MacDoctor

The Mayor of Auckland, Len Brown announced sweeping changes to the unitary plan for Auckland, made in response to widespread opposition to the plan to build high density high-rise apartments in many areas of Auckland.

“We have taken on board the reasonable objections of those who say that the proposed high density housing will be an eyesore and will detract from the beauty of the city. We want Auckland to be the most liveable and sought after city in the world, so we have gone for a more radical approach to urban intensification.

“Following on from our plan to build the rail loop underground, we thought “why not build it all underground?”. We have, therefore, embarked upon a plan of extraordinary vision and ambition and decided to build high density housing underground rather than above.

“There are many underground parking garages that will be completely redundant after the construction of the rail loop. These will be easily converted into underground housing complexes, thus satisfying our most urgent housing needs. New apartment blocks will have a single upper story and can be built down as far as the owner wishes, as long as they meet the building specifications we will set out, particularly the specifications for ventilation.

“Underground housing complexes will be connected by tube rail, extending the rail loop and ensuring that people can get around easily without cars and without having to come out onto the surface all the time. This is especially important because studies have shown that people who live underground tend to develop agoraphobia and travel on the surface may become traumatic for them.

“The beauty of the new plan is that, as it progresses, there will be less people above ground and, gradually, parts of Auckland can be reclaimed for parkland. In the far future, it may be that all of Auckland will be one vast park. We estimate the cost of surface housing in Auckland will rapidly escalate out of reach of all but the most wealthy, leaving few people on the surface and preserving the natural beauty of these parklands.

“The rest of the population of Auckland will rapidly adapt to their new living environment developing pale skin, stooped shoulders and a fear of light.

Mayor Brown said that “Project Morlock”, as the new unitary plan had been nicknamed, would be implemented over the next 800,000 years starting in 2014 with the conversion of the car parks. When questioned about the logistics of feeding such a large underground population, Mayor Brown grew evasive and muttered “I don’t think the protein requirements of the underground people will be a problem”.

Sometime I wonder exactly how much news is generated by the media internally. A TV3 poll on “The Vote” asked whether New Zealanders considered New Zealand to be a Racist country. Apparently 76% of people thought we were. I question the validity of these TV run polls and wonder if they are not just simply trying to generate a story that does not exist.

So, are New Zealanders racist? Interestingly, migrant groups did NOT think that New Zealanders are racist and, as a migrant myself, I can concur with that. I have experienced, and have observed, very little racism in this country. In fact, when there IS overt racism, it tends to make the news headlines, which would indicate that it is rare, rather than common.

Perhaps the problem here is that the word “racist” has been horribly overused, particularly by those who stand to gain politically or financially from the persistence of  the idea of institutional racism in this country – and, yes, I am thinking mostly about the Left and the Treaty Grievance Industry. Racism, for those who may not realise it, is discrimination against a person, or group of persons, based solely on their race or skin colour.

Xenophobia (fear of strangers) is NOT racism unless it leads to irrational discrimination. Most New Zealanders are a bit xenophobic when considering groups of people. This is probably due to our isolation. Our xenophobia does not normally extend to individuals, only to vague groups. We may talk about the “asian invasion” but we will be accommodating and welcoming to our Chinese next-door-neighbour (usually). This is not true racism in the proper sense of the word, though it bordered on racism at the time of the Crafar farm sales. Interestingly, that near-racist outburst was driven entirely by the politicians who rail most loudly against racism in other areas.

The other thing we tend to confuse with racism is the underlying tendency of prejudice. We are all prejudiced because we naturally process objects and people into categories. It is the way we think as humans. The upshot is that we tend to prejudge people based on many factors, of which race will be one. This does not mean we are racist. We are only racist if that prejudice makes us discriminate against them based solely on race. This might sound like splitting hairs, but it is an important distinction, because we can choose not to act on our prejudices, especially if they are as flimsy a prejudice as racism.

