G20 - what good it could do

While the UK media fawns over the arrival of Barack Obama, and several thousand solutionless people who are statists or anarchists, the G20 summit COULD achieve good if only two things happened.

1. The G20 came out, unanimously, against trade protectionism, in favour of renewing the Doha round, and a new emphasis on lowering barriers to trade in primary products, manufactured goods and services. THIS could do more to encourage global recovery than any other government measure because, it basically, is about removing government measures.

2. The less free G20 members (China, Russia in particular) might notice that an economy in trouble can have public political protests largely kept under control.

However, this is unlikely. Far more likely are platitudes, a few moans from poorer countries that it isn't their fault (but showing how dependent they are on wealthy country demand), and a demonstration that everyone is in agreement that the recession should end.

On the other side, I've noticed in the protests some Soviet flags (because the USSR was known to accept public protests as a matter of course), and the hard left "Stop the War Coalition" is calling for US withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, an end to aid for Israel and unilateral nuclear disarmament. In other words, surrender to Islamists and leave nuclear weapons in the hands of dictatorial governments. Charming lot.

Rob Muldoon's back

The NZ Herald says NZ$1.5 billion of your money - an "investment" - which will "bring New Zealand into the 21st century" - "enable it to compete with countries such as Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong". (Ah yes the 20th century is alive in well in NZ, and which Korea are we competing with again?)

Yes, National is going to grow the state by setting up a "Crown investment company" called "Crown Fibre Investment Co" (not that it is picking technology winners of course!) to build a network, and the users will come. I said before the election that this was shades of Muldoon's Think Big.

Look at the promises behind it:
- John Key says "They will be able to watch TV comfortably and easily over their computer screens, ". OHH TV over the computer screen, now THAT will create jobs right? I mean it's not as if there isn't digital Freeview subsidised by the state, and Sky's own commercially provided satellite platform right? You need TV via broadband to.... let you watch foreign TV subsidised??
- and "they will be able to run businesses from home". Amazing. Don't believe anyone running a business from home at the moment, they LIE, you can't do it without fibre to your home!

This is despite Telecom, Vodafone and Telstra Clear, the only real network providers in the country saying that their own plans will be adequate to meet demand - no doubt noting that when the government starts setting up a rival network, it devalues their own. In other words, the government is effectively shutting out significant new PRIVATELY funded network investment.

Ask yourself how you'd feel now as Telstra Clear, having spent hundreds of millions of dollars ten or so years ago rolling out hybrid fibre-coax cable to the kerb in Wellington and Christchurch, for the state to be now using taxpayers' money to roll out a superior network? (Well frankly Telstra Clear, having called for state expropriation of Telecom's property rights SHOULD now feel some chagrine).

Ernie Newman of the Telecommunications Users Association of New Zealand (not producers mind you, and not taxpayers either) is happy as can be, having long demanded the state subsidise and regulate for the benefit of his members. He was long a chief advocate of confiscating Telecom's property rights.

So why is this happening? Does the government truly believe that subsidising a particular technology so that consumers (far more than producers) can download Youtube, music, listen to internet radio and play high definition interactive games is good for the economy, or even moral?

After all, Stuff says "Ultra-fast broadband will let people watch high-definition or three-dimensional TV online, while talking on the phone via broadband or making video phone calls. Downloading movies will become much faster."

Is that worth subsidising? Faster movie downloads??

Anyway, why wont the private sector provide if people want it (and crucially are willing to pay)?

Well when you add up:
- Government denying Telecom and Vodafone private property rights over their telecommunications networks by forcing both to sell capacity on their networks to competitors at a price set by government;
- Government likely to regard any collusion between telcos for a new fibre network to be "anti-competitive";
- The RMA allowing local authorities to prohibit new overhead wire telecommunications networks in their districts, even if there are already such networks at present.

Then you might figure out that this Muldoonist approach to telecommunications is the wrong approach, and that subsidising the entertainment of New Zealanders who want cheap fast broadband is quite simply wrong.

David Farrar is typically abandoning his usual rather liberal smaller state approach to affairs and swinging in behind Muldoonist central planning of internet infrastructure. He will enjoy fibre to the kerb, and thinks my parents and their elderly friends should be forced to pay for it.

