by frog
John Key has said he will not let the environment get in the way of economic growth. That’s fine. I guess global warming is not everyone’s cup of tea – but maybe he hasn’t thought through all the consequences yet? Admittedly I have probably personally focused overly much in my global warming discussions on its impacts on average people. But it’s time to recognize that others are affected to. So today I begin a series on the impacts on global warming for your average bog-standard multimillionaire.
First up – rising energy prices are going to make it harder to keep your spa pool heated. That’s not a huge problem if you’ve got the cash to spare, but energy shortages from decreasing oil, gas and cheap coal reserves could be. It would be a shame to have your pool cooling down just as everyone else’s was heating up.
Luckily there’s a Green solution. Plug the exercycle up to the spa, sit a servant on it and put some of that pedal power towards heating the water.
Image credit: Allspice1
Published in Environment & Resource Management by frog on Fri, October 24th, 2008
Tags: , climate change, global warming, john key, millionaire, spa pool
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
That’s not very nice Frog. The filthy rich are people too, you know.
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Grrrrrrrrooooooooooaaaaannnnnn
Ten years without any warming
When are your bloody lot going to admit you were wrong?
12 years? 15? 20?
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And while your at it
Please admit defeat on peak oil too
Brent oil is under $60 today
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Why do the greens hate John Key so much? you could have a lot worse as your opposition.
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Yeah, and ya better admit springtime is a hoax too. The temperature is under 10 degrees today.
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Emmess
First…. it would take 30 years before you could see the CO2 trend breaking… you know that or would if you read the science instead of the right-wing blogs, and peak-oil is NOT about price…. it is about supply, and the amount of oil that was pumped in 2005 hasn’t been exceeded…. and very likely cannot and will not be exceeded, at any price you care to name.
Of course we do understand that our visitors from the right measure EVERYTHING in terms of money, no matter how inappropriate that particular yardstick is. We also understand the atavism and “whatever Dubya says” attitude that causes them to embrace yardsticks. What puzzles us (given those other two) is how they haven’t accepted American Football and Baseball in place of Rugby and Cricket.
BJ
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Tell me why is it sooooo so so bad if a guy makes some money during his career? Would we all be better of if the country had 10000 more people like John Key? I just don’t get why NZer’s as so anti any one who makes money. I wish I was as successful.
I also wonder the same as emmess, how long will we have to wait before the Green admit defeat on Global Warming? Was a great scam though
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BJ,
Whats with the ………. spaces behind every sentence?
Surely you are not turning into a philu clone?
Reason for that is simply, the left promise the world to everybody without showing an outline on how they would fund the promise.
Look at he Green rail innitiatives. No costing for the Auckland proposal, some for the Welington option.
Look at the Green transport policy. Spend a billion but funded from an extra tax on diesel that will raise 300 million.
Seems that those on the right like to see balanced books while those on the left dont know what a balanced book is.
Now if you can run a society (or even your household) without balancing the books, good for you. But it has been the downfall of every left wing government in New Zealand.
Somehow, somewhere and sometime you need to pay for the “free” promises you make.
Unfortunately in New Zealand we have to many tax recipients and not enough tax payers. The state (including regional and local body workers) servant payroll is near 50% (cant find an accurate reference) of all workers, meaning except for GST, half the New Zealand workforce does not contribute to the tax take and future development.
Now to the left this is not seen as a problem. To the right it is a huge fiscal problem as long term it is simply not sustainable.
Hence we have need for a bout of rogernomics to clear state servants from being tax recipients back to being tax payers.
So if you want the left to stay on the treasury benches, raise GST to 30% to pay for all those state servants.
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Gerrit- You know that I was only pointing at the specific speciousness ( or specialness) of Emmess pointing at the current price of oil as an indication that Peak Oil wasn’t real.
For what it is worth though, Greens do not expect something for nothing and when it comes to balancing books the likelihood IMHO, is that we would do a better job than the current mob OR the alternatives. TANSTAAFL is something most of us understand… though we have our share. I could VERY easily argue that the percentage of of such mis-understanding-people in the Greens is actually smaller than it is in National or Labour.