I think New Zealanders are, in the main, very good at not acting on their prejudices and their xenophobias. In-built into the society is the sense of a “fair go” and I see this shining through our relationships with people of different cultures and skin colours. I find Kiwis extraordinarily willing to look past the external and give people a chance. I do not believe that, outside of the imaginings of the treaty grievance industry, there is any institutional bias against Maori. Nor do I believe that there is a widespread discrimination against asian immigrants.

Let me re-iterate, as I have blogged in the past, quoting properly sourced statistics is NOT racism. If I say that Maori are three times more likely to commit child-abuse (a fact), I do not mean that ALL Maori are child-abusers (racism) or that, somehow, this is solely a Maori problem that Pakeha can safely ignore (this is also a racist stance).

Xenophobia, prejudice and racial-based statistics are NOT racism, We should avoid devaluing this word by implying they are. Otherwise many worthwhile conversations that would bring us better understanding of one another will be shut down.

Road Rabies [rohd rey-beez] noun pathology.

1. An episode of psychotic rage provoked by a minor driving infraction in a fellow motorist.

Youngest MacDaughter experienced just such an episode this afternoon in Botany town centre, Auckland. Right in front of her a large Pacific Island youth leaped out of his black sports car and started punching and trying to open the doors of another vehicle, a black Suzuki swift, with a couple and two teenage girls inside. Their infraction? The major crime of taking too long to get out of a parking space, he was waiting for.

They tried to drive away but he ran after them and punched the car again, leaving a sizable dent. Hopefully he broke his hand in the process.

To the idiot who terrified my daughter and the poor people in the black Suzuki:

Your behaviour is not acceptable, bro. I really don’t care whether you were having a bad day or your head was full of P or your wife had just left you. Acting like a psycho in a car park is not on. Your actions have been reported. Expect the boys in blue to be calling on you to discuss your compulsory anger management program, preferably in an establishment of her majesty’s choice.

Enjoy

No, not gay marriage (though that might). What will end in tears is Labour/the Greens NZ Power policy. I have already blogged how the policy itself is economic incompetence. And, despite Brian Rudman and Bryce Edwards waxing lyrical about the policy being similar to the Pharmac model, I have demonstrated that this is also a piece of complete nonsense, as Pharmac is a mere tenderer, not a form of price control. Assurances from Shearer that NZ Power will also just be “tendering for the lowest bidder” ring very hollow, for two reasons. Firstly, you will not be able to buy power from anyone except NZ power (people won’t be able to deal directly with generators). Secondly, Shearer has made it clear that NZ Power will not allow the generator companies to offer more expensive gas-fired power when cheaper hydro is available. This is often referred to as “gaming the system” but it is nothing of the sort – it is the way power companies keep the emergency support generators financially viable.

But neither the inept policy, nor the daft comparison to Pharmac, will be the reason why this will end in disaster for Labour. It is the political consequences that will end in tears. So far, every newspaper opinion and blog I have read seems to think that this is a clever political move by Labour and the Greens. It is not. it is a very short-sighted manoeuvre.

It is no secret that National have banked a great deal of their financial credibility on being in surplus in the 2014 fiscal year. It is also no secret that this aim is dependent on some rather rosy treasury predictions – prediction that may well not eventuate. If the NZ power policy reduces the price fetched for MRP, it would be relatively easy and convincing for National to pitch a failure to gain a surplus as the fault of Labour and the Greens strategically timed announcement torpedoing the MRP sale. Timed at the run in to the election next year and that may well sit nearly as well with voters as a surplus.

Far from being politically astute, this may well have handed National the election. Time will tell.

The most obvious thing about the recent “marriage equality” debate was how both the State and the Church talked past each other, almost as if we were using a different language. Of course, it did not help that anyone who made an attempt to put forward a reasoned Christian viewpoint was immediately denigrated as a bigot and ridiculed as some sort of fossilised dinosaur. It was clear from the outset of this piece of law-making, that the State was not interested in discovering the view of Christians on this matter. At the risk of being subject to similar invective, I will attempt to at least generate some understanding of the matter, now that we have silence from the myriad braying donkeys. As I represent no denomination, you may take this as a personal view, rather than an official one.

