05 May 2008

Food prices? Blame government

If ever you wanted to witness the catastrophic effects of government intervention in markets you need only see the international crisis around food prices. The primary reason why food prices have been increasing is demand from middle income consumers in India and China. This increase should easily have been accommodated by a free and open global market for food production. Demand increases, prices rise and this should encourage production in the commodities most sought after. Farmers and wholesalers of such goods would make good profits they can reinvest in growing more, and doing so more efficiently. Consumers benefit as this dynamism and entry into the production market helps keep prices from increasing too rapidly.
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Well it would work that way, but for the European Union, US federal government, Japanese government and other agricultural protectionists.
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Many have blamed the new found fetish for biofuels. They are partly right. Now biofuels are meant to be good because their production absorbs the same CO2 produced when they are burnt, and can replace oil. Sadly, whilst biofuels may have a future, governments in many countries have started subsidising them, making it more economic to grow corn and wheat for fuel rather than food. Half of the growth in crop consumption is due to biofuels, and that would not have happened had the US, EU and the like thrown bad money at it. Rather than letting oil companies choose to invest in the best options for more energy, there has been massive diversion to biofuels - the result is higher food prices. If biofuels were not subsidised they would face the same pressure on prices that oil (and food) has, making their economics more questionable and helping ensure that the balance of agricultural production is not leaning towards fuel.
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The biofuel agenda has been promoted by environmentalists such as the Green Party, keen to mandate compulsory targets for biofuel production. As much as they may wish to plead that it should be "sustainable", the vile meaningless buzzword of the 21st century, the truth is simply this - Government incentives for biofuel production increase the price of food. Environmentalists who want the state to encourage biofuels are doing so at the cost of food - simple as that.
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However, the new fad for biofuels may, at least, have a future. If left well alone, biofuels may well become important, but will be competing with hydrogen fuel cells, solar energy, wind energy, nuclear and dare I say it, new sources of oil.
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There are two far bigger concerns around the trade in food that are hindering, enormously, the ability of the food sector to respond to increases in demand.
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The first can be quickly addressed, these are the failures of the developing countries in the form of price controls, import controls, domestic monopolies and the like which have existed in many of the countries most suffering from the increases in prices. The price controls on food have restricted the economics of food production in those countries, and restrictions on imports have also hindered supply. Deregulating the import, export, production and sale of food should be a priority so that the right signals can be sent to increase production, and for food exporting countries to enjoy the windfall to encourage them to invest in producing more. Sadly the socialism of countries like Venezuela, keeping food prices down, has exacerbated the situation.
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However, for all of these failiings (and in many countries these barriers are being dismantled out of necessity), nothing beats the abject catastrophe created by the European Union, USA and Japan with agricultural protectionism.
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Liam Halligan in the Sunday Telegraph attacks, quite rightly, the French Agricultural Minister Michel Barnier who claims, without a hint of irony, that the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is a "good model". Model of what?
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Millions will happily protest against so called US imperialism, and have no doubt about it - US agricultural policy is only slightly better (and the Democratic Party led Congress is now pushing through another Farm Bill to spread pork to the feather bedded US farming lobby), but who protests the multi billion dollar distortions and disasters that result from the EU's CAP.
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Let's review what the CAP actually does.
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For starters it inflates the price of food in Europe by imposing tariffs, quotas and bans on food imports from countries outside the EU. It does this to protect inefficient European farmers, and so hurts European households by making them pay more than they need for food. The knock on effect is that efficient food producers outside Europe get poor access to that wealthy market, hindering their production in favour of the small, energy intensive subsidised farms of Europe. So the CAP first favours the less productive against the more productive, and European consumers pay more, whilst disadvantaging others.
