share of the Government’s Housing Infrastructure Fund.”] To paraphrase a popular line, a room tax here, a petrol tax there, and several other taxes later like it and sooner or later you’re talking real money. Brown raised debt and core rates to pay for his projects; Goof hopes to get these and several other taxes off the ground to pretend he’s kept a core pledge – but of what worth is it that rates themselves rise at 2.5% if a score of new taxes is added to the amount we pay to his Grey Ones.

And who really believes he won’t keep raising that rates bill anyway.

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Ayn Rand predicted an American slide toward fascism

 

Are fascism and socialism opposites? No, observed Ayn Rand, in practice they “are only superficial variations of the same monstrous theme,” with as little difference to those under their boot as there was between Castro and Batista. The two systems differ only in one technical respect, making socialism “in this respect [only] the more honest of the two.”
    Contrary to many conservative commentators during the 1960s, Rand maintained that America was drifting toward fascism, not socialism, and that this slippery slope was virtually inevitable in a mixed economy.
    In this guest post, George Smith ponders how she might view her prediction today …

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In a letter written on March 19, 1944, Ayn Rand remarked: “Fascism, Nazism, Communism and Socialism are only superficial variations of the same monstrous theme—collectivism.” Rand would later expand on this insight in various articles, most notably in two of her lectures at the Ford Hall Forum in Boston: “The Fascist New Frontier”¹; and “The New Fascism: Rule by Consensus”².

Rand knew better than to accept the traditional left-right dichotomy between socialism (or communism) and fascism, according to which socialism is the extreme version of left-ideology and fascism is the extreme version of right-ideology (i.e., capitalism). Indeed, in a 1971 Ayn Rand Letter she characterised fascism as “socialism for big business.” Both are variants of statism, in contrast to a free country based on individual rights and laissez-faire capitalism. As Rand put it in “Conservativism: An Obituary”:

The world conflict of today is the conflict of the individual against the state, the same conflict that has been fought throughout mankind’s history. The names change, but the essence—and the results—remain the same, whether it is the individual against feudalism, or against absolute monarchy, or against communism or fascism or Nazism or socialism or the welfare state.

The placement of socialism and fascism at opposite ends of a political spectrum serves a nefarious purpose, according to Rand. It serves to buttress the case that we must avoid “extremism” and choose the sensible middle course of a “mixed economy.” Quoting from “‘Extremism,’ Or The Art of Smearing”:

If it were true that dictatorship is inevitable and that fascism and communism are the two “extremes” at the opposite ends of our course, then what is the safest place to choose? Why, the middle of the road. The safely undefined, indeterminate, mixed-economy, “moderate” middle—with a “moderate” amount of government favors and special privileges to the rich and a “moderate” amount of government handouts to the poor—with a “moderate” respect for rights and a “moderate” degree of brute force—with a “moderate” amount of freedom and a “moderate” amount of slavery—with a “moderate” degree of justice and a “moderate” degree of injustice—with a “moderate” amount of security and a “moderate” amount of terror—and with a moderate degree of tolerance for all, except those “extremists” who uphold principles, consistency, objectivity, morality and who refuse to compromise.

In both of her major articles on fascism (cited above) Rand distinguished between fascism and socialism by noting a rather technical (and ultimately inconsequential) difference in their approaches to private property. Here is the relevant passage from “The New Fascism: Rule by Consensus”:

Observe that both “socialism” and “fascism” involve the issue of property rights. The right to property is the right of use and disposal. Observe the difference in those two theories: socialism negates private property rights altogether, and advocates “the vesting of ownership and control” in the community as a whole, i.e., in the state; fascism leaves ownership in the hands of private individuals, but transfers control of the property to the government.
    Ownership without control is a contradiction in terms: it means “property,” without the right to use it or to dispose of it. It means that the citizens retain the responsibility of holding property, without any of its advantages, while the government acquires all the advantages without any of the responsibility.
    In this respect, socialism is the more honest of the two theories. I say “more honest,” not “better”—because, in practice, there is no difference between them: both come from the same collectivist-statist principle, both negate individual rights and subordinate the individual to the collective, both deliver the livelihood and the lives of the citizens into the power of an omnipotent government —and the differences between them are only a matter of time, degree, and superficial detail, such as the choice of slogans by which the rulers delude their enslaved subjects.