From the outset, this “debate” was couched in deliberately misleading terms. After all, proponents who were against the bill found themselves apparently arguing against marriage and against equality. Both of these things considered good things by most people. This was quite deliberate. It should have been obvious to all that equality before the law was easily achievable by a relatively minor adjustment to the Civil Union bill, giving Civil Unions equal legal status with Marriage. This would have avoided the vast majority of the objections thrown at the bill. Instead, homosexuals were determined to claim the word “marriage” for themselves. This was, of course, less to do with equality and much more to do with normalisation.

Normalisation has been the goal of the Gay lobby for many years. While the Civil Union bill was initially purported to be all gay couples wanted, it soon became clear that this was seen as a stepping stone towards normalising gay relationships. This redefinition of marriage was inevitable after the civil union bill, exactly as many of the opponents of that bill had claimed. It is clear that nothing less than complete normalisation will satisfy. Expect children to be taught that homosexuality is normal (and, by inference, gender is optional) from formative years. Expect religious freedom to refuse to perform gay marriages to be eroded. Expect many things to be redefined as “hate speech” against homosexuals, including this post.

You see, the chief problem with redefining marriage to include same-sex relationships is that the bible very clearly defines same-sex relationships as sinful*. Note that sinful does NOT mean that gays are bad or evil people, they are simply engaged in an activity/relationship that lies outside of God’s plan for our lives. This is something we all do – fall short of God’s standards. It is a universal phenomenon, not limited to the gay community! Many heterosexual relationships are also defined as sinful – adultery and any sex outside of the marriage relationships (AKA Fornication). In fact the only place where sexual relationships meet God’s standard is in marriage. It is what He designed marriage for.

Therein lies the problem for Christians. Marriage is the proper place for sexual relationships. But placing homosexual relationships into that context is not possible, as they are considered sinful. Thus there is a vast schism opened up between the State’s new definition of marriage and the Christian one. Unfortunately, without the anchor of a Christian definition of marriage, we have no idea where the State will now take this. Suggestions of polygamy, polyandry and polyamory being next on the agenda are not unreasonable (although they were derided as such by the select committee and other enablers. Of course, so was the idea that civil union was the first step to gay marriage).

If you have made it down to this point, I congratulate you for spending more time on this topic than the select committee or parliament. You should know that Christians do not hate gays, nor would we deny them human rights. But we simply cannot ignore the bible in order to accommodate  peoples choices. History has shown us time and again that ignoring scripture always ends in tears. God designed us to work in a certain way and rearranging that design simply never works out. No matter how much we would like it too.

(*I am fully aware that there are scholars who dispute this idea. However, the vast majority of bible scholars agree that the bible defines homosexual relationships as sinful. If you are interested, the most useful passages to read are Romans 1:25-32; 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10. )

Following on from yesterday’s post Matt McCarten makes a strange comparison between Labour’s blast-from-the past policy of power price control and Pharmac:

“At home, the parallel in the health sector is Pharmac, which uses its buying monopoly to negotiate prices with multinational drug companies. It saves us billions of dollars. I haven’t heard the Government suggesting abolishing it and leaving prescription prices to the international free market.”

There is one small thing wrong with this comparison – it is utter nonsense.

Pharmac, of course, is not, and never has been, a form of price control. Pharmac does what most government departments do – it tenders for the cheapest quote. This is intensely competitive, unlike the dictatorial price setting envisaged by Labour. Of course, US-made drugs find it hard to compete with the knock down prices of Asia and India, but it is still competition, not price setting. A patient can still go out and purchase an unfunded drug if they wish and this does indeed happen, if infrequently. Certain drugs that are unfunded by Pharmac have sufficient advantages that those who can afford them will purchase them, if the funded drug is inadequate.

