Liberalism's Christmas carve-up

The war on Christmas these days seems to have became a battle on two fronts. First there's the left-liberal attempt to de-christianise Christmas. Although I haven't noticed too much of this in New Zealand, it was clearly obvious when I visited Melbourne recently, where Christmas shop displays seemed to be cleansed of any nativity scene decoration. No doubt this is related to PC concerns about not offending Australia's larger Muslim population.

Secondly, there's the on-going right-liberal campaign to make as much money out of Christmas as possible, even if that means marginalising Christmas day itself. Most retailers now seem to have given up trying to get people to buy presents for the big day, and instead are encouraging them to hold onto their cash until the summer sales start on the 26th.

Hence we now have two Christmas celebrations - one on the 25th for the wealthy people, and a K-Mart-style budget Christmas on Boxing Day for the lower classes.

The overrated gender pay gap

Left-liberal organisations in New Zealand have been going on about the gender pay gap for decades now, despite admitting that in fields where men and women actually compete for the same jobs with the same skills its not particularly significant. For example, in the Christchurch Press last Saturday, of Judy McGregor of the Human Rights Commission said "We still have a long way to go in relation to pay equity," despite saying that the average gender pay gap in the public sector is only about 12 per cent.

I would think that the fact that women have to leave work to have children would account for most if not all of such a relatively small gap, especially in a long-term career-orientated field like civil service work.

Of course in these complaints about pay differences, it's never considered that there may be occupations in which women are over-payed relative to men with the same qualifications.
Take teaching for example - in secondary teaching there is apparently a shortage of science and maths graduates, and a slight surplus of arts graduates. However, teachers unions are strongly opposed to allowing schools to increase pay rates for maths and science teachers.

Given the majority of arts graduates are women and the majority of science and maths graduates are men, holding back salaries for maths and science teachers negatively discriminates against a disproportionate number of male teaching graduates.

In the private sector there are also a number of fields where men are underpaid. There's little doubt male models are paid less than their female counterparts and its also likely to be a similar story in public relations, where a disproportionate number of jobs are given to youngish, relatively attractive females.

Sure, there may be valid reasons why women should be paid more than men in certain occupations, butt that's equally likely to be the case with men being paid more than women in some occupations. Blanket statements about gender oppression just don't cut it, particularly in a relatively tight labour market where there's nothing to stop workers from looking for another employer if they feel they aren't getting a fair deal.

Unless women are frequently getting paid substantially less than men for the same work, for an extended period of time, without taking time off for maternity leave, then its hard to make a claim they are being unfairly discriminated against.

Stupidly irresponsible journalism

Considering how mainstream journalists like to criticise bloggers for irresponsible journalism, Daily Mirror columnist Brian Reade has quite a cheek to joke about publicly revealing the details of right-wing political activists.

On the Daily Mirror website, he's written under a picture of British National Party politician Nick Griffin Reade (in an apparently sarcastic tone):

"I'm worried about the 12,000 BNP members whose names and addresses have been leaked on the Internet.

I pray their details don't fall into the hands of any of those black radical groups known to take a very dim view of white neo-Nazis.

It would be truly awful if anything nasty happened to these nice people wouldn't it?"

Most blog hosting sites like blogger close down extremist political sites which advocate violence or publish personal details of political opponents (which probably breaches privacy laws as well).

If mainstream newspapers columnists publicly condone this sort of action they should be sacked. At the very least, Reade deserves a warning from his employer for violating the standards of responsible journalism.

As a writer for a national paper he should be mature enough to acknowledge that most political activists, on both the right and left are decent, law abiding people and deserve to have their personal safety protected.

Liberal media and the man bites dog story

After "it bleeds it leads," one of the mainstream media's favourite pre-occupations is, as Steve Sailer points out, the atypical 'man bites dog' story. In crime reporting this often means a fixation on racially motivated crime among whites and organised crime among East Asians - both of which are statistically infrequent compared with the run-of-the-mill underclass crime that's more common among economically under-achieving minorities.

Such is the case with a Press story about the recent murder of an immigrant taxi driver in Christchurch entitled "Teens face killing charge," which had a page two follow up title "Racial link to killing feared," in which another unidentified taxi driver was given the chance to comment about cultural intolerance among Christchurch citizens, and was quoted as saying the murder wouldn't have happened if the man had been white.

This speculative material was deemed newsworthy despite the fact that the names and ethnicities of the two accused youths have not been revealed and that a police spokesman has clearly stated the motive for the murder is not yet known.

Similarly, in the same way racially motivated crime is exaggerated, the power of racialist politics is also over-played. As a rather disallutioned commentator on the white nationalist website Majority Rights points out, the level of serious white racialist political activism in the US is tiny, but is talked up by increasingly irrelevant left-liberal organisations like the Southern Poverty Law Center to gain funding.

Buying up the Pacific rim

During the decline of the U.S economy in the 1980s Japan bought out American companies and established car companies on the American mainland. Now Chinese investers are following suite and taking advantage of the current recession to buy up comparatively cheap properties in California (hat tip: Your Lying Eyes).

East Asians now own a significant percentage of the real estate in most of the major Western Pacific rim cities, including: Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Auckland, Wellington, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle and especially Vancouver (not sure about Portland, Oregan).

While the elites of English-speaking West don't seem to be particularly concerned about this, it does signal that the West is now decisively in economic decline relative to East Asia, and a pattern seems to be emerging that the worse the recession, the greater the amount of Pacific real estate bought up by Asian interests.

It also raises concern about North American and Australian security should relations worsen between China and the US.

In the long run, continuing Asian immigration could eventually lead to a fracturing of Australasia and North America with Eastern Australia, Northern New Zealand, British Columbia, and the US Eastern Seaboard becoming Asian countries and the space-loving Caucasian populations retreating to the cheaper and less-densely populated hinterlands.

Surviving in a liberal society

With a lot of talk these days about "western values" tests for non-western immigrants, I thought I might offer a few brief pointers for understanding the confusing western politics called liberalism:

- western countries pollute the atmosphere bad, non-western countries pollute the atmosphere ok
- environmental degradation bad, increased immigration and population growth good
- roads bad, buses good
- consumption good, mining and manufacturing bad
- diversity of cultures good, diversity of political views bad
- ethnicity based statistics mentioned in right-wing news bad, ethnicity based stats mentioned in left-wing news good
- blacks voting for black presidential candidate not racist, whites voting for white presidential candidate racist.
- blacks and browns opposed to homosexuality good, whites opposed to homosexuality bad.
-Muslim sexism good, Christian sexism bad
- objectifying women bad, pornography good
- women doing arts degrees good, women getting paid less bad
- more people at university good, rising tuition costs and populist courses bad
- indigenous paternalism good, western paternalism bad
- white trash music (heavy metal/country) crap, black trash music (gansta rap) good
- East Asian immigration restrictionism ok, Western immigration restrictionism bad
- white Eastern Europeans persecuting minorities bad, black Africans persecuting minorities not so bad.
- non-white ethno-centric parties ok, white ethno-centric parties=nazis
- nationalist holocaust evil, communist holocaust not so bad.
- painting your country's flag on your face and shouting out its name, good, being concerned with your country's long-term viability bad.
- IQ testing for criminals and learning disabled accurate, IQ testing for school students and job applicants not accurate
- anti-christian evolutionary ideas good, conservative evolutionary ideas bad
- people dependent on the state good, state imposing conditions on behaviour of welfare recipients bad
- meritocracy good, tough academic standards bad.

1990 again?

With the demise of New Zealand First, and National's strong showing in the recent election there appears to be a strong likelihood that immigration is set to increase.

As in 1990, National has got into government with a strong majority during a recessionary period and is keeping conspicuously quiet on immigration matters.

Last time around National's solution to solving the economic downturn was to increase East Asian immigration to stimulate the housing market and attract foreign capital. The economy turned around, but the majority failed to benefit as a yawning gap opened up between wages and house prices.

It's now six years since New Zealand First's strong showing in the 2002 election send a message to the government that the majority of the population wasn't happy with wealth-based, non-western immigration, and there are a number of signs that National is considering opening the immigration floodgates once again.

Firstly it's junior coalition partner Act has a strongly pro-immigration platform - it wants a net immigration inflow of 30,000 -40,000 per year, and it doesn't appear to be very fussy about where they come from (this is pretty high when you consider the country's high level of out-migration to Australia).

Then there's National's unnecessary decision to broker a confidence and supply agreement with the Maori Party. On the surface it might seem strange that National is willing to make a deal with an ethno-centric party whose co-leader has stated she's opposed to white immigration, on the grounds that it's undermining the "browning" of New Zealand (particularly since National voters are overwhelming right liberal whites who are strongly opposed to ethnocentric policies).

However, if the Maori Party is not particularly opposed to non-white immigration, as co-leader Turiana Turia appears to suggest, then there's no reason why it can't work with National on immigration. All National has to do is to restrict white immigration and let in more Polynesians and Asians.

There is also National's plan to loosen up zoning restrictions and cut back the Resource Management Act. If National does intend to increase immigration then its essential that it make more land available for development so that there isn't another sharp increase in house prices as there was in the 1990s.

