UK Treasury isn't on top of its own website

let alone the economy.

One may jest that it is hardly surprising that one after another there are UK businesses folding due to competition from the internet (Jessops, HMV, Blockbuster, Comet), when those advising the Government aren't even able to keep on top of their own website.

Do a search on the Treasury website for Treasury structure.  I did that moments ago because I actually wanted to find someone in the organisation.

You'll get not one, but two PDF files listed as follows:

Treasury Structure and

Treasury Structure

both very similar, both with the Chancellor of the Exchequer being one Rt Hon Gordon Brown. 

Now I wouldn't suggest that this means anything significant, other than the Treasury has failed to keep its website up to date or to maintain it properly.  

This sort of nonsense shouldn't happen, but then the incentives around Treasury getting things right (and the penalties for getting things wrong) are not quite as direct as they are for businesses.

Environmentalist reveals anti-science attitudes at heart of the movement

Whether you call it GE or GM, the debate about genetic engineering has been overwhelmed by vehement opposition from the environmental movement from day one.   Former NZ Green MP Jeanette Fitzsimons said in 1998 that that Christmas was the last one when you could "trust a potato" and since then the rhetoric around GMOs has been simple:

- Genetic engineering shouldn't be allowed outside laboratories because once released into the environment anything can happen (visions of plants and animals overrunning the landscape);

- GM food is "Frankenfood"(visions of it coming from monsters, as if it involves something half fish/half pineapple) and so everyone has the right to know if there is any trace of GMO in it, so they know they are "safe";

- Organic food is safe and healthy and wonderful, and is not only the best for one's health, but is great for the economy.

Mark Lynas is an environmentalist, his credentials are here.  He was an activist against GMOs, and he has come out to admit he was wrong.  He gave a lecture on 3 January 2013 to the Oxford Farming Conference where he said so.   It tears at the heart of the rhetoric of the Green movement on genetic engineering and as a result gives good reason to question any time any of them try to quote science.

Here was a big American corporation with a nasty track record, putting something new and experimental into our food without telling us. Mixing genes between species seemed to be about as unnatural as you can get – here was humankind acquiring too much technological power; something was bound to go horribly wrong. These genes would spread like some kind of living pollution. It was the stuff of nightmares.

These fears spread like wildfire, and within a few years GM was essentially banned in Europe, and our worries were exported by NGOs like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth to Africa, India and the rest of Asia, where GM is still banned today. This was the most successful campaign I have ever been involved with.

This was also explicitly an anti-science movement. We employed a lot of imagery about scientists in their labs cackling demonically as they tinkered with the very building blocks of life. Hence the Frankenstein food tag – this absolutely was about deep-seated fears of scientific powers being used secretly for unnatural ends. What we didn’t realise at the time was that the real Frankenstein’s monster was not GM technology, but our reaction against it.

It is damning about the environmental movement, about Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth.  Some of the choice quotes are:

What's next?

I've decided, in the interim, to keep doing what I have been doing, but to simplify tags.  I will have tags for the UK, NZ and other countries, and for specific generic topics.  I have too many tags as it is, so it is  time for them to mature - like me.

I will be writing about freedom, economic rationalism and the morality of having a society which is about consensual adult interaction, and a state which exists to protect that, and to intervene when people initiate or threaten to initiate force, or fraud.  I believe the purpose of life is to pursue your own goals, your own passions and to enjoy yourself.  People do that with family, friends, loved ones and many form partnerships, some get married and have children, but they are driven by what they enjoy.  That may be conversation, art, exploration, discovery, sport, cuisine, love, sex, hobbies or whatever.  However, that, for me, is the meaning of life.  It is about enjoying it, and then interacting voluntarily with those who complement it, which is about being social, enjoying your time with others, giving benevolently of your time, your property and your attention to those whom you choose.   That for me, is being human.

As a result I will also be writing about those who are against this.  Socialists who want other people's money taken by force, environmentalists who scaremonger and lie about science whilst selling anti-capitalism and state dependency as "solutions" for poverty, personal behaviour control freaks who believe that the solution to people who smoke, eat, drink or inject themselves to early graves is to make their behaviour illegal or tax it or berate them,  sensitive souls who want to criminalise people who offend them, Islamists who worship death and shroud their misogyny and other radical religious zealots who want laws to criminalise those who don't live according to their own selected moral code.