Interestingly, it is not Pharmac itself that is the biggest influence on costs, it is New Zealand’s patent laws, specifically the fact that we almost never extend a drug patent beyond the obligatory 20 year mark. This means that we have access to generic drugs well before those countries which routinely extend their patents (US and UK especially). This forces the price of drugs down far more than anything Pharmac could do. Bear in mind that Pharmac has to access certain drugs and classes of drugs, regardless of price. If cheap generics were not available, it would be forced to fund the more expensive products. It has some leeway in that it can fund substitutes, instead of the original article – however, this is not best practise in any man’s language.

So Pharmac is very poor example of price control – it is not an example of price control at all! Worse for Mr McCarten is the fact that the success of Pharmac in reducing our medicine bill by overly favouring generics is not without consequence. New Zealand has less than half the choice of drugs that most countries enjoy. Many of these drugs are simply not available in New Zealand at all. This is the primary reason why countries with predominantly public health systems do not emulate Pharmac. Pharmac is an excellent example of shortages created by distortion of normal markets.

Oh, and McCarten’s other example of price control is an actual example of true price control. It is California – famous for a year of rolling blackouts that nearly shut the state down in 2001. Blackouts that they are still struggling with even as late as last year. Good choice, Matt. Thanks for illustrating the idiocy of price controls so well.

Candles

Labour and the Green’s odd electricity price control policy has clearly been designed with only one real purpose in mind – to disrupt the sale of Mighty River Power and reduce the amount realised on the sale, to the detriment of National. This type of “scorched earth” thinking from the left is hardly unusual; Cullen’s absurd purchase of KiwiRail is another, similarly expensive, example. But in the event that Messrs Shearer and Norman actually believe their economic nonsense, I have provided them with a brief lesson on why price controls are dumb. Oh, and this is for Matt McCarten and Bernard Hickey, both of whom appear to be suffering from the same economic myopia.

First, let’s dispel the myths. This policy is not nationalisation of the electricity industry, though it will, in the long-term have the same effect, but without the benefit of the government having an asset it can offload, when it has finished stuffing it up. It will not lead to 5000 new jobs in the economy for the obvious reason that the money being injected into the economy by free and cheaper power will come from either the power companies profits or from the taxpayer. Both are likely to have spent or invested that money in the New Zealand economy anyway (unless Labour or the Greens have evidence that power companies are squirrelling billions of dollars into overseas bank accounts – Shearer is likely to want to avoid this topic). The 5000 jobs story is pure kite-flying.

In addition, it is debatable whether there is a problem to solve, here. It has been suggested that the so called excessive profits made by the power companies are likely to have been greatly overestimated in the Wolack report. In addition, the current price of electricity in New Zealand is inflated by an ETS (that Labour and the Greens would like to make more onerous and expensive) and by excessive regulation of the production of new generating capacity, significantly increasing the cost of generation. In a normal market, price is set by two factors, cost of production and competition. While Transpower (an SOE) and the lines companies (mostly local government or trust owned) essentially have monopolies, it is clear that the generating companies exist in a healthy competitive environment. It is therefore unlikely that the profits being taken by generating companies are excessive – unless one thinks that there is price collusion between them.

But assuming you have a problem with excessive industry profits, price control is not the way to address it. Here’s why.

With price controls, the price of an item is set to an arbitrary level that is considered a “fair” price. While it is likely that the government would make some attempt to make that price “fair” to the generating companies, the political reality is that that price must be set below the current market price. This will immediately place generators with the highest production costs under strain. Expect immediate job losses. Yes, that is losses, not gains. There may be generating companies going into liquidation.

In addition, the surviving companies will immediately cease investing in new power generation. Why? Because the price they receive no longer depends on what people will be willing to pay for it, but on the will of a government agency. An agency that is highly likely to have limited understanding of the industry they are, effectively, regulating. The risk of not receiving a price from which the cost of the generators can be recouped is too high.

You can overcome this effect by subsidising the cost (either directly funding or private/public partnerships) but this simply shifts that “excessive profit” onto the taxpayer, who now has to pay for generators directly, instead of simply consuming electricity. This just hides the actual cost of electricity in increased taxes, hardly a win.