Contrary to many conservative commentators during the 1960s, Rand maintained that America was drifting toward fascism, not socialism, and that this descent was virtually inevitable in a mixed economy. “A mixed economy is an explosive, untenable mixture of two opposite elements,” freedom and statism, “which cannot remain stable, but must ultimately go one way or the other” (“‘Extremism,’ or The Art of Smearing”). Economic controls generate their own problems, and with these problems come demands for additional controls—so either those controls must be abolished or a mixed economy will eventually degenerate into a form of economic dictatorship. Rand conceded that most American advocates of the welfare state “are not socialists, that they never advocated or intended the socialisation of private property.” These welfare-statists “want to ‘preserve’ private property” while calling for greater government control over such property. “But that is the fundamental characteristic of fascism.”

Rand gave us some of the finest analyses of a mixed economy—its premises, implications, and long-range consequences—ever penned by a free-market advocate. In “The New Fascism,” for example, she compared a mixed economy to a system that operates by the law of the jungle, a system in which “no one’s interests are safe, everyone’s interests are on a public auction block, and anything goes for anyone who can get away with it.” A mixed economy divides a country “into an ever-growing number of enemy camps, into economic groups fighting one another for self preservation in an indeterminate mixture of defence and offense.” Although Rand did not invoke Thomas Hobbes in this context, it is safe to say that the economic “chaos” of a mixed economy resembles the Hobbesian war of all against all in a state of nature, a system in which interest groups feel the need to screw others before they get screwed themselves.

A mixed economy is ruled by pressure groups. It is an amoral, institutionalised civil war of special interests and lobbies, all fighting to seize a momentary control of the legislative machinery, to extort some special privilege at one another’s expense by an act of government—i.e., by force.

Of course, Rand never claimed that America had degenerated into full-blown fascism (she held that freedom of speech was a bright line in this respect), but she did believe that the fundamental premise of the “altruist-collectivist” morality—the foundation of all collectivist regimes, including fascism—was accepted and preached by modern liberals and conservatives alike. (Those who mistakenly dub Rand a “conservative” should read “Conservatism: An Obituary,” a scathing critique in which she accused conservative leaders of “moral treason.” In some respects Rand detested modern conservatives more than she did modern liberals. She was especially contemptuous of those conservatives who attempted to justify capitalism by appealing to religion or to tradition.) Rand illustrated her point in “The Fascist New Frontier,” a polemical tour de force aimed at President Kennedy and his administration.

Rand began this 1962 lecture by quoting passages from the 1920 political platform of the German Nazi Party, including demands for “an end to the power of the financial interests,” “profit sharing in big business,” “a broad extension of care for the aged,” the “improvement of public health” by government, “an all-around enlargement of our entire system of public education,” and so forth. All such welfare-state measures, this platform concluded, “can only proceed from within on the foundation of “The Common Good Before the Individual Good.”

Rand had no problem quoting similar proposals and sentiments from President Kennedy and members of his administration, such as Kennedy’s celebrated remark, “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what America will do for you—ask what you can do for your country.” The particulars of Rand’s speech will come as no surprise to those familiar with her ideas, but I wish to call attention to her final remarks about the meaning of “the public interest.” As used by Kennedy and other politicians, both Democratic and Republican, this fuzzy phrase has little if any meaning, except to indicate that individuals have a duty to sacrifice their interests for the sake of a greater, undefined good, as determined by those who wield the brute force of political power. Rand then stated what she regarded as the only coherent meaning of “the public interest.”

[T]here is no such thing as ‘the public interest’ except as the sum of the interests of individual men. And the basic, common interest of all men—all rational men—is freedom. Freedom is the first requirement of “the public interest”—not what men do when they are free, but that they are free. All their achievements rest on that foundation—and cannot exist without them.
    The principles of a free, non-coercive social system are the only form of “the public interest.”

I shall conclude this essay on a personal note. Before I began preparing for this essay, I had not read some of the articles quoted above for many, many years. In fact, I had not read some of the material since my college days 45 years ago. I therefore approached my new readings with a certain amount of trepidation. I liked the articles when I first read them, but would they stand the test of time? Would Rand’s insights and arguments appear commonplace, even hackneyed, with the passage of so much time? Well, I was pleasantly surprised. Rand was exactly on point on many issues. Indeed, if we substitute “President Obama” for “President Kennedy” or “President Johnson” many of her points would be even more pertinent today than they were during the 1960s.

Unfortunately, the ideological sewer of American politics has become even more foul today than it was in Rand’s day, but Rand did what she could to reverse the trend, and one person can only do so much. And no one can say that she didn’t warn us.

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George H. Smith is an independent scholar and a weekly columnist at the Cato Institute’s Libertarianism.org. He is the author of Atheism: The Case Against God (1974), Atheism, Ayn Rand, and Other Heresies (1991), and Why Atheism (2000). He is also the author of the audio series on “Great Political Thinkers,” “The Meaning of the Constitution,” and “The Ideas of Liberty.”
This post previously appeared at FEE and Libertarianism.Org.