It is Think Big for the 21st century, it is cheaper, and less ambitious, but is driven by the same cargo cult belief that it will be some sort of economic saviour.

At best, it might prove to be financially self sustaining at some point, and get enough use to not be a total disaster, but at worst it will prove to be far more expensive than predicted, will not be completed according to plan, supplant other technologies, and wont deliver cheap broadband because... quite simply, it can't make international internet backbone capacity cheaper.

UPDATE: Paul Walker at Antidismal quotes an interesting example of how private sector underinvestment occurs when it fears the risk of nationalisation.

Strange radio signals from space

While most were sceptical this morning of the reports from Mongolia of irregular radio signals from space, the confirmation of these reports from independent sources in Europe, Africa, the United States and Australia is exciting scientists at several universities.

Professor Ahmed Tanfik Rachdi of the University of Algiers was reported as reading the signal from the University's own listening station that signals on frequencies of 6576-6602 kHz and 9325-9345 kHz seemed to not follow any regular pattern, but that the wide bandwidth included an amplitude modulated sound that, if verified, would be the very first sound transmission received from space not attributable to a natural phenomenon. However he was not the first to note it. The signal detection was shared by several others, first noted in Mongolia.

"Doctor Choi Khan San of Ulaan Baatar University may well have been telling the truth when he noted the disruption to regular radio broadcasts for 67 minutes between 10.34 and 11.41GMT did not come from any typical radio bandwidth transmission" said Professor Rachdi.

Professor Bart Kennedy of the Berkeley Institute of Astronomical Science is unconvinced, and says it might be a reflection of a signal from outside the solar system that has taken some time to return to earth, although he says scientists should have a better idea after further research.

Is it just a bizarre reflection (and amplification) of past radio signals from earth from some other source, or is it intelligence from outer space?

Greenpeace spokesperson Elkin Colinsonya of Finland said that if there is evidence of life outside earth, we should "ignore it, as we shouldn't corrupt its ways". Colinsonya said research into signals from outer space simply encouraged the use of electricity for purposes inconsistent with the sustainability of the planet. "What if humans become friends with inhabitants from another planet? We'll want to use it and abuse it like our own".

Rob Muldoon's back AGAIN

Want a new home? Why don't you turn to the government, given the latest Stuff report?

The Building and Housing Department (yes I didn't know it existed either) held a contest using your money for a design for an affordable "starter home". The winning design would apparently cost a state defined NZ$168,000 to build (excluding land) half the "usual cost" (forget the market, the recent drop in prices confuses bureaucracies as it makes planning difficult).

"Building and Construction Minister Maurice Williamson said the competition showed starter homes could offer superb design and be affordable."

The state is needed to provide such valuable information.

Will it be building any though? (to be fair, this was a Labour Government initiative).

Kiwis get a tax cut - what to do with it?

Be grateful for it, although the Standard doesn't get it - a tax cut means you getting more of YOUR money back. It was never the government's in the first place. It hasn't been taken from anyone, it just isn't being taken from YOU anymore.

The left will bleat on about those who effectively pay next to no tax anyway getting no cut, not that the left promised any cuts for them anyway. Instead the left will evade the point that a tax cut is leaving people to have more of their own money, it doesn't "plunder the state" anymore than not being robbed isn't plundering from thieves.

So here is a simple guide for those who oppose the tax cuts. You have only two moral options for the money.

1. Gift all of the tax cut money to the state. You would have preferred it had gone there in the first instance. Don't pretend you're so retarded you need to be forced to pay money to an institution you wish did more, do it by choice; or

2. Gift all of the tax cut money to charities that support the social activities you say you are passionately concerned about. This may be education, health, social care, poverty, international aid, whatever. Then you might see results, the money will be going somewhere YOU care about, and you wont regret the tax cut.

Because, you see, if you oppose tax cuts, you oppose that money of yours being spent on you and your loved ones. You'd be a hypocrite if you didn't donate the lot.

So go on, what are you going to do besides get angry and jealous that richer people earn more than you (pay more tax anyway) and get more of their own money back when any tax is cut?