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Secondly, the £33 billion per annum in subsidies - yes £33 billion - is poured into the farms that already have a protected market, so they can produce. Ah, you cry, but if they didn't produce wouldn't the price of food go up? Um hold on, part of these subsidies is to pay farmers NOT to produce, much like in the US. This trick was to eliminate over production, caused by the protectionism and subsidies in the first place. So yes, the EU pays for farm land to be unproductive, as does the US federal government. Be nice to end that straight away so that farm land might be more profitable used AS farm land than as a source for a welfare cheque - but no the French government says "it is a model". However, what is truly destructive about these subsidies is how they decimate food production elsewhere in the world, you see the CAP subsidises exports of inefficiently produced European food to the rest of the world.
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The result? Agriculture in many developing countries has been stunted by the EU's exports of its highly subsidised produce undercutting efficient production elsewhere, whilst shutting its own doors to imports.
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As Halligan says "the CAP, along with other Western subsidies, has delayed the cultivation of, and investment in, vast swathes of potentially fertile land across Africa, Asia and Latin America. And it's this land which should now be supporting the large-scale commercial production of the food these regions - not to say global markets - so badly need."
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So the EU, followed by the USA (and don't doubt Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will keep this going, McCain's opposition to "pork" spending may hold some hope) and Japan (on rice predominantly) have stunted and hindered food production elsewhere by propping up their own inefficient agricultural producers. The insanity of the CAP is such that the more efficient dairy farmers in the UK can't benefit from record dairy prices because of quotas of production within the EU - what rational agricultural policy prevents your farmers from making money from high commodity prices, but ensures your consumers pay more than that for what they buy?
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The CAP was originally about two things - ensuring European farmers had adequate incomes and food security. The latter is a nonsense, given the UK used to consume virtually all of NZ's food exports until the 1970s, and international trade in food with record prices will help ensure food security. The former is even more of a nonsense. The CAP stops European farmers from realising the benefits of high commodity prices, whilst simultaneously hindering production elsewhere. If there were ever a time to remove agricultural subsidies and trade protectionism for agriculture it is now.
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The clear message to Brussels, Washington and Tokyo should be plain and clear. It is time to dismantle your pork barrel laden agricultural protectionism. That means abolishing subsidies so that production isn't distorted in favour of inefficiency, and abolishing tariffs, quotas and bans on free trade in agricultural commodities - so that your own consumers aren't paying over the odds.
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Agricultural subsidies are the invention of socialists and economic nationalists, the truly economic braindead. They are immoral, destructive and a cancer upon the world of food production and trade. Nothing would assist in addressing food shortages more than dismantling these abominations, and meanwhile the enormous money saved might just be a boost to the flagging European, US and Japanese economies. Farmers in these countries need to be told - as prices for dairy, meat, wheat and rice are at record levels - you should stand on your own feet. Meanwhile, it would be nice if the EU's budget was halved and taxpayers got their money back.
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As is said by the Economist, ever the friend of free trade:
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"Defenders of the CAP and other rich-country farm policies cannot have it both ways. They cannot demand more money when prices are low, and then ask for extra protection when they rise. High food prices further undermine their already rotten arguments for support, and offer a golden opportunity to dismantle rich-country farm protection"
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The environmentalist new left movement is propagating a new form of snake oil called "food sovereignty". The UN Rapporteur on the "right to food" Jean Ziegler, a supporter of Cuba's agricultural policies, is a cheerleader for this.
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It's about time that these economic fraudsters were exposed for what they are. Their philosophy is literally killing people, and it is impoverishing farmers throughout the developing world. The time is now for all those who give a damn about food to call for a complete liberalisation of agricultural trade. Nonsense like so-called fair trade and the like should be ignored for what it is, a distraction.
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Meanwhile blame the environmentalist movement for biofuels, along with agricultural protectionism (although socialists and economic nationalists are equally to blame here). However there isn't much hope, with Sarkozy's administration talking about "community preference" as a new form of protectionism, and both Clinton and Obama pushing anti-trade agendas. S0 when will those who claim to care about poverty speak up against agricultural corporate welfare?

