The New Health Fixation

In the 1990s, Tony Blair introduced the catchphrase “education, education, education”. Having overdosed on banal managerial writers like Anthony Giddens and Charles Handy, Blair simplistically believed education was the answer to solving problems like economic inequality and low productivity.

The fixation on education of course hasn’t really worked and the West’s attention deficit democracies have moved onto other political fixations. Today the new focus for centrist progressives is health spending. With the baby-boomer generation soon eligible for pensions, the health conscious elderly represent the prize demographic for political strategists.

New Zealand’s Labour government discovered this recently when they put public money forward for an ambitious sports stadium in Auckland. In opinion polls across the country there was strong opposition from voters who preferred to see the money spent on reducing hospital waiting lists rather than sports.

The new emphasis on health presents problems for the National party, which has traditionally been seen as the fiscally conservative party.

Socially conservative voters who usually vote for National may now end up voting for Labour if it continues with its relatively generous funding of the health sector.

National could respond by increasing health spending and reducing investment in areas like tertiary education. However, that could encourage more graduates to leave the country and undermine the nation’s tax base. National also has to face the prospect of a growing Maori, Polynesian and South-Asian population, which overwhelmingly backs Labour.

The big loser in the new funding priorities is likely to be long-term investment, which can be seen in the lack of government investment in savings incentives and research and development funding. With an aging population, and a neo-liberal economic orthodoxy still in ascendency, the main political parties are likely to continue with a short-term approach to economic problems.

The Labour’s government myopic focus on social spending is highlighted by commentator Colin James:

“Helen Clark’s government is fond of strategies. But is it strategic?Look at its new-spending in the 2006 Budget: of the $2.2 billion new operating in the 2006 new operating spending, mostly on health, education and “working families”, $25 million goes to research, science and technology. Fixing up old people certainly gives them higher quality of life. But it says nothing about how today’s young are to have the higher incomes to pay for the care of the old in the future”.

Although National’s Bill English has tentatively talked about mending the relationship between National and the scientific community, the arrival of the "Cameronesque" John Key, who appears to be more concerned with public image than development, does not bode well for those concerned with the country’s long-term economic prospects.

Another Good Finnish Blog Disappears

A few months back there was a spot of blogosphere controversy when a popular Finnish blogger abruptly closed his blog 16 Volts -apparently because of political pressure from the university at which he worked.

The bemusing epitaph to 16 Volts is still accessible here.

Another good Finnish blog called Desire to Conserve also appears to have closed down, just a few months after its on-line launch.

If I am mistaken and Desire to Conserve has moved then I would like to know the new address so I can provide a link.

Refugees or Economic Migrants?

In a feature article in this Saturday’s Press it is revealed that half of Christchurch’s Somalian refugees have left the city and moved to Australia.

The Press states that over half of the Somalian community of 800, which peaked in the 1990s, has now left Christchurch to seek “opportunities in Australia”.

I would have thought that refugees, who are supposedly coming to New Zealand because they are in fear of their lives, would be more concerned with cementing their legal status in New Zealand than in seeking economic opportunities in Australia.

Refugees from Afghanistan have now replaced Somalians as the largest refugee group in Christchurch and currently number about 730.

The movement of refugees from New Zealand to Australia raises a number of questions about New Zealand’s immigration policy:

Why is New Zealand letting in immigrants from third world countries if there aren’t suitable jobs for them?

How is the government distinguishing between refugees in physical danger, and opportunistic economic migrants?

Is New Zealand seen as a soft touch for economic migrants trying to get into Australia?

And finally, why is this important issue mentioned in passing in a PR piece entitled “Ethnic enrichment,” rather than in the hard news pages.

Genetics and Health

Last weekends’ Press has a large feature article, "The Health Gap", which addreses the topic of Maori health statistics. The article outlines numerous instances in which Maori health outcomes are significantly worse than those for European New Zealanders.

However, nowhere in the several thousand-word article is the word genetics mentioned. For example, it is stated that “half of all Maori are smokers compared with one in five non-Maori”, yet no reference is made to recent studies that suggest Maori may have a genetic predisposition to smoking.

High Maori smoking statistics are put down to the “stresses” of poverty and “lifestyle choices”.

In the case of smoking, there is a good argument that central government should be doing more to help Maori overcome smoking addictions. Smokers pay heavy compensatory taxes to the rest of society and low income Maori would be better off medically and financially if they weren’t spending so much on cigarettes.

The author also states that Maori children are twice as likely to be obese as Caucasian children. There is a lot of evidence that people of Polynesian origin tend to have heavier builds and slower metabolisms, which strongly predisposes them to obesity. A predisposition to obesity also means that Maori are more prone to obesity related illnesses like diabetes and heart attacks -so why isn’t this mentioned in the article?

It is also pointed out that Maori have higher rates of certain types of cancer, such as gall bladder cancer.

The problem with glossing over genetic factors in health statistics is that it tends to increase political divisions without improving health outcomes. From a right-liberal perspective it appears that Maori are choosing to be overweight, smokers who have a blasé attitude to cancer. Conversely, from a left-liberal perspective Maori appear to be victims of a prejudiced health system.

The media message seems to be that Maori health problems are mainly due to bad lifestyle choices and that in any case Maori are unlikely to receive optimum care because the medical system is riddled with institutional racism.

Consequently, it is hardly surprising that many Maori have a chip on their shoulder about visiting a doctor – nobody likes to receive a morale sermon from somebody they don’t think is competent or doesn't care about their patients.

Certainly educational/intelligence levels also play a part in health care. People who are more persistent, more compliant and more knowledgeable are likely to get better value from public health systems.

Given that there are relatively few Maori doctors and that Maori have less confidence in western science than Caucasians and Asians, Maori people are less likely to receive optimum care in some situations.

However, if both doctors and patients are made aware of genetic differences in medicine, then doctors will be able to provide more focused care and patients from minority backgrounds will have a better idea about their specific health needs.

Us versus Us

In commentating on the war in Iraq, Lawrence Auster (see here) highlights one of the fundamental problems that right liberals have in fighting wars.

In right-liberal ideology, all people are seen as rationale individuals who have the some core values. Therefore when a right-liberal country like the US invades another country, the invasion must be portrayed as an act of liberation.

In the case of Iraq, the US neoconservatives see themselves as liberating the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein’s oppressive dictatorship. However, this presents considerable difficulties when the majority of the population do not have the same values as those of the occupying country.

Instead of being seen as enemies, Iraqi’s attacking US troops must be treated as criminal suspects who have the same rights as American criminal suspects. Mr Auster points out the absurdity of such thinking with the following hypothetical situation:

"Sarge, I’ve got a clear shot at the Al Qaeda guys in that house who fired an RPG at our convoy, can I hit them?" "wait a sec, I’ll just ask my JAG…Nope, she says we can’t do it".

The liberal argument that "every ones the same underneath" has been used by Marxist guerrillas in the developing world for the over 60 years. The arms dealer character in Lord of War comments that in third world countries the military factions with the most virtuous names often have the bloodiest reputations. Violent revolutionaries often try to justify their motives by denying their hatred of their opponents and claiming the moral high ground through phrases like “people’s liberation army”.

The fact is that different groups of people have different values and this is one of the reasons why warfare is such a bloody business. An ideology of sameness can be just as destructive as a supremacist ideology like fascism.

That’s why real conservatives only advocate war when an aggressive "them", is a direct threat to the different "us".

Blogging and Donations

Entertaining conservative ranter Udolpho comments here on the subject of blogging and donations. He argues that few conservative bloggers are sufficiently productive or intelligent to enough to warrant adding a donations option to their weblogs.

Udolpho states that Steve Sailer is probably the only non-mainstream conservative blogger who deserves to make money from blogging.

Personally though, I think that’s a somewhat negative assessment of the quality of conservative weblogs coming out of the US.

Other conservative bloggers such as Parapundit and Eunomia may not write as engagingly as Sailer but the quality of their analysis is certainly in the same league. Indeed, Sailer himself has acknowledged that he isn’t necessarily the smartest man on the Internet even though he is undoubtedly one of the most entertaining and probing.

If bloggers such as Parapundit and Eunomia wished to add a Pay Pal to their sites it would hardly make them the laughing stock of the blogosphere.

A possible reason why a number of talented bloggers don’t ask for donations is because the number of people willing and able to make donations is rather limited. The traffic gap between top mainstream bloggers like Instapundit and leading politically incorrect bloggers like Steve Sailer is (unfortunately) massive and unlikely to narrow much in the present political climate.

“The blogosphere” (God I hate that word, can anybody come up with something better) is still in its infancy and if a large number of bloggers asked for donations then the money might be spread too thinly for leading non-mainstream bloggers like Sailer to make a modest income.

Not only are blogger’s like Sailer important in their own right, but they also provide vital links to other “edgy” sites that would otherwise be starved of the “oxygen of publicity”.

Furthermore, there are many bloggers, who, while not in the same league as the best US bloggers, may still be the best blogger in their country or are a de facto leader in a particular field.

If a blogger of moderate ability happens to be covering important issues that other bloggers aren’t then why shouldn’t they ask for donations? - Good luck to em’ I say.