The demise of New Zealand First means there's no party in parliament with a immigration restrictionist policy to express opposition, since both Labour and the Greens support high immigration levels, and in the case of the Green's, increased refugee quotas.

Hopefully I'm wrong on immigration, but with the election of pro-immigration candidates like Kevin Rudd and Barack Obama in Australia and the U.S it appears New Zealand could be heading down the same path.

A redder shade of green

Good news for Marxists and immigration lawyers -

The Press reports the Green Party has called for a big increase in New Zealand's annual refugee quota as part of its immigration and population policy.

In a bid to widen its base from "traditional environmental issues" the party intends to push for a boost in the annual quota from 750 to 1000 by 2010. The Greens sat they are also planning to make it easier for parents and immediate family members of new migrants to apply for residency and to make marriage, civil unions and de facto partnership re-unifications exempt from all quotas.

How exactly all this is supposed to benefit the environment is of course left unmentioned.

The Greens are at least honest enough to admit their is no economic benefit to increased refugee quotas and they wish to do so for "humanitarian" reasons. However, in the long run I'd even question whether bringing immigrants from third world countries to industrialised western countries is particularly humane.

There's increasing anecdotal evidence that the majority of refugees from economically poor countries are struggling to adapt to life in western countries and are ending up at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder. In terms of access to health and welfare services they are no doubt better off, but in terms of finding employment and fitting into the local community they might be better off being sponsored to live in a non-western country with a similar culture to their country of origin.

Furthermore, the burden of re-settling refugees in western countries falls disproportionately on working-class citizens who live in the communities where refugees are usually settled.
Sponsoring refugees to live in other countries should appeal to left -leaning parties since more of the burden for re-settlement would fall on middle class and upper income taxpayers rather than the working class.

Cliche of the week

From the Prime Minister in a recent press interview -

"This country was built on migration, whether it was the first people who came out in canoes or my forebears, who came out to the goldrush in Cromwell.
We have had waves of migrations, which have helped to grow and develop New Zealand."

Considering just how many politicians use this argument to justify pro-immigration policies it might be worth considering if there is actually a country in the world that wasn't built on immigration.

Maybe one or two countries in Eastern Africa like Keyna (or wherever modern humans first originated), but even that's doubtful. Those who inhabit Kenya today may well be immigrants from other parts of Africa.

Hence, the total meaningless of saying a country is built on immigrants.

Of course the "built on immigrants" argument is not used to remind us about the obvious, but to imply that ongoing immigration will make a country richer and existing citizens better off.

However, just because a country is built on immigration doesn't automatically mean its likely to get better with further immigration. For example, Argentina was an affluent country until the 1930s, but despite on-going immigration, it never managed to recapture its high income status. A good argument could be made that Argentina should have stayed small and not diluted its agricultural wealth by increasing its population and half-heartedly attempting to became an industrial economy.

People were making the same argument in New Zealand a hundred years ago, and who's to say they weren't right - in 1900 New Zealand was the richest country in the world per capita, now its near the bottom of the developed world. Those of us who have arrived since then may be better off for it, but some of those who were already here were/are probably worse off for our arrival.

Yuppie populism trumps old-right conservatism

If New Zealand had a genuinely conservative government one of the things it would do would be to try and balance the interests of producers and consumers and savers and spenders.
Unfortunately, in company with the US we have an unbalanced right-liberal economy in which producers and savers are hammered while consumers are pampered.

While conservatism is concerned primarily with stability and balance, today's reigning neo-liberalism emphasizes individual freedom, and when people are given unrestricted freedom they usually behave in an unbalanced way. Interest rates may well be a key aspect of this lack of balance in economic policy. Over the last decade or so interest rates in New Zealand have been running at about 8 per cent per annum on average.

Now you might think high interest rates would have led to reduced spending and more saving, but the opposite has actually occurred - savings have stagnated while consumer spending has skyrocketed.

Critics such as Kel Sanderson argue that the Reserve Bank's high interest rates attracted more overseas capital than the country needed for growth and development leaving the banks awash in surplus funds. Thus lending practices have been loosened and more consumers have been encouraged to max out their credit cards and take out heavily leveraged mortgages.

Possibly the only reason we haven't had the kind of banking crisis seen in the US is that in this country the gap between wage rates and house prices is so high that people with poor credit histories have almost no show of paying off their mortgages so even the most cock-sure mortgage brokers wouldn't entertain trying to get them into a home.

To add insult to injury, savers have been discouraged from taking advantage of these high interest rates by hefty withholding taxes.

High interest rates have also pushed up property prices by making property speculation one of the few ways of making a profitable living. Despite the fact that Labour (like its UK counterpart) is constantly patting it self on the back for its supposed fiscal prudence, the country is sliding back towards ongoing trade imbalances.

Yet another way in which savers and producers have been penalised has been in the government's attitude to research and development spending. Economic development experts are frequently pointing out New Zealand has one of the lowest rates of private research and development spending in the OECD.

After two terms in office Labour finally decided to offer businesses some tax relief for research and development spending. However even this token measure of producerism has been crushed by the rabidly consumerist National Party.

I was briefly considering voting for National after hearing about its plan to substantially increase spending on transport and communications infrastructure, but this latest insult means something pretty out of the blue would have to happen policy wise before I'd consider voting for either of the two main parties.

Liberal economics coming unstuck?

Gwynne Dyer has written a pretty good summary of last week's financial bail-out in which he's criticised the media for over-hyping the extent of the banking crisis. Whether the West is due for a major depression over the next decade or so is still anyone's guess, but if a serious depression does occur, I agree that it's unlikely to take the same form it took in 1929.

Common sense suggests that having been through many previous financial crises over the last century, Western governments are pretty adept at dealing with acute problems in the financial sector.

Similarly, with so many workers now cushioned by the welfare state, there is less of a temptation for governments to resort to widespread protectionism to save jobs, which was one of the major issues in the 1930s.

However, western countries now face a number of serious long-term economic problems which didn't exist back in the thirties.The big question now is whether the West can deal with the chronic economic problems associated with de-industrialisation, rising energy and welfare costs and continuing immigration from second and third world countries with a poor economic track record.

In some ways it's probably fortunate this banking crisis has occurred sooner rather than later - if it occurred smack bang in the middle of another surge in oil prices and baby-boomer pension claims things could have been a lot worse.

Another concern is that many of the pundits who are willing to acknowledge these chronic problems, tend to be Ron Paul-style libertarians with a dogmatic attachment to classical liberalism. For example, pro-Ron Paul business commentator Peter Shiff predicted the current banking crisis back in 2006, but his credibility is undermined in my view by exaggerated claims about inflation and the wonders of the gold standard.

Shiff's approach is easy to attack, since critics can simply argue that classical liberalism failed spectacularly in the 1920s, and that's the reason why we now have a Keynesian economic system in which the government intervenes in the economy to smooth out recessions.

The dismissal of anti-Keynesian arguments by mainstream pundits is unfortunate, as they're quite right to question the use of Keynesian style economic policies to deal with today's economic problems.

In the 1930s, most people worked in productive jobs in farming and manufacturing, lived within their means, and received little in the way of government welfare or services.

Hence there was wasn't much economic danger in using government money to kick-start economic demand by increasing welfare spending and initiating public works programmes.

However, in today's consumption-driven post-industrial society, with its bloated public sector, extensive use of Keynesian policies doesn't make much sense. In a world dominated by liberal ideology, economists tend to view the health of the economy abstractly in terms of rational financial management, rather than concretely, in terms of the traditions and human capital on which economies are constructed and sustained.

Both right and left wing liberals are of the view that de-industrialisation is of little consequence, workers are interchangeable and culture can be replaced by financial incentives. I'll believe that when Toyotas are made in Zaire, billionaires opt for Argentinian banks, and IT entrepreneurs flock to Afghanistan.

Since today's economic problems go beyond the financial sphere perhaps non-mainstream economic theorists like Schumpeter, Veblen, Braudel, and List who put greater emphasis on technology, culture and human bio-diversity, should be read a little more widely.

Russian realism v western idealism

Considering how frequently liberal western commentators knock Russia for its lack of business transparency, central government meddling in the market, and supposed lack of democracy, you'd be forgiven for assuming the place was in as big a mess as bottom of the ladder third world dictatorships like North Korea and Zimbabwe.

However, compared with the West's favourite ex-Soviet Union states, Ukraine and Georgia, which the West holds up as beacons of democracy and progress, Russia's in pretty good shape. According to the CIA world factbook, Russia ended 2007 with its eight straight year of economic growth, and a pretty healthy GDP per capita of $14,700 (US). In comparison, Ukraine's GDP per capita is about $6,900 and Georgia's a lowly $4,700.

Now sure, a lot of this new Russian wealth has come via rising oil and gas prices, but Russia is also doing better than other oil-and gas rich ex-Soviet countries like Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan.

While Ukraine and Georgia have been idly dreamy of pie-in-the-sky western style democracies, Russia's taken a more down-to-earth Hobbsian approach to state building, emphasizing financial stability and basic law and order. The result has been sustained economic growth, higher pensions and fewer citizens on an all-potato diet.

