Your post(s) were well worth the wait, whatever its cause!

I too recycle everything I can and store things that may become recyclable locally. I do “time and motion” and “how best to” studies while doing it, with the intention of producing short “How to” tipsheets for ordinary “busy” people in local communities. However the sheer volume of un-necessary and un-thought-out packaging (let alone the short-life goods themselves) transported here with precious fossil fuels makes the whole thing largely a self defeating exercise however it is tackled.

Sometimes it seems that EVERYTHING (including the planet that sustains us and all other species) is being sacrificed for the current vogue of “free trade” at all costs the right to “impulse buy” at whim.

WHY do humans tenaciously hold onto ideas which may have been good once but have so obviously been taken to the point of demonstrable absurdity?

Interesting times are ahead!

respectfully
BJ

“I suffer surreal disgust when I read reports such as this one in today’s Wall Street Journal. This report is on how the Doha Round just broke down over farm subsidies and trade barriers.

These are negotiations among bandits whose bread and butter is the creation of rents — of artificial profits to be enjoyed by members of special-interest groups who can be trusted to use part of their booty to help keep each stationary bandit securely in power so that he or she can continue robbing innocent others.

So we have the spectacle of these bandits, these thugs, negotiating with each other over how much each one will reduce the plundering it inflicts on “its” citizens in return for promises from the other plunders to reduce the plundering they inflict on “their” citizens.”

http://cafehayek.typepad.com/hayek/2006/07/stationary_band.html

I’m not xenophobic and I’m not opposed to jobs and investment hightailing it for Tokyo, so long as NZers and anyone else who wants them are free to go and live where the jobs are. Actually I quite like the idea of lots of people leaving NZ - house and land prices would fall and I could set up my preferred nice little low-income, low material goods lifestyle and get away from this damn office.

Recycling is all very well, but uses a lot of energy in itself. Much better to keep using old stuff. Having said that, steel is great stuff, an environmental dream material - easily recycled and re-usable, easy to work, and if you don’t want it it corrodes relatively quickly. The other muck in cars is the problem.

Not so sure that the US ever protected small propertyowners against large corporates - they certainly don’t these days, but I admit my knowledge of early US history is n’t as strong as it might be.

What evidence do you have that the whole world was racist? Did the Iroquois confederacy believe it had the right, if not the capacity, to rule Europe? Did Africans believe Europeans were mentally and morally inferior? Did Maori consider having European servents to be part of the “natural order”?

Nice talking to you.

I’m not xenophobic either, I don’t begrudge the Japanese anything, it just a matter of realising that in a globalised market, NZ may not have much to offer - whenever I hear politicians addressing this they make two points - the first is to exalt our dairy industry (ignoring those other countries that are more economically efficent producers), the second is rhetoric about being smarter and faster than everyone else, which is just nationalistic optimism, or simple bullshit.

Of course, if you are one of the minority, like me, who are happy to have a low income and grow our own tomatoes, that’s fine.

I’m not sure that the US did respect property rights for its citizens - I’ve certainly heard lots of recent examples of small property owners being stomped on to make way for large corporates, but I don’t know if that is just a recent development.

Have you any eveidence for your claim that the whole of humanity was racist at the time? Did Africans consider Europeans to be a lower form of humanity? Did the Iroquois Confederation believe that, had they had the capacity to do so, they would be within their rights to force their culture and government on other nations?

Enlightened view on second hand cars, although the comment “your mention of advantages of newer cars ignores the environmental and resource costs of building new ones” ignores also that cars are largely recyclable as it is, much as planes are. Old cars are more dangerous and old diesel vehicles are a bigger environmental risk, since many can’t burn cleaner low sulphur diesel (which is thankfully about to arrive in NZ). The decline in the road toll is partly attributed to a newer fleet meaning more survivability, as the crash rate has not declined as much as the road toll.

You’re right the US didn’t respect property rights consistently, but it did respect it for those people that were considered citizens at the time. Certainly those rights should have been (and have) been extended to other people there - but that mistake doesn’t destroy the principle, as it was a mistake all of humanity made at the time (the whole world was racist).

By the way, the US didn’t respect property rigts in the slightest. Indigenous landowners had their resources stolen, intellectual property rights weren’t respected (stealing technology from Europe was considered patriotic), the government handed land over to railway companies for free and, if you were African, your right to own your own body was denied.

China’s success is that an enormous amount of resources have been set free from a North Korean type economic system over a period of 30 years. China lets many businesses fail, and its own domestic market is thriving under its own dynamic. China is enormously better off now than it was 30 years ago, the best comparison is Taiwan which soared past China in living standards decades ago.

Don’t forget that protectionism has a cost - subsidies comprise money taken from businesses and individuals that may otherwise reinvest that money or spend it on consumption on what they want, which is not going to be propping up an inefficient business. Don’t also forget that in China it would be legitimate, if it were a democracy, for people to make tradeoffs between air pollution and jobs. China doesn’t have property rights protected yet, but there IS a tort under common law of trespass which can be used (and has been) for pollution when a neighbour, for example, uses an incinerator on his land and the smoke enters your property causing you damage.

It would require some thought to adapt such legal provisions to cover class action lawsuits against pollution, but it has happened for water pollution in the US.

No it is a basic economic truth that opening up to free trade is in your interests. The counterfactual is that it is better to use resources producing something that you can use less resources to get from somewhere else.

If it costs 100 to buy something from overseas, but 150 to make it locally. You can buy 3 for the price of 2 if you get it from overseas, and use the spare 100 to buy something else. A great example is how the cost of every job in the local car assembly industry was around $180,000. Nobody involved in the industry got paid that, so it was a net loss to assemble cars in New Zealand. It cost more, less new cars were sold (so more old cars which are less safe and less fuel efficient on the roads) and money that could have been used for something else was spent on propping up an inefficient business. It’s basic economics.