The Press on Asian Immigration

A recent editorial in Christchurch's Press (Saturday, December 9, A21) highlights the wishful thinking and hypocrisy that typifies mainstream media views about immigration in New Zealand.

The latest national census figures indicate that Asians now make up 9.2 percent of the population, up from 5.1 percent in 2001. Unfortunately, the Press does not specify what percentages of Asian immigrants are South Asians and East Asians. Anyone interested in obtaining such information will have to untangle it from official statistics.

Nevertheless, this is an extraordinary rapid increase and unless stricter restrictions are placed on Asian immigration, Orientals and South Asians could become numerically dominant before 2050.

The Press editorial states that "New Zealand’s way of life must be preserved" without acknowledging that the country's "way of life" was established by and for European immigrants.
Once New Zealander’s of European descent cease to be numerically dominant then the New Zealand way of life will change change and nobody really knows what it will change into.

The "Kiwi lifestyle", which the Press claims is the main reason why immigrants come to New Zealand, is in many respects the same lifestyle enjoyed by people of European origin in North American and Australia.

It is build around a high wage/cheap land relationship, which is unique to societies established by North Europeans.

Unfortunately, for many working and lower middle class New Zealanders of European and Maori descent the “kiwi lifestyle” is already under threat. Increasing house prices and stagnating wages are being reflected in declining home ownership and escalating personal debt.

Whether Asian immigration is the primary reason for this situation is open to debate, but it certainly hasn’t done anything to alleviate it.

Although Australia also has a problem with surging land prices it still offers high wages and the chance to save for retirement. Subsequently, a steady stream of disgruntled New Zealanders are heading across the Tasman on a permanent basis.

The editor of the Press also states:

“As a nation which has agreed to accept migrants from different societies, New Zealanders must do far more to make them welcome when they arrive. And this includes doing all possible to ensure that they can get a job using the qualifications they have bought with them”.

In the United States, where East Asians are a smaller and slower growing segment of the population, they are seen as enterprising self–starters who make a valuable contribution in areas like scientific research and IT.

In New Zealand, the liberal-right argues if a little Asian immigration good for the US, then a lot of Asian immigration will be great for NZ. Hence, white New Zealanders, who are already burdened by an economically under performing Polynesian population, are expected to go out of their way to help middle-class East Asian immigrants with high IQs and numerate degrees.

Given that East Asian immigrants have, on average, higher IQs than European New Zealanders, it is they who should be providing us with jobs not the other way round.

Of course for an increasing number of wealthy whites that live off property rather than wages, the quality of life of the average citizen isn’t important, and it is the former who seem to be driving immigration policy.

Some Thoughts on Contemporary Liberal Decadence

As I stated in a previous post on Christianity and liberalism, modern liberal excess is probably due to a combination of ideology and material factors such as economic affluence and global overpopulation.

Material affluence of course leads to the old “bread and circuses” problem that plagued the Roman Empire.

It also provides a means whereby the unproductive can gain power at the expense of the productive, creating a society of “too many chiefs and not enough Indians” - a problem recognised by early 20th century social scientists like Therstein Veblen.

However, modern industrialised countries have added a new twist on the affluence equals decadence relationship - credit driven consumption. The modern consumption economy is not just an ad hoc tool for distracting the masses and winning public favour, but a scientifically developed system that exploits human quirks and weaknesses for profit maximisation.

In contemporary society marketing executives know more about human nature than most university academics.

Global overpopulation reduces the value of labour and puts pressure on lightly populated countries to import labour instead of increasing productivity or shifting people into more productive roles. This is something that early liberals like Voltaire and David Ricardo openly acknowledged, but which most modern liberals ignore.

With most of the world overpopulated, and a small number of developed countries experiencing population aging, an increasing number of people in the West have an incentive to adopt a rentier lifestyle, and import a new working class to service their needs.

This makes the protestant of values of hard work and delayed gratification largley redundant.

Since the late 1960s, the 200-year alliance between enlightenment liberalism and scientific empiricism has also come unhinged as liberalism has exploited the material abundance created by science to promote utopian social goals and justify an increasingly self-serving state bureaucracy.

At the same time, secular humanists have ignored scientific findings that don’t support the egalitarian tenants of modern liberal politics.

The uneasy relationship between scientific empiricism and modern liberalism can be seen in the 150-year-old clash between Darwin and Marx, which has re-ignited in the last 12 years.

Advances in genetic science, evolutionary psychology and psychometrics are undermining many of the assumptions of 20th Century liberalism at the same time that liberals are criticising Christian conservatives for denying Darwinian evolution (on the later point see Steve Sailer's article here)

The liberal establishment has thus done a good job of using empirical science to attack its opponents while deflecting scientific attacks on its own world-view.

However, it is becoming increasingly difficult for the liberal establishment to deflect scientific criticism as new scientific findings are being confirmed from a number of different sources.

The Internet is also providing an a means by which controversial findings can be publicised without the risk of censorship

The increasing failure of late-liberal policies in education, welfare, immigration and law and order is also undermining the general public’s willingness to provide funding for the liberal state.

Despite increasing problems at the social level , and serious long-term economic worries, modern liberal societies still have a lot of accumulated wealth that has been built up over the preceding 200 years of industrialisation.

This largesse insures that the majority of the population still enjoys a high level of material affluence.

Hence in today's economic climate, conservative critics of modern liberalism come across like the boy who cried wolf in Aesop's fables.

Western states are unlikely to make a decision break with liberal excess until they are directly threatened with serious social and economic disruption.

Christianity and Liberalism

On the “white nationalist” website Majority Rights there appears to be a lot of opposition to Christianity with the religious right in the US, for example, being blamed for the expansive immigration policies of the Bush administration.

In white nationalist circles the logic seems to be that Christianity spawned enlightenment liberalism, which in turn led to the excesses of modern liberalism, therefore the end of Christianity will lead to the end of contemporary liberalism

The French nouvelle droite intellectual Alain de Benoist blames Christianity for the rise of the modern liberal right in the United States and believes that a new post-modern conservatism can be developed from paganism.

The connection between Christianity and liberalism though, is far from clear cut.

In the United States there does appear to be a strong connection between right-liberalism and Calvinism, although the country’s staunchest economic libertarians are generally atheists.

However, in socially liberal European countries such as Sweden belief in Christianity is much weaker.

Catholic countries such as Italy and Chile further complicate the picture, since they tend to be more socially conservative than north European states and have a lukewarm view of economic liberalism.

Hence it appears that Christianity acts on a break on social liberalism, while sometimes promoting economic liberalism.

This perhaps explains why a socially conservative country like the US can also be the world’s leading exporter of pornography.

Given the strength of social liberalism in post-Christian North Europe though I find it hard to see why adopting paganism will lead to a revival of euro-centric nationalism.

While Christianity has often been allied with aspects of liberalism there has also been a strong counter-liberal Christian tradition. Edwardian Christian's like Chesterton and Henry George promoted intellectual common sense to counter rational utopianism.

In Australia and New Zealand for example, the popularity of the land tax movement gave governments the mandate to break up land monopolies and promote a landowning middle-class hostile to urban socialism.

Today Christian “common sense” opposition to liberalism has a growing presence on the blogosphere.

It has also influenced “post-liberal” thinkers like the British academic John Gray.

If Christianity isn’t the primary factor behind the excesses of modern liberalism then what is?

Three other possible factors are: global overpopulation, material affluence and the growing division between liberal ideology and western scientific empiricism.

Critics of modern liberalism probably need to focus more on how these and other important factors interact to create the excesses of modern liberalism.

White nationalists who blame liberal excess on Christianity are putting too much emphasis on the power of ideas. Religion is more a method of coping with conditions rather than a primary determinant of conditions. Considering white nationalists believe that biology is one of the main factors in determining human affairs, it is ironic that they are so concerned about the influence of Christianity.

Tonga's "World on Fire"

The recent riots in Tonga highlight the dangers of liberal immigration policies in non-democratic states. In the recent rioting eight Chinese immigrants have been killed and large sections of the capital, Nuku 'alofa, burnt down by elements of the native Tongan population.

According to the Taipei Times, over 1000 Chinese took refuge in police stations and The Chinese Embassy from the rioters. This unrest follows rioting against Chinese immigrants in the Solomon Islands capital Honiara. However, it the first time that such violence has been seen in a Polynesian city.

Although low-level corruption is a prominent feature of Polynesian politics, ethnic violence represents a new and disturbing development.

Over the last decade the Chinese population in Tonga has grown rapidly and Chinese businessmen now own 72 percent of businesses in Nuku 'alofa. On this poor island state, where the main source of income is remittance money from New Zealand and Australia, there is considerable resentment against highly successful Chinese immigrants.

The dangers associated with economically successful East Asians moving into economically backward states are highlighted in Amy Chua’s best selling book World on Fire. In the case of Tonga, the recent surge in Chinese immigration has been promoted by certain members of the Tongan Royal Family who are desperate to attract foreign investment into the near bankrupt country.

