State of the Nation 2 - Why privatising public assets will hurt most NZers

So we've heard John Key's "vision" for New Zealand. Unsurprisingly it is one where the state is further stripped of the vital resources it needs to support a just and healthy society, and selling off public good assets we will need forever is seen somehow as a good business decision. It is, inevitably, a transfer of shared public wealth into a few private pockets.
Tumeke pretty much nails this point.

It's true. The idea of New Zealanders investing in their own infrastructure is not a bad idea; the problem is, in the current laissez faire deregulated environment, the inevitable result is a disaster for the vast majority of New Zealanders - ie, anyone who has to keep an eye on their bank account and actively save for a house retirement, etc...

An example. You know how you have your favourite brand of biscuits? And they're good and they're cheap, and not too unhealthy either. But then the company that makes those biscuits lists on the stockmarket. The biscuits are quite popular, so it's a good buy for investors. They buy shares which earn them more money.
However, these investors can afford MUCH better biscuits, so they don't care about the product. So they get demanding of their biscuit company. The new CEO of BiscuitCo. promises to the market even greater growth in profits next year. To do that, he shrinks the size of the packet.
The next CEO makes the same promise. To achieve it, he raises the price up a bit.
The next CEO has huge boots to fill, but he's up to the challenge. He decides to change the recipe, using cheaper ingredients, and is so popular with the shareholders of the now mammoth BiscuitCorporation that he even sends production offshore to save more.

The real problem with shareholders in a deregulated - that is, there are very few laws limiting what corporations can and can not do - is that companies quickly lose sight of who their customer is. They can get huge injections of wealth on the stock market, by cutting the quality of their actual services they're supposed to be providing to the community.

Now, that's okay (kind of) with biscuits. Sad as it is, you can stop buying them, change brand. Phew. But food in general - well you need that. Another safe investment on the sharemarket. Who doesn't feel like a victim when you go to the supermarket and see bread/cheese/meat has gone up again?

And so Mr John Key's brilliant idea is to hand our power companies - again, something we all need - over to shareholders. The shining model is supposed to be Air New Zealand and how prices have fallen for their flights. But excuse me? It may have gotten cheaper Wellington-Christchurch-Auckland, but regional we get repeated engine failures, cancelled flights, less flights. Hamilton to Wellington costs 3-4 times the price from Auckland! We're treated like cattle.
And don't mention the new credit card charges they've introduced just because they are a monopoly and they can. They are not legally bound, not regulated, to treat the consumer with anything like a sense of justice and conscience.

That's why public goods - things everyone needs, like power, food, housing, clothing, communications, transport - need to be regulated, if not in government hands. The law is supposed to codify those morals, for all of us, that's what it's there for: including corporations.

So. We have power companies, who are farcically supposed to be in competition with each other even now. Be warned. At the moment they send people door to door, hoping to sign us up, promise a $50 credit or something. That's their main pitch, trying to get more customers - more "market share".
Well. If the power companies are privatised, even to only 49% as promised, the real issue is not foreign ownership; the companies will forget about you, the customer, and primarily be interested in wooing shareholders. And the best way of doing that is raising prices in every tricky way they can. Just like BiscuitCorp.

*

It's like I was saying yesterday about the tax system. The government takes far too much tax from the VAST majority of us, and nowhere near enough from a very wealthy few. Because off this, we scrape and gripe and struggle, and learn to distrust, even hate government. But in a democracy, the state is the one institution that is supposed to be there standing up for all of us. We need it well-funded - yes, slow and clunky sometimes, that's what democracy is - but it needs money to make sure we all have a fair go. If you are struggling to save, or get out of debt, or buy a house, or dream of keeping a parent at home with the kids like your parents had, shrinking the wealth and health of our state is actually against your interests:

Think about where most of your money goes. Is it to the government? Or is it to a few food giants? A bank maybe? An oil company. A telco. A power company. Privatisation takes power from the state - from all of us - and gives it to companies who already control where most our daily dollar goes.