Meanwhile political instability is once again threatening to undermine economic growth in the Ukraine, with prime minister Yulio Tymoshenko falling out with pro-western president Victor Yushchenko. Tymoshenko now wants to pursue a more pro-Russian stance and team up with Party of Region leader Victor Yanukovych.

Hopefully Ukraine can finally start to get its act together and reclaim its status as the bread basket of Europe, as opposed to being a basket case.

Is traditionalism anti-western?

Having not read many blogs over the last few months, I've belatedly been catching up some of the posts on western survival written by Conservative Swede in July and August.

In response to a number of exchanges with Lawrence Auster, Conservative Swede argues that like Marxism, libertarianism and traditional conservatism can also undermine western culture:

"Political views that are heavily ideologized infallibly fall into becoming permanent opponents to our civilization. Communists see our civilization as Capitalistic, and are therefore enemies of it. They will always be enemies of it since no matter what is its real character, they will always see it as Capitalistic. Libertarians see our civilization as oppression by evil states, and are therefore enemies of it. They will always be enemies of it since no matter what is its real character, they will always see it as oppression by evil states. Traditionalist conservatives see our civilization as liberal, and are therefore enemies of it. They will always be enemies of it since it will never be anti-liberal enough for them. This is the reason why traditionalist conservatives will often operate in a similar manner as Communist sectarians within any specific movement. They have an agenda of their own and that's the one they are driving."

Certainly if loyalty to an ideology comes before loyalty to a particular country or civilisation, then the ideology in question can serve to undermine that country or civilisation. For example, if a traditionalist were unwilling to oppose Muslim terrorism on the basis that they felt the west deserved to be punished for anti-traditional practices such as gay marriage or abortion (admittedly a pretty extreme scenario) then that could be seen as being aggressively anti-western.

In the case of liberalism, conservatives also have to take into account that while liberalism is in many respects undermining western civilisation it is also a product of western civilisation, so it would seem that a total rejection of liberal principles would be radically anti-western.

Having said that, it can also be argued that being aggressively pro-western outside the west can also undermine long-term western interests. For example, the United States is currently involved in promoting western values in Iraq and Afghanistan at great expense, while its economy continues to decline relative to that of non-western powers like China.

A paleoconservative traditionalist could therefore argue that such an approach to promoting western values is equally anti-western.

From a conservative perspective, the most prudent course may be to steer a middle line between assertively supporting traditional values, whilst not promoting them to the extreme that the social and economic viability of western countries are undermined or that the majority of westerners equate traditional conservatism with explicitly anti-western ideologies like Marxism.

Given that so little progress has been made in getting liberalism to make any concessions to traditional values, achieving such a balance is is likely to be a very big ask.

The left and eugenics

On The Rawness blog there's an interesting post on Sweden that touches on the country's eugenics programme,which ran from the 1930s to the 1970s.

A commenter named jaakeli points out that although left-wing intellectuals played a leading role in early eugenics programmes, their role in eugenics is largely forgotten:

"How did they make the leap from eugenics to multiculturalism?"

"It’s not that much of a leap. The eugenicists and racial theorists were the liberal intelligentsia of the time, playing the same heal-the-world role with different ideas. Today you can’t propose helping the poor of the world with breeding schemes but supporting crazy schemes to help the poor of the world without ever actually asking the opinion of the poor of the world is still the mark of a true progressive. The only thing that keeps changing is which schemes are considered good and progressive.

The heart of eugenics programs was a coalition of nationalists (the pagan right) and the left. It would not have worked without some support across the political spectrum because it’s so easy to demonize. The reason it seems strange now is that the leftists have been very successful in covering up their part in it and blaming it all on the nationalists.

Christian conservatives have not forgotten the left’s role in it, but everyone else ignores them since their anti-eugenics is buried under anti-evolutionism."

While the extreme eugenics programmes of the Nazi's, are probably the primary reason why eugenics is now mainly associated with the right, it's still surprising how the left has been able to make such a clean break with its eugenics associations, particularly since leading leftist proponents included Fabian socialists H.G Wells and George Bernard Shaw and the hugely influential economist John Maynard Keynes.

Then again, considering the left's ability to avoid being tainted by the likes of Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao Zedong, I suppose it's probably not that surprising.

The path to second world status?

A contributer to the Australian website Can Do Better cites a passage from American writer Roy Beck's recent book The Case Against Immigration finds a link between high immigration and Argentina's economic decline in the 1930s (hat tip: Ralph Edwards from the blog Eye on Immigration ).

While the US, Canada Australia and New Zealand slowed down their immigration levels in the 1910s and 1920s, Argentina did not have an immigration timeout. As a result Mr Beck says the country had to borrow heavily on internatinal markets to fund new infrastructure needed to support the burgeoning population, and this led to serious economic problems further down the track:

"How did Argentina cease to be one of the world's richest countries? That puzzle was the challenge for Allan M. Taylor, the Mellon Fellow at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies and the Department of Economics at Harvard. "More compelling and mysterious examples of failure than the ruination of Argentina are hard to imagine," Taylor said in a 1992 paper published in the journal of Economic History. He concluded that a key factor for Argentina's economic disintegration was the continuation of high European immigration to Argentina after the United States, Canada, and Australia began ending their eras of mass immigration early this century.

No single explanation could account for such a sustained and deep economic demise, Taylor said. But a crucial factor surely was the country's remarkably low savings rate, as compared to Australia, for example. Taylor linked the low savings rate to the high rate of immigration and the high fertility rate of the immigrants. Both immigration and fertility were higher than in Australia and contributed to Argentina having higher consumption and lower savings, Taylor found. The country made up the shortfall of capital for a while by heavier reliance on foreign capital. The differences in Argentina's circumstances-with their roots in the difference in immigration rates-left the country much more vulnerable than the other advanced nations to international events. Argentina's rich, middle-class economy was not able to survive."

The potential link between high immigration and low savings is not something I've thought about before.

In the case of New Zealand it's certainly noticeable that since immigration levels began increasing in the early 1990s, savings rates have remained stubbornly low, and in economic terms the country has been unable to lift itself off the bottom tier of first world countries.

The therapeutic state strikes back (again)

The Dominion Post reports this week that teachers are in fact allowed to use force to restrain unruly pupils who threaten teachers or other students.

Inspector Chris Gravenson has apparently told a recent teacher's conference that under the Crimes Act teachers are entitled to use force to restrain violent students, even if it causes bruising.

Sensible stuff you might say.

However, a spokesman for the Children's Commissioner's Office has piped back saying to it is never appropriate to use enough force to cause bruising. Exactly how a violent pupil can be restrained without risking bruising is of course left unexplained.

Clearly the kind of people who inhabit these waste-of-space organs of the therapeutic state aren't open to common-sense discussion.

This is why I was dead against John Key's wishy-washy decision to support the recent Anti-Smacking Bill. By supporting the Bill, albeit in a compromised form, Key allows the left liberal therapeutic state to take a step forward without gaining anything for conservatism in return.

The best stance National could have taken would be to simply to have said NO.

If the bill had been passed in its undiluted form it would have generated serious opposition that could have been exploited by National in the coming election. Instead the Bill's critics have now taken their eye of the ball, and deluded themselves into thinking they have gained some sort of victory from the compromise.

This is how the liberal left still continues to advance - it initiates an arrogant and unpopular piece of legislation, which the majority of the population dislikes. However, the so-called conservative centre-right then suffers a crisis of confidence, and instead of opposing the legislation, decides to support a watered-down version.

Thus not only does the centre left continue to advance its cause, but it does so at an incremental pace, which most people don't really notice. This allows it to steadily take over without attracting any serious opposition.

Its time to start saying NO more often.

Half-hearted realism

On breakfast TV last week I tuned in to see prominent British journalist Robert Fisk talking about the current situation in the Middle East.

Mr Fisk puts himself firmly in the pessimists camp, claiming things are likely to get a lot worse before they get better.

He says despite the presence of plenty of Middle Eastern Affairs departments in western universities, the West has little understanding of the region, and in return the Middle East doesn't have much of a clue about the West either.

With this track record of failure and mutual ignorance, it might be reasonable to conclude that contact between the two civilisations should be scaled back.

However, in typical left-liberal fashion he only goes as far as suggesting the West should reduce its military presence in the region. No mention of reducing Muslim immigration to the West or restricting the involvement of the western media in Middle Eastern countries.

This is a typical stance of a half-hearted realist who wishes to sound worldly and tough-minded without having to take the risk of being seen as seriously politically incorrect.

Reducing the West's military presence in the Middle East may well be a good idea, but its military presence isn't the only reason why the Middle East is opposed to the West.

France and the low countries for example, have stayed clear of the war on Iraq, but that hasn't stopped elements of their Muslim populations from indulging in anti-western riots. In Europe, Muslim hostility to the West is more about envy of western affluence, and contempt for western liberal values than it is about western oppression.

The liberal values problem is particularly embarrassing for those on the liberal left.

While staunch right liberals can openly defend western liberal values against Muslim traditionalism, the liberal left's tolerance for diversity means it is caught between defending its own liberal values and having to tolerate clearly anti-liberal Muslim values

Mr Fisk hopes that “cultural exchange” will help reduce tension between the two sides, but with such a big cultural gulf its difficult to see how such exchange can help. Only a small number of cosmopolitan elites from the West and Middle East will be able to tolerate living and working in each others world's without feeling the urge to undermine the host culture.