Punctuation, particularly commas, were a particular problem for me in High School 35 years ago. I do sometimes overuse/misuse the ellipsis as a result of that weakness. I do not however, do incomprehensibility the way Phil does. I don’t think I can. The only guy I know who comes close is Peter Quixote
respectfully
BJ
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was – darn it!
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I admire both phil u and peter quixote for the artful manner in which they communicate. They are both stylish and effective communicators. It has always puzzled me why readers complain about them, especially on this blog. I also find them both to be very perceptive and worthy of attention.
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Unbelievable, in order to avoid Gerrit’s very valid (and concerning) points you turn it around to a discission on punctuation and Philu!!!!!
You chaps never cease to amaze me
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that’s because we are amazing chaps
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“And while your at it
Please admit defeat on peak oil too
Brent oil is under $60 today.”
Showing that you have no clue about how supply and demand works, nor what happens in a financial crisis.
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Price goes down when there is over supply, price goes up when there is under supply. Simple! Price has halved in 3 months, we have more oil than we need being pumped out of the ground.
Interesting to note that all the prices that went up because of the high cost of transport – e.g. the organic veggies from the Farmers market I used every Saturday morning, have STAYED up, despite petrol/diesel prices falling. I wonder if veggie growers are becoming capitalists?
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Gerrit – clearly you haven´t been listening. All the Green´s public transport stuff is going to be paid out of existing allocations for new roads, while continuing to maintain the exisiting roading stock which is in a bad way. Do get off your hobby horse and pay attention!
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frog,
Perhaps you need to get up to speed with the economic outlook.
We will not have the money for either new roads OR new railways.
What part of the cupboard is bare do you not understand?
Oh, I forgot, Cullen is planning a mini budget for December where all will be revealed.
Are the greens going to support this secret agenda budget? As you have stated a preference to support Labour after the election, you must be pretty confident that this December budget delivers what you want and not a bout of rogernomics.
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“Price goes down when there is over supply, price goes up when there is under supply. Simple! Price has halved in 3 months, we have more oil than we need being pumped out of the ground.”
Too simple. While correct, you’re logic leads to the conclusion that supply is greater than it was several months ago. But it is only the relative supply that is greater. Price also goes down when demand drops, which is what the financial crisis has brought on. This is not inconsistent with peak oil, in fact it predicts that there would be demand drops as prices rise, causing price volatility. And of course the financial crisis is an aberration that complicates, but doesn’t change the underlying fundamentals.
Heinberg says that, ironically, the financial crisis will probably guarantee that peak oil production was reached in July 2008. Because the price is now so low, the more expensive oil that was economical to drill for a few months ago now isn’t, making production contract even further.
“Interesting to note that all the prices that went up because of the high cost of transport – e.g. the organic veggies from the Farmers market I used every Saturday morning, have STAYED up, despite petrol/diesel prices falling. I wonder if veggie growers are becoming capitalists?”
As ever they were!
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Gerrit, John Key is a class traitor and the greens just can’t stomach it.
How DARE someone from a solo parent family in a state house have the audacity to become wealthy and run for PM.
It is just not done!!!
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Gerrit – I don’t think John key has achieved ‘fetish’ status on this blog – the ‘attraction’ is more of the sideshow sort (I’m thinking of the swivelling clown head and the ping pong balls kind of attraction) Then there are the swings and roundabouts, the merry-go-round, the scary ghost train (Beware the 5-Headed Monster!!)- it all seems apt in this, the ’silly season’.
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Yes, Shunda is a good one to complain about hyperbole. At least Frog claimed it as such. Shunda make us point his out to him all the time.
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Dave S Says:
October 25th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
> Price goes down when there is over supply, price goes up when there is under supply. Simple! Price has halved in 3 months, we have more oil than we need being pumped out of the ground.
Indeed. You can alsdo look at the oil volumes being extracted, and you will see that the supply hasn’t gone up – the price has fallen because demand has gone down. So it does not in any way suggest that we have not been at a peak from which extraction cannot increase. And the fact that the huge increases in price over the last few years did not lead to a rise in extraction is strong evidence that the level of extraction we were at before this slump is a peak from which supply cannot rise.