However, since Tonga is a non-democratic monarchy, ethnic Tongans have been unable to voice their growing unease at the rapid pace of Chinese immigration. Subsequently, this resentment has exploded in the form of serious rioting, and the resulting destruction will only add to the country’s economic woes.

As Chinese immigration has increased, native Tongans have become increasingly angry that Chinese merchants have bought in Chinese labourers to do labouring work instead of employing locals. Unfortunately though, in countries with corrupt unstable governments such clannishness is par for the course, since people can only trust those with which they have strong informal ties.

In New Zealand, the liberal left often criticises New Zealand First for tapping into popular discontent with expansive immigration policies - particularly when this discontent is reflected in opinion polls.

However, it doesn’t seem to dawn on these critics that “populist” parties like New Zealand First provide a barometer for the government to gauge the public’s mood over immigration. This allows the state to temper its policies and avoid the kind of ethnic conflict that is occurring in the South Pacific.

New Zealand First’s strong showing in the 2002 election directly influenced the Government’s decision to temporarily reduce immigrant intakes and set tougher English language requirements for perspective Asian immigrants.

Martim Hames on Winston Peters

I’ve just been reading Martin Hames 1995 book on Winston Peters, Winston First. Although the book is written from a neoconservative perspective in which Hames, rightly or wrongly, dismisses Peters as an irresponsible populist, the book does show the noticeable pro-immigration bias in New Zealand’s media.

Hames argues that from 1984-1990 Winston Peters had a very cosy relationship with the country’s media. Almost all Peter’s numerous corruption allegations were taken seriously by the media even though a number clearly lacked substance. By 1990 Peters was riding high in the opinion polls and looked to be a serious contender for the National Party leadership.

However, after 1993 Peters’ relationship with the press took a nose-dive when he began to criticise immigration policy. National’s radical decision to open up immigration to wealthy East Asians in the early 1990s initially failed to attract much media attention. However, once Peters began making outspoken comments about Asian immigration the media turned the subject into a liberal morality play in which he was cast as an evil “right-wing populist” and “anti-immigrant”.

The use of the term “anti-immigrant” is a clear example of media bias since a more accurate and neutral term for someone wanting to reduce immigration would be a limited immigration supporter. You can only call someone an “anti-immigrant” if they advocate widespread repatriation of immigrants or discriminatory policies against immigrants that have already been allowed in the country.

The national media’s penchant for emotive terms on immigration issues is highlighted by conservative journalist Ian Wishart, who mentions an example of an immigration opinion poll (see here) by a leading New Zealand newspaper that deliberately led interviewees with loaded terms - ignoring one of the key rules in conducting opinion polls – that questions are phrased in neutral terms.

Today Peters can hardly manage to conduct a one-minute interview without losing his temper at the media. Although his skills and patience with the media appear to be waning as he ages, it is likely that at least some of his contempt for the media is due to the mauling he has received over immigration.

After his Orewa speech earlier this year, National leader Don Brash attracted unwarranted media criticism for stating, not unreasonably, that perspective immigrants adhere to “enlightenment values”. On Television One, 'nice but dim' Susan Wood, looked at Brash like he was some sort of war criminal as she demanded that he explain himself for his insolent remark.

As the Australian media tentatively begins to talk about immigration in a less biased manner it will be interesting to see if the New Zealand media will follow their lead.

Climate Change and China

In a Southland community newspaper Invercargill MP Eric Roy highlights one of the crucial flaws in the Kyoto protocol - its failure to take account of industrial pollution in China.

Since 1990, Southland’s Tiwai Point Aluminium Smelter has managed to reduce its CO2 emissions by 40 percent. As Mr Roy points out:

“For every ton of aluminium that is produced there is two tons of greenhouse gases, but in China it is eight and half tons of greenhouse gases per ton (of aluminium produced) ” .

He then states that: “In the last 15 years China has opened 15 new smelters”.

In New Zealand, many on the left believe that the Tiwai smelter should be closed so that emissions can be reduced to 1990 levels. It doesn’t seem to dawn on these softheaded do-gooders that closing the smelter would actually lead to increased CO2 emissions at the global level.

Population growth and easy credit that are the main factors behind New Zealand’s increasing CO2 emissions, not industrial activity. Either rapidly developing countries should be compelled to comply with the Kyoto Protocol, or it should be replaced with something else.

At present all it seems to be doing is accelerating western de-industrialisation.

Binge-Drinking Culture

Northern Europeans has long had a penchant for binge-drinking.

Whereas Southern Europeans tend to be bought up to drink alcohol in moderation, North Europeans have long preferred to bloater themselves on pints of beer before stumbling home to await the next morning’s hangover.

To people of North European origin, food takes up valuable stomach space that could be productively filled with Guinness or Lager.

Scientific studies are now showing that Mediterranean people may well have genetic traits that make less prone to binge-drinking, since alcohol has been widely available in the region for thousands of years.

Since the late 18th century, North European countries have applied heavy taxes on alcohol to control drunkenness, which reached its most infamous excesses in England during the era of ultra-cheap gin, depicted in Hogarth paintings.

Subsequently, Anglo-Celtic colonies like New Zealand and Canada have long had strong temperance movements and strict government regulations on the use of alcohol.

In 1999 New Zealand’s socially liberal Labour Government decided to lower the drinking age to 18. However 7 years later it now seems that Parliament is set raise it back up to 20 again. According to Police and Hospitals, levels of anti-social behaviour, hospitalisations and attacks on police have increased significantly since the drinking age was lowered.

However, two other factors are also playing a part in drunkenness – credit and modern “ladette" culture. Until recently, few people under 21 had access to enough money to be able to go out and get drunk on a regular basis. Now thanks to credit cards and student loans the young party hard (as the young do) and pay later.

While it is common knowledge that women can’t alcohol as well as men, the media loves to project images of leather clad, high-kicking females that can do anything men can do. Meanwhile back in the real world, alcopop guzzling young women are more likely to be seen floundering in high heels, puking in gutters and being sized as prey items by rogue taxi-drivers (often with dubious immigration papers).

This trend is already starting to impact on long term health outcomes with an increasing number of women suffering from alcohol related medical problems (see here).

Although their may be a good case for raising the drinking age, it would be nice if the country could start discussing some of the deeper causes of excessive binge-drinking like genetics, feminism and easy-credit. However, at present all these topics are largely no-go areas for the liberal media and its neo-conservative puppet masters.

Population and the Environment

Although New Zealand First has often pointed out the economic and social problems with the immigration-based economic policies of National and Labour, it hasn’t really highlighted the adverse environmental impact of rapid immigration.

When the population grows rapidly there is great stress on water, electricity and sewerage infrastructure and an inevitable rise in bio-security problems. With increasing urban sprawl the quantity of good arable land around Christchurch, Hamilton and Auckland is rapidly decreasing and this is encouraging more intensive agricultural practices on the remaining land. Subsequently, pollution of drinking water supplies to these cities is an increasing concern.

The New Zealand Green Party is strangely silent on immigration matters and this casts doubt on its real commitment to the environment.

For information on the link between rapid immigration and the environment the Australian organisation “Sustainable Population Australia” is a good source. SPA also highlights some of the muddled, Marxist thinking in the policies of the Australian Green Party.

Words of Wisdom (sort of)

Confucius say - A wise man keeps a copy of his template modifications, a fool must go back to square one.

New Zealand Politics since 1984

Prior to 1984, New Zealand Governments followed post war Keynesian economic policies, favoured by both main political parties, and progressive social policies initiated by the centre-left Labour Party.

However, by the early 1980s, excessive subsidisation of the declining farming sector, and over-investment in ambitious infrastructure projects, had created major structural problems than could no longer be contained by conventional Keynesian policies.

With the centre-right National Party dominated by the imposing personality of Keynesian interventionist Robert Muldoon, economic libertarians decided to infiltrate the centre –left Labour Party and quietly began to steer it in a neo-liberal direction.

In the 1984 election, the new look Labour Party was aided by a one-off protest party, The New Zealand Party, created by Bob Jones, a highly successful property speculator. Jones captured many votes from disgruntled National Party supporters than were unwilling to vote for the socially liberal Labour Party. With National out, Jones then promptly retired from politics - his mission accomplished.

Once in power, Labour’s economic libertarians then set about moving economic policy to the right, while its centre-left leader David Lange, began implementing a programme of left-liberal social and foreign policy initiatives, such as banning US worships from visiting New Zealand ports and legalising homosexuality.

The combined bombardment from neo-economic restructuring and liberal social reform disorientated working class white voters who turned on the traditional ‘party of the working class’ in 1990, and elected a reformed National Party that had adapted to the new neo-liberal orthodoxy.

National new neo-liberal economic programme, was opposed by a number of National MPs, the most prominent being Winston Peters and Michael Laws, who seized on the opportunity presented by the introduction of MMP (mixed member proportional representation) to form a breakaway party, New Zealand First.

New Zealand First were rightly concerned that State assets were being sold off too cheaply, and that Labour and National had gone too far in terms of removing support for manufacturing and farming - by 1990 New Zealand had one of the lowest levels of state support for research and development in the developed world.