Frequently I will agree with those who are not objectivists and libertarians, sometimes there is common cause with conservatives (and obviously there is not on some matters), occasionally common cause with leftwing liberals.

An orgy of irrationalism in economics (where money printing is seen to be a solution to stagnant productivity growth) and moral relativism in education, media and popular culture gives enormous scope for commentary.

So it is time to go forward.  I hope you enjoy what I write, and that you engage with ideas. If it bores you, move along.  If it offends you, I couldn't care less.

Bye 2012, hello 2013

Beyond the tragic shooting in the United States, which Peter Cresswell has pithily written about, the time has come for me to reflect on 2012.  What themes were important, what really matters and how has the world changed in that time?

Economics

The big theme remains economic policy and what remains a crisis of stagnation, public and private debt across the OECD.  It was caused on the one hand by malinvestment by financial institutions obtaining cheap credit from central banks which were focused on inflation of consumer prices, not asset values, and on the other hand by governments which thought they could perpetually overspend using that credit and never face a collapse in tax revenue when the malinvestments collapsed.

Despite the (rather pathetic) efforts by some on the left to try to paint this as the collapse of "neo-liberalism" (their term) and free market capitalism (ignoring that fiat money issued by central banks controlling credit, and a US financial system that made some lending to the "uncreditworthy" compulsory), nothing much has changed.

An exercise in widespread economic guesswork has seen a range of "solutions" be adopted by larger economies.

The US has been printing money, as has the UK, which is meant to work by flooding the financial sector with money to lend to businesses, hoping they will invest and grow the economy.  Of course, this risks causing inflation, which is happening on sharemarket prices (and some commodity prices) largely because entrepreneurs are conservative.  Inflation on consumer prices is low, because consumers are largely deleveraging (reducing their exposure to debt) because of fear of unemployment.

This money printing is being undertaken largely because central bankers and government economists don't know what else to do, and are hoping that the flood of money will end up getting spent and circulated and revitalise the economy, ignoring the real effect on savings and threat of inflation taking off.

In fiscal policy there is a split between the Keynesians and the "austerity is necessary"advocates.  The former believe that government can spend its way out of a recession, and Barack Obama has been of that school (as have more than some leftwing parties in other countries).  Japan has also been pursuing this approach and has seen 15 years of continuous stagnation.  The austerity advocates believe (as I do) that a balanced budget is critical, which is all very well, except that they also see tax increases and spending cuts as essentially neutral in terms of net economic impact.

They aren't, as tax increases reduce the size of the private sector, whereas spending cuts reduce the size of the public sector.   Tax increases take money from people undertaking voluntary transactions, whilst spending cuts mean less of other people's money being spent.  This is qualitatively and morally quite different.

I don't expect much will come of the limited austerity being undertaken.  France is taking the extreme tax increase approach and is paying for it.  The European Union is continuing to preach that the solution to a crisis caused by its own monetary looseness and fiscal incontinence is for it to spend more money from European taxpayers, to pay lip service to liberalising reforms that could do some good, and to arrogantly regard European citizens who question is unaudited, unaccountable bureaucracy as morally questionable.

So all of that continues, and it continues to deliver little, and I predict that will continue some more, until the next short term boom and bust.

The problem is that rent seekers of the state are loud, and demanding, whilst those who lose from rent seeking (savers, and a subset of current and future taxpayers) are numerous (and in many cases not yet born).

What is needed is true austerity, an end to taxpayer support of all business, encouragement of personal savings for retirement income and healthcare, an end to taxpayer support of children in middle income households, the end of QE and the removal of restrictions on competing currencies (to allow a shift towards commodity currencies if there is market demand for it).  That is the necessary minimum, to avoid the rolling bankruptcies of governments, to avoid the fiscal child abuse that is now rampant and to reduce the risk of future booms and busts.