Did you want to buy a railway?

Well it isn't a question - you own one now according to the NZ Herald. Clark and Cullen have taken $665 million of your money and have bought a dog. The private sector didn't want it, but now you have it - lucky you. It is another one of those investments that doesn't actually generate a financial return - funny that.
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You see the government's competency is astounding given its record on this.
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First it paid $81 million for the whole Auckland rail network, even though Treasury valued it at best at $20 million. The shareholders of Tranz Rail paid out a special dividend of around $50 million directly because of that purchase - that's YOUR taxes going to Tranz Rail shareholders' back pockets.
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Then it paid a nominal $1 for the rest of the network, and started undercharging Toll (as rail operator) to use it. $10 million a year undercharging, coming from YOUR taxes. The beneficiaries being Fonterra, Solid Energy and several forestry companies and freight forwarders - because your taxes should subsidise their freight shouldn't they??
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Since then it has poured more taxpayers' money into the network. As I blogged about before:
- At least $450 million to upgrade the Auckland rail network (track, signals and platforms) from 2005;
- $100 million per year for six years from 2007 to upgrade Auckland and Wellington rail networks;
- $25 million in 2008/09 and again in 2009/10 to upgrade the national rail network;
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Now it has said that "The Government will now avoid paying subsidies to third parties and we also avoid the on-going disputes over the implementation of the National Rail Access Agreement that had the potential to destroy value in the business and erode the morale of the people who work in it."
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*cough* Bullshit! The subsidy wont be going to Toll, it will be going to rail freight customers and rail ferry customers implicitly. It is reducing freight costs for timber, coal, containers and milk - that's it, by subsidising them - these are third parties. You see railways aren't exactly carrying just air.
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So why buy it? What about the concerns about road maintenance, pollution and congestion?
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Well this is all terribly funny. At a time of record fuel prices, the claims about the efficiency of rail over road would apparently be so self evident subsidies wouldn't be needed - and of course they aren't, since the railways ran happily without them for freight from 1988 till 2003. The difference is the government, as rail owner, wont charge Toll the full price of the cost of rail maintenance. So either rail is very fuel efficient (and conversely has lower environmental impact) or it isn't, or isn't enough to make up for the enormous fixed costs of having lightly used tracks. Not so sustainable now is it?
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So what about road maintenance? Well Road User Charges recover the costs of highway maintenance from trucks attributable to trucks. They get revised regularly to respond to those costs, so they aren't being undercharged (on average). Funny how the government will undercharge trains on its tracks, but not trucks on its roads. An argument can be made that trucks on local authority roads should pay more, instead of ratepayers paying for these costs, but these roads rarely compete with rail for most freight.
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So what about pollution? Well the government's own study indicates that the environmental impact of long haul road freight is sometimes the same or less than that of rail, and vice versa. It is route dependent, so is not as simple as the Greens preach it is.
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and congestion? Well rail freight will do next to nothing to address that, and passenger services in Wellington seem to be getting upgraded quite happily without government ownership of the operations. You're deluded if your think that the Auckland rail upgrade, which will serve locations where only 12% of Aucklanders work, and largely see a shift from bus to rail, will reduce congestion.
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and if that doesn't convince you remember this:
- In 1982 the government wiped what was then $100 million worth of debt from the Railways Department to restructure it. In today's dollars that would now be roughly $250 million.
- In 1988, the government wiped another $350 million worth of debt from the Railways Corporation to pay for the Think Big rail electrification which was a sunk cost and unprofitable project;
- In 1990, the government wiped $1 billion worth of debt from the Railways so it could start with a clean slate, the second time in eight years.
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No amount of ridiculous cargo cult worship of railways will get over the fact that this is a dog of an investment. The main freight customers should have been left to buy it and run it as a business, and if the government wanted the roads and railways to be on a level playing field, it could have run the highways as a business and even, shock horror, sold them.
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Instead the government pours taxpayers' money into poor quality exhorbitant road projects that are environmentally gold plated (like the Waterview extension and eventually Transmission Gully), and makes you buy a railway to shift traffic from the roads it wont manage on market principles.
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oh and you might ask why all the socialists and environmentalists didn't buy rail shares when they were available.

