Len Brown's Think Big plan - 10 questions

When you look at Len Brown's plans for spending a fortune on transport infrastructure in Auckland and his plans to charge those using it rather than tax various groups to pay for it, you might ask some real fundamental questions about what he isn't saying and in fact why you trust politicians to get these things done at all.

You see when you look at the underground rail loops, with cold dispassionate eyes, you can see this:

-  An underground rail tunnel and stations costing NZ$1.5 billion plus, that wont be a saleable asset.  Nobody will want to buy it outright for anything approaching 5% of that cost, without getting some subsidy for doing so.  In other words it is a wealth destroyer on the face of it.

- Those who would be forced to pay for it wont be those using it, regardless of what taxes are imposed to force others to pay for it.  Indeed those using it wont even be paying for the cost of running the trains through it.  At best they might pay half the operating costs, one day.  They are not paying for the trains either, you are.

-  Besides the users, the others benefiting are those businesses staffed or patronised by the users, who also wont be paying for it directly, well no more than you are paying.

-  There will be no discernible difference in traffic congestion, because both central and local government run the roads as Soviet style assets charging all users similarly regardless of time and location, with no attempt to ration scarce resources except by queuing or to invest in new capacity unless it is approved by political fiat.

The biggest problem I see in considering urban transport in Auckland is the complete lack of context of the debate.  You see if you want to fly to London, there is precious little involvement of politicians deciding, anymore, the prices, the frequencies of services, the types of planes, the timetables or in getting taxpayers to cough up money for the planes, or the airports.  Similarly if you want to send a container from Albany to Manukau.  You find a company that does the job and you pay it, with the company finding a truck, setting the price and then using the road - and paying road user charges for the privilege (and hopefully avoiding the queues inspired by the Soviet style rationing of the state and council's roads).  In neither case does what the Mayor of Auckland think have too much influence, although in the latter he'd clearly like to tax it more to pay for some unrelated infrastructure.

Yet when it is about people commuting, it suddenly becomes interesting.  Compare even simply getting a bus from Auckland to Whangarei, which is a service run by a private company for profit, buying its own buses, setting its own timetable and prices and providing a service for passengers willing to pay admittedly using State Highways.   Getting a train from Auckland to Manukau involves a train bought by the government, owned by the council, running at prices and times set by the council, managed by a private company, with its costs paid for by ratepayers, taxpayers and road users.

1.  Why are there always alleged "funding crises" for "Auckland transport", mostly involving shifting large numbers of people short distances, but not for moving freight short (or long) distances and not for international passenger or freight transport?  Could it be because the latter is virtually always the responsibility of private companies operating for profit, but the former is dominated by local authorities and planners deciding how they people should move, rubbing up against most Aucklanders who decided long ago they can buy a car and figure it out for themselves?

2.  Why is it that new ships, aircraft, trucks, buses, bicycles and cars (i.e. NOT infrastructure, just the objects that use it) are always  paid for by their owners, because in almost all cases they get enough from their users (if they are used to offer paid for services), but not trains?  Could it simply be that the people that use trains don't like them enough to pay for new ones?  Could it be because government is too lazy to spread the cost of capital of new trains over the life of the asset? 

3.  Why is it that users of ports, airports and the state highway networks all pay for the full costs of maintaining and building them, but users of railways and local roads don't?  Why are they special?

4.   If Aucklanders so desperately want an underground railway loop to use, why does no one, not even the uber-council of Auckland want to borrow the billions required to build it?  Could it be because there wont be enough money raised by the users of the railway to pay for the cost of operating a train through it, let alone pay for the railway in the first place? 

5.  If the underground railway loop is not about the people using the trains, but about revitalising the Auckland CBD, why wont the property owners of the area served by it invest in the loop, or at least support a specific rate to pay for the cost of it?  Is it because they know they Mayor and government are a soft touch with taxpayers money, or do they really simply not believe that the underground rail loop will make a lot of difference?

6.  Given the government has committed to spending NZ$1 billion of other people's money electrifying the current network (with the users not paying a cent towards it), predicated on ambitious prediction for growing usage (and reducing usage of the roads), why would anyone commit to spending several billion more before it actually being demonstrated that the earlier predictions for the results of destroying taxpayers' money on an unsaleable liability would meet expectations?