Overall, I think the difference between the two party's was well-represented by images we saw of their audiences for Goff and Key's speeches. Goff spoke in a community hall to an audience of all ages, ethnicity, classes. Key spoke to a conference room of black suits; and no, they do not represent the entire business community. Just that very elite end of businesses, that like to pretend that what is good for corporations is good for businesses of all sizes in our country, and everyone.

That is not democracy.

As far as the state of the nation goes, we don't need politicians to tell us. We each need to look at hard at our own lives, and think about where our money goes, how much we've saved, how many hours we're working, how many hours we see our children, whether we can afford children, whether we can afford a house - whether we can ever really see ourselves getting a decent job. And start to question. What is fair? What is just? Things have been like this for more than 25 years. Why hasn't some government done something?

Then, it's fair to start getting mad.

State of the Nation 1 - $5000 tax free a start, but not enough

I'll defer a "Fantail" state of a nation for another day to clear some of the must with a comment on the latest over at Tumeke on Phil Goff's State of the Nation. Bomber's report was interesting and personal, and strategically on the button. Specifically:

Goff's real trump card is his first $5000 tax free for all NZers. This impacts most on those who are earning the least and will be funded by a new top tax bracket that will be in the high 6 figure area so that professions not considered top tax bracket fodder don't fall foul of it.

The $5,000 tax free may be a trump card, but the difficulty Labour face this year was demonstrated in TV1's coverage of the speech. Their report didn't cover how Labour would pay for it: instead they cut to John Key saying that costly, overseas creditor "pixies (3x)" would pay for the cut - breaking up any the Labour narrative with what amounts to a bald opposition lie.

This is of course unsurprising coming from the national broadcaster, who have spent the last two years treating Key like a neutral political commentator and the vast majority of their stories focussed on taking pokes at the out-of-power opposition party instead of questioning the very in-power government. I remembered my jaw dropping when this soft-soaping started, the very first government policy release coming from the ACT party (appropriately). It was about on "cutting red tape" and passing legislation to allow people to opt out of the building code. (I reckon most of the good people of Christchurch are probably quite happy with about all that annoying bureaucratic tapes and codes stuff bout now). Mark Sainsbury interviewed on this Rodney Hide with all the rigour of a Swedish massage, and very little has changed.

Besides the media living in its own self-reflective balloon of public perception, The Youth Idol element of Key is definitely there - first time voters tend to "rage" against the incumbent government, and many young people know no government other than Clark's. Of course the real rebellion is to vote as Left as possible to try and get our society somewhere back to a reasonable centre again. Largely, that demographic is there for the taking, if they can be motivated. Most are at worst ignorant, if not poor, angry and scared.

Finally, the over 50K cadre should not be ignored. They're not homogeneous, and from my experience, household incomes have to reach 50K just for 2 people to be healthy and debt free - and that's renting, no retirement, no savings. That the tax brackets are marked at 14K, 48K and 70K gives a false impression of what is rich and what it costs to live in our society.
Markedly, it punishes and causes gripes for those struggling under 70K; and it groups all those people earning 70K with those earning millions, as if they have anything in common, in lifestyle or obligation to the community that has supported their success.

Phil Goff was right to point to those 700 multi-millionaires who grabbed another $1000 a week from John Key's tax cuts. That's 36 million from the wealth and health of our public services - gone.

So what's the state of our nation?

Let's see what the PM has to say later today.

Easing Back In

I've been (wisely) steering away from news and such and been getting more important things done, so there hasn't been too much stimulus for posts here in the New Year.

In general, the world seems to be in the same shit state as usual. The Doomsday clock moved another tick towards midnight, which I'd tend to agree with as the US expands it's Long War of Full Spectrum Global Domination into Yemen, looking more and more like a desperate scramble to pick up as many countries on the RISK board as possible before China and Russia stand up to tell them to SIT the fuck down.