Wishart's all too obvious smear

Now Ian Wishart's book is akin to Nicky Hager's - it is political with the motive of bringing down the political party (and leader) he dislikes.
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I have no time for Helen Clark and her politics. I wouldn't care to defend her and have never voted for Labour whilst she has been leader. I find her a control freak, statist and willing to regulate and tax whenever she sees fit - she sees the state big, growing, embracing and using education and the media to reshape the country in her vision. It isn't a vision of enterprise, freedom and diversity, but a vision of partnership - where the state never lets you go.
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However, Helen Clark's private life is another matter. I know enough to have my own opinion about her marriage and relationships, and frankly her sexuality is irrelevant to me. It does concern me that she chose to dedicate her life to politics, if only because it shows a passion for power - over others - that is cold, calculating and unfriendly towards individual freedom. Woe betide those in the way of Clark. She faced several challenges, in particular being the most hated Health Minister in recent history, then she knifed Mike Moore after the 1993 election to claim the leadership. Subsequently she saw Labour achieve its worst ever election result in 1996 with only 28% of the vote, but came back to win three elections in a row - albeit at all times with the help of Jim Anderton, Winston Peters and Peter Dunne to retain power.
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Wishart wishes to destroy her political career by the shock horror revelation about her marriage. What is disgusting is what a vacuous wasted effort such a revelation is, although Wishart can sell books, so do pornographers.
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Wishart could have brought down the Clark administration by having some real stories about conflicts in Cabinet and Caucus, some of the policies that nearly made it but were carefully avoided, and some of the debacles such as letting Air New Zealand fall so it could be nationalised. He could point at the government's record and see why growth has been stunted so much by the Clark administration.
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No, it was beyond him (and wouldn't sell as many books) to undertake serious analysis, he was into muckraking.
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Psycho Milt at No Minister has eloquently written about what it is all about. "This is where we get a good look into the psyche of the right-wing ranters who fill comments threads with vile abuse whenever the subject comes up (which it does with regularity, right-wing bloggers being what they are). What makes Clark and Davis “gay” is that they don’t fit these guys’ (well hell, you almost always are, and you know it) view of what a “real man” and a “real woman” should be like. "
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So now that Ian Wishart has played being News of the World, let's get down to some real reasons you shouldn't vote Labour.

Congrats Boris

It was prolonged and painful, but the election of Boris Johnson as Mayor of London is a tremendous victory for him personally and the Conservative Party. As I live outside Greater London, I had no opportunity to vote for him, but I did cast a vote for the Conservative candidate in my constituency (only for him to come third out of four and the Green Party to win - again).
Boris managed to beat the accusations of racism - absurd for a man with a half-Sikh wife, homophobia (Johnson responded to the question "have you had sex with a man?" with the careful answer "not yet") and buffoonery by focusing hard upon what was wrong with Keningrad. The mispending, accusations of corruption, the bizarre relationship with Hugo Chavez, and the poor performance on crime. Ken's single greatest achievement was the original congestion charge, although that in itself has been extended by Ken partly as his expression of the class war.
Johnson's greatest asset is his wit and his able mind, he is articulate and with a classical education. Hopefully he can surround himself with able people, slash wasteful spending at City Hall (including curtailing "Ken's Bank" the London Development Agency) and focus on the issues Londoners care about - crime, transport and housing.
On crime, Johnson seeks to emulate the success of Rudi Giuliani in New York by having zero tolerance of "minor" crime, from knife crime to vandalism. He has not the powers of the New York Mayor on law and order, but he can have a significant influence over budgets and priorities. This perhaps would be his greatest achievement if he can make London safer.
On transport Johnson has called for reform of the congestion charge, which is frankly relatively easy. However, he also seeks to improve traffic management and clearly will be more interested in roads than Ken was. The odd pledge to introduce a new generation of Routemaster buses is likely to prove unworkable, but if he can make a difference to crime on buses this may be also his greatest transport achievement. Sadly as Westminster is responsible for most of the transport budget, it is unlikely much innovative can happen whilst central government purse strings are tight on roads. However Boris should quietly privatise the recent TfL attempts to take over two thirds of the tube network and operate "London Overground". He might consider differential pricing by time of day as well for roads and public transport, to reduce overcrowding.
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On housing, the current housing crisis will undoubtedly ease rental pressures, but the key is setting free vast tracts of public land for housing development. Unshackling the ability of property owners to build will help, but Boris will also be responsible for a large budget of state housing that central government has given him to manage. How he deals with this will be interesting.
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Most of all, I hope he holds council tax (for the London Assembly) at constant levels in nominal terms, so that Greater London Authority spending reduces in real terms. London survived and thrived for 14 years without the GLA - if Boris can show he can shrink the GLA while London grows then he will be showing the country that the Conservative Party can deliver something new for Britain.