NOTES:

1. Dec. 16, 1962, published as a booklet by the Nathaniel Branden Institute in 1963
2. April 18, 1965, published as Chapter 20 in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal by New American Library in 1967

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Safety, stupidity, and why common sense isn’t very common anymore

 

With the weekend disaster on the Kaipara bar still on everyone’s mind, an ex-Department of Labour inspector, paramedic, and fireman wrote to Newtalk ZB’s Leighton Smith with the subject line, 'The Science of Being Stupid: Common Sense vs Health and Safety Act vs Bureaucrats'.

He joined the programme to talk about common sense and how bureaucracy and box ticking has diminished it – on the Pike River tragedy, the Kaikoura earthquake, and more. Very interesting.

AUDIO HERE: Tony Rigg: Common sense isn't very common anymore – NEWSTALK ZB

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“Why no leftie fake news sites?”

 

Fake news. Left liberals like to think they’re not part of it – to be specific, of the whole website-publishing-fake-political-stories-that-go-viral thing. The Double Standard for instance has this morning published a piece by “a fake news writer” claiming (to The Sub-Standard’s obvious delight) that “leftie / liberal fake news [sites are] much rarer” because “it just has never worked, it never takes off. You’ll get debunked within the first two comments and then the whole thing just kind of fizzles out.”

Perhaps a simpler explanation is that the liberal left don’t need to set up fake news coming from sites in Macedonia and elsewhere because they have them coming out already in the mainstream media from places like the Clinton News Network and Times Square. (Not to mention Tony Blair’s entire media army, from which milieu the very term “spin doctor” emerged.)

This is neither new, nor trivial. They have peddled fake news that has literally changed the world. Consider for example how the New York Times helped to save, then lionise, the “anti-communist” Castro (“Fidel Castro has strong ideas of liberty, democracy, social justice, the need to restore the Constitution’” wrote the Times’s Herbert Matthews over the sound of Castro’s firing squads, “but it amounts to a new deal for Cuba, radical, democratic and therefore anti-Communist.”) And to actively cover up Stalin’s many infamies ("Any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda,” wrote the Times’s Walter Duranty while the corpses were being piled high around him.) Not to mention how even today its senior staff gather each week in the Times office to “craft the narrative” for the week, or even year, ahead – and have all-but admitted post-election that it publishes advocacy instead of news.

The Times being just one among hundreds, and still the most influential mainstream outlet among them, why on earth would you need to start fake liberal-left news sites when the mainstream ones are already doing the job for you?

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What’s all this about “privilege”?

 

One of the most recent anti-concepts to emerge from postmodern academia is that of “privilege.”  You can “check your privilege” here against a list of possible experiences– to find that if you are a wealthy, able-bodied, first-world, cis-gendered, heterosexual, non-ginga, native-born white male you are certainly privileged, and probably a rapist.

The list of 100 experiences includes those that are good or bad, irritating or infuriating, But philosopher Stephen Hicks observes that

that the list packages all of the experiences under the “privilege” label.

This is important because, he suggests, “the concept of privilege is being broadened and leveraged for ideological reasons, and one should be aware of the re-packaging.” In other words, something is being smuggled in here within the package-deal of so-called “privilege.”

Observe, says Hicks, that

A genuine privilege is a benefit granted by authoritative others. Its features are that it is:
    (a) not earned,
    (b) not given out equally, and
    (c) social-hierarchical in origin.

This places privilege in direct contrast to something that is earned.

A privilege is something like your mother letting you stay up for your bedtime; or your club letting you bring in a guest at no charge. But look again at the 100 items in the list as an exercise suggests Hicks, and you will find “that it ranges across experiences of travel, insults, financial stresses, crimes, biology, cultural attitudes, and more.  And note how the few of the items [actually] meet the criteria of a privilege.” This is not accidental:

The list conflates at least four distinct phenomena: natural advantages, earned advantages, civil treatment, and privileges. Their distinctness is not that difficult to grasp conceptually. And thoughtful people have good discussions about their boundaries and significance regularly. So why the package-deal? One suspects that the real purposes of “privilege” lists are to induce feelings of guilt or shame in anyone who has a good life and to justify resentment and anger in anyone who feels “unprivileged.”

So this postmodern parading of “privilege” is, says Hicks, a bundled anti-concept.

Note that every anti-concept is generally intended to obliterate a genuine concept. That was often why the anti-concept was witch-doctored up in the first place. (The anti-concept of “ethnicity” for example is frequently “a disguise for the word ‘racism’”; or a “right to privacy” that has risen in importance as rights in property have diminished). In this case, the concept of earned rewards are obliterated by the anti-concept of all rewards – earned, unearned and stolen alike – being a sign of privilege.