Oh, and hey: anything the US can do...

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/3203448/NZs-cyber-spies-win-new-powers

Stuff catching up to Australia, weeee, look at us! On top of subjective mandatory blood-testing and DNA sampling, who isn't aspirational now?

Back properly next week.

End of the Beginning

It's Xmas, which means holidays and a spell away from the computer. Admittedly, not so you'd notice here over the last few weeks... The only thing harder than justifying blogging when you have important, paid work to be doing, is justifying it when you have a mammoth unpaid project to finish so that it hopefully pays off.

That said, the eggs laid in the nest here over the last few months have been very worthwhile. I kicked off the blog at a time when I was feeling optimistic and experimental with my time, and over about 40 posts have managed to stroke the tip of the iceberg on several issues dear to my heart. Looking at my cloud of "labels", media streaks to prominence; rightly followed by USA, UN, economics & environment. I can stand by 100% of what I have written here, which was an important goal I learned after a few edited posts; and more importantly I've worked out what I want to do with the post.

See, posts like the last one, and King Tamaki... that's daily thought stuff. It's minutiae, and that's not really what I'm interested in - popping off what's on the top of my head just to make sure something is up here every day.
I've learned it's not even worth my time to make daily comments on significant events. I certainly have an opinion on the various mistakes in John Key trying to bring the Te tino Rangatiratanga flag into the tent of nationhood; but I'm more interested in its place in the pattern of behaviour that typifies his government.
Likewise for the Brash Gang's report on catching up with Australia. A current event post would focus on the realpolitik of the Right-wing agenda and fight on the details, but it's far more interesting to me to look at it in the context of power relations and the broader thinking that is needed for us - the vast majority of NZ taxpayers - to see that accepting Rightist thinking is keeping us in our own dark hole.

In short, as you might see from my posts, I am more interested in several themes, messages, questions - stories, if you will - and in showing how the little events and "issues" that arise - Brash's 2025 gang, or Hone Key's flag - thread into these stories. More often than not, they make more sense and better reading than the news stories that rise around them on the day.

So that's what I'll be doing in the new year. This blog won't be breaking news stories or fighting on party battlelines. It won't be posting daily. Probably one post a week, and it will be following a narrative. Not planned, but weaving in and out of my reading, research and current events.

For now, it's a holiday. I'm going to relax, kick my heels up and muse over the details. But if you're interested in globalism and internationalism; society and economy; justice and democracy, then I'll meet you back here Jan 12th.

And if you're stumbling across this site, in the meantime, have a read over past posts. See if they take.

Pre-Xmas Price Ridiculousness

I've been legitimately (but unfortunately) too busy to post the last week, although I've several pages of notes on various topics I want to explore. Too busy polishing my novel and exploring avenues of alternate income, and busy feeling panicked, depressed, annoyed at various things.
Yes, despite the rational-legal, adversarial framework of our society, feelings have legitimacy too.

I was just looking for Xmas presents, and found some gobsmacking prices online. Try Fishpond, for DVDs in particular. The whole of Season 2 Flight of the Conchords on DVD for.... $20?? Sure, that's the price I was waiting for, but they only released 6 weeks ago!
Snapped it up. Then, ever a sucker for paying no shipping, I picked up Neil Gaiman's "The Graveyard Book" for the same price. Neil Gaiman's coming for next year's International Festival of the Arts, so I was happy to tick this off my wish-list. Checking Amazon, I would have got it (inc shipping) for the same price in US dollars.

Crazy, crazy prices. Any others out there? I guess the psychology is they're front-loading our shopping baskets. I bought for myself; but in theory (I know Mothers fall for this), you can keep picking up presents all the way to the 25th, with the price going up as stocks run down and people get more desperate.

Waiting is virtuous; but waiting for Xmas is a trap. When things I've already committed to purchasing hit the right price point - that's the sweet spot.