7.   Why is it good to shift large numbers of people from using a mix of subsidised and commercial bus services to using far more expensively subsidised rail services?  Could it be that advocates of the rail strategy don't like this inconvenient issue being highlighted?

8.    Outside peak times, how much of the capacity of Auckland's rail network lies idle, how much more will lie idle after electrification and the rail loop (I suspect around 66% given international benchmarks)?  How does that compare to the recent extensions to the motorway network?

9.    Why should road users across Auckland, on all roads, at all times, pay for a piece of unprofitable infrastructure that will

10.   Finally, why wont Auckland's Mayor and grand council face up to the fact that if it replaced rates funding of local roads with a form of direct tolls with congestion charging, that it would do far far more to relieve congestion and improve mobility than any rail scheme at next to no cost (whilst giving Aucklanders that don't contribute to peak jams some tax relief)?  Or is it far simpler politically to promise people big infrastructure baubles they don't have to pay for?

Want to know the common denominators with all of these?  A hint is this:

-  Planners don't like people moving about at times, places and in ways that they don't understand and can't organise.  They inherently fear this.  What they ignore is that there are planners in the transport sector that make things work smoothly, but they are commercial planners.  They make airports work like clockwork, logistics companies arrange for parcels to go from Dunedin to Dar Es Salaam and major to do all of this, because the incentives are right.

- Politicians don't like telling people they can't continue to have recourse to other people's money to subsidise their activities any more.  They much rather offer people something for nothing the cost of taxing others.

- Privatising the roads terrifies people because they have been inculcated with legends of fear from past privatisations perpetuated by hysterical socialist doom merchants. 

You see anyone who pretends that an underground rail loop will fix Auckland's transport woes is either a fool, naive or a liar.  Have a guess as to which one the people who should know better are.  If they don't like answering any of the questions above with a straight answer, then you'll know it isn't because they are stupid.

Yes I do own water

and I don't mean buying a bottle of Evian.

If I have land, and collect water on that property, it is mine.

Just because the state treats the sea, rivers and lakes as owned by it and local authorities, doesn't mean that water can't be owned.  It is ludicrous to claim otherwise.

Reticulated water costs money.  It requires people to work, people to construct, lay, maintain and replace pipelines, dams, pumps and the electricity required to operate them.  That isn't free.

There is no good reason why that can't be owned and operated by a private profit oriented company.  In England they are, under tight regulation, but that water is owned, and you buy it.

Socialists may argue against this, ignoring the disaster of state ownership seen recently in Northern Ireland, or the crass incompetence that saw government fail to upgrade infrastructure over many decade in places from London to Dunedin (in England and Wales investment in infrastructure increased by 83% after privatisation).

Swedish analyst Fredrik Segerfeldt concluded that water privatisation can generate enormous benefits:


For example, before privatization in 1989, only 20 percent of urban dwellers the African nation of Guinea had access to safe drinking water; by 2001 70 percent did. The price of piped water increased from 15 cents per cubic meter to almost $1, but as Segerfeldt correctly notes, "before privatization the majority of Guineans had no access to mains water at all. They do now. And for these people, the cost of water has fallen drastically. The moral issue, then, is whether it was worth raising the price for the minority of people already connected before privatization in order to reach the 70 percent connected today."


he concludes by asking... "why anti-privatization activists do not expend as much energy on accusing governments of violating the rights of 1.1 billion people who do not have access to water as they do on trying to stop its commercialization".


However, the National Party has never been that good at selecting politicians who can argue principle over fear and scaremongering.  

Torture is not as serious as rape

That's what the current sentencing of offenders against children appears to indicate.

Take this story from Stuff:

The young girl's plight came to national attention when police found her hiding in a cupboard in her West Auckland house on November 15, 2010. She was starving, dehydrated, bruised and was suffering from broken bones and anaemia from internal bleeding. A police statement released a month later made public the horrific details of her abuse - including prolonged beatings and having her toe nails ripped off. The girl had been in Child, Youth and Family (CYF) care most of her life after being taken away from her parents as a baby.

Her mother got 7.5 years with 5 year non-parole period as a sentence.  Yet when she is released she can still breed, still default to getting custody of children, wont be banned from living with or working with children, wont be a registered offender who has to report where she lives.

You see a woman torturing a child is not as traumatic, it would appear, as a man molesting one.  She was a sadist, she isn't fit to be near children and should be permanently denied access to children.  However, she needed to sexually abuse the girl for things to be seen to be that serious.  She's appealing her sentence of course.