By Country

UK:  The UK ends the year under a cloud, with continued moaning by rent seekers of state largesse about relatively small cuts in spending, and rising debate about the future of the UK within the EU.  The two bright lights at the end of the year has been the intelligent decision to reject Lord Leveson's call for a state regulator of the press (given his most recent comments wanting a level playing field between bloggers, tweeters and publishers, it ought to, but wont shut up the foaming at the mouth haters of Rupert Murdoch lying about his market presence), and rejection of mandatory internet filtering.   The year ahead will be full of hope of a recovery, which is unlikely, and full of arrogance and hatred of successful business from a revitalised more leftwing Labour Party - which will continue to argue that its slower programme of spending cuts (not saying what those are) will miraculously save the economy and mean that by spending more, the government will somehow be overspending less.   The mainstream hate filled class warfare against the "rich" will continue, and the national religion of the NHS (the world's largest non-military public sector employer) will remain almost impossible to challenge.

USA:  So Obama has won, thanks to a massive campaign of negativity, and he has succeeded in introduced a 2% increase in tax on all working Americans, whilst claiming all he did was increase taxes on the rich.  The US will continue to limp forward, printing more money, and the Obama Administration will do little to constrain the budget deficit.  The US taxes like a small government country and spends like a big government country,  this year wont be the one when it reconciles which of those it wants to be.  For those noisy about higher taxes also have an equal number noisy about losing the money they receive from borrowed loot.

New Zealand:  Politics will continue to be dominated by who may lead Labour, the Greens will continue to shroud their radical statist racist agenda with "oh so reasonable" sounding policies, with a media incapable or unwilling to challenge it, and the Nats will continue to ride slowly down their wave of disappointment and public cynicism.  The remains of ACT and libertarian/pro-capitalists will be developing a new platform forward for the local government elections.

Elsewhere:

Germany feels lucky, but it has its own fiscal problems, with public debt approaching 90% of GDP.  It will have to embark on austerity sooner or later, but is hoping the global economy will recover enough to avoid this.

France is following a path of socialism that is chasing away business and successful entrepreneurs.  Those on the left should watch and learn.

Russia survives on energy prices that remains buoyant due to Chinese demand, but if Western Europe ignores the environmentalist luddites on fracking, it will decimate gas prices and hurt Russia and Putin. Russia still has net population decline because the rampant corruption, brutal state and lack of opportunities for anyone who doesn't buy into the culture of corporatist corruption that surrounds Putin makes anyone with vision to not be a gangster, leave.  As long as Russians remain complicit in this, it will continue to bubble on, and become less and less relevant.

The Middle East will see a series of contrasts.  Libya will be increasingly a friend of the West, Egypt will face ongoing civil conflict,  Assad will fall, but the rebels will not be enamoured with the West.  Israel will continue to be hardline towards the Palestinians given the events in Egypt and Syria.  Iran will continue to stagnate, and there will be some efforts to reduce its isolation due to economic reality (and collapse of its ally in Syria).

Japan will stagnate, more.

China's growth will slow down, as its property bubble and its own sub-prime loan crisis gets absorbed by the state in one way or another. The biggest story in China is the rampant free speech seen online and the debates internally about politics and government policy through that medium.  China's new leadership wont embark on radical change, but watch to see if local politics become more pluralistic.   Meanwhile, China will sabre rattle over the Senkaku/Diaoyutai islands, and the islands in the South China Sea, until the US makes it clear that any battle over any such islands will not be tolerated.

Finally, Australia or China's mine, is hoping China's lowering growth doesn't hurt its grossly imbalanced economy.   It continues to be competitive in little beyond digging dirt and selling it, it continues to engage in massive transfers to support inefficient parts of the economy (e.g. motor vehicle assembly).   It will get a shock if China takes a shock, and NZ will be not far behind.

Culture

The year ends with the greatest influence on culture being the pervasiveness of the internet and communication technologies.  It is radically transforming how people interact, how they meet and what exposure they have to ideas, images and sounds.  Children and teenagers dive into it, parents either embrace or fear it, governments seek to monitor and control it, businesses are struggling to get to grips with how to use it and how it affects their businesses.   It remains dynamic and unpredictable, and will frighten governments more and more, but will also drive populist politicians to want to "do something about it" as people use it to bypass tariffs, taxes, censors and monopolies.

Me

This blog will be changing, I will be making it primarily about the UK and world affairs, with a separate page for NZ matters that I care to care for.  I will be writing slightly less frequently, but with a bit more reflection, and with a few more pieces that are less "current history" and more strategic in focus.