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“Yes, Shunda is a good one to complain about hyperbole. At least Frog claimed it as such. Shunda make us point his out to him all the time.”
So my hi per ber leee is legitamate then?
whooo hoooo!, let the games begin
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Yeah, all those left wing investment bankers have gone and got the whole world into a pile of trouble cos they didn’t know how to balance their books – in fact. they didn’t even know how to value their books as it turned out.
“Seems that those on the right like to see balanced books while those on the left dont know what a balanced book is.” Gerrit.
Try and rewrite that piece of history Gerrit. You’re living in a free-market idealistic fantasy worl – sweet dreams.
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“How DARE someone from a solo parent family in a state house have the audacity to become wealthy and run for PM.”
no under national anyone who grows up in a state house will be incentivised by low taxes to become wealthy and run for PM. there’s clearly room in New Zealand for everyone to be rich and powerful. those damn socialists just want to hold the poor down.
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“Yeah, all those left wing investment bankers have gone and got the whole world into a pile of trouble cos they didn’t know how to balance their books – in fact. they didn’t even know how to value their books as it turned out.”
Well Kiwinuke, they couldn’t have done without the masses of stupid people who borrowed money they couldn’t pay back. Where is individual responsibility in all this?
The left dumb society down to the point people can’t even make a basic risk assessment, then blame the right cause it all colapses.
The mistake these bankers made was simply giving the people what they wanted.
A bit like the left in this election really.
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“those damn socialists just want to hold the poor down.”
Yes exactly, you create room for a stereo type and thats all you will ever get.
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kiwinuke,
I dont need to rewritew history.
Your inference that investment bankers = right wing is totally stupid.
Either following the left way or the right way (cool expression “the right way”), you are going to have to balance the books.
Currently only the right side wants to face reality and balance the books. The left want to keep pretending that there is money in the kitty to be distributed.
And the Greens, hitching the wagon to the labour party is smart when they dont even know what is in the December mini-budget, is smart?
I guess you live in a sociaist workers paradise fantasy worl – sweet dreams.
Or sweat dreams!
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Gerrit Says:
October 25th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
> Currently only the right side wants to face reality and balance the books. The left want to keep pretending that there is money in the kitty to be distributed.
In 2005 when the economy was booming, Michael Cullen (who I’m assuming you’d count as a leftie) was running budget surpluses so that we could afford to run deficits when times got hard. Don Brash (who I assume you consider a rightie) criticised him for this, and advocated policies that would lead to a government deficit.
I’m glad we had a leftie who saw that the books had to balance in the long-term, rather than a rightie who didn’t care.
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Gerrit
I reject the assertion that only the right wants to balance the books. There is no evidence of this whatsoever.
What I see is that the right DOES want to increase our GINI index and emulate the USA in its trip towards more complete inequality and homelessness. I see that labour, national AND Winston First are untrustworthy.
You are projecting far too much onto this party. Not justifiably.
respectfully
BJ
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nommopilot,
As for someone from a poor background getting rich, I have no problem at all with that. People getting rich from money trading or stock trading on the other hand I do have a problem with, as they are just parasites (they don’t actually produce anything), and we are about to bear the rather high cost of their greed.
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“and we are about to bear the rather high cost of their greed.”
Yes, and the greed of every citizen in this country and every other that borrowed more than they could pay back.
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Roy,
although i have a distaste for speculators and I kind of agree with you about money traders. stock trading is a perfectly legitimate way to get rich; if people are stupid enough to think they can get rich quick by investig without understanding the market and its sublties then why should people who are smart enough to understand them not exploit the blatent stupidity of those who think they can get rich quick? gambling may not be productive but if you can beet the idiots then whats wrong with it?
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Shunda
This isn’t just about people borrowing to buy into a housing market at stupid prices. The market was going up. People had been doing the same thing for a good 5 years and several “speculators” made a hell of a lot of money “flipping” houses into that fountain of plenty.