It’s no accident the anti-concept has emerged at a time of “you-didn’t-build-that.” It comes from the very same place.

[Pic from FunnyJunk]

…

Time to spit on Castro’s grave [update 2]

 

A minor dictator and tyrant for six decades has died. Opined Garray Kasparov, who lived under several, there is no need to mourn:

Fidel Castro was one of the 20th century's many monsters. We should lament only that he had so long to inflict misery on Cuba and beyond.
    Don't rationalise or apologise for Castro's decades of brutal repression, torture, and murder. He didn't fight for freedom; he destroyed it.

So “why are some dictators remembered so fondly?” wonders Douglas Murray at The Times.

Long before his death it was obvious that Fidel Castro would benefit from the “revolutionary hero” type of obituary more than the “murderous bastard” variety. The BBC and the leader of Her Majesty’s opposition, among others, have not disappointed.
    Even now, Castro’s eulogists claim a man who urged the Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev to issue a pre-emptive nuclear strike against America to have been a man of peace. They claim the torturer of dissidents and sexual minorities to have been the representative of the oppressed. And they claim an unimaginative and logorrheic egomaniac to have been the voice of the voiceless. For decades before his death, Castro enjoyed a disgusting leniency, not to mention sycophancy, outside the nation he immiserated…
     His revolution with the people, for the people turned out to have very little interest in the people. If the justification for overthrowing Batista had been that Batista overthrew democracy, there was no evidence in the decades that followed that Castro had any devotion to the ballot box. And if Batista was brutal and oppressive — and he was — it was a habit Castro showed no desire to kick. Throughout his rule, Castro tortured, murdered and imprisoned his opponents to keep himself in power. Those who still deny these facts — and they are many — should consult the online Cuba Archive as a corrective to their frivolous and sinister revisionism. Like dictators throughout history, Castro was on the side of the people for only as long as all the people were slavishly on his side. And as in North Korea, one of Castro’s staunchest allies, communism was not only the blueprint for the revolution but also an excuse of sorts. It applied an internationalist, intellectual coating to conceal a squalid and deeply parochial crime scene.

Excuses for the crimes continued throughout his reign.

Even now, with his death, we hear the implication that Castro at least “meant well”. This obscene claim can be heard in the assertion by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn that Castro was “a champion of social justice”. It can be heard in the BBC describing Castro as “iconic”. And it can be heard in the corporation’s invitations to former KGB agents of influence, such as Richard Gott, to laud their hero on the airwaves..

There were no eulogies from world leaders more flowing than that from Canada’s child-PM Justin Trudeau

— whose Liberal party should have something to say about liberty — [but who] had this to say about Castro’s death: he feels “deep sorrow” upon hearing the news, notes his dad was “very proud to call him a friend,” and offers his “deepest condolences” to the dead dictator’s supporters.

As a former Sunday Times editor points out, Castro' "flaws" include 5,600 Cubans murdered by firing squad; 1,200 in “extrajudicial assassinations”; and tens of thousands jailed, tortured and who died escaping.

The online backlash against the child’s eulogy suggests at least that the embracing of butchers is far from universal, the hashtag #trudeaueulogy quickly trending to post Trudeau-like eulogies to the likes of Jeffrey Dahmer, Stalin and Vlad the Impaler:

UPDATE 1: Lawrence Reed reckons the reaction to old busy-whiskers’s death is an important litmus test …:

The moral bankruptcy of the state-worshipping Left has never been more vivid than it is now in what they're saying about Fidel Castro. Good people of sound character and judgment don't praise thugs, thieves, tyrants and murderers but stupid people of lousy character and poor judgment apparently do, especially when they choose to embrace or cover up for an evil ideology.

UPDATE 2: Former Green MP Keith Locke fails the test. Dismissing Fidel Castro as a “brutal dictator” simply shows how out of touch  you are, he says at Martyn Bradbury’s blog. Linking to a good Guardian piece (!), a commenter reckons Keith would do better to remember Castro’s victims.