From 1993-1996 New Zealand First developed a policy platform based on increased R and D spending, export incentives, compulsory savings and an end to state asset sales.

Meanwhile, National had responded to record unemployment and early 1990s economic stagnation, by starting a radical new wealth-based immigration initiative designed to attract wealthy East Asian Immigrants. The policy was modelled on similar immigration measures introduced in Canada.

New Zealand First, with its focus on productivity based growth, subsequently became the main advocate for limited immigration and drew criticism from the mainstream press for being xenophobic and populist.

In the 1996 election New Zealand First held the balance of power and decided to form a Government with National. However, although the two parties had similar social policies their differences on economic policy proved to great to reconcile, and the coalition collapsed 12 months out from the 1999 election.

In 1999, Labour came back into power with a Blairite economic programme based around increased education spending, investment in areas like arts, culture and tourism, and a relatively expansive immigration policy with a greater focus on British and Sub-Continental immigrants.

Labour's shift to the centre has now put New Zealand politics more closely in line with other English-speaking countries like Canada and the United Kingdom. New Zealand First survives as a vehicle for the public to intermittently voice their opposition to expansive immigration initiatives.

Dealing with Seasonal Labour Shortages

Although guest worker programmes, for better or worse, may provide a temporary solution to New Zealand’s seasonal labour problem, they are not a realistic, long- term solution. Large scale guest worker programmes can have big social costs and its citizens, not employers, that end up footing the bill.

The Country needs to take a serious look at how it can increase productivity and encourage more locals to do seasonal work.

Firstly, treat farmers' complaints about labour shortages with a little skepticism.

Apparently, Australia has a major shortage of seasonal labour but it also has some very inefficient farms.

I once picked pears on a farm in Victoria, which were destined for the SPC canary. Since the pears were picked before they were ripe, they could have picked using a cherry picker. Instead we walked around using heavy steel ladders and so took four times as long as we should have – not surprisingly, by Australian standards (and even New Zealand standards for that matter) we were paid very poorly.

The blunt reality is that if small time farms can’t invest in suitable equipment they should sell out to bigger farms with bigger pockets.

Admittedly, some crops bruise easily and it is necessary to carefully hand-pick them, and this is certainly the case with apples. Interestingly, pay rates for apple picking are not that bad - the problem is that not that many people available at the right time to harvest them.

One thing that could be done is to change the holiday times for Polytechnics in horticultural regions like Nelson and Hawke’s Bay. If students had their holidays in the autumn, it would make it much easier for farmers to find labour at harvest time.

Although NZ has a lower unemployment rate than Australia, we have a much stingier visa scheme for young workers from Europe and North America. For example, while New Zealanders on two year working visas make a significant contribution to the UK economy, British and Irish backpackers on six-month visas in NZ simply don’t have enough time to do much work.

If you want to get young backpackers to work, you have to give them enough time to use up their savings, and pounds and euros go a long way in New Zealand. The reason that Kiwis in the UK have a reputation as good workers is because they are usually desperate for money after a few weeks of arriving in rip-off London.

If labour shortages are as bad as the Government says, we should start a new scheme for one-two year visas for European and American travellers under 40 with good English skills.

However, people on visas don’t vote, and at present New Zealand’s two main political parties are more interested in importing voters and wealthy house hunters than in directly addressing labour needs.

Polynesian Guest Workers

The Government’s new proposal to bring in more Polynesian guest workers has gained the support of New Zealand First while drawing criticism from National.

The proposal allows for up to 5000 guest workers from Polynesia to fill seasonal labour shortages in viticulture and horticulture.

Given New Zealand First’s focus on export led growth, it seems that it prefers a guest worker programme to the idea of increased Polynesian immigration in the future. National, showing unusual concern for the wider public interest, points out that the country has up to 20,000 over stayers at any one time and that there is nothing to stop the workers from running off to get lost in the big city.

Personally, I have mixed views on guest worker programmes. I prefer them to large-scale immigration initiatives but realise that there is a lot of potential for abuse by both employers and workers.

This is an important issue that is getting nowhere near enough media attention.

Remittances - A Long term Perspective

The World Bank is claiming that remittances are the best way to help developing countries and that third world immigration to the West won’t harm western economies.

However, this ignores the fact that many western countries are increasingly in debt to East Asian creditors and that East Asia doesn’t play the western game when it comes to immigration.

In western countries like The United States and Great Britain, most of the jobs done by immigrants from developing countries are service jobs like cleaning, catering and labouring. These activities may benefit individual middle class westerners but they don’t contribute to increasing exports or decreasing imports. Not surprisingly, the fiscal health of the United States is deteriorating as third world immigration continues unabated.

In contrast, immigrant workers in East Asia are usually compelled to do productive jobs in factories. Subsequently, countries like Korea and Japan are still managing to stay out of debt and are maintaining healthy trade surpluses.

Although the volume of remittances from the West to developing countries may be impressive to World Bank economists, there is no evidence to suggest it is sustainable. When the West finally has to face up to its debts, the volume of remittance contributions will rapidly decline as the West can no longer afford the luxury of employing legions of unskilled service workers.

Also, lets not forget the global population is still increasing as the number of rich westerners is decreasing. This means that we will need to become even more decadent and wasteful to satisfy the third’s world’s expanding need for remittance money. This is not something that social conservatives are likely to be happy about.

The two factors that will finally make the West face up to its debts are population aging and rising commodity prices.

China is short of resources and has an aging population so it is eventually going to have to float the Yuan to pay for essential imports. That will cut off the supply of easy credit and ultra-cheap goods to the West.

If western governments are going to import workers from poorer countries then they should at least make sure these people are directed into productive jobs like food processing and seasonal farm work where there may be genuine labour shortages.

If workers from developing countries are channelled into specific jobs, in productive industries, and in limited numbers, then it will be easier for the government to monitor them. This will benefit both foreign workers, who are vulnerable to exploitable, and local workers who may be forced out of work by unscrupulous employers trying to undercut minimum wage rates.

Although the ‘guest worker’ programmes used by East Asian countries, and some western countries, are far from ideal, they arguably do less harm to the host country then large-scale, liberal immigration policies that may have huge external costs for future generations.

Technology Trumps Ideology

Reuters is currently circulating an article about women drivers in Russia entitled “Women are in the driving seat”. In the article a Russian motoring writer points out that:

“15 to 25 years ago there were no female drivers in Russia…There was only one car in the family and that belonged to the husband, the brother, or the father and they did all the driving”.

Today there are around two million women drivers in Russia and the number of women taking to the wheel is growing rapidly.

Now according to contemporary feminists, female emancipation has been due to the tireless efforts of women’s rights advocates. However, for over 80 years Russian society was ruled according to an aggressive egalitarian ideology called communism. Anyone who has read a few chapters of Karl Marx’s writing will know emancipation is a big part of Marxist ideology. A woman, according to Marx, can’t be a “species- being” until she is emancipated from domestic drudgery.

What’s happening in Russia certainly casts a few doubts on the notion that political activism has been the main reason for changing attitudes to women. It seems that male technology has also played a big part in liberating women from “repression and drudgery”.

This finding fits in nicely with Patrick Buchanan’s controversial statement:

”The real liberators of American women were not the feminist noise makers; they were the automobile, the supermarket, the shopping centre, the dishwasher, the washer-dryer, the freezer”.

How about a feminist cheer for the male engineer?

Borat's "Cultural Leanings"

It turns out I was right about Sacha Ben Cohen's lack of research into Kazakhstan for his Kazakh character Borat.

According to a Sunday Times article, "Curse of The Kazakhs" (October 8, C17), the producer of the early episodes of Da Ali G Show, Andrew Newman, has confessed:

"I think we chose Kazakhstan fairly randomly. It was somewhere that
sounded far away and we thought it would not be that easy to check up about".

Honestly, what's comedy coming to.

However, there are some interesting points about Borat on Wikipedia, such as :

"The hair and mustache are real and it takes about six weeks to grow them to
Borat's length. The hair has never been washed, which helps him to smell "foreign".

Excellent, Cohen may be a bit slack on research but you can't fault his commitment to method acting.

Tolerating Intolerance

One of the foolish mistakes that many liberal democracies make is granting non-democratic parties political representation.

The most infamous group to get into power through democratic election were the Nazis. The Nazis frequently ridiculed the democratic process, yet the democratic Weimar government turned the other check. Even a cursory read through Mein Kampf, should have told them that Hitler has no place in a democratic government.

In 1917, Russia’s newly elected democratic government made a similar mistake when they failed to arrest the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks also publicly broadcast their totalitarian ambitions. Kerensky’s democratic government was particularly foolish because it had the backing of the army, which could have disarmed the Bolsheviks if it had been given approval to act quickly. Furthermore, it is unlikely that the Nazi’s would have been voted in if the German electorate hadn’t been threatened by the prospect of Russian backed communists.

Even today, western democracies still allow communist organisations to register as legimiate political parties. No doubt this is to validate the superiority of democracy and capitalism, but it also smacks of complacency, if not stupidity.