Finishing-off the old right

As the country's journalists enthusiastically sharpen their knives in preparation for finishing off Winston Peter's, Michael Laws points out their over-zealousness may well-backfire.

It's not just the fact they're clearly enjoying questioning Peter's over his fast and lose financial dealings, but the fact they've jumped straight into the role of judge and executioner.

A few months out from the election, Peter's looks to be in big trouble, and the smart thing for his media critics to do would be to simply back-off a little and let public opinion decide his fate.
Instead, over excited political editor's like Colin Espiner have jumped in to spout their personal indignation about Peter's and practically ordered him to resign.

This gives Peter's a small glimmer of hope that he can rally enough anti-liberal sentiment to get past the five percent threshold in November's national election.

To what extent the media's dislike of Peter's is due to his old-right ideology, or to his evasiveness and grandstanding, is hard to figure out, but there certainly seems to be a lot of right and left liberals who would love to see the back of him.

One thing that even Laws has overlooked is the fact that as National's policies have moved closer to NZ First's, Key's attacks on Peters have intensified. Under Key, National has assumed NZ First's centrist stance on Foreign policy and its Keynesian stance on infrastructure spending, and its also toned down its neoliberal stance on privatising state assists.

Maybe this isn't a bad thing - if National is toning down its right liberalism, then New Zealand First becomes more irrelevant as a political alternative.

The thing that disturbs me though, is that this sudden desire to decisively knock over NZ First, whilst assuming some of its policies, could be a ploy by National to make the country think its becoming more conservative, and use that as cover for increasing immigration levels.

After all, whatever one thinks of Winston Peter's populist style and NZ First's amateurism over party administration, NZ First has been only the break on unpopular immigration expansionism over the last 15 years. Sure their success in this regard may have been modest, but without NZ First's strong showing in the 2002 election, it seems unlikely Labour would have shifted its focus to skilled workers and tougher English-language requirements.

Similarly, when National opened the doors to East Asian immigration in the early 1990s, there was no political party to represent the interests of immigration restrictionists. Knocking over NZ First would once again leave the main parties in total control of immigration policy without having to worry about public opposition.

On the other hand, the removal of Peter's would make it easier to untangle the personal animosity from the ideology. If New Zealand First were able to survive without Peter's as leader (admittedly, a big ask) then it would be easier to see whether the media was actively trying to oppose old-right policies like immigration restrictionism - which a supposedly objective media shouldn't be doing - or whether it was just rallying against Peter's populism and sloppy party administration.

The other thing about the donations saga that hasn't been touched upon is that there doesn't seem to be any ideological intent behind them. It's seems strange for example that a right liberal like Robert Jones would want to give money to an old-right party he claims to be ideologically opposed too.

Similarly, if Owen Glenn supports NZ First’s political manifesto, why does he want a show down with Peter's over alleged statements made in regard to donations. Surely if he supported the party then he would want to keep things quiet.

In the weird world of political donations, people rarely seem to donate large amounts of money to political causes for straightforward reasons.

Since corporations prefer giving money to left-liberal, anti-business causes so as to improve their public image, then perhaps businessmen also like to donate to causes they don't support in order to improve their image or sway their opponents in a direction more to their liking.

National starting to get things right

National's proposal to boost spending on transport and communications infrastructure by four and half billion is well overdue.

Despite the moans from libertarians and environmentalists, Key's proposal makes sound economic sence.

It's essential for a government in a small, isolated country like New Zealand to make a serious funding commitment to infrastructure, and its cheaper to do so during a recession when construction costs are lower.

Furthermore, the longer we put off essential development, the more expensive it becomes.

Fuel prices

With fuel riots now starting to break out is some European countries, I think we're getting some idea of when fuel price rises will start to bite in New Zealand.

European countries have been having to deal with expensive fuel since the late 1970s, thanks to hefty taxes designed to encourage more efficient fuel use, and subsidise generous welfare spending.

Unlike in Australia, New Zealand and North America, where there's been a ‘we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it’ attitude to peak oil, European governments have long been concerned that rising fuel prices pose a serious threat to economic competitiveness.

Britain’s economy was hammered by rising oil prices in the 1970s, which in combination with intense competition from Germany and Japan, wiped out most of its manufacturing sector.
However, thanks to the timely arrival of cheap oil and gas from the North Sea, it managed to cope by focusing on financial services, oil-based manufacturing industries, and armament sales.

Today though, European countries are dealing with the ‘double whammy’ of high taxes and rising oil prices, and the combination is starting to prove too much for many citizens. Spain’s rioting fisherman are sending out the message that oil prices approaching the two euro mark aren’t going to be tolerated without a fight.

Here in NZ, oil prices have increased from around 90 cents a litre in 2000 to just over $2 a litre today, and despite a few moans, there hasn’t been a serious economic impact.

I guess you need to take into account that technological advantages have provided a bit of a buffer. Since the 1970s, vehicles have become more fuel-efficient, many manufacturing firms have shifted production to low-wage countries (so rising material costs are offset by lower wage costs) and appliances and manufacturing processes now use less electricity.

Hence, oil prices will have to increase to current European levels before there is major economic strife. I'm speculating that most people won’t be changing their driving habits, or protesting outside the beehive, until petrol prices breach $3 per litre.

Immigration and big government

In a new Vdare column "Immigration - is the Viagra of the state," Peter Brimelow tries to appeal to libertarians by suggesting that immigration leads to bigger government.

However this depends on what kind of government you're referring to.

Immigration has certainly increased what some paleoconservatives refer to as the "liberal therapeutic state," but it's arguably been a disaster for the developmental state of which New Zealand was an early pioneer.

In terms of government investment in such things as science and technology, transport and energy infrastructure, public housing, and technical education, the golden age for the English-speaking West was the era between 1925 and 1965, a period when there was little non-western immigration, particularly in the US.

For advocates of affirmative action, global government, mass university education, anti-smoking campaigns and hate-speech laws, the liberal golden age began in the mid 1960s, when non-western immigration took-off in earnest.

Admittedly there was a classical liberal attempt to trim back the excesses of the left-liberal state in the 1980s, led by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, but this movement ran out of steam in the early 1990s.

Brimelow does correctly point out though, that while immigration may discourage support for the state among the majority of native citizens, it has little appeal for the immigrants and their government and big business supporters, who stand to gain more, at least in the short-to-medium term, from a bigger state.

Subsequently there is potential for a paleo-libertarian approach to gain public support where globalist, pro-immigration libertarianism has failed.

Unfashionable thinking on learning disorders

A feature article in last Saturday's Press alluded to the growing number of learning disorders that the medical-come-educational establishment is defining, and that parents and educators are struggling to keep up with new developments.

This got me thinking about how children with genuine learning disorders are supposed to be identified, given the huge number of students who go through the education system, and such identification be done in a cost-effective way.

The usual way that children are identified as having learning difficulties is for a parent or teacher to spot some problem with their school work or behaviour and then refer them to a specialist. The problem with this ad hoc approach is that not every child has a doting soccer mom to keep track of their academic progress - and it's too subjective - how do know whether a children has a learning difficulty or just isn't very smart.

By contrast, if a psychometric approach was used, and all children were given IQ tests, then we would have a pretty efficient way of sorting out the vast majority of academic underachievers from the genuinely slow learners.

The ADHD kids would be pretty easy to identify since there is likely to be a gap between their academic grades and their IQ score, and or, they are likely to have atypical profiles, with low scores on concentration dependent sub-tests like digit span. Again, kids with specific learning difficulties such as dyslexia, are either going to have a big gap between their IQ score and their school grades, or they are likely to have unusually skewed IQ profiles. For example, it's fairly obvious that someone with a non-verbal learning disorder would likely struggle with the non-verbal part of an IQ test.

No doubt this neo-empiricism will be offensive to many liberal parents who see IQ tests as a return to the dark days of the1950s, but if they don't like this kind of approach, they can always get a second opinion - working class and underclass parents, with less money and knowledge, don't always have that luxury.

Who knows, 21st century-style IQ testing could be the next big learning break-through since depression-era school milk, which ensured poor kids were finally able to get through the school day with a little concentration-inducing protein.

Quote for the week

From a great David Round commentary attacking managerialism:

"Bureaucracy is safer, quieter, more lucrative and more powerful than politics. It attracts more ambitious people. Politicians have some sense of responsibility to the community. Managers are safely invisible and irresponsible, and every time you turn around, there are more of them."

De Bres Brouhaha

In a surprisingly strong defence of free speech, The Dominion Post has come out saying race relations conciliator Joris De Bres should not be pre-emptively censoring Massey University's Professor Clydesdale over his controversial new study regarding the economic contribution of Polynesian Immigrant's to New Zealand's economy:

"Mr de Bres seems in danger of forgetting this is a democracy, in which academics have the freedom their institutions allow them to comment and critique society and newspapers have the right not only to report such comment and criticism but also to decide what prominence to give what is, by any definition, news." (hat tip: David Farrar)

What really gets me about all this is what an economic report has to do with a race relations conciliator? Are we expecting Polynesian immigrants to riot in the streets if the findings of some minor academic study paint them in a bad light? Where is the precedent for un-pc academic findings causing major racial conflict? Did Africa explode over Professor Watson's politically incorrect comment on African intelligence? Did African Americans riot over the publication of the Bell Curve? Of the few people that did get worked up about the later, most were harmless-looking middle class white guys.