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Friday Morning Ramble, 25.11.16

 

A few things I wanted to talk to you about this week (or disagree with) but ran out of time. So add these interesting and insightful links to your weekend reading pile …

“Geonet have been busy measuring how much the ground moved in this week’s earthquakes…”
Measuring ground movement – YOUR NZ

“Good laws don't require that MPs have perfect information about the industries that they're attempting to regulate, but they should be at least half-way to having a clue.”
Confusion reigns as Uber talks to MPs – NZ HERALD
Uber flexible or Uber confusion? – Eric Crampton, THE SANDPIT
Uber ignorant – Eric Crampton, OFFSETTING BEHAVIOUR
Uber flexible – Eric Crampton, OFFSETTING BEHAVIOUR

Q: So who owns it? Or should?
When the seafloor surges out of the ocean – coastal uplift explained – THE SPINOFF

 

“Socialism, like the ancient ideas from
which it springs, confuses the distinction
between government and society.” 
~ Frederic Bastiat

 

No, Brexit was not a reaction against immigrants. MSM was wrong again: “When polled, only 17 percent of people who voted "Leave" during Brexit said that the main reason for their vote was to curb immigration into the United Kingdom. Everyone else voting that way had a different number-one motivation.
A smooth exit to the EEA is achievable – LIBERTARIAN HOME (UK)

That promise should have been there from day one.
British expats set to be granted right to carry on living in EU [and vice versa] with Theresa May 'close to reciprocal rights deal' – TELEGRAPH

What have those immigrants ever done for us? "Over 50 percent of workers in the United States who have Ph.D.s and are employed in science, technology, engineering, and math-related jobs are foreign born.”
High-Skilled Immigration and the Rise of STEM Occupations in U.S. Employment – NBER

“The Orwellian world of immigration controls.”
Deportation is Freedom! – GOOGLE BOOKS

Bad timing on the metaphor, boys …
The tectonic plates are shifting

“"The top leaders of the [Indian] government are filled with some kind of messianic zeal—they think that it is moral to sacrifice the interests of hundreds of millions of innocent and law-abiding people in the name of some greater good. But they forget that the road to hell is paved with good intentions."
The Immorality of Currency Demonetisation – Anoop Verma, VERMA POST
More War on Cash: Indian Economy Grinds To A Halt After Cash-Ban: "Faith In System Shaken" – AGAINST CRONY CAPITALISM

“Wealth created by foreigners is just as wonderful as wealth created by locals.”
How transactions that raise America’s trade deficit enrich Americans – Don Boudreaux,  LEARN LIBERTY

 

“Build a wall around the welfare
state, not around your country.”
~ William Niskanen

No, New Zealand hasn’t succumbed to yet another American holiday. But the real story of Thanksgiving is such a fantastic story, even the pope couldn’t help but learn something from it. Thanksgiving? “In the early years, the pilgrims of Plymouth Colony had little to be thankful for until they gave up on dreams of utopia and turned to markets instead.”
The Great Thanksgiving Hoax – Robert Maybury, MISES.ORG
Thanks to whom? – Jeff Scialabba, VOICES FOR REASON
Celebrate Thanksgiving the Ayn Rand way: Thank yourself – Debi Ghate, CS MONITOR
Pope Francis shouldn't bite the hand that feeds the Catholic Church – Shikha Dalmia, WASHINGTON EXAMINER

America might never have even got off the ground if those early pilgrims hadn’t thrown off communism. Read the almost unknown early history of those early Pilgrims -- of how private property saved their lives and their colony, so making today’s Thanksgiving celebrations possible.
How Private Property Saved the Pilgrims -  Tom Bethell. HOOVER INSTITUTION
Thanksgiving Was a Triumph of Capitalism over Collectivism – Richard Ebeling, FEE 

By the way, “There are some things that God cares deeply about -- sex, foreskins, menstruation, and animal sacrifice,for example. And food.
Most Christians forget about that. They prepare and eat food on Thanksgiving that God abhors, while thanking him for it.. Don't make that mistake this Thanksgiving.
Here are some suggestions for a biblically correct Thanksgiving dinner.”
All the fat is the Lord's: The Bible's guide to Thanksgiving dinner – DWINDLING IN UNBELIEF

Graphs to be thankful for: Global poverty is plummeting.
23 charts to be thankful for this Thanksgiving – Dylan Matthews, WONK BLOG

“Progress is an unalloyed good thing. That belief is a fairly recent one, and it's always had opponents.”
Progress Isn't Natural – Joel Mokyr, THE ATLANTIC

“By embracing modern technologies, for one.”
How Humans Spare Nature – Linus Blomqvist, PERC

“It’s well into Thanksgiving Day in the US now, and that’s a nice tradition to export. So, today, I’m thankful for geophysics.”
Thanksgiving – Thomas Lumley, STATS CHAT

 

Safety message for our American readers at this time, from William Shatner: “Just remember: ‘Fire, metal, oil, and turkey are glorious when in harmony.’”

 

Q: Is America a Christian nation? Or one nation under a constitution?