Post 1000

I have been blogging for over 2.5 years and so today this is my 1000th post.

So why do I bother? What has been the result?

There is some effort involved in having a daily rant. It started and still is about that, but I’ve noticed the hit rate rise and drop. I average about 100 users with about 130 page views a day. I've been linked to by numerous sites from time to time, and am grateful for that.

However, what I want to do most of all is make people think, beyond simply a rant. I blog primarily about NZ politics from afar, but also UK and US politics, international affairs, and occasionally trip reports and personal matters. Given I am a transport sector management consultant I have a lot to say about that, but know the audience is limited. Indeed transport almost highlights why I have a suspicion of government doing good, as in most cases it makes foolish decisions.

So I am a libertarian, objectivist and atheist. You figured out that easily enough. However why? What was my philosophical, political journey to take me to something that is, frankly, a highly minority opinion?

My first ever exposure to politics was my maternal grandfather who was a card carrying member of the Labour Party. I briefly remember the 1978 general election, and that “Mr Muldoon” was the Prime Minister. My grandfather told me why he supported Labour though I understood little, I listened to his criticisms of Muldoon. Sadly he died when I was 10, but from that I followed politics a little more. It seemed to be a contest between good and evil. I remember the 1981 election and more specifically the party political broadcasts that Labour, National and Social Credit put out on TVNZ, which then had a statutory monopoly. Labour argued that income tax was too high, but business tax too low. National argued Think Big “Jobs for our children and our childrens’ children that’s what this is all about” bellowed Muldoon. Social Credit was difficult to understand, but the idea of a third party automatically appealed.

The political environment of the time was full of conflict. The Springbok tour, protests against US nuclear powered/armed ships, and the economic malaise all caused concern and divided opinion. I remember inflation at 18%, and interest rates BELOW that for the bank, thinking I was getting a good deal on my paltry savings at the then Post Office, when in fact Muldoon was ripping me off, like he did hundreds of thousands of children. Those are the days Jim Anderton and Winston Peters remember fondly for some reason. I also recall learning from books how dictatorial East Germany was, with citizens prevented from leaving by big barbed wire fences. I wondered how bad a country can be that it needs to force its people to stay.

The 1984 election was an exciting one, not least because Bob Jones’s New Zealand Party made it amusing. I was loyal to Labour, not least because it was the party that could unseat Muldoon and National, which I thought was a party of economic madness. At school we were meant to do a project on the election, and I remember going to the Social Credit office in Wellington to ask for a manifesto, only to have a weird little bearded man mumble and hand me something. Bob Jones’s diatribes on Skoda driving grey zip-up shoe wearing bearded teachers made some sense at that point. Nevertheless, I was convinced David Lange was honest and would do what was right – in some respects had Labour embarked on a mad socialist programme I would have accepted that at the time, but no…. it was all going to be very different.

I was astounded by the reason behind pulling the plug on subsidies, the opening up of markets and the general willingness by the fourth Labour government to get out of the way of business. The sheer mind numbing ineptness of the Post Office, Railways, Petrocorp and the like was patently obvious. Why couldn’t these be businesses, why should businesses receive taxpayer funds at all? How possibly could politicians know better than consumers, producers and entrepreneurs?

I was convinced by Douglas, so supported Labour even up to voting Labour in 1990. Why? Because of the sheer audacity that politicians would do what is right rather than obtain short term political advantage. The fourth Labour government outraged farmers, manufacturers, unions (albeit somewhat muted) and many others, yet who could argue to retain the bloated state sector and its inane regulations of things such as international air fares! Who could argue that the government could keep overspending ad infinitum?

However, it didn’t all please me. The Treaty of Waitangi became centre stage, and the cries of victimhood and claims that Maori committed crime, did badly at school and smoked, drank and ate themselves to early graves because of Treaty breaches sounded suspicious. The establishment of new Ministries such as Women’s Affairs seemed like an unnecessary increase in the size of the state. On top of that Labour had reintroduced compulsory unionism, and effectively severed military ties with the USA- the anti-nuclear rhetoric appeared largely emotive nonsense, and the anti-American insinuation was ridiculous. Few protested Soviet nuclear weapons.