As much as I am an objectivist, libertarian and vehemently pro-capitalist, all that in itself is not enough to affect change and influence.  More important than politics, is culture and the philosophy underpinning that, and at the moment there is has been a yawning gap abandoned by traditional conservatism that has been filled by a post-modernist cultural relativist mush of constructed fiction.  Only by taking that on can those of us who believe in individual freedom, capitalism and small government provide convincing arguments against the status quo.  However, on top of that we also have to demonstrate the moral case for capitalism and individual freedom is not the vampiric caricature of a strawman that the post-modernist left paints all too lazily, but of generous, benevolent, positive and social people who are defined by themselves, and how they live their lives.

The case for freedom is not based on economics, it is not based on religion and is not based on a nihilistic hedonism, but on a belief in life as the highest value and that humanity and civilisation is reflected with consensual adult interaction in all affairs.

Basin Reserve flyover opponents are grandstanding

The noise from Labour and the Greens on the Basin Reserve flyover is utterly remarkable.   

For Labour it is grandstanding hypocrisy because when it was in government, Labour endorsed a transport funding packages for Wellington that explicitly included provision for grade separation of roads at the Basin Reserve.

For the Greens it is disappointing, as it is a continuation of the hyperbolic hysteria that Sue Kedgley use to peddle, which I thought may have been moderated under the more thoughtful Julie Anne Genter.  

For both they may want to claim the project is akin to some major urban motorway project of the sort that once activated large groups of "rent-a-mob" leftwing protestors in the UK, but really it is no big deal at all.   Furthermore, the absurd claim that Wellington City Council is being bullied because NZTA questions the value of duplicating Mt Victoria Tunnel and associated road improvements towards the airport without the flyover, is astonishingly hypocritical.  For I doubt that the Greens endorse any of those projects (and if you believe road capacity improvements are the spawn of the devil, then doubling highway capacity between the city and eastern suburbs ought to be opposed as Sue Kedgley thought at the time).

Labour once happily supported funding major highway works at the Basin Reserve

During the Clark Government, Labour released a transport funding package for Wellington, which included money for the new Matangi electric multiple units, replacement signalling, electrical and track infrastructure, replacement trolley buses and to support a range of major road improvements.  The calculations for this funding including provision for capacity improvements at the Basin Reserve, with the implication clearly made at the time that this is about grade separation. 

Indeed, it was seen in the Wellington Regional Council's endorsement of "Basin Reserve capacity improvements" as the 4th highest priority in 2005.

It was the next logical stage after the one-way road and on-ramp that comprised the much maligned "Inner City Bypass" (which simply enabled the one-way system across Te Aro to be shifted a block and a bit south).   So Grant Robertson and other Labour politicians jumping on this bandwagon are being hypocrites.  Annette King in particular is being disingenuous, because she supports a second Mt Victoria Tunnel, which without the Basin Reserve bridge would simply mean longer queues at the Basin Reserve, as two bottlenecks would be cleared.   She didn't utter a peep when Transit/NZTA was investigating this very project when Labour was in power.

Greens are being utter hysterics over a two-lane one-way bridge

Sue Kedgley consistently claimed the Wellington Inner City Bypass would be a "multi-lane motorway extension through the heart of Te Aro".   It wasn't.  I wonder how many people who went on "path of destruction" tours still think Te Aro's historical heart has been "destroyed".

The "path of destruction" of the Wellington inner city bypass looks a lot like the other two lane roads

The two-lane 50km/h city street called a "multi-lane motorway" by the Greens

Now the claim is that this project will "destroy the character" of the Basin Reserve, an entirely subjective value judgment, but itself is rather extreme.  It will affect it, some may think negatively, but destroy?  Really?

The next claim is "it will affect Wellington's green belt and access to eastern suburb sports facilities and will cost tax- and rate-payers $97 million to move traffic congestion 300 metres"

Really?  The green belt?  Utter nonsense:

The green belt is off to the left of the Basin bridge, affected?

How will it affect access to eastern suburb sports facilities? Other than improve them for those leaving the eastern suburbs.  How will it cost ratepayers, given it is fully funded from NZTA as a state highway project?  How will it "destroy the Basin as a sporting and cultural venue"?   

Just pure hysteria.