 

“The placement of socialism and fascism at opposite ends of a political spectrum serves a nefarious purpose, according to Rand. It serves to buttress the case that we must avoid ‘extremism’ and choose the sensible middle course of a ‘mixed economy’.”
Ayn Rand Predicted an American Slide toward Fascism – George Smith, FEE

“As Gordon Tullock was fond of pointing out, while government protection is not a factor of production, it can be a factor of profit.”
How Do You Solve Crony Capitalism? – James Rogers, LIBRARY OF LAW

“Ominous in all sorts of ways.”
White Nationalists Celebrate ‘an Awakening’ After Donald Trump’s Victory – NY TIMES

But how can it be a "smear" when it's their own label, under which they've adopted all the grossness of which the left accuses the right.
The Smearing of The Alt-Right by The Leftists – Anoop Verma, FOR THE NEW INTELLECTUALS
An Honest Look at the Alt Right – ‘Sargon of Akkad,’ YOU TUBE
7 differences between the alt-right and libertarians – NOT PC
Who is Milo Yiannopolous? – NOT PC
Who is Steve Bannon? – NOT PC

“"The concept of identity, when not employed on an exclusively individual scale, is inherently reductionist and dehumanizing, a collectivist and ideological abstraction of all that is original and creative in the human being, of all that has not been imposed by inheritance, geography, or social pressure."
Identity politics on the Left eventually triggers identity politics on the Right – Ronald Bailey, REASON

“Despite Donald Trump’s recent victory, he and the GOP have no mandate whatsoever to violate the rights of Americans citizens and foreigners alike, no matter how many people voted for them to do so.”
My Freedom Trumps Your Fake Mandate – Joey Clark, FEE

 

 

Trump was like a piece of blotting paper on which his supporters imprinted all their hopes and dreams. What now then, now he begins backtracking on all of them.
Donald Trump will NOT pursue investigations into Hillary Clinton – MAIL ONLINE
Donald Trump’s threat to prosecute Hillary Clinton was always hollow – WASHINGTON POST
Trump on waterboarding: Gen. Mattis might have talked me out of it – HOT AIR
Donald Trump just completely changed his mind on climate change – INDEPENDENT (UK)
How long before the white working class realizes Trump was just scamming them? – WASHINGTON POST

Not all bad though. “Dedicated to school choice, apparently against Common Core, and unknown on higher ed. Lots of questions--and guarded optimism--about the next U.S. Secretary of Education.”
It's DeVos for Boss! Hopefully, Just of the Education Department – CATO

Failed first test.
Potential Trump cabinet security pick accidentally reveals Homeland Security plans in photo – THE HILL

“President Trump will have to choose between candidate Trump’s promises. He can embrace international trade and contribute to making America great, or he can follow his protectionist rhetoric at the expense of American greatness. But he can’t have it both ways.”
Protectionism Will Make America Poor, Not Great – Benjamin Powell, FEE

“A Donald Trump spokesman caused concern by citing World War II-era Japanese-American internment camps as a ‘precedent’ for a registry of Muslims and immigrants.”
America's Concentration Camps Are a Warning, Not a Model – Gary McGrath, FEE

“No influence left to buy...”
Foreign Donors Begin Pulling Out From Clinton Foundation – OBSERVER

 

“Scarcity is not a fundamental of economics;
rather, man’s creation of value with his mind is.”
~ Yaron Brook, ‘Radical Capitalist Episode 73: Is Silicon
Valley America’s Hope or Demise? [audio]’

 

“The operators of the pipeline are being jerked around by the government, environmentalists, and the Standing Rock Sioux, all of whom are acting in varying degrees of bad faith.”
The Real Dakota Access Pipeline Victim Is the Construction Company – William Yeatman, FEE 

So Bitcoin keeps you safe from the grey ones? “The Internal Revenue Service has filed a ‘John Doe’ summons seeking to require U.S. Bitcoin exchange Coinbase to turn over records about every transaction of every user from 2013 to 2015.”
The IRS Just Declared War on Bitcoin Privacy – Jim Harper, FEE

Is foreign trade really like an invasion?
War metaphors and trade — Bastiat – STEPHEN HICKS

“The Left has done far more than the Right to set back progress. … The danger from the Left does not arise from stupidity or dishonesty; those failings are bipartisan… But two huge threats to science are peculiar to the Left—and they’re getting worse… The first threat is confirmation bias. …  the second great threat from the Left: its long tradition of mixing science and politics.”
The Real War on Science – John Tierney, CITY JOURNAL

“The battle for freedom is not primarily a political in nature, but educational: we must educate the public about the history, economics and, most importantly, morality of capitalism.”
Why You Can’t Get Rid of Leviathan — So You’d Better Reform It [Video] – Yaron Brook, VOICES FOR REASON

So I’m Martin Luther King. How about you?
QUIZ: Which Famous Revolutionary Are You? – QUIZONY