What made it possible was not really the greed of those who got caught in this. They are culpable for their piece of it, but the thing that made it possible was a money supply that was borrowed into existence at huge multiples of the actual mortgage risk exposure. Basically for every dollar that they may or may not default, there are financiers and hedge weenies who are on the hook for 10, 20… eveh a hundred times that. That’s how the CDS market is actually bigger than the gross world product and that’s how it can drag big banks and small countries down. Those financiers and hedge weenies knew… and should have known better. They were after all “the smartest guys in the room” as the Enron trader put it. They knew they were stealing, they knew they were selling multiplied risks. They knew (or should have known) that it was all going to come crashing down. It was fun while it lasted. Some of them managed to get away with the loot too. A lot of them are expected to go BK (Bankrupt).
That’s just the tip of the iceberg though. The rest of it has to do with the fundamentals of having whole countries borrowing, even in good times, to “stimulate” growth. Its like drinking a cup of coffee. One is good. Perks you up nicely if you’re tired. However, if you are on a diet of 3 cups a day, you don’t get any lift out of it, you need it to avoid collapsing in a heap. The only way to get anything out of it is to lay off for a while, accept the down time to sleep and recover, and then start up again without it.
The US economy is addicted. The rest of the world is going to suffer the withdrawal pains with it though, because it is crashing… it is drinking enough coffee to make it sick, but it can’t get any lift out of it. Much as Japan has been for the past nigh-on 2 decades now. Cheap credit doesn’t make it grow anymore either, and Japan is far healthier than the USA. It actually has some reserves.
Yes, greed is a bad thing in general. Blaming the folks caught holding the bag isn’t productive though.
respectfully
BJ
respectfully
BJ
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http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=33013790
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’s funny. The right wingers love it that the oil price is crashed, which is basically ‘cos economic growth has stopped. When economic growth returns, then the oil price will be back up.
Eventually, of course, the slaves will be operating the exercycle…
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Jed1 Says:
October 25th, 2008 at 5:40 am
Tell me why is it sooooo so so bad if a guy makes some money during his career? Would we all be better of if the country had 10000 more people like John Key? I just don’t get why NZer’s as so anti any one who makes money. I wish I was as successful.
……………………………
He makes money, he just doesn’t make anything useful for it.
“How is it that – in a free market system, where people are supposed to be rewarded according to how much they provide to others – today’s biggest prizes go to those who provide so little? Mr. Jenkins and Mr. Blankfein do not add in any appreciable way to the world’s wealth. Instead, they merely move it around – from middle and lower class taxpayers to the super-rich…from householders to speculators…and, by loading up the world with debt, from the future to the present.
The answer is to be found in the details of modern finance.”
http://www.dailyreckoning.com/Issues/2007/DR012607.html
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1) A major part of the problem was providing home finance to poor people. Maybe they should have continued to let them live in the gutter?
2) The other part of the problem was that the financial system had become founded upon “turnover” rather than “capital”. (eg: fractional banking).
Basically it had become a huge pyramid scheme; destined to reach a sudden end.
The irony is that two contrasting groups caused the pyramid bubble to burst:
Firstly, those who clipped the ticket and made money on transactions rather than real work (eg like John Key)
Secondly, those who did absolutely nothing to generate income, and got their money for nothing (eg like most NZ beneficiaries)
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>>The right wingers love it that the oil price is crashed, which is basically ‘cos economic growth has stopped
I am extremely happy that the oil price has crashed given that economic growth has stopped which is partially due to the oil price rising in the first place, and the falling oil price will help growth to resume
Cause and effect – something you lot wouldn’t understand
Besides greenies doen’t even want economic growth anyway
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Global warming for millionaires indeed…
“From $64,950…Join us on a remarkable 25-day journey by private jet. Touch down in some of the most astonishing places on the planet to see the top wildlife…in remote areas of South America, the South Pacific, Southeast Asia and Africa…To reach these remote corners, travel on a specially outfitted private jet that carries 88 passengers. ”
http://www.worldwildlife.org/travel/2009/Africa/WWFTripitem7467.html
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emmess Says:
October 25th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
>> I am extremely happy that the oil price has crashed given that economic growth has stopped which is partially due to the oil price rising in the first place, and the falling oil price will help growth to resume.
I’m actually still doubtful about whether the financial crisis was caused by the high oil prices, or just by the dubious ‘financial instruments’.