If de Bres can't find any better things to do with his time, you have to wonder whether we should be forking over taxpayers money to support his role.

Print media v the Internet

In newspaper commentaries on the decline/ stagnation of newspapers, and the rise of Internet, you don't tend to hear much about the Internet's greatest strength - its capacity to act as an outlet for frank opinion, or it's greatest weakness - its lack of appeal to advertisers.

For example, in a Press opinion column from last week "There's no business like news business," (Saturday, May 24), Martin Van Beynen says the Internet is competing strongly with print media for advertising, but later in the piece claims newspapers are struggling to get any revenue from their online versions.

To the extent that newspapers have been able to survive the various threats posed by radio, television and the Internet, I'm willing to hazard a guess it's because they've got a competitive advertising niche. Television advertising is too expensive, radio advertising is too brief, and both are extremely annoying and intrusive for viewers and listeners. Internet advertising holds potential, and is similar in many respects to print advertising, but at the present time, it's pretty hard to see how it can be made to pay.

By contrast, there are numerous advantages to newspaper advertising: it's cheap to produce, not particularly intrusive, can be viewed at any time, can include lots of important details, doesn't require a computer, and can be combined with useful information in the form of advertorials. Community newspaper advertising is particularly competitive, since 'communities' can be produced very cheaply and delivered to local homes for free, providing users will access to information on local products and services in a convenient form they can view anytime.

But since businesses are reluctant to pay big money for Internet advertising, it's difficult for bloggers and independent websites to produce the kind of hard news that is the bread and butter of newspapers. Hard news requires contacts, legwork, making lots of toll calls, and accessing user- pays databases, which is hardly likely to appeal to a lone blogger working for free or the occasional donation.

So instead of trying to compete in the field of hard news, which requires too much time and resources, bloggers are striking at the weak underbelly of print journalism - commentary. While, it requires training, resources and certification to produce good hard news, good commentary depends more on intelligence, talent, courage and subject knowledge - qualities which can just as easily be found in an anonymous layman with a high IQ or a curious mind, than an over-worked professional journalist constrained by numerous editorial requirements and pressing deadlines.

Not only that, but the amateur blogger has the advantage of total flexibility in regard to time spend on a post and the frequency of his or her posting.

Most newspaper commentators are obliged to produce articles of a particular size to a regular and inflexible deadline, and almost invariably quality and originality decline over time. Thus the flexible nature of blogging means that people who have jobs in other fields, which may pay much higher than journalism, can potentially produce refreshing, quality posts on an occasional basis, and blow away their stale and frequently under-paid, newspaper competitors.

Print journalists argue that the anonymity of blogging encourages a lot of immature and malicious posting, and they do have a point - quantity and shock value, rather than quality is the norm in blogosphere. However, the sheer volume and diversity of posts means that the best of the Internet (provided people can find it) is more than a match for the stale output of most newspaper opinion columns.

John Gray - a post liberal realist for the mainstream market

While there are quite a few realist intellectuals roaming around the wild west of the Internet, Britain's John Gray is arguably the only one who gets a fair hearing in the mainstream media.

Last weekends Press for example, has a prominent, and sympathetic portrait of Gray, and a review of his latest book, the provocatively titled Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia.

I haven't had a chance to read his latest work, but I like his previous books Straw Dogs, and Al Qaeda: what it means to be Modern, which attack utopian ideologies such as Marxism, and the anthropologic nature of western liberalism and environmentalism.

In regard to modern environmentalism, for example, Gray echoes realist demographer Thomas Malthus in saying:

"Green thinking has many utopian, and even apocalyptic features...Greens are hardly ever violent but they share the apocalyptic view that the world is doomed unless vast changes occur in human institutions and human society.

I have some problems with that - it's a very anthropocentric view. It puts humanity at the centre of things, which it isn't. Whatever happens to humans, humans won't kill the planet. We won't end life on Earth - humanity simply hasn't got that much significance. The planet is much more powerful than humans and will kick back, and that's happening."

He sides with mainstream scientific opinion on global warming, but unfashionably believes there is little humans can do about it other than prepare for the worst. Gray isn't afraid to attack liberals on the economic front either, getting stuck in to both Marxists thinkers such as Terry Eagleton and pro- free market organisations such as the IMF, saying the reality of peak oil contradicts one of the free market's founding myths - that where there is supply there is demand.

His latest book, apparently takes off from where he left off in his Guardian essay The Atheist Delusion, where he gets stuck into the "evangelical atheism" of right liberal aetheists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, who consider aggressively imposing liberalism on the Muslim world.

Admitedly, taking the piss out of Francis Funkayama's The End of History, or Richard Dawkins, human-biology-free The God Delusion, is pretty much standard fair on your average nationalist or paleoconservative weblog, but Gray is about the only mainstream print media public intellectual allowed to aggressively critique utopian aspects of liberal ideology.

There are of course caveats though- he's conspicuously fuzzy about topics like multiculturalism and immigration, and you get the suspicion that some of his ideas come from the European Right, but he's too afraid to say so. For example, on the topic of non-western immigration in Europe, Gray advocates "cultural pluralism," and envisages nation's states modeled on modernized versions of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (It could be my over-active imagination and hazy memory, but isn't that an idea of an an earlier thinker, new right luminary Alain de Benoist, who is pretty much shunned by the mainstream media?).

Anyway, despite these shortcomings, he remains one of the more interesting intellectuals writing for mainstream newspapers, and reading his articles and books has certainly opened my eyes to a lot of views that aren't usually expressed in the mainstream press.

New Zealanders better off, but at what cost?

With unemployment in low single digits for some time now, it's not surprising living standards for most New Zealanders have been increasing. According to Infometrics economist Chris Worthington, most New Zealander's real incomes have increased continuously since 1992, despite high interest rates and the recent surge in fuel and food prices.

What's not mentioned in the article though, is what's been sacrificed to achieve this income increase, and whether such 'live for today' economics is sustainable.

Take transport for example. During the country's last boom period, in the 1950s and 60s, investment in transport was enormous- thousands of kilometres of roads were built, along with hundreds of bridges and tunnels. By comparison with the frenetic infrastructure development of the past, transport spending over the last 15 years has been pathetic. No major bridges have been expanded or replaced, attempts to solve Auckland's traffic bottlenecks have been put in the two hard basket, and not a single stretch of two-lane highway has been converted into a proper motorway. The Otira Viaduct stands out as the only significant infrastructure development of any note in the last 20 years.

There's also been no investment in a better route for the inter-island ferry, which still takes as long to connect the North and South Islands as it did 40 years ago.

We may have the unemployment level of a Scandinavian country, but we sure don't have the transport infrastructure.

Between the Reserve Bank and the Labour government with its focus group-based scientific populism, the consumer has been crowned king and the producer relegated to a lowly serf. The high exchange rate has protected motorists from the impact of rising fuel prices, and kept the overgrown retail sector purring like a kitten, while manufacturers, sheep and cattle farmers, horticulturalists and the forestry and fishery sectors have all been wilting under the double whammy of crippling interest rates and the ever rising dollar.

Judging by the fact that it's our biggest employer, the government seems to worship the retail sector, but doesn't factor in the obvious point that most of it's earnings come from money earned elsewhere in the economy.

Meanwhile, the spector of the complex Emissions Trading Bill casts yet more gloom over the horizon for manufacturing and farming.

Spending on research and development has improved slightly in the last few years, from a very low base, but the government still seems lukewarm about giving tax incentives to address the low level of r and d spending by the private sector, which is one of the lowest in the OECD. In line with this neglect of r and d, there has been little research into our conspicuously low productivity rates, which are also at the lower end of the OECD table.

Then of course there's the country's pitifully low defence spending. As possibly the only western nation with over a million people which doesn't have a squadron of fighter planes, we are now totally dependent on the charity of our shunned former Anzac partners Australia and the US. But putting it bluntly, why should they come to the aid of a sanctimonious free loader like us? - certainly we have no means to come to and assist them.

Typically, those vote-winning essentials, health and education, have been reasonably-well catered for, but as far as long-term development goes, the country's probably no better off than it was in the recessionary early nineties, and back then it didn't have quite such a large population to plan for.

Foolish anti-producerism from Labour as per usual

Rio Tinto Alcan, the primary owners of Southland's Tiwai Point aluminium smelter claim the Government's emission trading scheme could mean the end of the smelter and the loss of 3500 jobs.

The company's regional president, Xiaoling Liu, warns that such a move could force the operation overseas, threatening the jobs of 900 smelter workers and 2600 indirectly employed workers.