With new generation frozen, the inevitable consequence is that the power requirements of New Zealand will outgrow the current level of production. Blackouts will occur. They will occur sooner, rather than later, because emergency generators, which are expensive to run and maintain,will simply not be available, as they will be mothballed. Why produce expensive power and then sell it at a loss? This will happen even if the taxpayer foots the bill for new generation.

At this point I could draw you a graph to demonstrate that a low fixed price will stimulate demand for electricity without stimulating production. (called excess demand). This will, of course, make the above power cuts happen even earlier.

Not sure if “Vote Labour and Green for power cuts in your near future” has quite the ring to it that Mr. Shearer is looking for…

Now that the alleged Boston Marathon bombers have been “apprehended” (if that is the right word for a massive dragnet operation ending in a shootout with one suspect and one policeman dead), it seems that David Sirota of Salon has got his wish, because the bombers are apparently Chechen Muslims. He can now continue to pontificate about the differences between the way the US treats white Americans who commit atrocities and Muslim ones. He opines:

“Likewise, in the context of terrorist attacks, such privilege means white non-Islamic terrorists are typically portrayed not as representative of whole groups or ideologies, but as “lone wolf” threats to be dealt with as isolated law enforcement matters. Meanwhile, non-white or developing-world terrorism suspects are often reflexively portrayed as representative of larger conspiracies, ideologies and religions that must be dealt with as systemic threats — the kind potentially requiring everything from law enforcement action to military operations to civil liberties legislation to foreign policy shifts.”

Frankly, I am unsure which I find more nauseating – the carnage caused by two idiots who thought that it was justified to kill innocents for whatever reason, or the smug, patronising garbage produced by a privileged white male about male white privilege in the wake of this monstrous deed.

Americans tend to view white killers as a “lone wolf” because, by and large, they are lone wolves. They do not normally subscribe to any organisation advocating terrorism in any meaningful sense of the word. Right wing extremist groups do not count unless they have a genuine terrorist agenda (as opposed to a great deal of rhetoric and bigoted bluster). The only recent killing in the US by a white person that is true terrorism is killings associated with abortion clinics orchestrated by certain “Christian” (and I hesitate to use the word Christian) extremist groups.

Which brings me to the second difference between atrocities committed by US whites and those committed by Muslims in particular. When the terrorist attack is claimed by a recognisable group in the US, condemnation is immediate. In particular “Christian” extremist groups are denounced immediately by Christendom in general. Contrast this to recent terrorist attacks by Muslims where the silence is broken only but the embarrassed shuffling of feet in the Muslim community. And we will not mention the raucous cheering coming from Muslim countries. In addition, the majority of Muslim terrorists claim affiliation to a valid terrorist organisation or, at the very least, a violent religious ideology.

I do not point this out to embarrass Muslims. Not for a moment do I think that all Muslims covertly enjoy acts of terrorism and/or are potential terrorists themselves. Their silence most likely does not denote consent, but fear. However, the contrast is marked and easily noticeable by all but the most blinkered person.

Muslims and non-Muslim mass-murderers do have one thing starkly in common – they both consider their victims as less than human. While a Muslim extremist has an almost understandable reason to see non-muslims as non-human (he thinks they are all demons or in league with demons), the non-muslim killer has less clear ideological motives. The horror we feel with such killings is compounded by a sense of confusion, a need to know why.

Sadly, the why of such events of mass-murder are wrapped up in the mores of a society that progressively devalues human life while, paradoxically, at the same time nurturing an extremely self-centred world-view. Scripture tells us we reap what we sow and what we have sown is an extreme sense of entitlement that borders on narcissism combined with a pervasive view that humans are not as important as <insert your current favourite cause here>. An obvious illustration of this is abortion on demand, where a mother’s right to maintain her lifestyle trumps the life of another human being who is dependant on her. There are many, many others.

It would be nice to believe, like Mr Sirota, that mass-murder by white Americans is a symptom of right-wing extremism and rhetoric (or even left-wing extremism and rhetoric) but, sadly, it is far more likely to be the result of decades of dehumanising group-think policies from “progressives” who see people they don’t know as cyphers and annoyances, rather than as fellow humans. It is an inevitable consequence of a society obsessed with, and isolated by, their own self-gratification.