“Experts were concerned that ice at the South Pole had declined significantly since the 1950s, which they feared was driven by man-made climate change.”
Scott and Shackleton log proves Antarctic sea ice is not shrinking 100 years after expeditions – TELEGRAPH

 

The great Thomas Sowell …

 

“In his famous work, The Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle explores the components of friendship, love, and companionship. One section, entitled ‘Of Loving and Being Loved,’ provides several ways in which we can fight loneliness and make ourselves more loveable.”
3 Tips from Aristotle on Fighting Loneliness – Annie Holmquist, INTELLECTUAL TAKEOUT

“Occasionally I meet people who have an obsessive need to keep themselves and their kids busy. Every spare moment must be filled!” Why?
Under Pressure: The Frantic Need to Keep Kids Busy – Dr Michael Hurd, LIVING RESOURCES CENTER

“As we approach that busy time of the year - it could be timely to contemplate whether we may just be the cause of our child's behaviour?”
'Gentle parenting' explainer: no rewards, no punishments, no misbehaving kids – THE CONVERSATION

 

The structural ingeniuty behind this 3-ton. 4.6m diameter, award-winning stair …

 

And the photo Time magazine selected as “one of the most influential in history” is …

 

[Hat tips and quoted quips … Climate Realists, Elan Journo, George Machen, Ben Thomas, James Valliant, Jae Alexander, Mark Tammett, Bosch Fawstin, Tom Burroughes, Stuart Hayashi, Phil Oliver, Daniel Aguilar, Donald Kilmer, Cato Center for Educational Freedom, Stephen Hicks, Andrew Bates, Nelson Brackin]

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Quote of the Day: On socialism

 

“Socialism must commence with an enormous act of theft. Those who seriously want to steal must be prepared to kill those whom they plan to rob.”
~ George Reisman,from the section ‘The Necessity of Evil Means to Achieve Socialism’ in his book Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics

[Hat tip Anoop Verma]

..

MoW 2.0?

 

There is a lot of work to do post-earthquake, and political commentator and lifelong socialist Chris Trotter wants to get the red flag flying again by suggesting (by all accounts seriously) that the organisation famed for long lunchbreaks, sizeable cost overruns, and a lot of leaning on shovels be rebuilt, resurrected and let loose again on the unsuspecting taxpayer to do all (or at least a sizeable chunk) of that work.

Mr Trotter has considerable expertise in the texts of Marx and Lenin and in the blowing around of windy rhetoric – but very little else, it must be said, and certainly not in contracting of the sort he hopes a new state-run Ministry of Works would do. Christchurch engineer Mark Tammett however has considerable expertise in contracting, so is in the ideal position to set him straight about his dream: There are several holes, he begins, listing five before concluding:

You'd think that after the lessons of the 20th century, such as the fall of Communism, the failure of Socialism anywhere in the world to deliver anything but poverty; and to a lesser degree what's happened post earthquake with Christchurch -  that people would have learnt that government control of the economy never works, and never will. But judging may many comments on his thread, who enthusiastically support Trotter's suggestion, it looks like that lesson may need to be learned again in the 21st century.

Read his post here: Ministry of Works 2.0: Have the lessons of the past been forgotten? – Mark Tammett, PROCON

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How things have changed

 

It’s easy to forget how many things have changed so very much in so very few years. Those of you especially who have grown up with the internet might look askance at this story a friend plucked out from his archives this morning; a story from a London newspaper about my former West London footy club.

It was considered “a “story because, wait for it, the club was connected to something called “the internet.” This, at the time, was considered impossibly exotic. Explains the unofficial archivist and former official webmaster:

Twenty one years ago today, we launched the third Australian Rules football club website in the world* which made a grand total of eight sites on the planet devoted to Aussie Rules.
    In the initial days, our email was faxed to us because unbelievably, none of us had an email address in London … and if you tell that to the young people today, they won't believe you....

* Pipped by Essendon and Collingwood.

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Quote of the Day: On ‘economic migrants’

 

“When poor people from poor countries try to enter rich countries, critics often deride them by saying, ‘Those aren't political refugees; they're only economic migrants trying to get out of poverty.’
    “We should ask ourselves WHY those countries are still mired in poverty, instead of having risen from poverty to wealth like Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. It's because the governments of those poor countries are kleptocracies that loot entrepreneurs and thereby pre-emptively discourage investment. Any ‘economic migrant’ trying to escape from the government-maintained poverty of his nation of origin is a political refugee.”
~ Stuart Hayashi

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Wellington post-quake visit

 

Yesterday I was out and about looking at damaged buildings around central Wellington to help understand why they were damaged. (This is what designers do.)