Some right-liberals argue that parties that promote the interests of particular ethnic groups should also be denied political representation. However, provided such parties abide by the democratic process, and don’t use violence or intimidation to achieve their ends, I don’t see why they shouldn’t be allowed to register.

Many left-liberals in Britain regard the British National Party as an extremist party that should be outlawed. The BNP may promote views that are extreme to liberal sensibilities but it does (at least at present) respect the democratic process. In fact, the BNP is probably the second most democratic party in Britain after the Liberal Democrats. This is because it is copying the Liberal Democrat strategy of campaigning on local issues through door knocking and telephone inquiries. In fact,the BNP probably has a better idea what ordinary people actually think that the Labour government.

If parties like the BNP are excluded from government then parties that represent non-white minorities will also have to be excluded. In New Zealand, the Maori Party, rightly or wrongly, promotes the interests of particular group, yet this doesn’t seem to concern left-liberals that attack white nationalists.

Democratic governments will always risk shooting themselves in the foot when they tolerate undemocratic parties of the right or the left.

Brash, Peters and Assimilation

Don Brash’s new 'anti-Maori' stance is setting up a showdown with New Zealand First over how to deal with the increasing problems posed by multiculturalism.

Brash calls for the abolition of all racial preferences for Maori including television and radio quotas and Maori political seats. Peter’s has responded by saying that such policies are tantamount to racial nihilism and will trigger unnecessary conflict.

I suspect that Brash thinks that if Maori continue to have special preferences then other minorities will start to campaign for special privileges and the country will descend into a full-blown ethnic spoils system.

National’s new, harder line on assimilation may be a good idea for screening prospective immigrants but is a questionable policy for dealing with Maori.

As indigenous people, the Maori did not have a choice about whether or not to accept western values. White westerners came in numbers and they had to adapt to a largely western way of life. In contrast, prospective immigrants are free to stay at home if they don’t agree with New Zealand’s predominantly western culture.

If all special accommodations for Maori are cut they will be even more detached from their native culture – arguably, this could well make social problems such as crime and educational underachievement even worse. Furthermore, even if Brash is right, Maori are too large a group to be totally assimilated into White culture so there will always be a large number of dissenters who will seek to undermine such an approach.

While New Zealander First has a slightly softer line on Maori assimilation, it has a harder line on immigration. New Zealand First is the only party with an explicit commitment to limited immigration, so it doesn’t need to ‘make an example’ of Maori to maintain social cohesion. Conversely, National has a more expansive immigration policy and is therefore compelled to pursue an aggressive policy towards assimilating Maori.

While it is good to see Brash talking candidly about Maori problems like domestic violence and obesity, he fails to consider the possibility that expansive immigration policies may have contributed to some of these problems.

Even though Maori unemployment has gone down, wages have not kept pace with the rising cost of living. Property prices have soared in the major cities and in the competition for housing, relatively wealthy East Asian immigrants have out bid Maori families who are increasingly unable to get a toehold on the property ladder. Like it or not, this trend is only going to add to the Maori grievance culture.

There has also been a hollowing out of Maori communities as many hard working Maori have left the country to seek higher wages in Australia. Restless young men in these communities now have few role models to look to for help and guidance.

Where there is clear evidence that affirmative action policies are failing then there may be a good case for removing them or replacing them with something better. If there aren’t enough Maori applicants to fill university quotas then perhaps the government would be better off providing polytech scholarships instead.

In general, it appears New Zealand First aims to help Maori by maintaining support for Maori culture and moderating inequality. At the same time it is aware that continuing transfers of resources from Whites to Maori is creating a strong White backlash.

Brash’s policy of attacking Maori culture appears to be undermining support for New Zealand First, but come election time it may drive moderate voters into the hands of Labour. This could create an even stronger Labour government that is free from any restraining influence from New Zealand First.

Managerialism

Libertarian blogger ‘Stumbling and Mumbling’ points out that there is an important distinction between technocratic management and managerialism.

Managerialism is an ideology that claims management is a profession in its own right that has generic methods and rules that can be applied to all types of organizations (managerial thinking is primarily spread via MBA programmes, a point alluded to by Canadian writer John Ralston Saul in his 1992 best seller 'Voltaire's Bastards').

The reality of course, is that good managers need to have prior experience in the particular field that they are managing. For example, you can’t really manage a manufacturing firm if you don’t know anything about making things. I have been told that managerialism has been one of the reasons for the dramatic decline of British and American manufacturing.

Managerialism is more rampant in English-speaking countries than in East Asia or Continental Europe. This is partly because English-speaking countries have very unstable job markets, so professionals try to make their careers more secure by marketing themselves as adaptable generalists. If organizations believe in generic management then managers can hop from job to job and muddle through without specialist knowledge.

By contrast, East Asian countries lie Japan and Korea emphasis job loyalty rather than professional loyalty so their managers have more specialist knowledge. This is one reason why the Japanese excel at planning complex projects and manufacturing high quality goods.

Admittedly, technocratic management can lead to rigid thinking and this is one of the reasons why narrowly focused economists should be taught history and politics as well as abstract economic theory. This might encourage them to take a longer-term view of economic problems.

In the English-speaking world ideological managers are often positive thinking extroverts who frequently clash with critical thinking introverts. George Bush provides a pretty good example of a positive thinking extrovert.

Ideological managers tend to have shallow educational backgrounds and an aversion to reading. This leaves them vulnerable to fashionable, up beat ideas based on simplified readings of works by established intellectuals. The Landmark Forum is a popular positive thinking course that fleeces managerial extroverts using watered down ideas from existential philosophers.

John Maynard Keynes points to the weakness of managerial thinking in his often quoted remark: "Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence are usually the slave of some defunct economist".

Politics and Relationships

Prior to the late 1960s, politics wasn’t really a big consideration in people’s choice of partner. It was generally thought that woman were less interested in politics than men, and in any case, differences in political views were not a big deal.

Today though, people are increasingly seeking partners with similar jobs and opinions.This trend emerged began in the 1970s with fashionable magazines like London’s Time Out running singles columns for young urban liberals. Now conservatives have got in on the act with on-line dating agencies like Conservative Match - ‘sweethearts not bleeding hearts’.

One reason why politics has become more important in relationships it that women have become more educated.

When women were first given the vote, conservatives were surprised that most of them didn’t vote for socialist parties. It was assumed that women would vote with their hearts, rather than their heads, and support the left. Subsequently, conservatives were dead against universal suffrage. However, it soon became apparent that once women have families they become more conservative and vote for economic stability and pro-family policies.

Today, women are spending more time in university (soaking up politically correct ideas) and are waiting much longer to have families. The result is that many of them are becoming more liberal and less concerned with economic stability and ‘affordable family formation’.

In general, educated women are more concerned with social and environmental issues than economic issues like tax rates. This may be one of the reasons why a lot of young males are libertarians and neo-conservatives.

Males with traditional conservative views appear insensitive and unfashionable. Conversely, male libertarians and neo-conservatives, with milder views on social issues, are less likely to clash with educated liberal women. At the same time they can express their ‘manly political incorrectness’ through economic liberalism. Hence, neo-conservatives and libertarians males may think they are politically tough and unfashionable, but they are unconsciously conforming to the desires of liberal women and workplaces dominated by women.

In contrast, socially conservative males are arguably today’s true 'conservative' rebels - standing up for free speech, political integrity, and putting their jobs (and possibly sex lives) on the line.

The Iraq war however, is bad news for male neo-cons. Women hate wars and attitudes towards paleoconservatives may soften as events unfold according to their predictions.

Articles on International Terrorism and Counter-Insurgency.

In the last couple of weeks the American Conservative, and War Nerd have came up with two excellent commentaries on issues relating to terrorism and counter-insurgency.

The 'Rich Get Richer', by American Conservative writer James Kurth, is a top-notch peice of commentary, of a similar standard to the first American Conservative article to grab my attention, Robert Locke's 'Marxism of the Right' ( a critique of libertarianism).

War Nerd mixes dry humour with vigorous common sense and lateral thinking in his latest blog entry - 'Afghanistan, Let Them 'Em Ham'. As a supporter of the war in Afghanistan, who is disappointed with the way things are going, I can strongly relate to his comment - 'I didn't believe we could possibly be so stupid as to blow the one thing we did right'.

Why New Zealand Still Needs More Prisons

In a bid to reduce the cost of dealing with criminals the Government has decided to give judges the option of issuing home detentions for minor criminal offenses.

However, the only proven way of reducing crime rates is to threaten more offenders with imprisonment.

In the United States and Continental Europe, high incarceration rates have led to a significant reduction in crime rates. Conversely, a shortage of prison spaces in Britain and New Zealand is undermining police efforts to get tough in criminals.

New Zealand is one of the toughest places in the world to commit a crime without getting caught, but it also has some of the softest sentencing.

The logic of imprisonment is simple - if criminals are locked up then they can't commit crimes. There is also the deterrence aspect to imprisonment. Although many people argue that prisons are much softer than they used to be, the inmates are still pretty unpleasant. The threat of getting raped in a prison shower (or worse) is always going to make a lot of minor criminals think twice about breaking the law.