How about the child's father?

The father also hit the child in a way that was ''unacceptable'' and deliberately concealed the situation from the child's school by keeping her at home when her injuries would have made it obvious that she was being physically abused.

So he knew it was wrong, covering things up to protect the sadistic monster of a mother and himself.

(his lawyer) said he was caught between trying to control his daughter's ''disturbing behaviour'' and getting through to his partner.

Astonishing.  He couldn't actually figure out that this girl, of 9, being tortured by her mother, who had been sexually abused by a relative previously and who had spent most of her life not being loved, understood, listened to and helped, would behave in ways that are disturbing?  This entity, called the "father" is barely fit to go to the toilet himself let alone be a parent.

Judge Gibson responded by saying that the girl had been subjected to ''the most appalling revictimisation'' due to the couple's contention that the abuse was a result of her ''difficult'' behaviour. ''You continued to blame the child for what happened to her and I utterly reject that,'' he said. In sentencing the man, Judge Gibson said he wanted to denounce his conduct, deter others, hold the man accountable, protect the community and send a clear message to people who stood by and did nothing to intervene. ''It is clear that your daughter is unable to understand why she was tortured, and that is the appropriate word for it. ''You didn't do your duty as a parent.''

No doubt this entity thinks he is a "big man", I'm sure he plays up being tough and staunch and every other faux "value" low lives like him posture about.  Yet he faces only three years in prison, with two years non-parole.  He to is not being denied future custody of children, not being denied the right to live with children.  Who can doubt his dick will be out pumping kids into the next ego-less strumpet who thinks so little of herself she'll take him, and the evil entity who is the girl's mother will no doubt create another tragic child, so she can feel "complete".

Garth McVicar is right.  The sentencing is insufficient, both deserved much more.  She should have a sentence commensurate to the harm done.

Let's look at some other sentences:

- 13 year sentence for stealing war medals.  

- 17 year sentence for producing an illegal substance that other adults wanted to buy

- 8 year ban from owning a dog due to neglect ( no ban from having kids that you neglect though)

- 5 year nine month sentence for breaking and entering, robbing, tying up a 19yo woman and "indecently assaulting" her (which means kissing her on the lips when she did not consent)

- 6 years and four months for fraud

The core role of the state is to protect citizens from violence.  In the case of parents who abuse their children, it is a particularly despicable crime for those who are entrusted to protect children do the opposite.  Banning smacking didn't have an effect on these two.  However, having sentences that effectively incarcerate such egregious sadists for the period of their greatest fecundity and fertility, would be a step forward, as would denying them ever being allowed to live with anyone under 16.

Meanwhile, wouldn't it also be a good start for the state to deny anyone convicted of serious violent offences ever being able to claim welfare?

Waitangi Day from a distance

Being a kiwi living in London, Waitangi Day is notable only because it is not hard to remember 6 February, although with the exception of a work colleague (Australian) mentioning it, it would be easy to forget it.

Despite the news, only reported in NZ, of the Waitangi weekend pub crawl (and only reported because one man complained about it), there is nothing to note it here.  It's refreshing for me, in part because of the cringe of the usual annual show is largely invisible. 

Waitangi Day has tended to be a time when mainstream politicians celebrate the purported partnership between the state and iwi (said to be Pakeha and Maori, a curiously romanticised albeit blatantly incorrect rendering of the situation).  It is a time presented as a chance for more "understanding" and raises the Treaty of Waitangi in a way that meets the desires of many who see it as quasi-constitutional.

Meanwhile, it is a chance for protests.  This time it is unsurprising that Hone Harawira's gang of Marxist ethno-nationalists have seen it as a chance to be rude and to make far from novel demands for the state to hand over property, power and money to those who his lot approve of.

Yet there is another view.  It is one that treats New Zealanders as individuals.  That doesn't mean must or should deny their ancestry, or claim whatever ethnic, national or other identity one wants.  It is not, despite the squeals of racists like Hone Harawira, about being "anti-Maori".  What it is, is about the state being colourblind.   It embraces the Treaty of Waitangi for what it is.  Not the creation of a distinction between the amorphous non-entity called "Maori" and the Crown, but the granting of individual rights and property rights to Maori residents, in exchange for ceding final authority to the state.  