As you can see, there are three main clusters of damage: on fill at the waterfront and Te Aro flat, and above Waterloo Quay in Thorndon:

 

 

Several things struck me (observations rather falling masonry, fortunately):

• Perhaps the greatest thing to notice is not so much that so many buildings were damaged, but that so few weren’t! Around 60 buildings are on the official list of damaged buildings, and there is talk that maybe four will be demolished. Only four in a city of thousands! Focus on that and you realise what a job those engineers did.
• It’s true however that not all damage has yet been found (not all buildings have their structure as openly exposed as the Courtenay Place/Reading Cinema carparks), nor that all of it is visible from outside. Yesterday, for example, when I walked past the Asteron Centre in Featherston St, it was still considered sound. Overnight however cracks were found in the stairwell, and the building is now officially declared unsafe. The only damage seen from the outside however is a plywood sheet over a windowpane – and much the same can be said of the officially-damaged Deloitte’s building on Brandon St, below, which aside from a few fallen ceiling tiles looks undamaged from the exterior. And as for the pipes and cables under Featherston St, well, that’s another story altogether …
• That said, there was talk about town that the building in Featherston St had suffered in the 2013 Seddon earthquake, and surprise that it was not on the ‘damaged list’ this time.
  And this was a theme with several of the damaged buildings I saw: new cracking evident from the outside (in the precast panels of the Revera building in Mulgrave St for example, seen below) had clearly joined hands with cracks from earlier times that had been cleaned up and painted.

Cracking evident at spandrel/mullion joints on precast panels at the closed Revera Centre in Mulgrave St

• Let’s also celebrate the crews out cleaning up all the debri. This is work they hadn’t programmed, and yet just ten days after the quake the damage to the city is clearly well contained. Glass and tiles fell from tall buildings along The Terrace, for example, but the fast cleanup leaves the streetscape looking as clean as it always has – and much the same can be said of the rest of the city I saw.
  
• For the most part, the effect of the quake (if any) on smaller buildings was barely evident in most parts of town I saw. Those suffering damage were primarily taller buildings. That said however one of the worst damaged buildings, the comparatively new Statistics House (below, behind a severely damaged low-rise building on the disturbed ground around both), is low-rise. The effect of poor ground conditions here at the severely damaged Centreport compound– sitting on fill that has clearly suffered – is undoubtedly a large factor. So the role of all Welllington’s reclaimed land is clearly a factor to bear in mind.

The much-discussed Statistics House, sitting on failed reclaimed land next to a severely damaged low-rise
building on the right. Note the drop in ground level by the lower building’s entrance step.

• The building code requires that “significant” buildings which includes council buildings, defence buildings, archives etc. be given a higher level of seismic performance. Yet both the 2007 Defence and main Archive Building (first picture below), and both Wellington Council and Greater Wellington Regional Council Buildings, were all damaged – just Christchurch’s council building was damaged in the Canterbury quake. There are good reasons for the damage to all of these, but perhaps the damage to these last three especially might suggest that the expertise assumed to reside in these buildings about these very issues may be very much less than many might suppose.

Damaged Defence Building, above left; damaged Archives Building, centre; undamaged private apartment building, right.

Greater Wellington Council and Wellington City Council buildings (above and below) both closed for business.
Not altogether a ringing endorsement of the expertise alleged to lie within.

• Remember, there is no such thing as earthquake-proof. The first responsibility of the structural designer is primarily to maintain the building’s integrity in  quake sufficient to get the people out, resulting in what might be called “controlled damage.” Although the quake happened at midnight rather than midday, and at one-third of the intensity the structures were designed to withstand, this was achieved all across town.
  Damage to secondary elements however, caused by failure of partitions, windows etc. to move with a building’s more ductile structure has sometimes caused significant failure that could, if the damage had occurred at midday, been catastrophic. Falling wall tiles, falling fittings and falling panes of glass from tall buildings for example: several buildings suffered in this way, and all of these would have been deadly to anybody in the street. (While not itself very tall, the new BNZ building on damaged ground at Waterloo Quay, below, exhibits this kind of failure, with internal infill walls cracked and window rubbers and external fittings and finishes popped out or unfastened.) This is not so much an engineering failure as one of the designers of those secondary elements – a warning to all designers to understand a building’s earthquake response, and also a reminder of the risk of potentially dangerous finishes and styles of buildings in a city located on a significant fault line that has itself not yet ruptured.

BNZ Harbour Quays building on damaged reclaimed land beside Waterloo Quay

Statistic House exterior: stiffer secondary structures (wall, glass curtain walling system)
crushed and/or buckled by movement of more ductile structural frame

• This, in other words, is a warning that should be heeded.

[All pics by PC, unless otherwise noted]

to be continued …

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