Perhaps the most galling thing about the government's enthusiasm for imposing heavy financial and administrative costs on manufacturing, in the name of reducing harmful emissions, is that manufacturing is the only sector of the economy or society to significantly reduce its carbon emissions over the last couple of decades. The Tiwai smelter has reduced emissions by over 40 percent since 1990, and operates one of the most efficient aluminium smelters in the world using a clean and renewable energy source.

Furthermore, if the smelter were to close, Rio Tinto would merely move production to a poorer country with much weaker pollution regulations, resulting in a probable increase in global emissions, and the loss of thousands of jobs and millions of dollars of vital export revenue (in the last 15 years for example, China has opened 15 new aluminium smelters).

It's very easy for urban liberals to impose heavy financial regulations on industry as so few of them are employed in this sector, and it deflects attention away from the real sources of rising emissions - things like population growth and their own profligate lifestyles. Since it highly unlikely wealthy urbanites are going to stop driving around in gas guzzling "soft roaders," or give up buying power boats, emissions trading is going to have little positive impact.

There's certainly no point in sabotaging the economy on the alter of lower emissions, particularly since New Zealand's contribution to global carbon emissions is so pathetically small that there's little point doing anything drastic until China, Russia and the US start taking the lead. And since even the most environmentally conscious European countries seem unable to meet their Kyoto obligations, that could be a long time coming.

Dysgenics from Labor?

Although I'm a keen supporter of means testing for pensions, I don't see what's wrong with a little subsiding of the upper-middle classes when it comes to having children, especially since they tend to have so few of them.

Therefore it's disappointing to see Australia's new Labor government restricting the state-funded baby bonus by making it means tested. Getting the rich to have more kids is one of today's most pressing demographic problems, so an across the board subsidy which includes an incentive for the wealthy, as opposed to just low income earners, makes sense from a eugenic perspective.

Apparently the bonus has been criticised by economists as being a very expensive way to encourage people to have more children, and perhaps other types of fiscal incentives could be used, but at least it sends out the right message, and the results have been promising - the bonus was first introduced in 2004 and by 2006, the number of births reached 265,922 - the highest level for 30 years.

Sadly though, it now appears that Peter Costello's audaciously conservative initiative must be sacrificed for transgressing the reigning equalitarian orthodoxy that EVERYONE HAS EQUAL POTENTIAL.

I was however, pleasantly surprised by this rather un-pc quote from Liberal politician Wilson Tuckey, regarding Labor's watering down of the bonus:

"I've been in the racing business for many, many years and we tend to look at the high achievers as those that should have foals.

"When you start discouraging people who are high achievers, even if it's a limited discouragement, then I think that's not wise."

As another prominent Aussie might have put it :"That one's going straight to the pool room!"

Big business and the liberal left

After reading through this article by the Capital Research Center about corporate contributions to left wing causes (hat tip: Inverted World's Ian Jobling) it stuck me just how far the liberal left has become part of the furniture of the mainstream corporate establishment.

Not only does the liberal left dominate the public sector and many aspects of the legal system, but it also has a strong influence over the private sector through its impact on corporate public relations.

Back In the 1920s, the liberal left was a genuinely cash-strapped outsider movement, shunned by mainstream business and media and totally dependent on the energy and idealism of its supporters to gets its message across. In those days, it did genuinely focus on improving the life of the working class, and it's supporters led grime and decidedly unglamorous lives, as chronicled by the American inter-war writer John Dos Passos in his USA trilogy.

By contrast, today's left liberal activist is probably more at home sailing around the high seas chasing after Japanese whalers, or siting around a board room talking to corporate CEOs about their affirmative action programmes or donations to the WWF. In this modern kind of left-wing politics the gnarly idealistic activist of yesteryear, has been replaced by the extroverted affirmative active lawyer, as Engels and Marx make way for Jesse Jackson and Michael Moore.

One of the reasons why the left has been so successful in being accepted into mainstream politics has been it's decision to abandon its commitment to economic equality and instead promote social and environmental causes. Whereas Economic Marxism directly challenges corporate power, through union and government intervention, cultural Marxism and environmentalism do not pose such a direct threat to business and can be used by corporations as marketing tools to develop new products and attack competitors.

The Cultural Marxists established a strong following in the 1950s through French and American universities, while the modern environmental movement seemed to take off in the early 1960s following, among other things, the backlash against the over-liberal use of DDT and the hydro dam boom.

A number of recent books like Bobos in Paradise have done an excellent job of highlighting the commercialization of the 1960s counter culture and its absorption into middle class life, but perhaps there hasn't been enough investigation into how much big business has bought into social and environmental causes to clear the playing field of smaller competitors.

According to the Capital Research Center article on corporate donations, for example, two giant timber companies, International Paper and the Weyerhaeuser Foundation, actually donated funding to anti-logging causes:

"...the foundations of the timber giants International Paper and Weyerhaeuser fund many groups that support the endangered species act, which has imposed drastic restrictions on the use of forests claimed to be the habitat of alleged endangered species..."

It is likely that International Paper and Weyerhaeuser are annoyed by laws restricting their use of forests. But they have the legal talent to fight these policies in a court or broker special deals with government regulators. Restrictive forest use policies hurt small businesses far more because they cannot pay what it takes to fight a government regulatory onslaught abetted by environmental advocacy groups."

It's likely there are other types of big business strategies which are partly related to keeping small business in check. For example, why is it that big companies in most western countries aren't more opposed to GST and VAT, even though it places such a big administrative burden on the business sector as a whole? Could it be that big business can deal with all the administrative hassles of indirect taxes better than small business, and perhaps welcomes the opportunity to knock over smaller businesses that are no longer able to compete?

One thing's for sure, whatever big business's tactics in supporting or appeasing the liberal left, there aren't many old school socialists and populists still around to keep an eye on it.

The "Sinicizing" of the South Pacific

With China now making its presence felt in Africa and South East Asia, it's easy to overlook the expanding Chinese presence in the more lightly-populated South Pacific.

In a region traditionally dominated by France, Australia, America and New Zealand, China is now the the main source of both immigrants and outside money. Mineral resources such as Copper, Zinc, Nickel, Manganese and Cobalt are luring Chinese companies to Papua New Guinea and the Solomons, while East Asian entrepreneurs are increasingly taking the place of Indian businessmen in Fiji, and dominating the retail sector in Tonga and Samoa.

According to Asia Times journalist Bertyl Linder, in an aptly titled article "The Sinicizing of the South Pacific," the vacuum left by westerners in mineral and timber rich Papua New Guinea is now being filled by the Chinese, who are willing to put with the anarchic conditions prevailing there:

"There is nothing particularly unusual about the food at Ang's Chinese restaurant. In fact, the roast duck served there is excellent and the Lonely Planet guidebook assures you that its hot-and-sour soups are especially tasty. Rather, it's the eatery's ambiance that is a tad offsetting. The yard is surrounded by high walls topped with razor wire and surveillance cameras. Two security guards watch the entrance and open the sliding gate only if the callers appear to be genuine dining customers. Those allowed entry are met by another steel door guarded by more watchmen, who not only shut but lock the door behind the restaurant's guests. Only then may they enjoy Ang's oriental fare in relative peace.

Welcome to Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea - and, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit, the worst place to live among 130 world capitals and major cities. Major hotels advise their guests not to venture out on foot - even in broad daylight in the poshest downtown areas.

Unemployment rates here hover anywhere between 70% and 90% and crime has become a way of life for gangs of young men born into a culture where tribal warfare, vendettas and violence are deeply ingrained. Add the easy access to firearms in urban areas, and it's not surprising that most of Port Moresby's homes resemble high security prisons and that the 50,000 Western expatriates who lived there when independence was achieved from Australia in 1975 have since dwindled to a few thousand.

But, as the chatter in Ang's restaurant indicates, newly-arrived mainland Chinese migrants are fast filling the gap as the impoverished country’s leading businessmen, contractors and import-export dealers. Throughout history, Chinese migrants have shown a willingness to endure harsh living conditions to prosper economically in new countries - and the Chinese in Port Moresby are no exception."

As in Africa, Chinese success is being aided by their no-nonsense, pragmatic approach to business and politics which isn't lumbered by western concerns for ethical governance and business transparency. Currently it's estimated there are around 10,000 Chinese immigrants in Papua New Guinea, although the number may be greater since local politicians are assisting many Chinese to enter the country without valid visas.

However, while local elites may been keen on attracting Chinese businessmen, many ordinary Papuans and Solomon Islanders aren't quite so keen on Asian immigration. For example, in 2006 there were widespread anti-Chinese riots in the troubled Solomon Islands, which were contained by Australian police forces.

It isn't just in Melanesia though, where the Chinese are clashing with locals, two years ago rioting also occurred in the Tongan capital Nuku' alofa, in which at least eight ethnic Chinese were killed and numerous Chinese businesses destroyed. At present the Chinese own about 30 percent of businesses in the Tongan capital.

Being a successful market dominant minority, the Chinese are generating resentment among the less commercially orientated South Sea Islanders. As Linder points out:

"The business acumen of Chinese entrepeneurs stirs intense rivalry in the South Pacific, where initiative is often stifled by the custom of having to share profits with your extended family."

Crime and cameras

Surveillance cameras may be a pervasive site in many cities these days, but according to an article in the Daily Mail, most CCTV footage is useless for identify criminals.