Each mass-murder event is a scream of contempt for life and an explosion of self-immolating narcissism. It is both louder and closer to home than you think.

If ever there was a dangerously inappropriate political football, it is the potential sale of Crafar farms to the Chinese company, Shanghai Pengxin and the hysterical xenophobia it has induced. While the furor has managed successfully to paint National into a very uncomfortable corner, it has also made all future overseas purchases significantly more difficult. Like the sale of airport shares to Canada during the Labour administration, the entire debacle has been driven by the typical isolationist xenophobia of Kiwis in general (the consequence of living on an island miles from anywhere). Unlike the airport saga, though, the Crafar sale has the added complication of an about-turn instituted by a legal judgement.

Let me be clear that I have no issue, on the surface, with the Justice Miller’s legal finding that the OIO have overestimated the additional benefits to New Zealand of an overseas sale. The problem here is with the word “additional” which the Judge correctly points out can be interpreted to mean “additional to the reasonable  improvements expect to incur from a New Zealand sale”. While this is a reasonable lay interpretation of the words, it is clear that the OIO and, I suspect, many economists would disagree with it.

The problem lies in the fact that the idea of reasonable improvements is extremely nebulous. Take the Crafar farms, for instance, (and John Key is probably thinking “please do”). Fay and his consortium could simply sell the farms, without improvements, individually, to make a reasonable profit. Or, more likely, they can spend the bare minimum to make them a going concern again and make a killing. Absurdly, if they sold them individually, I think all the farms are small enough to escape the level of scrutiny being given to the current deal. It is therefore quite possible for Fay to sell the farms individually to Pengxin over a period of a few years (I am just guessing here, but it is possible, owing to the way the current law is structured, that a deal like this could be made)

The thing is that Fay, and any other New Zealand bidder can offer as many improvements and jobs as their imagination can provide. Unlike the Chinese and other foreign bidders, the OIO has no power to compel them to provide these improvements. Fran O’Sullivan points out in her column today that Fay has an extra $30 million dollars to play with and so can make his offer of improvements seem very plausible. It would be hard to establish that his offer, bogus or not, was “unreasonable”.

Effectively, this makes it virtually impossible for an overseas investor to beat a homegrown offer, even if that offer is much lower (in fact, especially if it is lower). As O’Sullivan points out, this essentially reduces the sale price of all farms in New Zealand.

Ridiculously, the Left are crowing about National’s discomfiture without any apparent appreciation for the damage they are doing to New Zealand investment. This is made doubly absurd by the fact that Labour accepted many, many farm sales during their last administration based on exactly the same OIO analysis as the Crafar one, now rejected by Justice Miller.

There are no good options left for National. Appealing Justice Miller’s ruling would merely prolong the issue and there is no guarantee that it would be overturned. Approving the sale based on a new OIO recommendation will see Fay taking it to court again. The damage to National would be very large if he was successful. Key might even have to demote his ministers.

Rejecting the sale is also a poor option, sending all the wrong signals to overseas investors, but at least it can be done in the context of reviewing the OIO criteria and making the selection process clearer and more defined. The MacDoctors advice, FWIW, would be to scotch the sale and purchase the farms via Landcorp (at a bid somewhere between Fay’s and Pengxin’s). Get them up and running again and sell them individually ( if Fay can make money out of this I see no reason for the government not to be able to). At least Fay will not profit from his machinations (and that would send a clear signal to the Chinese that the New Zealand government is less than impressed with the situation and will act to remedy it). Then the OIO criteria can be revised and made unambiguous at leisure.

Of course Pengxin will be put out, but even that would be a valuable lesson for them. Next time you want a piece of New Zealand, get a New Zealand company to front the bid and loan them the money. We have to do the same when buying into China.

After all, xenophobia is the bed-pan of socialism. You just have to hide it under the bed.

Thanks, Trevor, for inspiring not one, but two neologisms: