New temporary police uniforms
The Police have unveiled a new uniform for their temporary officers, after controversy earlier this month when it was revealed that temporary civilian officers were wearing full uniform.
It’s great news that members of the public will be now be able to differentiate real officers from temporary ones, and this should provide considerable protection against abuse of the position. I just hope the uniforms are made in New Zealand!
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May 30th, 2006 at 11:08 am
Thanks for the link to Keith’s oldish press release Frog - it’s pretty funny (and appears to be on the legal money).
May 30th, 2006 at 1:02 pm
“I just hope the uniforms are made in New Zealand!”
It is a sign of economic success that it’s not possible to profitably engage in low-cost, labour-intensive industries like clothing manufacturing here. Wages are simply too high. Celebrate that fact.
Buy the uniforms from China. It’s win-win.
May 30th, 2006 at 1:27 pm
I told every out of work clothing manufacturer I could find how great it was that our labour costs are too high to produce clothes any more, and how it makes so much more sense to buy form a place with no worker or environmental protection so we can keep our costs down. I asked them to celebrate with me, but I was so disapointed at the snivelling, selfish and totally negative reaction I received. Ignorant peasants!
May 30th, 2006 at 2:02 pm
MW - You’re missing the boat. Chinese wages will catch up soon, so then where to, Ethiopia ?
The economic fantasy model of comparative disadvantage is broken … the rules of ecology and thermodynamics can ony be ignored for so long. Nature does not negotiate.
May 30th, 2006 at 4:23 pm
kiore1
Given that there is effectively zero unemployment in New Zealand the conclusion must be that you didn’t find *any* former clothing manufacturers who are still out of work: They will almost all of them be doing better jobs for more money.
By contrast, workers in poor countries queue round the block for the chance to work in those western-owned manufacturing plants you so despise (that’s right, nobody forces them!). For them it is a good job. I’m happy to buy their products, why aren’t you?
fastbike,
“Chinese wages will catch up soon, so then where to, Ethiopia ?”
Yes.
As hundreds of millions of Chinese have been lifted out of poverty (and the likes of South Korea before them) so, if they are lucky, places like Ethiopia will in turn become attractive investment opportunities and millions more will have the chance of escaping grinding poverty.
Incidentally, as this process unfolds, these billions of people will be able to look beyond how they are going to feed themselves next week and have the luxury of taking an interest in the environment.
May 30th, 2006 at 4:45 pm
er, better jobs for more money? Yeah Right. The hypothetical former clothing industry workers are probably working in McJobs, stacking shelves or working as cleaners or security guards. Or perhaps they are making a living trading on TradeMe, delivering advertising leaflets door-to-door, or in some Internet work from home pyramid scheme.
May 30th, 2006 at 11:18 pm
Yes MW,
Off Topic really but … don’t expect lightning to strike three times. The world is a different place than Korea was in the 1960/70s and China was in the 1990s. Even China will not be able to make the full transition as the Asian Tigers did.
Do the maths on 1.45B Chinese (est pop in 2030) consuming as the US does - the figures are alarming. Look at stats for grain, meat, oil, coal and steel - the basic commodities for an industrialised society. Exponential growth does have it’s limits.
And I can’t imagine India standing idly by. So go figure what their larger (than China) population will be demading by then.
As for Ethiopa and the rest of Africa - they’re in for a rougher ride than they’ve already had.
May 31st, 2006 at 11:57 am
stuey,
Even the “McJobs” you deride would still be a dream come true for the hundreds of millions living on less than a dollar a day. I’m happy to trade with them for our mutual benefit. Why would you insist that I limit my dealings to people who are, comparatively speaking, enviably rich? It’s just a form of nationalism, which is always ugly.
fastbike,
Enough with the Malthus already. There is absolutely no reason why there should be a shortage of food. There is plenty of oil for the forseeable future and more coal than anyone knows what to do with. New energy sources will be found, including better nuclear. And steel? Well, there’s never going to be a shortage of iron ore. And as these countries become wealthy they will all of them introduce ever more stringent environmental protection laws.
But the security of wealth is a prerequisite.
May 31st, 2006 at 1:48 pm
Mouldwarp
think whatever you want, you’re not hurting anyone…but don’t lie: “there is effectively zero unemployment in New Zealand ”
thats just bloody stupid.
May 31st, 2006 at 2:37 pm
There is absolutely no reason why there should be a shortage of food.
but that’s not the one we inhabit. Anyway let’s look at what is happening in in this world of ours vs what some theory says should happen.
Well, there’s absolutely no reason why there should be a shortage of anything in an infinite world
Let’s take world grain stocks:
Note this is before the mandated ethanol/petrol blend requirements in the US come into play this year.
plenty of oil
Yes, the BP 2005 SRWE reports 1,186 billion barrrels at end of 2004. However, the price (energy and $) and the rate of extraction are key. In case you haven’t figured it out, there will still be plenty of oil in the ground when we stop extracting it too - amount is not directly related to availability. Informed commentators are saying we’ve now passed a peak on light sweet (read cheap) crude.
Oh - but I forgot. Doesn’t the theory just say “let the invisible hand of the market” do its work - so how good is this magic hand. Despite oil prices rising from $12 to in excess of $70 per barrel in the 2000 to 2005 period, production has only increased from 75 to 82 mpd. Doesn’t look like it works at all.
New energy sources will be found
Don’t tell me, you’re planning on repealing the laws of thermodynamics, or is this just more magic hand waving. Could you be more specific about these sources, costs, EROEI etc
… including nuclear
Maybe you should do the the maths as M.I.T. has, and you’ll find the answer doesn’t work out. It’s nothing personal, but I’d rather trust M.I.T. studies than the magic hand.
Well, there’s never going to be a shortage of iron ore
Who said there would be, Fe is one of the most abundant minerals in the earth’s crust. But iron ore is certainly not steel, and the steps in between take vast inputs of concentrated energy. Is the magic hand going to repeal the laws of chemistry now ?
Remember, nature does not negotiate
May 31st, 2006 at 3:52 pm
Tom,
In a dynamic economy there will always be people between jobs for various reasons, so a low percentage “unemployed” is to be expected and nothing to worry about.
With regard to long-term unemployment the rate is effectively zero. There are plenty of jobs in NZ, and if that’s not enough there’s the whole of Australia as well.
Contrast that situation with places like France and Germany where “worker protection” legislation has led to permanently high levels of long-term unemployment. They seem to be locked into a disastrous downward spiral which could all end very nastily.
fastbike,
Re: grain, the obvious solution is to grow more food, no? The market will need no prodding, and the green revolution is only just the beginning: GM technology holds enormous promise.
As for oil, yes the market will respond, but it takes time. The problem is that it doesn’t know what the stable long term price will be following the current spike. However it seems to have enough faith to have seriously begun exploiting North American shale.
Energy? I’m afraid I only glanced at the MIT document you referred to, but I don’t understand why you cite it as evidence: There were no show-stoppers that I saw, and its summary actually details what they consider the best nuclear strategy should be. And who knows what the future energy sources will be: fusion? thorium?…
May 31st, 2006 at 5:14 pm
MW
GM technology holds enormous promise.It’s been a market flop so far. No one will knowingly eat it - starving or not.
stable long term priceYou’ve come back with more unsubstantiated market-will-provide dogma. Take a look at the historic price for oil - it’s only been stable when there’s been a monopoly/oligopoly at work. E.g. Texas Railroad Commission and OPEC. Now that neither controls the market, prices are running away.
North American shale Yes and moonbeams have a great EREOI too I’m told.
I’m afraid I only glanced at the MIT document
So how would you understand it if you didn’t read it then ?
There were no show-stoppers that I saw
Let’s try this for starters
You obviously missed the highlighted words. Note further through, they say
This report is written by pro nuke researchers too and that’s about as good as it gets.
A more indepth analysis is available .
fusion and thorium Good luck waiting. Fusion is at least 50 years into the future.
We obviously disagree, so I’ll leave it there. Over and out.
May 31st, 2006 at 10:24 pm
MW
My sister was a clothing designer, got top marks at Wellington polytech, and could not find any work in New Zealand. She had to eventually retrain. It is certainly not true there is effectively no unemployment in New Zealand. Am I just imagining that I have no paid work?
Outsourcing to China just means that companies can get rich through practices that they would not be allowed to use in their own country.
I am not so sure about the argument that if the Chinese did not work crap wages for multinationals they would not have work at all, so we are really doing them a favour. Perhaps some others on this blog can give me a more knowledgeable reply to that one.
June 1st, 2006 at 11:44 am
fastbike,
“‘GM technology holds enormous promise.’ It’s been a market flop so far. No one will knowingly eat it - starving or not.”
That’s a curiously dismissive response from someone who has just claimed that there will be hundreds of millions of people facing a critical food shortage. If it has been a market flop and people are scared to eat it it is largely due to the hysterical scaremongering which has been directed at the issue. There is absolutely no reason why GM food can not be safe, plentiful and nutritious. Surely the imperative must be to make sure this happens?
” stable long term priceYou’ve come back with more unsubstantiated market-will-provide dogma. Take a look at the historic price for oil - it’s only been stable when there’s been a monopoly/oligopoly at work. E.g. Texas Railroad Commission and OPEC. Now that neither controls the market, prices are running away.”
Well yes, the market will provide. Why would companies walk away from an opportunity to turn a profit?
And yes, the price was stable when OPEC had control of the market. But that’s only because it deliberately restricted the supply to keep the price artificially high for many years - hardly a desirable situation.
When OPEC lost power the price of oil tumbled to the natural market level. It’s only recently with surging demand from China and a combination of political events that the price has spiked. The market seems to believe that it won’t subsequently fall all the way to its previous lows, so money is now being attracted to develop the more marginal sources of oil. The market is working.
As for nuclear, there are no show-stoppers in the document you cite. Obviously the technology works and has done for decades. New technologies and designs are a huge improvement over what has gone before. Nobody is suggesting that it will be a free lunch.
kiore1
If your sister had taken an electrical apprenticeship rather than a clothing design course she’d have employers biting her hand off.
And are you imagining you have no paid work? Probably not but, with respect, that says more about you than it does about the current employment situation.
“I am not so sure about the argument that if the Chinese did not work crap wages for multinationals they would not have work at all, so we are really doing them a favour.”
We can be pretty confident that millions of Chinese are not willfully turning down better opportunities in order to work at these factories.
June 1st, 2006 at 3:02 pm
MW
Not everyone can do electrical engineering, and not everyone wants to. But for some one who has never met me, you seem to be making a lot of rather arrogant assumptions about me and my family.
BTW most electronic goods seem to be made in China as well, so how long will it take for electronics engineers to go the same way as clothing designers?
June 2nd, 2006 at 10:09 am
kiore1
The point is that the world doesn’t owe us a living. For most people it’s not a matter of what one would *like* to do, but what pays the bills. It doesn’t take much effort to find out what the what the current skills shortages are. If someone chooses to indulge themself aquiring an essentially useless qualification then they should perhaps not be surprised to find their employment prospects unimproved; and they should certainly not blame the national employment situation for their predicament.
And much of the electronic design is already done in China, or at least Taiwan. All very advanced stuff. Which is precisely why it would be folly to protect labour-intensive, low-margin, low-tech industries in New Zealand. The logical conclusion of such a policy should be plain for everyone to see.
June 2nd, 2006 at 1:39 pm
“We can be pretty confident that millions of Chinese are not willfully turning down better opportunities in order to work at these factories.”
Agreed, all that’s necessary for jobs in multi-national sweat shops to seem like a good opportunity is to have a government that steals your land, bans trade unions, restricts small business, wrecks the environment, tolerates wide spread corruption and locks you up if you object.
June 2nd, 2006 at 2:02 pm
Sam,
Exactly. Chinese poverty is the result of decades of communism. People’s anger should be directed at the repugnant Chinese governments past and present, rather than the western companies which are now starting to create wealth and opportunity in the country.
June 2nd, 2006 at 7:59 pm
MW says: “Chinese poverty is the result of decades of communism.”
What then is American poverty (eg in Florida … as recently shown worldwide) the result of?
Recent visitors to frogblog touting their simplistic solutions should perhaps learn to understand words like “ecosystems”, “planet”, “other species”, “finite resources” etc and cease to bore all of us with their various mantra of rationalised greed and unsustainability.
June 4th, 2006 at 1:14 pm
eredwen,
That is a most trite comparison. China was, until recently, a country of universal, absolute poverty. By contrast, America is an extremely wealthy country with areas of stubborn relative poverty. There is simply no equating the two.
Simple lack of wealth was China’s problem, whereas America spends “more than $500 billion per year, or about 12 percent of its gross national product” (www.econlib.org) addressing the issue. It should be obvious then that America’s problem is rather more complex than China’s. Racism, crime, the unintended consequences of some government programs, the prevalence of single-parent families etc. It’s also true that there is a high rate of economic mobility in the United States, meaning that while relative poverty exists it is far from the case that it is the same group of people trapped at the bottom.
> ‘Recent visitors to frogblog touting their simplistic solutions should perhaps learn to understand words like “ecosystemsâ€?, “planetâ€?, “other speciesâ€?, “finite resourcesâ€? etc and cease to bore all of us with their various mantra of rationalised greed and unsustainability.’
I hope you would agree that everyone on the planet has the right to the same comfortable standard of living that informs your indulgent opinions and priorities?
I tend to share the view of Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace - “The environmental movement I helped found has lost its objectivity, morality and humanity. The pain and suffering it is inflicting on families in developing countries must no longer be tolerated.” (www.eco-imperialism.com)
And let me also quote the national chairman of America’s Congress of Racial Equality - “We are fighting the same battle, for the liberation of black people. In the past that meant taking on old racists and colonialists – now it means challenging environmentalists too.” (www.core-online.org)
June 5th, 2006 at 1:46 am
Wow MWarp that is quite a tirade!
As you are new to frogblog, and may not realise that exchanging ideas is what we do here (rather than scoring points and “putting others down”) I will overlook its tone and will reply … this once.
A “trite” comparison indeed if one takes the meaning “worn out by constant repetition” (… but repetition doesn’t make it any less apt).
Personally, I found Florida an uncomfortable place to visit … a sad indictment on the so called “American dream” (demonstrably not possible for everyone.) I would question your assertion that “it is far from the case that it is the same group of people trapped at the bottom”. While some people escape, that is not the general experience of various social scientists working in that area.
Unfortunately it would be pointless for me to agree that “everyone on the planet has the right to the same comfortable standard of living” that (you assume) I have. Even my personal (chosen) smaller ecological footprint would be difficult to achieve for each current member of Homo sapiens on this finite planet. THAT is the message that needs to be heard. It is one that Greens are very aware of, and an area in which I currently work (as a volunteer) at the community level … to find ways in which we can reduce our individual ecological footprints to a level that all could share … while still leaving space for other species.
I am VERY interested in your obvious misinterpretation of this process!
It seems that there is enough “talking past each other” going on here without the addition of “put downs” and insults.
eredwen
June 5th, 2006 at 11:20 am
Mouldwarp - I am FROM the USA, and I will tell you plainly that any claim that 12% of the GDP went to the poor is total BULLSHIT.
How that figure was arrived at isn’t clear from your link either. I look forward to seeing a more explicit link or directions to find whatever it was in that site that led you to make the claim.
America has “stubborn poverty”… because it has stubborn greed, and tax cuts that were supposed to cause trickle down instead turned out to be the great sucking up.
I note that the Gross Distorted Product is, even when NOT distorted, a poor way of measuring a nation’s wealth and the way the statistics in the USA are handled currently gives weight to the observation about damn lies and statistics.
Economic mobility?
“.. The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston found that 53% of families who were in poverty in 1970 were still below the poverty level. The study also found that more workers remained in the same income brackets in the 1990s than in the previous two decades. Comparing 1973 with 1998, a Wichita State University study found a higher percentage of sons in 1998 remained in the same income bracket or a lower economic bracket than their fathers.” .. more at
http://www.apo-tokyo.org/productivity/056_prod.htm
http://neweconomist.blogs.com/new_economist/2005/11/us_intergenerat.ht ml
So… now that we are past the fantasies about the USA. At least I HOPE we are… let’s think for a moment about China, which has been on the receiving end of a massive invasion by Japan, was a feudal imperial society for the best part of human history and which emerged from all of that to become an economic giant in the space of 40 years. Hmmm… I don’t think I would be blaming “communism” or praising it. Seems to me that there are a lot of OTHER factors involved here than a mere ideology. Dead right they were poor… and they still are in some ways.
Everyone on the planet DOES have an equal claim on its resources, and I would say we do better than most here in NZ, simply because there are fewer of us here. This is a good thing IMAO , but it is also part of the answer to your conundrum. There are TOO MANY people and the wisdom of limiting population growth is lacking in too many places. China did better by dictating slower birthrates than by any other economic miracle…
As for the problems of CORE and Mr Patrick Moore, I understand them but I cannot provide them with special dispensations. As I read this thread, the issue is simply “where are the uniforms made”. There are two issues here.
One of them is shipping, which is simply an ecological evil. It is a cost which must be minimized wherever choices are available, the other is “who gets the job”. Which is a rather different problem. More complex and you seem to think it should go to the Chinese if they can (and they certainly can) make the shirt cheaper.
The question of “who gets the job” is important to NZ, because our situation is a very small local market and limited export potential LARGELY due to transportation issues. This makes it difficult for us to simply say “sure, you do it and we’ll pay you for it” to the Chinese. There is absolutely nothing they cannot do in greater volume and therefore cheaper. Their LOCAL market, never mind exports, is larger than we are. A factory that produces shirts in NZ is not going to be able to get a lot of export trade, even at the price of our labour which is low compared to Europe and the USA.
So is it right for us to buy uniforms for the police from a local manufacturer rather than from the Chinese? I think it is within our rights as a Nation… Nobody has a “right” to sell us something if we do not wish to buy from them.
OTOH, there is no realistic means of preventing private parties from using the free market to maximize what they get for what they spend. The question boils down to whether it is good government policy to support NZ enterprises where possible as compared to simply trying to get the most for our money at any given instant.
Which is a case-by-case judgement. There ARE people here who could make clothing and whose skills are suitable to that task. It is a fairly common skill, and there is no need to export the work to china.
For us it is a dilemma that has its roots in our economic isolation, and small absolute size. We have the right however, to choose when it is the government doing the purchasing.
So I will resist CORE and I will resist Mr Moore when they demand my business at a cost to my country or my ecology.
My take on the disadvantaged is that I am damned lucky and also that there is, sorrowfully, damned little that can be done now. It had to be taken in hand as international population control by the end of WWI but nobody believed dismal Dr Malthus. Now there are half again as many of us as the planet can support. The population WILL be reduced. You can take that to the bank. The only questions are how and by how much and how painful the correction will be. I am intent on survival for myself and my children now. I am in agony when I recognize that there are parents of children all over the planet who have far less chance to save their children than I do… but I do not see any means to alter their fate. I will not give them food from my child’s mouth.
This then is where the question of the maker of uniforms winds up logically for me… in a consideration of lifeboat ethics at the international level. I say keep the jobs in NZ.
BJ
June 6th, 2006 at 8:10 am
Eredwen … sorry to say, some of us simply shoot back, and I am sure I am a poor example of your ideal green.
respectfully
BJ
June 6th, 2006 at 4:52 pm
eredwin
> “I will overlook its tone and will reply … this once.”
Thank you.
bjchip,
> “I am FROM the USA, and I will tell you plainly that any claim that 12% of the GDP went to the poor is total BULLSHIT”
I’m not sure that being a national of a country automatically makes one an authority on its economic statistics (though I’d probably take your word on baseball statistics). But in fact you’re right. It’s not 12%, it’s actually more like 15% (www.oecd.org/dataoecd/56/37/31613113.xls).
Oddly enough, millions of poor people disagree with your indictment of the US. They risk their lives to cross the border to work there; and that without any prospect of taxpayer handouts. And how many have been drowned or eaten by sharks as they paddled their way from the workers’ paradise which is Cuba?
> “America has “stubborn povertyâ€?… because it has stubborn greed, and tax cuts that were supposed to cause trickle down instead turned out to be the great sucking up.”
Wrong. Federal taxes in the US are *highly* progressive:-
http://www.house.gov/jec/publications/109/rr109-36.pdf
You’ll see that the bottom 50% of earners pays virtually no tax at all - just 3.46% of the tax take.
It is practically impossible to devise a tax regime that is more progressive. The top 5% of earners pay more than half the entire income tax take! The great injustice of the US federal tax system is that higher earners and the wealthy pay *way* too much.
With regard to your analysis of the China situation, it just confirms what I was saying. The rapid and dramatic impact of capitalism on the wellbeing of hundreds of millions of people has been all the more marked because of what preceded it. Anyone with an ounce of humanity should be celebrating.
> “There are TOO MANY people and the wisdom of limiting population growth is lacking in too many places. China did better by dictating slower birthrates than by any other economic miracle…”
Nonsense. China’s population has got nothing to do with its standard if living. It is capitalism that has transformed the prospects of so many people.
It is to be expected that as people’s standard of living rises, and as women become equals in the workplace, populations will naturally decline as large families become a thing of the past.
The real problem for the future is how the increasing number of wealthy countries will cope with their declining populations. Contrast that with your authoritarian dream where the poor and vulnerable are forced to not have the children they rely on for security in their old age. It won’t be long before China and India in turn start to fret about declining populations.
Had they embraced capitalism sooner it is highly unlikely their populations would ever have grown so large in the first place.
> “As for the problems of CORE and Mr Patrick Moore, I understand them but I cannot provide them with special dispensations.”
Unless you’re the Pope I have no idea what you’re talking about. They don’t want your “dispensations,” they want you to wake up to the genocidal effects of green policies.
As for free trade, you make much of the small size of NZ and its workforce. But that is a compelling reason for more free trade, not less. NZ cannot (and should not) hope to make everything itself, it has to specialise and trade.
Sure there’s plenty of people in NZ who could make you a pair of trousers or any other low-tech (and not so low-tech) item. We could drag some IT specialists away from their workstations and have them stitch pants if we wanted to. But how would that benefit anybody? How would it benefit consumers of trousers or of IT products?
And given the fact that NZ’s tiny workforce can’t make everything, how do you decide which jobs to protect and which ones you’ll let go? Really, I want to know. Is it the ones with powerful unions? The ones that make large donations to political parties? Do you toss a coin? How do you decide? The truth is that yours would be an entirely arbitrary decision and would introduce all the inefficiencies inherent in a centrally planned economy.
And what is the cost of protecting those jobs you deem worthy? Obviously it means having to pay more for their goods than would otherwise be the case. That’s money which is no longer available to be spent on other things - meaning job losses in unprotected sectors. Why don’t you care about those jobs?
And if the government is paying more than it need then it has less to spend on services. So that’s how many fewer hip operations for kindly little old ladies each year? How many fewer teachers? Or are you planning on raising taxes by the amount the state wastes in this manner? If so, what happens to the jobs that were supported by that money when it was left in people’s pockets and being spent efficiently?
Remember in 2002 Bush imposed tariffs on steel to protect steel-workers’ jobs? It is generally acknowledged that it cost more jobs than it saved, since sectors which used steel to make finished goods found themselves uncompetitive. So much for jobs protection. So much for cynical politicians.
> “This then is where the question of the maker of uniforms winds up logically for me… in a consideration of lifeboat ethics at the international level. I say keep the jobs in NZ.
For your position to have any merit you would have to demonstrate a relationship between changing foreign trade %GDP and changes in the level of domestic unemployment. Of course, there is no such relationship. Increased foreign trade is entirely compatible with full employment, as we have seen globally for many years now; it just means that people’s standard of living is much higher for the same amount of work.
But more than that, you are being xenophobic. There is no more moral justification for trading according to nationality than there is according to race. A worker in Thailand is just as worthy of your consideration as anyone who happens to live somewhat nearer.
In short, the Green “buy NZ” policy is economically damaging and morally indefensible.
June 6th, 2006 at 10:04 pm
Frog help me!
MW your understanding of the ethics of global trade seems to be based purely on your own selfish desires.
Has it ever ocurred to you that sitting on your well-fed rump in NZ, standing up for the “rights” of young asian workers to forgo their chances for an education at around 12 years old, in order to begin a “career” sewing shoes for an internationally recognised brand, is a morally tenuous postion to adhere to.
More so if you are white, male, university educated and corporately employed.
(feel free to tick the boxes for yourself, no need to specify your personal standpoint in this blog….)
Disempowerment of the young workers of the world by MNC’s is the next area of industrial relations to go ballistic; and good on Sue Bradford and her team of staff and outreach, who are doing the best that they can to address one of the key isues of this decade.
Kia Kaha, Sue just keep the ball in motion!
June 6th, 2006 at 10:09 pm
Back to the story at the top of the thread:
“If someone is a temporary officer and gives the wrong advice, they are going to think the whole of the police is stupid,” she said.
As opposed to spending some time conversing with regular sworn officers, who bollux up their job often enough, and coming to the opinion that they are all plonkers???
June 7th, 2006 at 12:26 pm
Katie,
Unless I accidentally slipped in a reference to Japanese schoolgirls I don’t think I mentioned any “selfish desires.”
> “standing up for the “rightsâ€? of young asian workers to forgo their chances for an education at around 12 years old, in order to begin a “careerâ€? sewing shoes for an internationally recognised brand, is a morally tenuous postion to adhere to.”
Good grief. I know I’m at the Greens’ website now. Spare us the moral posturing. If public displays of piety could solve global poverty everyone would be farting through silk. As it is, such an unwillingness to address ugly realities hinders rather than helps.
Do you really imagine that a family so poor it has to send its 12 year old daughter to work in a sweatshop would magically find the money to educate her if it were forced to close? How absurd. It would be a disaster for them. In poor countries children have to work not because the parents are wicked but because it’s the only way the family can be viable.
So, given the premise that we don’t have a magic wand we can wave to end poverty, how can we bootstrap these economies so they start to generate wealth and leave horrors like child labour behind?
The answer, unattractive as it may be, is western investment and so-called sweatshops as the first stage.
Nobody denies that sweatshops have little to recommend them other than the fact that they are better than the alternatives; but they are the start of a process which will transform wages and conditions within a generation.
Hell, even the lefties’ favourite economist Paul Krugman agrees that this is a necessary process on the way to prosperity and concludes that those who oppose it “are not entitled to their self-righteousness. They have not thought the matter through. And when the hopes of hundreds of millions are at stake, thinking things through is not just good intellectual practice. It is a moral duty.”
(http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/smokey.html)
Amen to that.
More in a similar vein at
http://www.aworldconnected.org/article.php/525.html
June 7th, 2006 at 7:53 pm
I have this image in my head of the fossil fuel being used to ship Kiwi made goods to the Markets of the World while more fossil fuel is being used to ship similar goods to the Markets of Aotearoa/NZ and Australia … etc etc etc
In that sense, I heartily agree with the final part of Mouldwarps quote …
“They have not thought the matter through. And when the hopes of hundreds of millions are at stake, thinking things through is not just good intellectual practice. It is a moral duty.â€?
eredwen
June 7th, 2006 at 11:27 pm
Mouldwarp, that chart of yours is counting “total public social expenditure” which is very distinctly NOT going to the poor in the USA. You make a massive error in this, and it would be laughable if you weren’t serious. I also suggest that you consider that it is, even at the claimed 15%, LOWER than the expenditure in terms of GDP, of the rest of the OECD. This is hardly progressive.
Take education spending in the USA. The skew here comes from the fact that education is largely funded out of local property tax. This means that the poorest neighborhoods have the least money to spend on educating their children, the vicious nature of the feedback is extreme. It is hard to surmise where the OECD data is coming from, but “social spending” isn’t quite the same as any effort to correct poverty, and the only reason people keep coming is the fact that it is relatively easy to swim across the Rio Grande (given that it ran dry a few weeks ago), and the US is, at least for the time being, still better off than most of latin america.
Education spending is a pretty big chunk of change. The healthcare system in the USA? The USA doesn’t need assisted suicide programs, we already have HMOs. More money is spent to get less result than in any other nation on the planet, and the efficiency of delivery as opposed to the gross amount being sucked into the system is ALSO a factor.
Basically you are mixing two comparisons. Compared to other civilized nations the US is one of the WORST places to be poor. Compared to 3rd world conditions it is better, and the many who struggle to reach the USA from latin america are tempted by the duality of the porous border and the lack of any functioning internal controls. They are also tempted by the fact that birth in the USA confers automatic US citizenship on their kids. The Cubans get a bonus. Touch land anywhere in the USA and they are automatically legal and granted asylum with citizenship in 5 years time. That’s bonus, which is why you see them pushing rafts into the water and heading north. Not so many as there used to be either.
Illusions like your statement about “progressive” taxation in the USA, are common among people who haven’t actually lived and worked there. You picked the Income Tax which is in THEORY progressive. It used to be MORE progressive, but hey, if its good for the wealthy it’s good for the nation. It is also pretty easy to avoid if you are wealthy, but EVEN SO, the BS that you are reading is propaganda.
Permit me to illustrate.
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2006/05/the_burden_of _h.html
You will notice also that the situation if the taxes are cut but the spending ISN’T cut, is that the nation borrows. Let us introduce now, the most REGRESSIVE tax known to man, the Social Security tax. This is a tax now, because it MUST be paid and because the payments are entirely invested in government bonds, that is BORROWING which is necessary to finance the aforementioned tax cuts. Since the nature of the FICA tax is that it is only paid on the first $85K of income, and it is a PAYROLL tax , it falls most heavily on the middle class. It amounts in many cases, to as much as or MORE than the income tax now, and it includes “medicare”. Worse, the current middle class (the boomers) has been paying in extra to cover their retirement and relieve the burden on their kids. Every cent of that money was “borrowed” into the general fund, and the current so-called President has declared the IOU’s “worthless”.
He’s right of course. There is no way that money is going to get paid back. He is making damned sure of it.
I could go on for a LONG time, this is only a Blog, not a course in the broken economic system of the USA. Care to take a stab at what REAL unemployment numbers are? Real GDP? Real CPI?
I will give you a hint. The statistics are lies.
http://www.gillespieresearch.com/cgi-bin/bgn/article/id=344
As I said before… I HOPE we are done with your illusions about the US as Paradise. I lived in a pretty good neighborhood, but you could still hear gunfire in the distance on weekends… every few weeks during the summer months… kids were shot outside of schools pretty regularly too.
Nonsense. China’s population has got nothing to do with its standard if living. It is capitalism that has transformed the prospects of so many people.
That’s your argument, you go ahead and stick to it. I didn’t support my assertion with analysis, you needn’t support yours. I don’t disagree with Capitalism working to make things better, but I do not agree with your belief that Communism failed them. The initial investments were made by the state, not by Bank of America. The initial productive capacity was built by a fully government run central economy.
The real problem for the future is how the increasing number of wealthy countries will cope with their declining populations. Contrast that with your authoritarian dream…
Huh? Where did I say that? What brought this on? I think you got the wrong guy mouldy… I have no “authoritarian” dreams… I don’t have any dreams at all. I have nightmares. I can barely understand this paragraph of yours at best. What makes you think that there is a comparison to be made anyway. One is a minor problem for wealthy nations, the other is a strawman and both are in error. The REAL problem is that real people are going to die because there are too many people and the dismal Dr Malthus will eventually be proven right. The REAL problem is that long before China and India fret about declining populations because there economies succeeded so well, they will fret about declining populations because so many are starving to death, as weather patterns change in the face of global warming and the places that were once breadbaskets of the world turn into deserts or salt marsh or worse. That’s why we’re here, not because we’re all communists… we don’t want THAT to happen.
There seem to be an awful lot of people who would like those jobs rather than a welfare check every month. You bring in a weird strawman about IT workers making pants… how about someone who used to work canning fish? I pointed out the cost and benefits myself in that argument WITH myself.. and I think I made it clear that there were and are decisions involved that go case by case. I didn’t say we didn’t have to trade… I said that shipping things is bad news and that we don’t have the markets to support producing everything we need. Which means that we CAN’T economically build our own computer chips and memory chips and automobiles… and we come a hell of a lot closer with something like a pair of pants. In this situation the difference between a viable company making pants and one that dies because the market is simply too small to support it may well be a government contract for uniforms. It’s a judgement call to be made case-by-case, benefit to the economy vs cost to the economy. It is not a waste of money if we cut imports, and raise/keep some New Zealanders out of jobless poverty. I think you’d find that in such cases the added economic activity locally would more than compensate for the cost of doing this… it is far better than a dole check.
I never mentioned tariffs… I have no fondness for them. This post is already way too long.
Now to the last paragraphs.
For your position to have any merit you would have to demonstrate a relationship between changing foreign trade %GDP and changes in the level of domestic unemployment
So you’re saying that the balance of trade deficit doesn’t affect interest rates? Interest rates do not affect business activity?
June 7th, 2006 at 11:52 pm
Sorry, my browser hiccupped before I finished with this.
Increased foreign trade DOES give full employment if it is in balance. If it is NOT balanced it creates the conditions of market failure and economic collapse. Which THEN creates unemployment. I think you are arguing from some incomplete examples, for the massive liquidity experiment of the central banks is still in progress and they are desperately fighting to stave off the results of their excesses. The only question for the USA is whether it will wind up in a mere depression or whether it will be coupled with hyperinflation as well. Watch this space. In order for NZ to balance its trade it needs to do what it can to keep from importing stuff it doesn’t absolutely HAVE to import… like a pair of pants.
But more than that, you are being xenophobic. There is no more moral justification for trading according to nationality than there is according to race. A worker in Thailand is just as worthy of your consideration as anyone who happens to live somewhat nearer.
You have pretty consistently ignored what is important to us here, so this statement doesn’t surprise me a whole lot. “Somewhat Nearer” means less energy for transportation and less warming. It has nothing to do with Xenophobia. You have so little idea what IS important to us that I suspect you don’t really try to understand. Nor is it Xenophobic for New Zealanders to stand by one another when we can. If you abandon that level of feeling for your countrymen and countrywomen, you have in effect, abandoned the nation. It does not stand against anyone, it is FOR New Zealanders.
NOW I’m done.
BJ
PS.. The hiccup has to do with X picking up a field from a layer below the one which it SHOULD be on. I didn’t have this problem with gnome, but I am wondering why Linus is so keen on KDE.
I don’t think it’s quite finished.
BJ
June 8th, 2006 at 4:13 pm
bjchip,
> “that chart of yours is counting “total public social expenditureâ€? which is very distinctly NOT going to the poor in the USA. ”
Well is sure as hell ain’t going to the wealthy. Have you checked down the back of the sofa?
‘Newcomers to the United States are struck by the amenities enjoyed by “poor” people. This fact was dramatized in the 1980s when CBS television broadcast a documentary, “People Like Us,” intended to show the miseries of the poor during an ongoing recession. The Soviet Union also broadcast the documentary, with a view to embarrassing the Reagan administration. But by the testimony of former Soviet leaders, it had the opposite effect. Ordinary people across the Soviet Union saw that the poorest Americans have TV sets, microwave ovens and cars. They arrived at the same perception that I witnessed in an acquaintance of mine from Bombay who has been unsuccessfully trying to move to the United States. I asked him, “Why are you so eager to come to America?” He replied, “I really want to live in a country where the poor people are fat.”‘
(http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/06/29/IN290713.DTL)
That’s the point I’m making. Probably half the world would jump at the chance to live in America, even if they had to forego any government support.
>”I do not agree with your belief that Communism failed [the Chinese people]. The initial investments were made by the state, not by Bank of America. The initial productive capacity was built by a fully government run central economy.’
Ahh, that’ll be the Great Leap Forward. I’m not sure how you can conclude that the man-made famine which resulted from the imposition of communist ideology and which killed tens of millions of people cannot be construed as a failure.
It was the abandonment of communism and the introduction of markets and private property which was the salvation of the Chinese; a process now accelerated by international investment.
The last few years have seen more people lifted out of poverty that at any time in history. A stunning confirmation of the morality and power of capitalism and free trade.
>”The REAL problem is that real people are going to die because there are too many people and the dismal Dr Malthus will eventually be proven right. The REAL problem is that long before China and India fret about declining populations because there economies succeeded so well, they will fret about declining populations because so many are starving to death, as weather patterns change in the face of global warming and the places that were once breadbaskets of the world turn into deserts or salt marsh or worse. That’s why we’re here, not because we’re all communists… we don’t want THAT to happen.”
Get a hold of yourself man.
It may have escaped your attention but people in poor countries are dropping like flies right now. Not because there’s an international shortage of food but because they’re too damn poor to buy either food, medicine, education or healthcare.
The absolute priority is for them to escape from poverty. If they can achieve that they will have sufficient wealth to deal with a *variety* of real problems, be it disease, earthquake, whatever, and not just the possible influence of climate change in 100 years that you have in mind for them.
There is absolutely no reason to believe that there will be a global food shortage. Increased demand will raise prices which will result in increased food production. It’s not rocket science.
The real question is why greens such as yourself make dire predictions about famine and at the same time campaign vigorously against GM techniques which will boost yields significantly and safely. What the hell’s wrong with you people?
> “So you’re saying that the balance of trade deficit doesn’t affect interest rates? ”
I don’t think I did say that, but in fact you have it backwards: It’s interest rates which affect the balance of trade (by altering the exchange rate).
It’s hard to know where to begin with the rest of your ideas about economics.
You seem to be saying that a high level of trade is compatible with full local employment, but that the shock of an international crisis could create unemployment in participating economies.
Undoubtedly this is correct. But the benefits of trade are so enormous that to forego decades of rapidly increasing standards of living simply to avoid such a rare event is a ludicrous idea (and I’m being kind here).
For example, such an event, if and when it comes, may well cause a sharp drop in the number of tourists coming to NZ. So should visitors be banned so that a tourist industry can’t develop - one that would be vulnerable to such a downturn? Madness.
Put another way, are you saying that a country that does *no* foreign trade would not experience unemployment? If you are not defending that precise position then you can stop trying to link free trade with dole checks and the like.
> “it’s a judgement call to be made case-by-case, benefit to the economy vs cost to the economy.”
Ahh, the omniscient central planner! One thing we can be sure of is that the market allocates resources efficiently, whilst central planning is a recipe for profligate waste. Efficiency is green.
> “In order for NZ to balance its trade it needs to do what it can to keep from importing stuff it doesn’t absolutely HAVE to import… like a pair of pants.”
Incorrect. Unless you plan on banning the export of trousers from New Zealand?
Because what would happen, of course, is that trousers would then be exported just as surely as any other product you care to mention, in exchange for imported goods.
So, with regard to your balance of trade worries, it matters not one jot whether or not New Zealanders are limited to making products which they don’t *have* to import. All you would have achieved would have been to alter the mix of imports and exports, and impoverished New Zealanders by making them work on low-tech, low-margin stuff for very low wages.
But the good news is that there is absolutely no reason for you to worry about the country’s balance of trade, because a trade deficit is self-limiting. Foreigners only accept NZ dollars in return for their goods because they will then spend them buying NZ goods, assets and services in return. It all balances out in the long term. Forget about it.
> “Nor is it Xenophobic for New Zealanders to stand by one another when we can. If you abandon that level of feeling for your countrymen and countrywomen, you have in effect, abandoned the nation. It does not stand against anyone, it is FOR New Zealanders.”
Hmm. Try replacing the words “New Zealanders” with “white people” (or whatever race picks your fancy).
I doubt you would consider the resulting statement to be at all innocuous. How is standing by someone based on their nationality morally any different than standing by someone based on their race?
Unless your economic proposals count everyone equally they are wholly objectionable.
Which leaves your objection based on the energy costs of transportation. Specifically (I think) CO2 emissions and supposed anthropogenic warming.
Firstly, let’s observe that for some time now the wheels have been coming off the whole global warming bandwagon. For example:-
http://www.canadafreepress.com/2006/harris060406.htm
Let’s then note that even if there is merit to the anthropogenic warming theory, the effects of climate change would be mixed: There would be some benefits and some negatives. It could well be that there would be a net benefit from the overall process (of course the climate is changing all the time naturally anyway).
And finally, in balancing the equation you have to take into account the benefits of economic growth and its ability to lift half the world out of grinding poverty. I can think of no greater imperative. They would then have the wealth to deal with a whole range of problems - any negative effects of climate change being just one of them.
For some reason greens seem to forget the human side of the equation when agitating for their radical policies, prompting the co-founder of Greenpeace of observe that the movement has lost its humanity.
Concern for the environment only has any merit as part of a general concern for humanity. Tragically too many greens seem not to understand this.
More economic growth and more trade will create the wealth for more people so they have the luxury of worrying about the long term health of the planet. But people come first.
June 8th, 2006 at 5:16 pm
Canada Free Press
Ah Yes … now I’d trust anything they said anyday - but - only with my tinfoil hat on.
http://www.canadafreepress.com/war-on-terrorism.htm
http://www.canadafreepress.com/land-farming.htm
http://www.canadafreepress.com/environment.htm
ROTFLOL
June 8th, 2006 at 5:21 pm
And linked to their home page
http://www.conservativejoe.com/
http://www.americanpolicy.org/
http://www.frontpagemag.com/ and
http://www.homelandsecurityus.com/site/modules/news/
Nuff said.
June 9th, 2006 at 9:14 am
fastbike,
Try to be a little more discerning. Try to look beyond who is doing the reporting and read what is actually being reported.
For example, the veracity of the following extract is neither enhanced nor diminished by who is actually reporting it:- ‘Dr. Ian Clark, Professor of Earth Sciences at the University of Ottawa, summed up, “The science has progressed dramatically in this field; in particular we are seeing new evidence - new hard science - showing that solar forces, not CO2, is what really is the main driver of climate.” To the dismay of the environmentalist on the CTV panel, Clark continued, “There’s actually been no evidence that CO2, which is a benign gas, a nutrient for plants, has ever had a measurable impact on our climate.”‘
Or this: ‘ex-Environment Canada Research Scientist Dr. Madhav Khandekar explaining to an audience of 60 professors, students and Natural Resources Canada scientists that much of the climate science that is accepted by the public as being ‘settled’ is, at best, seriously in doubt.’
Or this: ‘Victoria-based climatologist Dr. Tim Ball…delivered the same message — check the science of climate change; it is different to what most people think. “Over the past ten years the public have been hoodwinked into thinking our emissions of carbon dioxide are leading to a climate catastrophe.”‘
Do you understand? The merit of these claims is not affected in any way by who is doing the reporting.
Your unseemly rush to dismiss the evidence says more about you than it does about the issue in question.
June 10th, 2006 at 1:37 am
Mouldwarp,
Do you realise that the detectable arrogance, in both content and tone, of many of your posts “says much more about you than it does about the issues in question.”
It stands out on frogblog!
I wonder what it is that you (hope to?) achieve here.
Perhaps you could (should?) reflect on the maxim “When in Rome do as the Romans do.”
If you considered for a while you might realise that fastbike is not only intelligent and well informed, he is skilled in making his points clearly with minimal offence and is generous in providing web links for others …
If you have the time to provide us with superior links that would be great!
eredwen
June 10th, 2006 at 4:06 am
Mouldwarp - You know I agreed that people in the poorest nations might want to get to the wealthier ones. There are problems all over Europe as well as in the USA. Boat people trying to reach Australia…. I said that myself at the start of this little set-to, and you seem to think that it MEANS something to your argument. All it means is that people want to live.
You mistake the case. If a thousand people set fire to the ship they’re on in the middle of the damned ocean, and I happen to have a 3 person boat nearby… *I* am not responsible for their deaths.
There is absolutely no reason to believe that there will be a global food shortage. Increased demand will raise prices which will result in increased food production.
Say that HERE and you’re simply trolling, yet I know YOU believe it and I have a hot news flash for you. Desertification, cat 5 typhoons, rising sealevels and lack of fresh water are headed our way. Globally. Every inch of the planet is being affected, every fish in the sea is being affected and YOU in your arrogance think that simply waving money at this problem will make it go away.
Nor is your link worth the time to refute it. I will point you at
http://www.realclimate.org
I don’t even have to look it up. You keep believing that nothing we do matters. I have a really keen idea for you. Let’s say you’re right, and a lot of the warming comes from solar insolation. Now lets ALSO consider the consequences of that warming. Pretty nasty. Now let’s look at what we can do about it. Big mirrors in space to make some shade? Too bad about the space program taking it in the guts to fund the damned vanity wars… that’s out. Here’s an idea. We can get rid of more of the heat if we don’t have so many greenhouse gases in the air. That’ll let us dump more of it back out into space. Do you see how it works? IT DOESN”T MATTER what pseudo-science you happen to follow, less CO2 is pretty nearly the ONLY thing that can possibly help us.
So.. given what the morons in Washington have done to Kyoto, I happen to be hoping for a good stiff global recession… and if Krondatiev is to be believed, we are about to get one.
I suggest we should agree to disagree on the topic of China. I was not referring to the “Great Leap Forward” but to the more pragmatic but controlled changes that came after that. You think that what is there now is pure Capitalism? Even now I can tell you that is not the case. There is actually no way for either of us to PROVE that the Communist regime did well or poorly in its efforts to lift them out of poverty, or that it was Capitalism alone that did the job. You wish to champion capitalism, I reckon it to have been a two stage rocket. I suggest however, that this will not be resolved by anyone… ever.
People in poor countries are dropping like flies.
OK… so what do you propose I do about it. Export New Zealand jobs and create unemployment in my country because they are slaves, or worse.
“In order for NZ to balance its trade it needs to do what it can to keep from importing stuff it doesn’t absolutely HAVE to import… like a pair of pants.�
Incorrect. Unless you plan on banning the export of trousers from New Zealand?
Because what would happen, of course, is that trousers would then be exported just as surely as any other product you care to mention, in exchange for imported goods.
So, with regard to your balance of trade worries, it matters not one jot whether or not New Zealanders are limited to making products which they don’t *have* to import.
Hardly incorrect. We will visit this again later too.
Do you want to balance trade or do you simply want to achieve laissez-faire free trade. I suspect the latter, but if you consider the tyranny of distance and the size of our market you will, IF YOU TRY TO ACTUALLY DO BUSINESS here, realize that you can’t make a profit exporting ANYTHING from this place. Milk and Cheese and Sheep… but stuff-all else. There’s always someone who can do it cheaper with better more direct access to a larger market. So you CAN do… films, software, a little niche hardware and whatever the government finds a way to support. Let the “market” dictate what we do here and we’ll ALL have to move to Oz and leave this place to the Maori and the sheep. “The invisible hand also kills”. Which is a big part of what happened to the Chinese.
The difference between race and national identity is very simple if you really need it explained to you… We live together, pay taxes together and suffer the same laws and fate together as a nation. We govern ourselves not foreign lands. That makes us a nation.
Race does not bring with it a social or civil organization. It does not bind people to a set of laws or subject them to taxes, or force them to live together, or suffer the same fate as a race…
Your concept of the effects of our CO2 habit is not as well informed as it should be. Consider that the last 6 interglacial periods had nothing to match the CO2 levels we’ve reached. That’s 6 major Milankovitch cycles driving the planet from Ice-Age to Ice-Age. Nothing like what we’re seeing shows up in the paleoclimatology.
Incidentally:
Khandekar - Member of “CoolerHeads”
CoolerHeads is Funded by Exxon-Mobil http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/personfactsheet.php?id=1115
Tim Ball - Member of “Tech Central Science Foundation
Tech Central is Funded by Exxon-Mobil
Now I have NEVER seen a credible explanation why all these climate scientists are so intent on “hoodwinking” the public. More to the point, I worked at NASA JPL with some of them for most of 8 years and I can tell you that the scientists are scared spitless. Several of them are moving up into the mountains to the north… I came to NZ. Maybe you think that the raw data is lying to all of us for some reason?
It seems however, that there is a good ECONOMIC reason why some climate scientists might be intent on hoodwinking us.
Check out realclimate.org. Don’t believe the 3 stooges.
You seem to be saying that a high level of trade is compatible with full local employment, but that the shock of an international crisis could create unemployment in participating economies.
If you say so then I guess it must seem so to you, but it is nothing like what I have said. What I said is that exporting jobs building cars, planes, microchips and DVD players doesn’t cost us anything because we CAN’T build them competitively and we can’t even come close. However, since we must IMPORT those things AND we have to balance our trade or suffer some nasty consequences (or are you one of those folks who reckons the bill will never come due and if it does we’ll just declare BK?) we have to do our damnedest to encourage what LOCAL production we can.
Economic growth cannot lift the other half of the world out of poverty. It can only plunge the entire world into darkness… some of the rubble might glow a bit in the dark, but it isn’t an endless source of wealth. Not if we run out of planet… and we are ALREADY running out of planet.
BJ
June 13th, 2006 at 12:48 pm
eredwin,
> “If you considered for a while you might realise that fastbike is not only intelligent and well informed, he is skilled in making his points clearly with minimal offence”
e.g. “Ah Yes … now I’d trust anything they said anyday - but - only with my tinfoil hat on…ROTFLOL” ?
I’m afraid it’s lost on me.
bjchip,
Good grief man. Pick the bones out of that or what. It’s just not possible to respond fully to such a rambling post.
Re global warming, have a look at http://www.climateaudit.org where the data and processing behind the infamous “hockeystick” chart from realclimate have been laboriously examined (in the face of stubborn resistance from the original authors). The result is nothing short of a scandal. Just one example: they found that the program that Mann wrote to process the data is biased such that it actually trawls for hockeystick shapes. Nine times out of ten the program will produce a hockeystick-shaped chart when fed *random* data. How could you not be interested? That’s the poster-child of the global warming scare and it’s scientifically worthless.
> “Desertification, cat 5 typhoons, rising sealevels and lack of fresh water are headed our way. Globally.”
You seem to think that the current climate is magically balanced at some optimum point and that any movement away from it *must* be negative; indeed, disastrous. This is an entirely fanciful notion on your part. The climate is always changing, sometimes dramatically and rapidly. There is nothing special about today’s climate, and absolutely no reason to believe that a warmer climate would, on balance, be any worse for humankind than today’s. Warmer, for example, implies more evaporation which implies more rainfall, not less.
None of which is to say that it is at all possible to discern an anthropogenic signal in any recent climate change. So far it’s just doing what it always does: change. The Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period occurred long before the internal combustion engine came along.
>”There is actually no way for either of us to PROVE that the Communist regime did well or poorly in its efforts to lift them out of poverty, or that it was Capitalism alone that did the job.”
What a strange statement. You mean the Communists did okay if we ignore the tens of millions of avoidable deaths? A curious way of looking at things, to be sure.
On the subject of trade, I said: “You seem to be saying that a high level of trade is compatible with full local employment, but that the shock of an international crisis could create unemployment in participating economies.”
To which you replied: “If you say so then I guess it must seem so to you, but it is nothing like what I have said”
In fact it’s *exactly* what you said:- “Increased foreign trade DOES give full employment if it is in balance. If it is NOT balanced it creates the conditions of market failure and economic collapse. Which THEN creates unemployment.”
It is very difficult to debate a proposition if you are going to flatly contradict yourself like that.
If you accept that increasing trade is entirely compatible with full employment (which it obviously is) then your objection about not wanting to “export New Zealand jobs and create unemployment in my country” is clearly worthless, so you can stop repeating it (and just what is a “New Zealand job” anyway?).
> “Race does not bring with it a social or civil organization. It does not bind people to a set of laws or subject them to taxes, or force them to live together, or suffer the same fate as a race…”
You’re not expounding a moral principle here, you’re appealing to what you perceive to be my naked self-interest. You imagine - wrongly - that trade is a zero sum game. You believe that for me to prosper others must live in poverty. This is nonsense, for the simple reason that wealth is created.
And I have to say it is an extremely unedifying picture you paint where, having convinced yourself that the world is coming to an end, you flee to NZ and try and pull up the drawbridge behind you so that you’re alright and screw everyone else. Charming.
June 13th, 2006 at 11:34 pm
Mouldwarp
You accuse me of rambling and now you drag in hockey sticks?
I have pointed you at realclimate several times now. The infamous hockey-stick has nothing to do with the FACT that there is ALREADY more CO2 in the atmosphere today than there has been in the past 6 interglacial periods. The hockey stick argument remains “alive” and the final word seems to be a long time in coming. I will refer you, ONCE AGAIN, to some relevant discussion of this issue.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/10/hockey-sticks-ro und-27/
You seem to think that the current climate is magically balanced at some optimum point and that any movement away from it *must* be negative; indeed, disastrous. This is an entirely fanciful notion on your part.
You have 6 billion people who are barely feeding themselves today. Lots of them are starving. Agriculture is running out of fresh water and pollution is claiming more than just the water. Change the rainfall patterns and global food production goes totally off the rails for a while. I am not assuming something “benign” about how it is, now, only that there is a hell of a lot of inertia in the system. Six billion people have inertia. How naive of me.
“Warmer” changes WHERE the rain falls. The little ice age and the medieval warm period… they destroyed farmland and killed people THEN. What happens if something like that occurs NOW? YES it changes. Never before, to our scientific knowledge, the way it is changing now. Go to realclimate and educate yourself.
With respect to China you seem to want to claim that only capitalism is to be credited with their accession to the economic power that they wield today. I disagree with your assessment. I don’t think it is strange at all. Sorry but I don’t think free market capitalism is the right answer to every question.
I said NOTHING about the “shock of an international crisis” and arguing with me by putting words in my mouth is liable to make me rather less polite with you. I pointed out that if trade is not balanced it will eventually cause collapse of our economy… or do you somehow think you can continue to get something for nothing forever? If it is not balanced we are buying on credit, and passing debt and trouble on to our kids. I won’t agree to that.
It is very difficult to debate ANY proposition with you, since you insist on changing words and meanings to suit your prejudices.
If you accept that increasing trade is entirely compatible with full employment (which it obviously is)
… But I don’t accept that JUST ANY increase in trade is compatible with full employment, I have stipulated SEVERAL times that it must be balanced and I have pointed out SEVERAL times that there are a great many things we cannot build here economically. I have repeated this in different ways and you still base your argument on this assumption.
You’re not expounding a moral principle here, you’re appealing to what you perceive to be my naked self-interest.
NO! I was responding to your assertion that nationalism or patriotism is the same as racism. That looking out for my fellow countrymen and countrywomen is the same as racism. I pointed out that your assertion is not correct. It still isn’t.
You imagine - wrongly - that trade is a zero sum game.
I do? Gee, I never knew I imagined THAT… I wonder why I didn’t know I imagined it? Maybe, just maybe, it is because I DIDN”T! I know very well that trade can benefit both parties… but I count the cost of the distance far dearer than you do, and I insist that trade be balanced… that is TRADE, not us buying everything we need from someone else on credit just cause they can make it cheaper than we can and nobody counts the shipping properly.
you flee to NZ and try and pull up the drawbridge behind you so that you’re alright and screw everyone else.
I have children. I feel sorry for them and the world that they will inherit. I feel sorry for EVERY child and every parent on the planet. I also have a hell of a time with lifeboat ethics, cause I feel sorry for them. That doesn’t mean that I am going to sell out MY children’s future. The idea that anything that I or NZ can do will alter the fate of the 3+ billion people I believe to be at risk, is not realistic. Trade? Sure we can, but not on credit.
Which means we have to sell THEM something of equal value or do without whatever it is they are flogging to us. Me, I want the heat pumps and A/C units and single board computers. I’ll have my wife sew me a pair of pants and save my foreign exchange for something I CAN’T get that way. Does THAT make it any clearer?
Right… Take it down to the family budget. We want a new computer and a pair of pants and food and heat and a wind turbine for electricity etc… etc…
I can raise food in the backyard, I can gather wood for heat, my wife can make me some pants… I HAVE to buy the turbine and the computer… they are beyond my manufacturing base. So should I spend my money buying pants and gas for my heater and peaches from California and grapes from Chile?
That’s what you seem to be saying… and you are real insistent about it too. I don’t agree.
BJ
June 14th, 2006 at 2:54 pm
bjchip,
> “there is ALREADY more CO2 in the atmosphere today than there has been in the past 6 interglacial periods”
Which is actually evidence *against* your warming theory, since this increase in CO2 does not correlate with climate change; therefore demonstrating the *irrelevance* of CO2 as a primary forcing agent. On the other hand, recent climate variation *does* correlate very strongly with changes in solar activity. See the graph and accompanying text on the following page:
http://www.dobmagazine.nickles.com/columns/pulse.asp?article=magazine% 2Fcolumns%2F060612%2FMAG_COL2006_UC0000.html
> “You have 6 billion people who are barely feeding themselves today.”
Well, maybe half that number actually. But not because they have bumped up against any natural limit, but because they live in countries which are economic basket cases.
Rather like the case of Communist China’s tens of millions of starvation deaths, or the recent famine in North Korea; the causes are purely political.
> “Agriculture is running out of fresh water and pollution is claiming more than just the water. ”
Water rights are obviously important, as is a proper pricing regime so that the resource is not squandered. But really you are just rehearsing the whole flawed Malthusian argument which does not allow for any technological progress. This makes you plain wrong. For example:-
“Cheap Drinking Water from the Ocean. Carbon nanotube-based membranes will dramatically cut the cost of desalination.”
http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?ch=nanotech&sc=&id=1 6977&pg=1
” South Africa Develops Revolutionary Solar Power Technology”
http://www.isarticle.com/Article/42526.html
These are just two of hundreds and thousands of constant advances in technology which totally invalidate your predictions.
> “I pointed out that if trade is not balanced it will eventually cause collapse of our economy… ”
This is a very profound misunderstanding, and one which seems to colour your whole outlook on trade. What exactly is the mechanism you have in mind? Note that debt is really a separate issue. If you want to talk about debt then say so, but it is certainly not implied in any discussion about mutually-beneficial international free trade.
> “Which means we have to sell THEM something of equal value or do without whatever it is they are flogging to us. Me, I want the heat pumps and A/C units and single board computers. I’ll have my wife sew me a pair of pants and save my foreign exchange for something I CAN’T get that way. Does THAT make it any clearer?”
Yes. It’s very clear now where the error lies. Your mistake is that you are overlooking the opportunity cost involved in making those pants.
The real cost of *anything* is what *could* have been done with the same time and resources.
As a hobby making your own clothes is fine, but as an economic proposition it is worthless.
For the same amount of time, if spent doing something you are trained and equipped for, you could earn enough money to at least buy pants *plus* a couple of shirts.
For the same reason, it makes no sense for any other worker in a highly productive “western” economy like New Zealand’s to spend time making pants when, for the same amount of time and effort, they can produce output of *much higher value* which can then be be traded.
And when it comes to the trade, you have to exchange something of equal value whether you’re buying stuff from a NZ national or a foreigner: The only difference is in your mind. The New Zealand dollar and the Chinese Renminbi are both foreign exchange as far as your household is concerned.
June 14th, 2006 at 10:55 pm
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/24/opinion/24easterbrook.html?ex=130612 3200&en=a4df3b808f1716da&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
You won’t listen to me. I have no idea why you continue to labour at this blog when you don’t want to understand what we’re talking about.
Do you really know how reverse-osmosis desalinization works. Have any idea of the pressures involved? How expensive the membranes the plumbing and the plant are, and how MUCH membrane is involved to make a meaningful dent in the water usage of a single farm? TechnologyReview is a forward looking mag, and I respect them, but half the stuff in there never gets past the scaling problems.
I posted a link to that SA solar panel myself, not 3 months ago. I remember it well enough.
Malthus didn’t reckon the timing well, but it is clearly, to me, happening. Right now it is slow motion desertification in the American midwest and the Australian wheat belt. I see fisheries overfished to the point that the stocks can’t replenish themselves even with a decade of “rest”. I see forest fires, and the pine beetle and the acidification of the ocean and the destruction of the rain forest and I know EXACTLY what technology can and can’t do.
The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.
“The real cost of *anything* is what *could* have been done with the same time and resources.
As a hobby making your own clothes is fine, but as an economic proposition it is worthless.”
Hardly worthless if I need pants. It saves me exactly the cost of those pants. Your calculation of “opportunity” cost presumes that there is something better than my wife might do, or that someone over in Cannon’s Creek who would really like a paying job but has damned few skills, can do. Be REALLY clear MW, I am not talking about moving skilled people from skilled to unskilled work. I am talking about moving unskilled people from no work to unskilled work. There are a lot of people hanging about this place who could use a steady job.
I do see your mistake. You are tacitly presuming that every worker in our modestly productive “Western” economy has the same abiliities, the same skills and can get the same training.
You know better than that if I put it this way, but you may not realize that your statement
For the same reason, it makes no sense for any other worker in a highly productive “western� economy like New Zealand’s to spend time making pants
….does carry that implication. I wonder what goods and/or services you really think we CAN produce at a profit, given the distance and the market size. That’s a serious question. I have a real short list. Software, Movies, niche-market tech. some agricultural produce that doesn’t spoil when it is shipped (as prices rise around the world). Make your own list and then ask yourself what percentage of the population is able to compete on a global level in any of them.
Finally you didn’t quite get why I took it down to the household level. My FAMILY is an economic unit. My COUNTRY is an economic unit. If my wife sews me a pair of pants and I reward her in some way, that stays inside the family.
If I buy a pair of pants from Mrs Lee down the street instead of Mr Lee in Hong Kong, the money stays inside the country.
I was comparing the two economic units, I was not mixing them together. I should’ve said that.
I would really REALLY appreciate it if you would go to realclimate and READ. It’ll take you a week to get through the site, and some of the information is pretty dense, but it might help you to know how the debate is actually shaping up out there.
Thanks
BJ
June 15th, 2006 at 9:03 am
Good link BJ
I heard Gregg Easterbrook interviewed on National Radio last night.
http://radionz.co.nz/audio/national/ngts/global_warming.
Interesting. But I’m sure our fungal-friend would have some problem with that too.
June 15th, 2006 at 1:03 pm
I was going to post about Easterbrook today, fastbike, but the Nights part of RNZ’s website seems to be broken, and your link no longer works:(
June 15th, 2006 at 4:00 pm
bjchip,
> “if I need pants. It saves me exactly the cost of those pants. Your calculation of “opportunityâ€? cost presumes that there is something better than my wife might do…If my wife sews me a pair of pants and I reward her in some way, that stays inside the family.”
And if your computer programmer son stays at home and makes you some pants, that also “stays inside the family”: Which just leaves the question of the several hundred dollars he *could* have brought into the family if he’d traded his skills.
You see, we’re talking about an economic principle here, not the merits of any particular example that you have in mind.
The market mechanism reveals where workers and resources can be most profitably used, not some central planner with a “real short list” of what he thinks is most appropriate. If making pants is the most profitable, you can be sure that that’s where the resources will flow.
> “If I buy a pair of pants from Mrs Lee down the street instead of Mr Lee in Hong Kong, the money stays inside the country.”
Buy your trousers wherever you like, but don’t imagine that having the money “stay inside the country” is a net benefit.
If you get better value from Hong Kong then buy from there: you get cheap pants and Hong Kong gets NZ$50. But what are *they* going to do with that money if not spend it back in NZ? Maybe Mrs Lee won’t get that particular NZ$50 when it is spent here, but another Kiwi will (one who, just because he or she doesn’t have a name in this fable, is no less important than Mrs Lee).
And the money you saved by buying from Hong Kong? Where are you going to spend that bonus?
> “I do see your mistake. You are tacitly presuming that every worker in our modestly productive “Westernâ€? economy has the same abiliities, the same skills and can get the same training.”
There is no such assumption. A “western” economy is highly productive compared to a third-world one. There are a number of reasons for this, but there is absolutely no suggestion that “every worker…has the same abilities” etc. All it means is that output of much higher value is being created by a much larger proportion of the workforce. Even unskilled workers are relatively productive in such an economy, due, for example, to the fact that their workplaces can have a lot of capital invested in equipment.
> “I wonder what goods and/or services you really think we CAN produce at a profit, given the distance and the market size…Make your own list and then ask yourself what percentage of the population is able to compete on a global level in any of them.”
In fact, a vast range of things *could* be produced and exported at a profit; even pants. The *real* question is what salary could be afforded to the workers such that a worthwhile profit could still be returned.
After all, countries with low productivity are still able to export to the highly productive ones, it’s just that their very low output levels only allow a pittance of a salary to be paid (note that it’s their productivity level that makes them dirt poor, not the fact that they’re engaging in mutually profitable trade).
NZ’s remoteness - clearly something of concern to you - has the same impact on trade as a tariff: it is simply a cost that has to be factored in when deciding on the profitability of any particular transaction.
As for the global warming thing, I have been to realclimate many times; but I have also been to sites which provide important contrary evidence and which put recent climate change into much needed context.
Realclimate are cheerleaders for the whole global warming story. More than that, their own scientific analyses have been exposed as fatally flawed in a number of ways. Sadly, their response has been one of continual evasion and defensiveness.
Clearly you have an enormous emotional commitment to the whole global warming alarm; after all, it brought you half way around the world. But if you genuinely have an objective interest in the facts you really should examine climateaudit.org.
They mostly examine statistical studies and have demonstrated a large number of glaring errors in the original hockeystick and many other studies. You can judge the quality of their work for yourself. It is very robust. But they are currently quoting the following paragraphs about Al Gore’s little movie:-
‘Gore repeatedly labels carbon dioxide as “global warming pollution” when, in reality, it is no more pollution than is oxygen. CO2 is plant food, an ingredient essential for photosynthesis without which Earth would be a lifeless, frozen ice ball. The hypothesis that human release of CO2 is a major contributor to global warming is just that — an unproven hypothesis, against which evidence is increasingly mounting.
In fact, the correlation between CO2 and temperature that Gore speaks about so confidently is simply non-existent over all meaningful time scales. U of O climate researcher Professor Jan Veizer demonstrated that, over geologic time, the two are not linked at all. Over the intermediate time scales Gore focuses on, the ice cores show that CO2 increases don’t precede, and therefore don’t cause, warming. Rather, they follow temperature rise — by as much as 800 years. Even in the past century, the correlation is poor; the planet actually cooled between 1940 and 1980, when human emissions of CO2 were rising at the fastest rate in our history.
Similarly, the fact that water vapour constitutes 95% of greenhouse gases by volume is conveniently ignored by Gore. While humanity’s three billion tonnes (gigatonnes, or GT) per year net contribution to the atmosphere’s CO2 load appears large on a human scale, it is actually less than half of 1% of the atmosphere’s total CO2 content (750-830 GT). The CO2 emissions of our civilization are also dwarfed by the 210 GT/year emissions of the gas from Earth’s oceans and land. Perhaps even more significant is the fact that the uncertainty in the measurement of atmospheric CO2 content is 80 GT — making three GT seem hardly worth mentioning.
:
:
Scientists who actually work in these fields [of atmospheric physics] flatly contradict Gore. Take his allegations that extreme weather (EW) events will increase in frequency and severity as the world warms and that this is already happening. Former professor of climatology at the University of Winnipeg Dr. Tim Ball notes, “The theories that Gore supports indicate the greatest warming will be in polar regions. Therefore, the temperature contrast with warmer regions — the driver of extreme weather — will lessen and, with it, storm potential will lessen.”‘
June 16th, 2006 at 10:45 am
MW,
it looks like your worldview finds any negotiated international agreements and policies to deal with greenhouse gas emissions a problem. Who knows why
Maybe you’d rather trust “free market” principles than the work of scientists. It appears this has coloured your thinking and attitude towards the problem, including the scientific aspects - so you’ll seek out the contrarians to justify your views. Fine - that’s your prerogative in our free world. It doesn’t mean that other people can’t hold opposing views without being attacked personally (just re-read some of your earlier posts if you think I’m being harsh).
There is an ongoing organised PR campaign to dispute climate change science using very sophisticated tactics, in the US, and which has now spilled over into other countries including Canada (seen as a soft touch) and now NZ.
Much of the contrarians have now conceded the science cannot be challenged so the next phase of their campaign is to raise politically, philosophically and economically motivated concerns. While not necessarily a bad thing it influences the types of arguments used and thus diverts attention away from the core science and ideas for mitigation/adaption.
Thus the contrarians raise the “it’ll be bad for business” type arguments, while ignoring savings to be made from efficiency gains and the warnings of economic loss from the reinsurance industry. And the world wastes valuable time that could be used to implement cost effective solutions - now.
June 16th, 2006 at 3:53 pm
fastbike,
> “Maybe you’d rather trust “free marketâ€? principles than the work of scientists.”
The two are not contradictory. If CO2 is a problem then market principles would be the obvious way of tackling it, via a carbon tax for example. The question is whether CO2 is actually a problem or not.
> “you’ll seek out the contrarians to justify your views.”
The obvious retort is that believers such as yourself seek out sources in turn which confirm your own opinions.
The defence you present simply consists of dismissing the sceptical case as being nothing but a negative PR campaign - a defence which, in the absence of anything more substantial on your part, is no better than that which you accuse others of.
With *any* scientific theory it is the *contrary* evidence which is most important. If you don’t *know* what the contrary evidence is in this case, and you haven’t been able to discount it for sound scientific reasons, then you are just another cheerleader running a PR campaign of your own.
Do you, for example, maintain that the infamous “hockeystick” chart is an accurate depiction of recent climate change? Have you examined the contrary evidence at climateaudit.org? What would be the significance for your position if the chart is shown to be significantly flawed? (and how!)
Do you dispute the figure for the insignificance of the anthropogenic contribution to total CO2 levels? Do you dispute that CO2 itself is just a very tiny contributor to the natural (and essential) greenhouse effect?
Do you disagree that there will be benefits and problems associated with any climate change (natural or otherwise)?
Do you dispute that the long-term historical supposed correlation of CO2 and climate actually demonstrates that climate change *preceded* changes in levels of atmospheric CO2 (due to the fact that warmer oceans don’t hold so much CO2)?
Given very recent events like the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age, what is different or alarming about the recent climate?
Why aren’t the three decades of cooling after 1940 - at a time of unprecedented industrialisation and rapidly increasing anthropogenic CO2 emissions - evidence *against* your theory? Why isn’t this total lack of correlation of concern to you? Why isn’t the almost lock-step correlation between recent climate variation and solar activity of interest to you?
Unless you can answer these, and other, questions fully you have no case - just what you might call a sophisticated negative PR campaign.
June 17th, 2006 at 1:30 am
Mouldwarp = Troll
Sorry… I am tired of pouring actual information into the black hole of mouldwarp. You go further at your own risk.
Do you maintain that the infamous hockeystick…”
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2005/2004GL021750.shtml
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=121
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/02/a-newtake-on-an- old-millennium/#more-253
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=114
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=199
… and indeed I have examined “climateaudit.org” apparently McIntyre is trying to take on the world alone…
That is, in scientific terms, the end of your hockey stick argument. There isn’t any damned signiifcance to whatever you read last night that was written a decade ago.
Do you dispute the figure for the insignificance of the anthropogenic contribution to total CO2 levels?
Maybe you should ponder the SIGNIFICANCE of the contribution in terms of the flow of heat and the flow of heat on the thermal balance of the planet. It doesn’t take a lot of change to make a difference. Nor is 55 megatons a day insignificant if it continues year on year, the effect is cumulative.
How much is OUR doing?
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/06/how-much-of-the- recent-cosub2sub-increase-is-due-to-human-activities/
Volcanoes *a common red herring, about 0.15 Gt/yr carbon vs anthropogenic emissions o about 7 Gt/year of human related sources) .
Do you dispute that CO2 itself is just a very tiny contributor to the natural (and essential) greenhouse effect?
As pointed out earlier, it doesn’t HAVE to be large if it is continuous. This is entirely irrelevant.
Climate change from a glacial to an interglacial is the wrong place to look for an understanding of how things work DURING an interglacial. We all know and understand that the climate has changed significantly before we started mucking about with it. The question at hand is how our mucking about changes the way the climate changes. Since the transition is usually several THOUSAND years, the CO2 being released at the start of the transition (the first 800 years) is CO2 that is released as a result of warming.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/co2-in-ice-cores /
You see we all KNOW that the climate is subject to many different forcing functions… CO2 is only one of them. One of the others, quite possibly solar, starts the process of transition from Ice-Age to interglacial. There’s several questions surrounding that process (like where DOES the CO2 come from when things warm up, the ocean IS one theory). The problem is that CO2 level we’ve been mucking about with is the one that was the “already warm” state of the normal balance, and we’ve pushed it past any level seen in 650 K-years.
Do you deny that additional CO2 causes more heat to be trapped?
Medieval Warm Period:
The MWP was not apparently as global an event as the LIA, though it certainly appears to have affected Northern Europe. Whatever can this mean, and what caused the subsequent “Little Ice Age” both of which are relatively meaningless in terms of the climate changes we are arguing about, but I want to leave no rock in your head unbroken (told you I’m out of patience with your nonsense).
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=11#myth2
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/070.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age
Solar Forcing - What lock step are you describing? :
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/08/did-the-sun-hit- record-highs-over-the-last-few-decades/
Veizer’s Cosmic Rays :
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/05/on-veizers-celes tial-climate-driver/
The point of all this is not to deny that there is a Solar Contribution to climate. Even if it was ALL Solar, or maybe little g