However National did absolutely nothing to confront any of this, except voluntary unionism. National was totally unwilling to deal with the Maoist attitude to debate on some of these things that I encountered at university – all Maori were disadvantaged and I should be disadvantaged to give Maori a “hand up”. Funny how I noticed some who had such a “hand up” came from wealthier families than I did. I am the first from my family to go to university.

I also was far from enamoured at the conservatism of some in National. Graeme Lee had a strong influence on censorship law in the early 1990s, to the extent that it became an offence to possess “objectionable material” even if you didn’t know it was or reasonably should know, and that definition included depicting acts that are legal.

I believed in freedom and wanted less government, the only voice in the early 1990s appeared to be Roger Douglas and the newly formed Association of Consumers and Taxpayers. However while ACT promised radical reform of health and education, it never spoke about freedom – that was when I discovered the Free Radical.

The notion that adult interaction should be voluntary was so clearly obvious as to make it strange to think otherwise, yet that was what government was all about. I became a libertarian because I was tired of people demanding governments use force to make others do what they couldn’t convince them to choose to do. Those on the left are particularly keen to tell others what to do, but many on the right do too. However it is more than just freedom, it is about life.

That is how I discovered being a libertarian and the philosophical underpinning for it – objectivism. You see I value human life. I don’t seek purpose outside existence, I am alive and I may as well enjoy it. I want to be free to do this, whilst respecting the same in others. My body, my property and my life, and others have the same. I can’t conceive why others can have any right to tell me what to do with any of these, given I do not want it over anyone else. Government should exist to protect people from each other and from other governments, it should not exist to do anything else.

However objectivism goes beyond the role of the state, and is actually about why we live and how to live. A life of reason and passion, enjoying what time we have is what objectivism is about.

Contrary to this is so much in statist politics, whether it be socialism, fascism, conservatism or more recently environmentalism. All are an abandonment of reason. Environmentalism selectively uses science to spread fear of doom and death, whilst often advocating anti-science, in objecting to biotechnology, or anti-economics, in advocating protectionism, subsidies and higher taxes. Religion all too often, besides being explicitly an abandonment of reason for faith, is concerned about the after life, not life. At its worst it has been the banner for murder on a grand scale, at best it is a distraction and a private comfort for some.

My overwhelming mission in this blog is to question the role of the state in almost all aspects of human affairs. The state, after all, is simply a collective of human beings with only one difference from everyone else – the right to use force against them. The idea that in many instances politicians and bureaucrats know better than other people how to spend their money, use their bodies or their property is rather peculiar – yet it is the core belief of those who join the Labour Party or the Green Party, or dare I say it, National.

The liberty of the human individual is a beautiful thing. You can see this most clearly in a child, who unsubconsciously explores the world around her, who smiles, trusts and seeks to learn, and make the world into what she wants it to be. That is before being told not to be “too clever” or “how important it is to be liked”.

Today, thousands of young people grow up concerned most of all about being liked and “belonging”, when they should celebrate being themselves, pursuing their passions and respect others doing the same. Millions live today demanding the state take more money off of others because it is “fair”. Fair apparently that others should live for them, make a living that must be paid to others. The insipid socialism that there is something wrong with the “rich getting richer”, and the “poor” standing still –and that the rich should fix their lot, not the poor.

The violence of the state is every bit as abhorrent as the violence of individuals who mug, steal, attack and take from others as crimes. However it has the veneer of respectability – it is ok to vote for your neighbour to be robbed to pay for what you like. After all, taxation is theft, regardless of any justification one may make or other cliché claimed, taxes are taking money by force.

So I ask you, when you read this blog, or read others or the rants of politicians who want something from you, do politicians not have the powers granted to them by the people they are meant to represent? If politicians only have the powers granted to them by the public, why do they use powers that no member of the public could ever have? You have no right to steal, so how can you grant that to a politician? You have no right to stop your neighbour painting his house the colour he wants, so how can you grant that to a politician? You have no right to arrest someone because he ingests something you disapprove of, so how can you grant that right to a politician?

That is why I advocate freedom – I don’t think politicians and bureaucrats are better than me, or anyone else. What could be more egalitarian than that?