Julie Anne Genter is a bit better on this.  She says it is a waste of money because the road has "declining traffic volumes", although this isn't apparent in the severe congestion and of course the Greens typically say new roads generate new traffic, so she can't have it both ways.

She says "The vast majority of people coming into Wellington take public transport, cycle or walk", yet this project isn't about people coming into Wellington, but bypassing Wellington primarily between the airport and the Hutt, Porirua and wider region.  In fact the travel survey by NZTA (excel file) of travel across the country indicates that 68-69% of trips in the region are by car, with 5-7% by public transport. Greater Wellington Regional Council even says only 17% of commuter trips are by public transport, with it being 21% in Wellington city (excluding the Hutt and Porirua).  Cars are important in Wellington.

Then there is the utter nonsense of this:  "A massive concrete motorway flyover is an invitation for future urban decay and crime. It is the exact opposite of smart transport planning".  Once again, she has Kedgley disease in calling it a motorway, but there are several motorway flyovers in Wellington, let's look for this urban decay and crime:

Bowen Street motorway overbridge - car park, housing and offices

Thorndon Quay motorway overbridge, commercial and retail premises

Dowse Drive/Hutt Road overbridge, commercial and retail premises

Yep, lots of urban decay and crime in those scenes.

In fact the only argument she has is economic.  It doesn't have a good benefit/cost ratio, with various studies indicating it ranges from below 1 to above 1.  The argument can be made that there are better projects.  Yet the Green Party's pet project - the underground rail loop in Auckland - doesn't have one either, in fact they argue that the conventional benefit/cost appraisal of the project doesn't take into account all of the criteria important to them.   So it's a bit rich to claim a road doesn't stake up on one set of criteria, but that same criteria is inappropriate for a rail project.

What is clear is the Greens will oppose road improvements on any sort of cooked up criteria.  A flyover may be ugly to some, and it may not be the best use of money spent on roads in Wellington, but it is far from the worst, and unlike the proposals for more rail, it wont need subsidies its entire existence. 

Save the Basin campaign is equally hysterical

The actual opposition campaign against the project is at best misguided and naive, at worst beholden to the same hyperbole that besets the Greens.

The claims are:

• It will blight the streetscape and surrounding neighbourhoods

Well, few things blight the streetscape as much as large volumes of traffic circulating around this enormous roundabout.  As you can see above, bridges need not blight streetscapes.  The claim it will "blight" surrounding neighbourhoods is hysterical.  After all, the presence of a busy road tunnel since 1931 has had a bigger impact.  Thorndon has had a motorway blasted through it since the 1970s and is hardly "blighted", neither is Kelburn "blighted" having it running at its base.  

• It will overshadow the Basin Reserve and place its future as an iconic international cricket ground at risk

Oddly, this was never really raised as an issue for the 40 years that there have been serious plans to push a major highway along this alignment.  There is no authoritative statement that this is true, just a rant by a reader to a website.   

• It’s unnecessary. Road traffic volumes in New Zealand are declining and so is trucking:

So what? The route is congested and the current problems are severe.  At peak times, queues from the Basin back up all the way through the Mt Victoria Tunnel, they back up around the Basin from Buckle Street, and create delays for buses. 

• Now that a tunnel is being built under Memorial Park, it makes no sense to emerge from a tunnel and go up onto a flyover

Yes, and nobody is expecting that to happen because the flyover is a one way road towards the tunnel.  This basic mistake indicates how very shallow this opposition is.

• There are good, well-researched alternatives to a flyover. One, Option X, looks even better financially now that a tunnel will built under Memorial Park. Another non-flyover alternative has recently emerged.

Except that these alternatives actually don't deliver benefits and Option X creates new problems.  The professional assessment (i.e. highway engineers not architects) indicates that Option X has safety issues, would cost more, would have lesser benefits and has significant gaps (e.g. it is depicted as offering no road access to two of the schools at the Basin Reserve).   

This claim from its website is just nonsense:

This vote follows other cities throughout the world which have rejected flyovers – Boston, New York, Melbourne, Toronto, Seoul, Boston, Milwaukee, Vancouver, Trenton, Portland, Chattanooga.