Quoting Scotland Yard's surveillance chief inspector Mark Neville, the Mail says only 3 percent of crimes in Britain are solved using CCTV footage, and they have have had little, if any, impact in reducing crime.

It would be interesting to know if this also applies to the CCTV cameras used on public transport.
As a regular user of public transport while living in the North of England, I was told by drivers that CCTV cameras were installed on most buses, and this meant that trouble-making young "scallies" on public transport could be easily identified and dealt with later by the Police.

But, if CCTV cameras are as ineffectual as this article claims, then all they're likely to achieve is to discourage people from dealing with anti-social activity themselves. Certainly the presence of cameras on buses has made me think twice about clouting the odd little darling busily engaged in abusing and spitting on hapless pedestrians.

However, spitting on innocent citizens barely registers as anti-social behaviour in the rougher parts of Britain. Non-violent youth crime has apparently got so bad in some parts of Manchester for example, that locals have had to resort to semi-vigilante-style neighborhood watch groups to maintain any semblance of law and order.

Mmmm, I wonder, if this DIY citizen policing will ever take off among the besieged citizens of trendy Islington?

The western media's obsession with democracy

Zimbabwe might be one of the world's poorest and most internationally irrelevant countries, but that isn't stopping CNN and the BBC from giving round-the-clock coverage of it's elections.

Since today's Zimbabwe is of little economic interest to the West, and western elites don't seem to care much about the displaced white farmers, then we can only assume it's the battle for democracy that is pushing CNN's buttons.

Nothing seems to excite the western media more than a political battle between an aliberal, ethnocentric dictator and an educated, pro-western liberal democrat.

Not surprisingly, CNN's reporters seem to spend most of their time scouring the globe for potential democracies-in-the-making and then moving on once the evil dictator who stands before his people and electoral freedom has been vanquished. Notice for example, in 2004, during the Ukrainian elections, that photogenically battle-scared democrat Victor Yushchenko was always in the news, yet since the election, he may as well have ceased to exist as far as CNN is concerned.

Here in the South Pacific, are lust for democratic drama is periodically supplied by Fiji and its politically incorrect, but largely harmless generals, whom our politicians and media pundits enjoy ritualistically denouncing whenever they get the chance.

And its not as if there haven't been plenty of other potential stories of interest going on over the last decade.While the West media has been focusing on politics in places like Zimbabwe, Fiji and Myanmar, a massive continental war has been and gone in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in which at least 5 million people have been killed or displaced. There has also been little coverage of all the interesting developments in oil and gas exploration, and the economic, political and environmental pros and cons associated with the various pipelines going through areas like Turkey, Central Asia and the Baltic Sea.

A few thoughts on overpopulation and increasing food prices

With cries of food shortages now being heard in many third world countries, the West is likely to be expected to once again step in with food aid to ameliorate the crisis. But this could well result in making the situation worse.

While the recent surge in commodity prices may spell trouble for the millions of third world poor living in overcrowded cities, it's actually good news for many third world farmers, who form the backbone of the economy in most developing countries. Subsequently, if the West responds by aiding third world countries with food aid, as it has done in the past, it may well drive down the price of locally produced grain and impoverish local farmers.

This is why population control is so essential in many developing countries. Most poor countries have a large non-production population which serves as both a break on development, and a major headache for cash-strapped third world governments trying to establish basic infrastructure.

In the past, nature had a rather brutal, but effective means of getting rid of surplus humans and making room for new development - famine. In a particularly dramatic example, a recent international genetics project claims modern humans almost became extinct 70,000 years ago ("When humans came closest to extinction," The Press, Saturday, April 26).

According to the Genographic Project, the human population crashed from around 10,000 - 100,000 people to just 2000, following ice age related climate change which made Africa cooler and drier. However, the Project's director, Spencer Wells, says this population crisis ultimately became a major stimulus for human development:

"A shift in culture began. People began making better hunting tools they needed to survive the drought. Art makes its appearance. There is abstract thought."

Another such stimulus, occurred in Europe during the 14th Century, following massive depopulation caused by the Black Death. With a sudden and profound labour shortage, workers wages increased, feudalism began to breakdown and the development and uptake of labour saving technology, such as horse-drawn ploughs and water mills began in earnest. This labour-shortage-fueled technology stimulus went on to became a major factor in the technological supremacy of Europe and its colonies from 1500 through to the present day.

It's seems that population control plays a vital role in human development, but how then can human numbers be controlled without massive human suffering?

Many liberals argue that people will naturally have fewer children as they become more educated and affluent. But that is putting the cart before the horse. People can't become more affluent if they are too numerous to be able to command increasing wages for their labour, or authorities are unwilling or unable to educate them.

The most humane option, and one which is in the best interests of rich and poor countries, seems to be managed population control through such measures as family planning, contraceptives, and economic incentives. Hopefully the end of the Bush presidency this year will signal a resurgence of interest in funding for population control programmes.

Counting the cost of population growth

With global food prices on the rise, we have yet another reminder to reconsider whether immigration-fueled population growth is really a good idea.

In an article on the News with Views website, American talk radio pundit Frosty Woolridge points out some of the numerous negative effects of large scale legal and illegal immigration into the United States:

"What does growth really bring to you and me? Yes, it creates a few ‘rich’ people. However, Bartlett said, “It brings more homeless, more unemployed, more people living in poverty, more traffic congestion, higher parking fees, more school crowding, more unhappy neighborhoods, more expensive government, more and higher taxes, more fiscal problems for the state, more air and water pollution, higher utility costs, diminished democracy, crowded highways, growing costs of infrastructure maintenance, higher food costs and more destruction of the environment.”

You will encounter a few more: overloaded campgrounds, beaches, ski resorts, more litter, higher gas costs, greater housing costs, water shortages and loss of choices and personal freedom. "

In my view this list constitutes a pretty powerful argument in favour of immigration restrictionism. Just about all of these trends can be applied to most other western countries including New Zealand.

About the only negative impact which doesn't really apply to New Zealand is immigration-based unemployment. Fortunately, this country, unlike the US, doesn't have a high level of unskilled immigration at present, so we don't have quite the same problem with immigrants taking jobs away from unskilled native workers. Hence the unemployment rate is only about 3-4 percent, which is one of the lowest in the OECD.

Other than actually bite the bullet and reduce immigration, there is little governments can do to shield citizens from the impact of expansive immigration. For example, the Labour government has attempted to reduce poverty by reintroducing family benefits, but any benefits from increased government spending has largely been canceled out by the increasing cost of housing, food and utilities.

Western recruitment agencies undermining health care in the third world

Last week the Press had a couple of articles about Filipino nurses working as low paid care workers in Christchurch. According to the Press, trained Filipinos nurses are paying large sums of money to recruitment agencies to secure jobs in the city's hospitals, only to end up in working in nursing homes.

To register as nurses in New Zealand they first have to pass an International English Language Test examination, which is proving to be a major stumbling block for many applicants. Since the Philippines, like most developing countries, has a looming shortage of doctors and nurses, which is arguably more serious than ours, it seems a waste of human potential for them to be working as low paid, semi-skilled workers in a western country rather than as skilled nurses in their home country, where they know the local language and customs.

Care work is also one of the lowest paid professions in the country, with most workers getting paid slightly above the minimum wage of $12 per hour. Before trying to strip the developing world of it's medical staff, it might be an idea to try and offer slightly better work conditions for native workers.

In a sign of the times, the article also revealed that Filipinos were the largest group of net migrants from Asia last year, with 6143 immigrants, up from 5065 the previous year.

Quote of the week

From a recent Fred Reed post on those borders:

"To grasp American immigration policy, to the extent that it can be grasped, one need only remember that the United States forbids smoking while subsidizing tobacco growers. "

Double standards from TVNZ

Over the last few weeks the popular UK documentary series Ross Kemp on Gangs has been screening on New Zealand TV and I've found it quite eye opening.

For example, I knew Jamaica had quite a high crime rate, but I had no idea that the nation's capital, Kingston is arguably the most violent city in the world (for the size of its population).

Unfortunately though, the episode on gangs and football violence in Poland, was a bit disappointing. In the show Kemp interviews a neo-Nazi skinhead, who doesn't speak any English, about his about his political views and reasons for engaging in soccer violence. Naturally, the youth doesn't have many intelligent things to say, and Kemp looks suitably disgusted by his predictable opinions about Jews and other races. Kemp also fails to ask the most obvious question, and the first one I would have asked - "why do you like a guy like Hitler, who killed so many Polish people? "

Anyway, Kemp then turns up at a football match where a neo-Nazi gang is clashing with a rival non-Nazi nationalist gang, and very briefly interviews an English-speaking non- Nazi nationalist whose face is concealed by a bandana. The young gang member, who appears more intelligent that the neo-Nazi interviewed earlier, then states that the two groups often fight each other after matches, but have significantly different ideologies

Now to my mind, it would have been interesting to interview one of these non-Nazi nationalist gang members, and find out what their views were, and why they disliked the neo-Nazi skinheads, particularly since the former appeared more typical of the average Polish gang member. Unfortunately though, the programme appears to be more about creating shock value than looking into the attitudes and habits of the typical gang member and what makes them tick.