While some neo-conservatives question the cost-effectiveness of imprisonment, liberals argue that prison degrades the individual. This may be true, but it depends on your priorities - reducing crime or rehabilitiation. If its the former, then build more prisons.

Ultimately there are only two types of serious penalties - imprisonment or physical punishment. To a criminal, a fine is an empty threat unless a judge is willing and able to send them to prison for not paying one.

Alternative punishments like home detentions may be useful, but only if they are backed up by the threat of stronger penalties. If someone repeatedly breaks the conditions of a home detention then there must be a prison space to which they can be sent.

Just because imprisonment rates are already high does not mean imprisonment doesn't work. Sure, we should be doing more to tackle rising inequality, and inequality is a significant factor in crime rates.

But we can't just go easy on those that have already lapsed into a criminal lifestyle.

In the 1950s when crime rates were at record low levels, society was a lot more egalitarian (in economic terms) but it was also more authoritarian.

Prisons may be unsightly, they may be costly, but they actuallly work - thats why we need more of them and shouldn't moan about paying for them.

The costs of crime are continually being passed onto law-abiding ctitzens through increased taxes, rates, rents and insurance priemiums. Investing in prisons will save taxpayers money in the long run.

Slagging off the French

In the English-speaking world slagging off the French is a popular pastime.

The Americans blame the French for snobbish culture and political correctness. Australia and New Zealand dislike the French for testing nuclear bombs in the South Pacific.

The British still blame the French for their capitulation in 1940 as well as their role in founding the European Union, while English-speaking Canadians blame the French for Quebec.

As far as political correctness goes, France is no worse than any other western country. For example, France has conscription, modern nuclear power stations, and low taxes on cigarettes – hardly signs of extreme political correctness.

Its laws and economy may be a bit bureaucratic and socialist for some tastes but at least it doesn’t impose its economic views on countries outside the EU.

We should also give the French credit were credits due.

France has a proud intellectual tradition from the 18th century physiocrats and encyclopedists to great 20th Century historians like Fernand Braudel and Jacques Barzun – and where would political satire be without Voltaire.

As far as food and wine are concerned, France is number one – this isn’t really a debatable point. A visit to any reasonable sized French supermarket will reveal great food at very reasonable prices. Where else can you get a drinkable bottle of wine for a few euros.

France did co-found the EU (for better or worse) but it has had the good sense to reject the European Constitution and isn’t about to surrender its national autonomy.

Where the French really do deserve to be criticised its for spawning the demonic ramblings of post modern philosophy. France certainly owes the world an apology for the likes of Foucault and Derrida.

In Regards to the French outpost of Quebec, I don’t see what wrong with them asserting their own culture (at least in Quebec) or rejecting some aspects of American consumerism. However, I don’t think Canada or the world for that matter, needs another Pierre Trudeau let loose in Ottowa.

If the Gallic world could just apologise for post modernism and Trudeau then I think all should be forgiven. In return, as a sign of good faith, the English-speaking world should apologise for reality television and Britain’s railway system.

Laws gets Lean and Mean on Political Correctness

In Michael laws latest Sunday Star Times article - 'Forget the muck, how about the pork'. He makes some interesting and very humorous points about obesity, immigration and political correctness.

I think the country could well surpass the US in obesity statistics if current trends are anything to go by.

Perhaps we should start favouring ectomorphs in our immigration policy.

In Praise of Borat

In last week's post on the decline of T.V comedy, I did overlook one recent gem - Sacha Ben Cohen's character Borat, from the Ali Gee Show.

According to Canadian blogger Black Rod, Cohen has bought Borat to the big screen in Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, which recently screened at the Toronto Film Festival. Reuters was suitably shocked, calling it:

'the mosts appalling, tasteless, grotesque, politically incorrect sladerous flim of the year'

However, for festival goers 'It was also the hottest ticket item that night'.

I do have one major criticism of the Borat character though - he doesn't look like he's from Kazakhstan (Kazakh's look more East Asian dam it!)

As a self confessed expert on central Asia ( I have seen several repeats of Reilly Ace of Spies, and have spent at least 40 minutes reading up on the various republics in the region) I have come to the conclusion that Borat should be from Azerbeijan ( which technically isn't in Central Asia). The Black Adder crew would never have made such an oversight.

Technology and the New Zealand Economy

Looking back over the last 150 years of New Zealand development it's that noticeable that the country has prospered as new forms of technology have become available.

The Vogel boom of the 1870s was possible because of advances in railways, shipping, and communications. In the 1890s refrigeration provided the cornerstone of the prosperous Liberal Era (1891-1911). Top dressing, Land Rovers, and the Green Revolution allowed New Zealand to become one of the world’s most affluent countries in the 1950s and 1960s. During the 1990s, cheap air travel and advances in irrigation and uses for dairy products led to significant growth in tourism and dairy farming.

During these periods the country had a wide of governments with a wide range of economic policies. The Vogel government was classically liberal; the Liberal government - progressive populist; the government’s of the 1950s and 1960s - Keynesian, while the National government of the 1990s was neo-liberal.

Hence, there is little evidence that economic success is dependent on a particular set of policies, suitable for all situations, as lobby groups such as the Business Roundtable suggest.

British writer John Gray argues that technology, rather than ideology, is the cornerstone of economic success. Given that technological advances have always preceded economic growth in New Zealand’s history, I am inclined to agree with him.

The experiences of Japan and Sweden provide further evidence in favour of Gray’s argument. For over 30 years economic libertarians have been predicting the economic decline of overtaxed Sweden yet it is still one of the West’s strongest economies. Sweden invests heavily in scientific research and does remarkably well in hi-tech industry for a country with just nine million people. Similarly, Japan, a bastion of old school protectionism and limited immigration, thrashes the English-speaking world in large-scale manufacturing.

At present New Zealand has one of the lowest rates of productivity growth in the developed world. This suggests that we are going through a serious technological trough. However, what research is the Maxim Institute or the Business Roundtable doing into new technology that could turn things around – nothing.

Economic libertarians in New Zealand seem to be fixated on the economic mirage that is immigration based economic growth. They seem to think that large numbers of immigrants ‘carefully screened’ for western values will suddenly come to our rescue. Ayn Rand once said that as an economic libertarian she considered herself to be a romantic realist.

Economic libertarians are certainly romantics but I fail to see in what sense they are realists.

When China Wakes Up

How much longer will China be happy making cheap goods for the West?

Vdare columnist Paul Craig Roberts argues that once a particular industry is moved to China, research and development in that industry will also be moved there - this could have dire consequences for western economies.

At the moment China is quite happy pandering to the needs of western consumers.The Yuan is pegged to the US dollar at an artificially low rate, while the dollar is propped up by Chinese investors. This is increasing the competitiveness of Chinese manufacturers and boosting the purchasing power of American consumers.

Since the mid 1990s working class westerners have became dependent on cheap Chinese imports to offside stagnating wages and rising costs in services. A pricey ticket to a football game is still affordable because a new toaster only cost 20 dollars.

However, two things are starting to change:

1. China is now producing more sophisticated, better quality goods

2. Chinese domestic demand is rapidly expanding.

In the early stages of industrialisation, capital starved industrialists make sure that their workers produce significantly more than they consume. However, as productivity picks up, a surplus of goods accumulates and employers increase wages so that workers can consume more of the surplus.

Chinese firms are now buying up unprofitable western manufacturers, such as the UK car manufacturer Rover, and shifting the capital equipment back to China. Soon component manufacturers will also have to move and it will become impractical to maintain research and development facilities back in the home country.

Furthermore, the Chinese will be able to study how the blue prints of the capital equipment and set up their own industries for building capital equipment.

At this China won’t really need to subsidise western consumers since they will control production. The Chinese will then be able to float the Yuan and charge western consumers higher prices for their products.

The West won’t be able to respond by moving production to cheaper countries, such as Bangladesh and Pakistan, because the West won’t own the patents for the products or the capital equipment needed to produce them.

Two other factors will also serve to increase the price of Chinese goods:

1. the cost of raw materials, such as oil and wheat, will also increase in the coming decades

2. the aging of the Chinese population will put upward pressure on wages.

Prices for oil and gas, as well as farm products such as wheat and beef, are likely to increase and China will need a stronger currency to pay for these essential imports. At that point it won’t make sense for China to compete in low wage manufacturing. The Indian sub-continent, with a much younger population than China, will then take over a lot of low wage manufacturing.

Although, many western economists hate the term ‘strategic industries’, the West is going to have to identify essential industries that it won’t surrender to China. The fact that Chinese companies are already producing aircraft components for a strategic firm like Boeing, suggests that this is not yet happening.

Some Thoughts on the Decline of Popular Culture

The noticeable decline in popular music and television comedy over the last twenty years is often talked about but rarely explained.

From the late 1960s to the early 1980s there was a remarkably diversity of novel output in popular music and comedy but in the mid 1980s this outpouring of creativity abruptly dried up. Twenty years on, there isn’t much sign of a renaissance.

The essential characteristic of the comedy of Monty Python and Peter Sellers was irreverence. These young guns were free to lampoon every canon of western culture from the Catholic Church to Nietzsche. Such expansive comedy was unknown in the first 60 years of the 20th century.