But anyway, the resumed economic growth will very soon get us back to wanting more oil than the peak extraction level that the market has been trying unsuccessfully to breach since 2005. This will lead to another spike in oil prices. If the currrent financial crisis was caused by oil prices, that spike will lead to another economic collapse that will bring the oil price back down and start the cycle again.
Of course, through all this turmoil, people will adapt to using less oil, and using oil more efficiently. But there’s likely to be a lot of pain in the process. are you happy about that?
there is a certain beauty to the mathematical cause and effect of financial booms and busts, but only if you ignore what they mean to the physical world where people actually live.
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# Roy Says:
October 25th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
nommopilot,
As for someone from a poor background getting rich, I have no problem at all with that. People getting rich from money trading or stock trading on the other hand I do have a problem with, as they are just parasites (they don’t actually produce anything), and we are about to bear the rather high cost of their greed.
Well said Roy.
For over 2 thousand years we have been warned about usury.
Still we have the band of merry followers extolling the virtues of rapacious scoundrels who gamble with the lives of the starving millions, all in the name of mammon.
It is good to be rich if you have achieved it by making work & comfort for others.
He was known in the trade as the smiling assassin.
Hearing the words relief from his lips sends a cold shudder down my spine.
Men died on relief—-read & know your history before it is too late.
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Kelpie,
How is a stock trader a “parasite”?
How is a money trader a “parasite”?
If you want to see parasites look at thousands of public sector employees and look at thousands of welfare spongers.
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Kelpie and Roy,
What you seem to fail to comprehend is that without those whom invest in and trade shares in corporations the capital would not be moved to where it would be most productive and as such those companies that would benifit society through providing jobs would not get the capital they require to create those jobs and as such those whom play around in the share markets serve society well and are prehaps the most productive of actors, if they do the job better than others in the market then by all means they should profit.
Infact, almost the only people whom do not benifit society through their own quest for their own personal good are politicians, benificiaries, and trade unionists. Lol.
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Sapient, You fail to understand the difference between investing and trading in a company’s shares. The former is done by people who either risk everything for a high return on new shares which pump new money into a company, or by people who want a modest dividend reward each year in return for taking a modest risk that the company might be mismanaged. Traders want the rewards of the former while only taking the risks of the latter. When traders convince directors to reward managers with shares instead of cash they are merely ensuring that the company will be run for the short term benefit of the current shareholders and that there will magicaly be enough stupid or ill-informed future shareholders to trade the shares with before the company collapses and the shares become worthless or worth less. This is one of the few areas where pyramid schemes are still legal.
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There are a lot of partial answers floating about here…
The larger class of parasites are financiers. There’s a couple of ways this has happened. A couple of seriously troubling ways that came into being through unregulated and deregulated trading arrangements. Real money financiers play a role that is NOT parasitical, but they are invisible in the market now, having been driven out by the debt-merchants.
In much the same way as the house take can be altered at a casino, the banks (and insurers) have been “cooking the books” with respect to the risk they were taking vs the risk they were being paid to take. This is a long-term imbalance which most country’s bankers enjoy. It isn’t large, but it is fundamentally a theft from every depositor and every borrower in the system. Likely to be less than a penny on the dollar every year, but it is part of the reason that those institutions were building to positions of unassailable wealth.
The bankers are not however, purely parasites as they ARE providing an essential service (so long as/to the extent that – they are honest bankers). Can’t do without them. Do have to watch them. One part of the problem is that we went and handed the entire responsibility for the money supply over to them. A situation of which Jefferson pointedly disapproved:
“[The] Bank of the United States… is one of the most deadly hostility existing, against the principles and form of our Constitution… An institution like this, penetrating by its branches every part of the Union, acting by command and in phalanx, may, in a critical moment, upset the government. I deem no government safe which is under the vassalage of any self-constituted authorities, or any other authority than that of the nation, or its regular functionaries.” ~Letter to Albert Gallatin, 1803
-and-
I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.
The situation he so describes pertains in every nation of the OECD, the whole of the habitable earth and parts of Australia. If we could hook up a generator to his spinning in his grave he could power the state of Virginia.