Certainly one episode of the series has been viewed a little too shocking for local audiences by Television New Zealand. On Radio Live this week Michael Laws said TVNZ has decided not to play an episode about the New Zealand Mongrel Mob.

It seems it's ok to look at other country's gang problems in a slightly sensationalised way, but politically correct TVNZ isn't keen on the same treatment for New Zealand's indigenous underclass.

Living with resource shortages

Despite all the talk about peak oil these days, you don't get much of an impression that people are very concerned about rising fuel prices.

Fuel hungry SUVs still seem to be popular with New Zealand motorists, and although the Police say some drivers are slowing down to say fuel, I haven't really noticed it much myself. Most people still seem to drive as they usually do - at the speed limit when the Police are around, and 10-20 km above the speed limit when the coast is clear.

There also seems to be a swift from manual to automatic cars, which isn't doing much for fuel conservation as many auto cars are only 4 speeds. My parents recently purchased a near-new 2 litre 4-speed station wagon, which, much to their disappointment, actually uses more gas than the 11-year-old 2.8 litre manual wagon which it replaced.

Cars with permanent 4WD also have lousy fuel economy, yet this isn't putting people off buying them for that once a year trip to the ski fields. The European trend towards diesel cars hasn't really taken off here either, despite the fact that some of the newer diesels out-perform hybrids cars in terms of overall fuel economy.

Mind you, drivers aren't getting much help from the motor industry. Many of the mileage figures cited in newspaper advertisments are a long way off the mark. In city traffic, some SUVs actually have 50 percent worse fuel economy than on the open road, and most mileage figures are based on open road driving conditions.

With fuel prices likely to rise significantly in the next 5-10 years, people could be making a big financial mistake in not buying a fuel efficient car, particularly when you also factor in rising food prices, surging electricity bills, and continuing high interest rates.

Ducking demographic problems

Amid the recent criticisms of New Zealand First for questioning Asian immigration, liberal political pundits have overlooked the fact that Statistics New Zealand is predicting the population of NZ will grow to over five and half million by 2026 (that's about what you get if you add up their predictions for the country's major ethnic groups).

Such a population increase will mean that the country will have to take a whole new approach to power supply and infrastructure development.

New Zealand, with just over million citizens is one of the few countries in the world that obtains almost all its electricity needs from hydroelectric power stations. This has been a cornerstone in the country's "clean green" anti-nuclear image that's been promoted by the Labour Party.

However, the nation is now at a crossroads. Nearly all the best sites for hydroelectric power generation have already been developed and if the population increases by the amount predicted by Statistics NZ, then Nuclear or Coal power will become essential. Wind power, while a useful supplement to other forms of energy, just doesn't produce enough power on a consistent basis to provide for a population increase of this magnitude.

Similarly, big investments will have to be have to made in the countries transport infrastructure. The many roads and bridges built between the 1930s and 1960s, are now beginning to deteriorate under increased traffic, and further population growth will mean that many will have to be either rebuilt completely or expanded to accommodate greater traffic volumes.

At present, there are no motorways linking any of the country's main cities, and if the population increases by over a million it will become essential to put in dual carriageways on the busiest routes, such as the infamous road between Auckland and Hamilton. This will consume a huge amount of public spending and put an end the Greens' hopes of running down the roading budget and putting more money into public transport.

It's fast getting to stage where the country's so called environmentalists (which now apparently includes the National Party) will have to decide whether they should continue to follow a liberal approach, in favour of expansive immigration and a utopian faith in alternative energy and public transport, or a hard-headed conservative approach, which puts limits on immigration as well as economic excesses.

National MPs on labour shortages

According to pro-National blogger David Farrar, today's National Party bases its policies on a combination of liberalism and conservatism, however after reading political commentaries by National MPs over the last few years, I'd say liberalism usually trumps conservatism.

For example in a North Canterbury community newspaper last week, Kaikoura representative Colin King criticises the government for not providing enough overseas workers for the viticulture industry. The opinion piece, from the Hurunui News (not online) is entitled "focus on employing people based on ability, not nationality."

Mr King argues that local vineyards are having problems finding enough suitable workers under the goverment's Recognised Seasonal Employer Scheme for Pacific Island guest workers, and that visas should be extended for experienced seasonal workers form other countries.

However, as an elected MP, Mr King, and his fellow National MPs, don't just have to take into account the interests of local employers, but also local citizens, who are likely to hold more conservative views on immigration.

The question, I would ask, as no doubt would many other people of a conservative disposition, is where do these experienced workers from other countries come from, ie, which countries. Do they come from relatively developed, pro-western countries, and are they likely to be a future burden to New Zealand taxpayers if they overstay? Since work on grape-vines is unskilled work, Mr King has things exactly backed to front. It's nationality, rather than ability, that is of most concern to local citizens.

If the National Party really is based on a combination of liberalism and conservatism, then I would expect more debate about such matters, rather than blind allegiance to an ethnically neutral, politically naive, pro-business stance on immigration and labour matters.

In a previous comments thread I argued that a reasonable compromise might be to extend visas for workers from developed western countries, as well as those from pro-western middle income countries, such as Argentina, Poland, Uruguay and the Baltic States, while excluding workers from poor non-western countries such as Indonesia and China.

Such a policy would go a reasonable way to help satisfy the current labour need, while reducing the risk of inviting in a potentially hostile underclass, or driving down wages for those local workers and backpackers who are willing to take up seasonal labour jobs.

Cheap imports not so cheap

Rent, bills, services, fuel and medical bills may be steadily rising for the western consumer, but there's aways ever cheapening Asian goods to look forward to isn't there?

Well maybe not for much longer.

The question now is whether China will revalue its currency to compensate for inflation.

Lets play bash the populist

Following New Zealand First deputy leader Peter Brown's comments about the latest figures on Asian immigration, the Press has come out with the usual self-righteous cliches that the mainstream media likes to use to confirm its adherence to fashionable middle-class views.

What's particularly depressing about this is that the Press isn't a dogmatically liberal paper by New Zealand standards. Like CNN with Lou Dobbs, the Press at least manages to allow for some unfashionable views by publishing populist and traditionalist letters to the editor on a fairly regular basis. By contrast, I can tell you from personal experience that the type of material I publish in this blog wouldn't stand much of chance of getting into the Sunday Star Times or Dominion (the later being NZ's equivalent of the LA Times).

The Press's official editorial piece on the topic, entitled "Contribution, not colour, is the best judge of a migrant" (Saturday, April 5 not online) starts reasonably, but soon gets sanctimonious:

"Playing the race card has become something of an election year ritual for New Zealand First. So much so that the only uncertainties this year were when the card would be produced and which NZ first MP would deal it. These questions were answered this weak when the party's deputy leader, Peter Brown, cited a Statistics New Zealand forecast that Asians would outnumber Maori by 2006 because of short-sighted immigration policies. This was anathema to Brown, who argued that Asian migrants would not integrate into New Zealand society and that this would create division, friction and resentment. Not only are Brown's views plain wrong, but the majority of voters will not be duped by this cynical tactic on polling day."

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but hasn't periodic immigration restrictionism had a pretty good track record of hastening rather than blocking integration ( as far as is practical when immigrants are from totally alien cultures). One reason why the grime predictions in Enoch Powell's famous "rivers of blood speech" didn't happen was because the UK government wisely decided to reduce immigration from Britain's former non-white colonies during the late 60s and early 1970s.

In New Zealand, the relatively high unemployment rate among East Asian immigrants is finally starting to sort itself out precisely because Labour's tougher English language requirements have lowered East Asian immigration in the last few years, thereby reducing tensions with established immigrants and giving employers time to absorb the labour influx.

You also have to wonder why the Press feels the need to take such a strident line against Brown if it believes his populist stance is unlikely to have much influence on voters anyway.

The Press also suggests Brown has no right to a view on Asian immigration because he is an immigrant, and that it is "richly ironic" that he should be questioning Asian immigration. I'm sorry but, I don't get the irony. Immigrants are entitled to have an opinion on immigration just like everyone else. Many people have come to New Zealand precisely because it's a lightly populated country which has traditionally been cautious about immigration. What's "richly ironic" is that the Press seems to advocating colour blindness on the one hand (people from all cultures should be able should be able to come) , and snobbish nativism on the other (only native whites and indigenous Maori's should get to debate immigration policy).

Then of course there's the further irony that it's a British immigrant who is being attacked for questioning non-western immigration, in what is arguably the most British country outside Britain.

While the writer of the article does make a point that NZ first has tended to exaggerate Asian crime levels, and should be precise when talking about immigrant groups, they drop another howler in talking about immigration and education by citing an Afghan refugee as a "prime recent example" of a high achieving Asian student. Now I've got nothing against giving credit where credit's due, East Asian students in western countries do have an excellent academic record, but Afghans? I'm sorry but this isn't a "prime example," of academic success, it's a very atypical one. According to the field of psychometrics, East Asians have an average IQ of 105, Afghans a likely average IQ of about 83.

If the Press can't recognise that Afghan and East Asian levels of academic achievement are wildly different, then you have to question whether the paper should be assessing the relative contributions of perspective migrant groups.