In the early 1980s a second wave of comedians arrived. ‘Smith and Jones’ produced elaborate satire with highly crafted sketches that the 18th Century satirists would have been proud of. Meanwhile Rowan Atkinson and Bell Elton fused A-level history with dry British sarcasm in the hilarious Black Adder series.

By the late 1980s intellectual humour became increasingly unfashionable, in part, because viewers were insufficiently educated about western culture to understand jokes about ‘soccer playing philosophers’ and ‘rococo gasworks’. Similarly, comedians aren’t interested in things they don’t have much knowledge about.

The work of today’s comedians, such as Ricky Gervais, is mainly about cultural cringe and social embarrassment. This seems appropriate for an age characterised by self-consciousness and political correctness. However, by Monty Python standards, modern comedy like the The Office is pretty mediocre.

In the early 1970s popular musicians like Yes, Genesis and Pink Floyd audaciously plundered the canons of classical music and Jazz - much to the annoyance of traditionalists. A lot of ‘prog-rock’ output was overblown, but its practitioners did produce some decent material.

At the same time notable Jazz musicians, such as Herbie Hancock and Miles Davis, experimented with funk, rock and psychedelia.

During the late 1970s punk rock emerged, partly as a reaction to the excesses of the progressive rock era. However, it proved to be even more short-lived than its predecessor and has left few memorable pieces of music.

Since the late 1970s music that includes references to western hi-culture or displays of instrumental prowess seems to be automatically derided by popular music critics. This has pretty killed off interesting and melodic popular music. When Kate Bush moved over for post-modern squawker Bjork, the end was nigh.

It seems that you can only have a vibrant and creative popular culture when you have a respected hi-culture that the popular culture can draw upon for ideas and inspiration. In today’s culture of political correctness and post-modern relativism it is difficult to produce anything intelligent, audacious or dynamic.

Some Thoughts on Economics and IQ

According to the controversial psychologist Richard Lynn, the secret to a successful capitalist economy is a population with a high IQ. However, maintaining a successful economy may also be about recognising and dealing with IQ weaknesses.

In IQ studies, Western countries tend to come out on top in measures of verbal intelligence. Conversely, people in East Asia tend to have higher non-verbal IQs. The verbal IQs of English speaking western countries like Britain and the United States are further boosted by an Ashkenazi Jewish population with an average verbal IQ (according to Philippe Rushton) of 107.5.

The IQ patterns of Western and East Asian countries seem to match their respective economic fortunes over the last few decades. After a period of industrial decline in the 1970s, the English speaking West has enjoyed a high rate of growth over the last 12-15 years, in part, by shifting from manufacturing into services, software and media products, ie, just the sort of economic output requiring a high verbal IQ.

In contrast, industrialisation benefits from a population with a high non-verbal IQ, and so it seems likely that China’s extraordinarily rapid rate of industrialisation is at least partly due to the high performance IQ of its population.

However, there is a danger in letting people fashion the economy in their own image without industrial planning. The English-speaking world seems to have forgotten the message that all wealth ultimately comes from production. In English-speaking western countries, there has been an explosion in jobs requiring a high verbal IQ that don’t really add to GDP. People such as real estate agents and public relations staff readily come to mind. Subsequently, productivity levels have stagnated while serious trade imbalances have built up with more industrialised Asian countries.

The Japanese seems to have the opposite problem. They have perhaps over-emphasised production and neglected their service economy. Even though Japan is highly efficient in manufacturing, its banking and distribution sectors are surprisingly antiquated. Subsequently, as manufacturing has peaked, the whole economy has stagnated. The Japanese have perhaps become too reliant on activities requiring a high performance IQ.

The IQ problem in developed countries is going to become more acute as their populations start aging. Hence it is important that western countries maximise opportunities for those with atypical IQ profiles.

In the West, it is important that workers with high performance IQs are lured into productive jobs and get the best available training and incentives. In New Zealand, it is absurd that maths teachers aren’t paid more than arts teachers, even though the former are in serious under-supply. Similarly, many of the countries best scientists are driven away by lack of government spending on scientific research.

Perhaps the most important thing in making the most of a nation’s intelligence, is good intelligence- acknowledging the importance of IQ in many life outcomes and taking steps to record it on a national level.

National and Immigration

I was amused to read in the Southland Times (September 8, 2006 p3) National Party M.P Eric Roy complaining that New Zealand’s Immigration system is skewed in favour of people with high academic qualifications.

In the early 1990s National talked up the wonders of the ‘knowledge economy’. Ruth Richardson claimed East Asian immigration would lead to a new wave of prosperity. At the same time the National Government dismantled the 1983 Apprenticeship Training Act and discouraged young New Zealanders from taking up practical trades.

Today the country is suffering from a shortage of trades people in the provinces and a surplus of unemployed East Asians in the cities. It is pretty ironic a ‘pragmatic farmer’s party’ like National is responsible for this state of affairs.

Surprisingly, the Labour Party has done the most to address the trade shortage. It has reintroduced traditional apprenticeships and the shortage of tradesmen is now easing in the main centres.

It has also introduced stricter English language requirements, which have helped to slow East Asian immigration somewhat. Maybe it’s just me, but I think there is something curiously embarrassing about people with physics degrees running junks shops- and its hardly healthy for the economy.

Slowing East Asian immigration is also good for existing East Asian residents. In the last few years many East Asians have stated finding jobs in the medical field and higher end jobs in the service industry. Furthermore, their driving has improved!

While I agree that immigration is skewed in favour of academic qualifications, rather than practical skills, I don’t think major skills shortages can be solved through immigration. New immigrants always seem to gravitate to the big cities – especially if they are from different cultures.

Most other developed countries are also suffering from labour shortages so in many instances we are simply ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’ – a policy which doesn’t really benefit anyone in the long run.

Employers in general are going to have to get used to living with a moderate labour shortage and provincial employers are going to have to pay city wages to attract city workers. National should also stop droning on about free markets and conduct a serious inquiry into the country's poor productivity levels.

Some thoughts on John Gray's - 'Al Qaeda and What it Means to Be Modern'

In his book, Al Qaeda and What it Means to Be Modern, John Gray makes some excellent points about the naivety of the liberal right in believing that the world can be re-made in the West's image. However, while he acknowledges the cultural distinctiveness of the West he denies westerners the opportunity to protect themselves by limiting immigration.

Gray lucidly states that globalisation is not making the world more uniform:

"As societies throughout the world become more modern, they do not thereby
become more similar. Often they move further apart. In these circumstances, we need to think afresh about how regimes and ways of life that will always be
different can come to coexist in peace".

This is sort of thinking that traditional U.S conservatives have been promoting for the last one hundred years but is a message that Liberals, from Woodrow Wilson to Tony Blair, have been consistently ignoring. Most of the World is not like the West and doesn’t want to be like the West.

In military affairs Gray takes the traditional conservative view that enemies can never be eliminated, only contained:

"There cannot be tolerance so long as terrorism is unchecked. Dealing with it is
a precondition of any kind of civilised existence and requires courage, skill and - at times – ruthlessness. Yet in the new kind of conventional war
that is now being fought there is no prospect of victory".

The neo-conservative idea that threats like terrorism and drugs can defeated in all out, short-term offensives is another utopian idea with a very short shelf life.

Another vital point that Gray makes is the importance of overpopulation in global problems:

"The human prospect is shaped by rising human numbers, mounting competition
for natural resources and the spread of weapons of mass destruction …Interacting with historic ethnic and religious enmities, they argur conflicts as destructive as any in the twentieth century".

Unfortunately, on the topic of immigration Gray backs down from his usual non-liberal position and criticises ‘far right’ political parties that seek to promote limited immigration. Surely, if western culture is unique, and is threatened by global overpopulation and terrorism, then the West is perfectly entitled to try and limit immigration from non-western countries.

The eminent scientist Gareth Hardin has made a very strong argument that countries need to be made responsible for their own overpopulation problems and that lack of border controls will set up a "tragedy of the commons" situation where countries pass the problem of overpopulation onto their neighbours. If Gray expects to be taken seriously by traditional conservatives then he needs to address Hardin’s hard-headed argument.

Furthermore, contrary to what Gray suggests, political parties don’t have to play on "racist fears" of voters to win support for limited immigration policies. Opinion poles indicate that most people already support limited immigration. The reason we don’t have limited immigration policies in place already is because political parties are deliberately putting big business interests ahead of majority interests. Gray himself acknowledges that western businesses are driving immigration: "Remember Voltaire’s quip: ‘The comfort of the rich depends on abundant supply of the poor".

In type-casting limited immigration advocates as ignorant populists, Gray alienates the kind of people that are most likely to take his other, more hard headed arguments seriously. Its high time self-styled iconoclasts like John Gray stopped squirming around politically sensitive issues like immigration and reveal what they actually think.

Demography and the Middle East

In blogosphere debate on armed conflict in the Middle East, one factor is conspicuously absent from most discussions - demography. Given the huge demographic problems that the region faces this appears to be a big oversight.