It is a view that means that Maori language and culture can thrive, if those who want it to do so make their own efforts to promote it, whether as individuals or through iwi authorities, or other non-governmental bodies.  It is also the view that government doesn't promote culture either, but steps to one side not only from Maori, but everyone in areas where its role should not be as great as it currently is.  It means using property rights, contracts, rule of law, societies, voluntary groups, relationships and choices to build and develop the communities, institutions, businesses, sports, art, culture, inventions, discoveries and everything else that is the creation of humanity.

Yet, even setting aside my vision of a smaller state, there is a valid view that today, in the 21st century, the state should not treat individuals or corporate bodies differently depending on their ancestry or the ancestry of those who own or control it.

It rejects the infantile claim that New Zealand is bicultural, when it is populated by people of multiple cultures (the "bicultural myth" was generated by Maori nationalists wanting to portray Maori as being separate from the state which represented "Pakeha" culture.  Multiple cultures undermines the myth that Maori are also not represented by the state).  Cultural is not homogeneous.  It is not defined by ancestry, or ethnicity, or religion.  It is multifaceted.  In a world where people make connections across boundaries with modern communications technologies, people are themselves multicultural as they have relationships based on business, family, sports, arts and other interests.  The cold monaural world of "identity politics", which more than a few Maori educators inculcate among their students, is quite simply inaccurate.

The neo-Marxist "identity politics" view means that anyone who "identifies" as Maori is, by definition, disadvantaged by the state and society.  This is regardless of their personal wealth, education achievements, employment or own individual status.  Maori are, in the world of the likes of Harawira, automatically oppressed.  Daughters of lawyers and doctors, who are Maori, are deemed "disadvantaged" and deemed fit for affirmative action programmes, whereas sons of labourers or convicted violent criminals or cleaners, who are "Pakeha", are deemed to not be so deserving, as the state is presumed to be on "their side".

Identity politics have plagued much of the world for centuries.  It isn't just Europe or countries once colonised by Europeans that have been damned by it.  

Those that reject this view blithely and cheaply throw the word "racist" at it.  They think that for Maori to exist and be acknowledged, the state must treat Maori as a distinct entity, separate from the state and implicitly not represented by the state.  The Maori seats help entrench that by implying that a Maori voter is somehow, peculiarly, not represented as well as a non-Maori voter.  

Maori are separate from the state, as individuals themselves are.  However, it is time that the tired view trotted out by the likes of Hone Harawira, Margaret Mutu, Metirei Turei and other nationalists is confronted for the poison that it is.  It denies any need for the state to be colourblind, it demeans and diminishes the status and rights of all those who do not identify as Maori, and actually diminishes the individual rights of Maori by focusing on "rights" of corporate iwi entities, politicians and governmental entities.

There are three parties in Parliament that explicitly embrace the nationalist view of Maori relations with the state (Mana, Maori and Green), and three which appease it (Labour, National and United).  Could there be a party that rejects this without being so blundering in its language that it can be interpreted as being denigrating to Maori?

French court punishes Google Maps - for being free

One of the many misrepresentations and distortions of libertarians is the belief that we all want to reduce everything to money, and for life and the world to be a collection of financial transactions.  It is a core part of the post-modernist leftwing critique of capitalism and free market liberalism, yet it is one that has no basis whatsoever in libertarian or capitalist philosophy, politics or even discourse.  Indeed it is Marxism that puts materialism about everything else.  It is seen in the incessant collectivisation of people into classes, based on incomes or wealth.  It was seen in the Soviet Union's ruthless pursuit of construction and production regardless of the cost to individual freedom or the environment.  Almost every policy proposal from the left of the political spectrum involves spending more money or taking money from people to spend on what they want.  For anti-capitalists the problem is invariably around there being "not enough money" for those they approve of and "too much money" owned or earned by those they don't.  The Khmer Rouge abolished money, but by then it had completely enslaved almost the entire population of Cambodia (after executing many) and people were all meant to work for the love of each other (ignoring they had guns pointed at them, literally, the whole time, and were all on the brink of starvation).

Yet I know many in the left will claim wide support for charity, and quite a few people in charitable endeavours and who provide assistance, time and money for needy people don't do so for money.  They do so out of genuine human benevolence for other people.  They want to see people lifted out of poverty, they want to see children getting education, they want people to be cured of diseases.   You see it is part of human nature to have some compassion for others.  However, if you consider mainstream political discourse, the left would claim that it represents a charitable view of the world, compared to that of the "right" which is all about people being individuals who care nothing for others.