-but like an infomercial for ginsu knives it continues –
About half the collapse risk we endure now comes from the big commercial banks having finally won the removal of a law that dated back to the depression. A law that flatly prohibited them from going into “investment banking”. They have lobbied for its removal for decades. The image of a group of corpulent bankers congratulating themselves on having removed the gate lock and running to dive headlong into a pool of sharks presents itself. They were so used to controlling the risk THEIR way they didn’t notice that in the shark pool, the rules are vastly different.
Still, it would not normally have hurt quite so much. Unfortunately, someone altered the environment in the shark pool. The CDS debacle appeared (The sharks got the ability to take bites off 10 bankers with one snap of the jaws) and for an explanation of the CDS ( I am wondering if you REALLY need all this background but I am sure someone who reads will ) we probably should refer to this….
http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials_08/tan041608pv.html
That link is important. You can’t get the truth until you read it through.
Now the defenses mounted by various culpable parties would be as follows:
bankers: “the regulations allowed us to…”; “there was no requirement to MTM (Mark to Market) those instruments”. It was the Politicans who let us do this.
pollies (who eased the regulations): “deregulation is generally in the best interest of our country. Despite the advice offered by industry experts (a.k.a. lobbyists) we appear to have missed some of the risks. Still the regulators should have caught this.
regulators: “the politicians gutted our budgets. We were unable to keep up with the market”
++++++++++++++++++++++
Now all of this is water well under the bridge and irretrievably mixed with the ocean. We have the problems we have. Many of those problems have their roots in “greed, fraud and the American Way” (borrowing from the original superman).
The problem is that the DEEPER problem remains even if G20 were to go into emergency session and rule a bunch of CDS contracts unenforceable. The deeper problem is that good times and bad, we have been “stimulating” our economy like the growth junkies we are.
http://mises.org/story/2901
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2006/12/reader-question-on- deflation.html
It takes a hell of a lot of inflationary effort now just to keep the bankers warm… actually getting them to do useful work is almost impossible.
Basically what government has done is herd the general public into the shark pool so that the bankers don’t get eaten for their mistake in jumping in. Note that some banks may die anyway. The sharks are not starving to death. The problem has not been solved.
+++++++++
At the larger level, the people who actually produce the “something of value” that capitalism must have in order to work, are not paid properly in comparison to the ones who control the investments. That makes it appear, particularly now when almost all investments are losers, that the folks who control the investments are simply parasites. They may actually have a valid “something of value” to contribute in a perfectly implemented capitalism. They have a place in the structure. They abandoned that place decades ago.
respectfully
BJ
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BJ…excellent summation.
If I try to understand all this as an uneducated bystander I come up with these concepts:
1) Money, as a mere TOKEN of effort or skill, makes it easy to underestimate and manipulate the true value of an individuals work. Maybe we need to head back to a barter system.
2) So many groups are responsible for eating away at the true value of a dollar, by virtue of a whole range of behaviours that are founded on being able to get access to money without having to truly earn it.
Some examples:
Many bankers and financiers
Welfare beneficiaries
Credit recipients who dont pay back.
etc etc etc
I think we are seeing what is effectively a huge “revaluation” of what a dollar is worth. Whether we see huge deflation or inflation as a result remains to be seen.
My prediction is that the next 5 years will trend towards record inflation.
Isn’t that what happens when governments pump newly printed millions into an economy just to keep it afloat? Isn’t that the real effect of governmental “bailout” schemes underway around the world?
I think maybe they will have the effect of smoothing the waters for a year, then chucking us further into the shark tank.
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“As for someone from a poor background getting rich, I have no problem at all with that.”
my problem is that parties like national and ACT pretend it’s a possibility for more than an extremely small minority of people. the idea that people at the bottom don’t aspire for a better life without the supposed incentive of paying less tax when they get there shows they have no idea. do any minimum wage workers wake up and think “glad I didn’t take that contact energy directorship, think of the tax I’d be paying. thank god I work at KFC”?…
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Sapient wrote: “What you seem to fail to comprehend is that without those whom invest in and trade shares in corporations the capital would not be moved to where it would be most productive …”
That’s not what has happened though, is it?
I agree that investing, trading and corporations have an important place – there are many useful enterprises that cannot take place without collecting resources in a particular place. However these activities need to be regulated so that they don’t spiral out of control and become an end in themselves, divorced from their underlying value. Regulation is also needed to prevent us from stealing from future generations.
This regulation has failed to happen (in fact quite a lot of effective regulation has been removed), and much of the investment going on is a zero-sum (possibly less than zero-sum?) game on a badly queered pitch. Like cells in the body that start reproducing uncontrollably, these activities that should benefit society have become a cancer.
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I agree, very lucid summary with a nice historical context. Alexander Hamilton has a lot to answer for.
bj, given NZ’s minnow status in the vast ocean of sharks, what do you believe is the best way for us to respond? How close is this to the Greens programme of sustainable infrastructure and local investment?
Thanks.
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Valis
The people in the Greens that I get to talk to seem to understand and agree. How much is polite head nodding I can’t say, but Russel is sharp enough and has brought parts of it up before. The party as a whole has always objected to the “growth-is-good” meme, and while some people’s reasoning may be a lot fuzzier than others, that meme is supported pretty strongly.
How to respond is, I think, a matter of not making mistakes. Easier said than done as any chess player can tell you.
First: Not creating too many dependencies on the economies of the rest of the planet with respect to feeding our own. Ensuring that basic needs can be met through existing local resources. (Isolationist – I know).
Second: Funding growth and investment out of our savings, our money not out of debt that is passed on to generations to come. That slows growth down quite seriously and I don’t know if we can do it cold turkey, and it could be argued that we should make exceptions for things that will benefit multiple generations… but overall this is the target.
Third: As part of item one, take some measures to support local industry and technology and the people who work in technology, remaining in NZ. With population and country being the sizes they are, at the distances from market they are, we have to be very aware of the potential that our best will leave and that our migrant intake will not measure up in terms of abilities. That has to be avoided.
We may need to consider closer ties with Oz on that basis?
In any case, those are what I’ve thought of to answer for now. Tentative those answers. I reserve the right to be wrong.
respectfully
BJ
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Kevyn,
I agree with you that share traders are there, in some cases, for motivations different to investors and I agree with you about the perils of shares as shares are, at least in my view, one of the main sources of myopicism in the market and as such one of the main causes of market collapse as CEO’s are pushed to make more and more short term profit at the cost of long term profit in order to keep their jobs, the result of this being a unsustainable company, somewhat like the growth fetish we have with the economy.
My point is that rationally acting share traders and investors will only purchase shares in companies which they perceive will increase in value and as such they are distributing cash where they believe it will be most profitable; though as aforementioned I do not necessarily agree with the practice.
Nommopilot,
An act member with which I associate expressed to me the other day that it was her opinion that children born to poverty were poor of their own fault and that they had all the same chances at success as a rich child, her essential argument being that poor children are poor of their own faults. Even I find that scary, lol.
Roy,
) assertion, my point was mearly that in a properly operating system those actors are not parasites but symbiotes and that they do actually produce and do have every right to gain from their exchanges.
Agreed that the trading should be regulated, although I do not believe I have expressed it in this forum I am in support of speculative taxes such as Tobin tax and capital gains tax in an attempt to stop speculation. I would also agree with your less than zero-sum game (though the terminology is somewhat questionable
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My point is that rationally acting share traders and investors will only purchase shares in companies which they perceive will increase in value
Ouch!… they are humans, so they do not usually act rationally.
If they are Americans they will only do the right thing when all other options have been exhausted (someone told me that joke and as an American I absolutely believe it).
Anyway… the thing is that you’re right. In a transparent market with people knowing the things they NEED to know, this mess and others would not be the problem it is. Greens don’t diss the market… to be fair I doubt if there is actually any uniformity of view of it at all through the party.
respectfully
BJ
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bj,
If everyone had all the knowledge they needed then there would be negilible gains to be made through share trading as there would be no loosers, kind of the same as how if everyone knew all they need to know then everyone would be green as it provides the greatest long term profit. lol.
but alas the vast majority of people are both myopic and stupid, and as you say; not in the least bit rational.
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