Oh really? The Big Dig in Boston?  Melbourne's Citylink, EastLink and soon to be built East-West link? Toronto's 407ETR? Boston twice (paying attention then)?  Well Auckland has had a host of flyovers built in the past decade, Napier has had two built, Hamilton has just seen one built, Christchurch has just seen one built.  Indeed, the Hutt Valley recently had one open (Dowse Drive Interchange)

Funnily enough, the claim that the bridge will generate more traffic is now not made, presumably the great fear is that it will work and make a positive difference to traffic, like every other grade separation highway project in Wellington in recent years (underpass of Vivian Street, Dowse Drive Interchange, Newlands Interchange, Mungavin Interchange). 

A simple claim is made that anytime there is new road capacity provided, it quickly fills up because there are simply thousands of people who would have driven before, but for whom the existing congestion puts them off.  The improved road is said to "induce" demand, and so make things worse, because the additional trips (which are presumed to have little real value) simply take the road back to a congested position in the first place.  This is known as the Pigou–Knight–Downs paradox, but it is so grotesquely misquoted out of context by politicians (particularly Green ones) that it is worth remembering what the authors actually meant.

The situation they talked of was when the road improvement directly reduced congestion for a trip where there was a parallel public transport service offering similar travel times to driving.  A perfect example in Wellington would be trips between the Hutt Valley and Wellington city, so that adding another lane to the motorway between Ngauranga and Aotea Quay would directly improve travel times between driving and taking the train.   It's a bit more difficult when very few of the trips on the route being improved are undertaken by public transport (or could reasonably be undertaken by public transport), even moreso if the route improvement directly reduces delays on public transport.

The Basin Reserve flyover primarily benefits traffic travelling between the airport/eastern suburbs and the wider region to the north and the western suburbs.  Whilst there are a few bus services that offer alternatives to some, all focus on passenger starting/finishing trips in the CBD, so are slow for trips that are bypassing it.  In other words, the time savings wont result in any mode shift which is the source of the "induced demand" claimed by that theory.  Beyond that, it is difficult to envisage that anyone will relocate businesses or homes just because a flyover will knock a minute or so off of traffic queues, certainly not in volumes that will mean it gets filled up with traffic.

Furthermore, the secondary benefit of the flyover is to take east-west traffic flow away from the north-south traffic flow at the Basin, which includes some major bus routes.  Those bus routes are held up by substantial delays which will be relieved by the flyover, a point almost entirely ignored by the naysayers.

Local authority opposition is misguided and should be ignored

For many years both the Greater Wellington Regional Council and Wellington City Council have supported major road improvements on this corridor.  Regional Councillor Paul Bruce, a Green Party member and activist against motorised transport (the guy bikes most places) has been central to seeking a review of this, and at Wellington City the Mayor has been.  This is the first time this opposition has been realised at the Councils, and shows just how difficult it is to plan major infrastructure when politics swings against it, particularly when there was strong support before.

Yet it largely shouldn't be up to them. The project requires no ratepayer money, it isn't on local roads (although it interfaces with them), and it fits clearly into the various strategies that are relevant.  It demonstrably improves access across the city, and will deliver huge benefits to public transport users, cyclists and pedestrians (in part because a damned silly cycling/pedestrian bridge has been included in the design).  

Opposition to it is hysterical, illogical and based on hyperbole or simple nonsense.  

It is a two lane one-way westbound bridge to connect one tunnel to another.   A second Mt Victoria Tunnel can't possibly replicate the benefits of this, and in fact will make the current situation worse.   Labour opposes it because it is being pushed under a National Government and Labour wants Green votes in Wellington.  The Greens oppose it because it's a road project and it panders to hyperbole about road projects. The Save the Basin lobbyists suggest alternatives that are inferior and unsustainable.   The two Councils are pandering to Green activists within their ranks, who offer no rational alternative (exhorbitantly expensive light rail lines that wont do a thing to reduce congestion are just chimeras).   If any of those opposed were truly concerned about generating more traffic they would stop improvements to the motorway between Ngauranga and Aotea Quay and demand Transmission Gully be stopped, but the latter is politically popular, so they are largely keeping their heads down on that one.

The Basin bridge will improve the environment for all road users, reduce delays and emissions, and is a necessary pre-requisite to building a second Mt. Victoria Tunnel.  It should proceed.