Objectivists don't hold to that view, for we believe that human benevolence is a rational pursuit of one's values.  The most universal example is with families and close relationships.  Given humans raise children, an activity that involves dedicating a significant amount of time, effort and money to providing for others, demonstrates that it is inherent to give a damn about others.  Wider families and friendships see that happening informally, all the time.  Human beings are mostly social, they enjoy the company of others and get pleasure from sharing, interacting and giving and getting from each other, voluntarily.

Libertarians reject the characterisation of capitalists and free-market advocates as wanting to atomise humanity, and have people who "don't care about the poor", or who always want people to exchange goods, services or indeed any form of interaction for money or some form of predatory gratification.   Libertarians embrace one core principle -  voluntary adult human interaction.  Human beings should feel free to interact with each other as they see mutually fit, which can mean asking for help, or giving help.  If people refuse, then that should be respected.  For without the voluntary element, one is no longer being kind or benevolent, but is submission to force - a concept that is incompatible with benevolence.

So why have I gone on about this diatribe? Well companies often do not expect money for goods and services.  They may offer free samples for promotion, or they may simply regard the provision of common goods, services or even space as complementary to what they do.  Shopping malls are large privately owned common areas where people can spend considerable time with seating, warmth and bathroom facilities, for nothing.  Google Maps is a service that is available for free online, and offers a basic level of mapping to anyone wishing to access it.

However it has come afoul of French competition law, which apparently treats a company offering a service for free as being negative.  Competition law exists as a response to arguments that dominant businesses in a market can act in a way that prevents competition and is harmful to consumers.  Setting aside that libertarians reject this argument, what is going on in France is not about consumers.  It is about protectionism.

The French Commercial Court has decided that Google Maps offers "unfair competition" to a French cartography firm called Bottin Cartographes, and is fining Google US$600,000 for daring to offer Google Maps for free.

What has Google Maps done wrong?  Has it stolen any intellectual property? No. What it is offering is the product of its own efforts, purchased, produced and accumulated through voluntary interaction.

Is it harming consumers?  No. Quite the opposite, they are getting a useful resource for free.  They are benefiting from a large company offering a service they need not pay for.

The problem for the French is that Google Maps is undermining another business, a French business (this sort of economic nationalism is of course, racism practiced by socialists).  A business that rather than change what it does, focusing on value added or targeting specific markets, declares it has some high profile customers (Louis Vuitton), as if that makes it special.   So it should be protected from another business that offers its own maps for free.

This, is the French model of "compassionate "capitalism, unlike what they call "Anglo-Saxon" capitalism.   It is sometimes pointed out by socialists who see France as some sort of halfway model between free market capitalism and socialism, but this court case reveals it for what it really is.

French competition law is not about consumers.  They lose out.  Indeed France has long been one of the last EU Member States to open up its traditional monopolies to any form of legal competition at all, such as electricity, postal services and bus services.  That ignores the rampant protectionism of the agricultural sector, because French consumers can't be trusted to pay more for French produce (as they are expected to do).  So in France, this "socialist capitalism" actually means the ordinary citizen loses out, no free service.

French "capitalism" is about protecting old established businesses.  It is about entrenching a corporatist view that says it is more important that an existing business keeps doing what it is doing, making money from consumers that have little choice, and keeps people employed in that old business. 

It ignores the fact that if consumers had a choice, they may spend their money on something else, on something they want that isn't free, on a business that does have to compete for their money and which employs people.  A business (and employees) that suffer because of the protectionism of Bottin Cartographes.  It ignores that someone may set up a business or grow a business because a free map facilitates something innovative or affordable that was not when one had to buy a map from Bottin Cartographes.  Finally, it ignores that the people working for Bottin Cartographes might actually be innovative enough to diversify, specialise and generate more value by being different.

So in France, the country that rejects free market capitalism, when something is offered for no money it is offensive to the law.   It is offensive to me too.

The people of France may now get Google Maps blocked, sadly.  Whereas I think the right response to Bottin Cartographes is to boycott it.  Let this stinking little protectionism business, which uses courts rather than good products people want to pay for, not get money from those of us who do have a choice. 

Why should anyone, regardless of whether they are free market capitalists, or anti-capitalists want the law to step in and stop a business giving away its goods and services for nothing?  After all, it is not you paying for it, and you do not have to take what is offered?