Most countries in the Middle East have young, rapidly expanding populations, while the regions resources are in steady decline. Water is becoming scarcer while oil and gas are very unequally distributed. Many countries like Egypt are already dependent on grain producers like Australia and the U.S for basic grain supplies.

Traditional conservative Lawrence Auster argues that the primary reason for Islamic terrorism is the Islamic religion itself. He points out that many other developing countries have reason to dislike the West but you don’t see Nigerians or Burmese, for example, attacking US airliners. In terms of explaining the suicide attacks on Westerners, Auster’s cultural explanation is very plausible. Historically suicide attacks are quite a rare form of conflict yet are commonly carried out by young Muslims.

In terms of explaining the high general level of violence in the Middle East the cultural theory is more limited. Although, Islam may be a more aggressive religion than say Buddhism, only a relatively small proportion of the world’s huge Muslim population is actively engaged in terrorism. Furthermore, much of the conflict in the Middle East is between Muslims rather than between Muslims and non-Muslims.

The most common reasons for war are not culture or religion but disputes over resources. When you combine a shortage of resources with a large population of young aggressive males the chances of violence are greatly increased. The Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s was a classic resource war where large numbers of Iranians died attacking oil rich Iraqi. Only a country with a large surplus population of young males could tolerate such losses.

The current instability in Iraq has provided unemployed males from overpopulated countries like Pakistan, Iran and Jordan an opportunity to practice ‘’low risk’ terrorism against Americans and pro-Americans. Only well-educated, suicidal Muslims are willing to strike at Westerners on their home territory.

However, in the chaos of Iraq, terrorists with more limited training and courage have an excellent chance of inflicting damage on their enemies without losing their lives in the process. The good work the US and UK are doing in foiling attacks on the West is being undone by their blunders in Iraq.

The enormous losses Iran sustained in the conflict with Iraq have had a significant effect on the nation’s demographic policies. Iran, alone among Middle Eastern countries, has implemented a major population control program. Sadly, this policy has not been acknowledged by Western governments, or held up as good example for other Middle Eastern countries.

Ironically, the wealthiest country in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, has one of the most irresponsible attitudes to population control. If Saudi Arabia followed Iran’s example, and implemented a responsible population policy, it would be a great example for many other Middle Eastern states.

As well as supporting population control policies, Western governments need to send a firm message to nations in the Middle East that they can’t export their demographic problems to the developed world. There is no place for large numbers of Middle Eastern Muslims in western countries.

Local Government Rates in N.Z

New Zealand’s local government rating system is a legacy of the land tax movement of the 1890s, which was inspired by the American writer and activist, Henry George. It is based on the idea that landowners should pay taxes for local improvements that boost land values. If taxes are levied in accordance with land values, it is argued that this results in a fair system for landowners.

To a certain extent then it is probably fair that property owners, who are currently benefiting from a surge in prices, should pay increased rates for municipal services. However, significant increases in rates are unfair on low to middle-income pensioners who are no longer engaged in buying and selling property. Indeed, land value style taxation has long been criticised for being unfair on the elderly with low incomes and relatively valuable homes.

Although some of the rates increase is the fault of city councils, for spending too much money on non-essential services, there have also been unavoidable costs like higher fuel prices and new responsibilities imposed on local government by the state, especially in relation to the RMA.

If the present rating system is to be maintained, there needs to be more rates relief for pensioners. Money for rates relief should come from a capital gains tax levied on property.

Although many politicians have written off a capital gains tax as political suicide, I wonder if they have taken into account that the pool of property owning voters is rapidly declining. An increasing number of younger voters may well be very receptive to a capital gains tax if it is supported by the reserve bank and its benefits are properly explained to voters.

Although capital gains taxes are used in most developed countries I don’t believe New Zealand should adopt a broad capital gains tax that covers all types of capital gains. Such a tax would be a significant disincentive to invest in the country’s stagnating share market.

New Zealand’s relatively equitable rating system could be greatly improved by the addition of a capital gains tax, which would take some of the local Government funding burden off pensioners. This would spread the cost of municipal funding over all tax paying age groups and reduce the current windfall enjoyed by prosperous baby-boomers.

Centrist or Conservative?

Originally, this blog was titled ‘New Zealand Centrist’. I chose that title because I wanted to distinguish my blog from those written by economic libertarians and centre-left liberals. At the time, I was also focusing mainly on economic and environmental issues. In this context, I took issue with mainstream left and right wing pundits that fail to acknowledge limits to such things as population levels, resource consumption and government bureaucracy.

As I have started to focus more on issues like culture, immigration and foreign policy though, the ‘centrist label’ has become a liability. Mainstream dialogue on issues like immigration is almost totally dominated by liberal views of one form or another. Hence, someone who describes him or herself as ‘being in the centre’ is effectively defining themselves as a liberal. As someone who is critical of the core values of liberalism, it would therefore be misleading for me to describe myself as ‘centrist’.

Perhaps the key features of modern liberalism are a failure to acknowledge limits, an aversion to discrimination and a denial of tradition. In moderation, these may be good qualities, but taken too far they can do considerable damage.

In is interesting that few so called ‘right-wing’ bloggers identify themselves as ‘conservatives’. Looking around New Zealand sites, I can’t find any serious bloggers that describe themselves as conservative. Most describe themselves as ‘libertarians’ or ‘defenders of liberty’- clearly such bloggers are still trapped inside a liberal world-view.

Political commentators who define themselves as ‘traditional conservatives’, ‘paleo-conservatives’ or ‘evolutionary conservatives’, are effectively outside mainstream political opinion, even though, in their own minds, they may think of themselves as moderates. However, with liberalism now completing dominating mainstream debate, those who are critical of liberal values needs to have the courage to adopt unpopular, old-fashioned labels like ‘populist’ and ‘conservative’.

In the new blog title I have chose the words ‘alternative’ and ‘conservative’ to differentiate myself from right-wing liberals (aka, ‘libertarians’ and ‘neo-conservatives’) and because my thinking has elements of several non-liberal streams of political thought: ‘traditional conservatism’, ‘evolutionary conservatism’ and elements of progressive populism.

Maori 'Warrior Gene' Controversy

There has been an interesting range of responses to Dr Rod Lea’s theory about Maori having a ‘warrior gene’ for aggressive behaviour.

TV had the most in-depth coverage with Dr Lea being interviewed by John Campbell. Surprisingly, Campbell handled the interview in a pretty unemotional, low-key way, giving Lea plenty of time to respond to his questions. This suggests that TV3 is perceptive enough to realise that there are going to be alot more stories about genetic differences between races and that a lot of politically incorrect findings are likely to emerge.

Perhaps it is beginning to dawn on some liberals that their worldview is now diverging from that of modern science.

However, The New Zealand Herald ran a comments board about the story on its website and anti-scientific hysteria was rampant. It was clear from almost all the responses that any scientific findings that conflict with mainstream liberal values must be automatically discounted. Not a single comment was posted in support of Lea or his research findings.

Neo-conservative commentator Alan Duff has been less hysterical but also makes little sense. Duff tends to blame Maori violence on welfare and illiteracy, and argues that the gene theory can be 'reputiated'. If the threory is scientifically wrong then Duff is free to ignore it. However, he then states that:

'...the last thing we need is another excuse, or another reason for Maori
dominating in the violence stakes and all the bad stats.'

Duff seems to be suggesting that scientists should only publicise 'good news' and that 'bad news' should be brushed under the carpet. Society's job is to decide what to do with scientific findings not to deny they exist. According to Duff's logic we should also hid the facts about global warming since 'bad news ' is bad for the global economy.

Interesting, some Maori have taken the view that there may be some truth in Lea’s findings and have decided to take a positive spin on the theory. They are claiming that the gene may have helped Maori to discover New Zealand and survive in a difficult environment. Again though, you can’t pick and chose scientific facts. If a genetic disposition has a positive side it is will often have a negative side as well. This is something modern liberal society has yet to acknowledge.

Go East Young Man

A cheeky career idea for Mel Gibson

At present, Mel Gibson seems to be desperately trying to mend his relations with Hollywood’s powerful Jewish community. However, rather than putting his time and effort into what may be a very difficult, if not impossible task, perhaps he should make a new start overseas.

Steve Sailer has pointed out that Mel Gibson has an interest in the Ukrainian Holocaust and perhaps he could move to Kiev or Moscow and make a film about it. It’s a lot cheaper to make a film in Eastern Europe, and you don’t need to spend money making costly mock-ups of historical buildings. With Hollywood production savvy, a controversial subject, and a receptive European audience, Mel could be onto a winner with a film about Ukraine in the 1930s.

Kiev in particular, could be a good option for film-making – apparently Kiev is the new Prague for European stag parties and Gibson could supplement his film budgets by timely purchases of Kiev real estate.

Gibson would also make great gossip material for the Exile crowd and certainly boost his internet presence.

However, a word of caution- Mel, don’t make your film/s too good. Well made European films have a habit of bankrupting their producers. For example, the German company that made Enemy at the Gates has gone belly up (how can you go bankrupt making films this good!)Fortunately though, Gibson knows how to add just enough cheese to make a film commercially successful.