ADDENDUM: Checking around a bit, it seems these prices are pretty consistent, so my view that the world tends towards madness remains intact. In this vein, it became a day where I took a browse through Neil Gaiman's blog and found his amazing Oracle. Which was kinda neat.

Do No Harm

Just had to alert to another fine piece of writing at Media Lens.
This quote, in particular:

Compassion, then, is the key concern - where best to direct our efforts in the hope of doing something to relieve suffering in the world. Journalism should be honest and rational, but it should not be indifferent or neutral - it should be biased in the direction of relieving misery. Noam Chomsky has gone so far as to suggest that a life without compassion is meaningless:

“So if you decide not to make use of the opportunities that you have; not to try to live your life in a way which is constructive and helpful, you end up looking back and say: ‘Why did I bother living?’” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Zt8svS2w1I)

This position is important because it provides the psychological motivation for challenging vested interests that are keen to reward servility with status, privilege, even power. In the absence of compassion, there is every reason to conform, to toe the line - to perhaps give the appearance of adopting dissenting positions without really rocking the boat. Then journalism is a job like any other - a way of paying the bills. To be sure, Chomsky’s position is an exotic one from the perspective of much mainstream journalism. When asked what he likes about his job as a journalist, Paxman answered:

“It offers you the opportunity to meet all sorts of fascinating people... If you have a curious mind and you like words it’s a wonderful, wonderful occupation.” But the pay is not good, he warned: “The salaries are very poor... There is no job security.” Nevertheless: “It remains a fascinating way to spend your time.”

I would frame "compassion" more as "do no harm" - acknowledging that true self-interest is unknowable because we can only follow the rail of consequences so far in our tiny human brains - as is proven in matters as diverse as high school shootings and the current environmental upheaval. We should always aim to tread lightly, and provide resilient criticism when someone does start throwing their power around.

Budding journalists, take heed.

The Land Looking after The Land

"The Earth regulates itself." So goes one of the stories reeled out by those advocating NOT acting on global warming and environmental degradation. You know, because it can look after itself.

And it's a fair point. In clean green NZ, it's easy to think, looking across the green fields of the Waikato, the Marlborough vineyards, or interchanging between padded cells in one of our big cities, that all is well. That it is impossible for our little pocket of existence, even multiplied 8 billion times, could have such an effect on a mass that is 75% water anyway.

And again, it's a fair point. Or would be - if we hadn't had 60 years of Post-war industrial development, gas and chemicals masticating the planet.

It's not our personal consumption that has caused this crisis. It is the engines of industry.

One example I like to use is in Australia where they're suffering a water crisis. Now, we know the planet is warming, and we know it's only going to get worse. So there are big billboards! all over Melbourne -everyone is doing their bit having short showers, hand watering plants every second day, not leaving taps running, turning off public fountains... complaining of course, but chipping in.
Unfortunately, the private water consumption of 26 million Australians only accounts for 10% of water use. Industry takes up most of the rest, including irrigating arid, otherwise unfarmable lands.
And, like here, they want more water.

It's the same with every industry, because our economies have been geared to growth, growth growth. We've been ramping them up and up and up, drawing on huge banks of investment and credit... Yes, credit - that thing banks just make up out of thin air to "create wealth", an endless snowball of funding so industry can keep digging, and making and selling; and when that product is made obsolete three years later, they make and sell again.

Unfortunately that credit does not come out of nowhere. It is value being extracted from labour, and from the earth. Basically it's like the credit crunch - we've been drawing too much too fast from the earth's resources, and now we can't pay it back fast enough to stop the whole system collapsing.

And after spending their inheritance, we'll leave future generations to clean up our mess.

Now we have a UN report that provides an answer. It is very positive, saying we don't have to go back to personal gardens to make all our climate/economy crunches so much better:

War against hunger, global warming can be won on farmlands –
Improvements in cropland and grazing land management as well as the restoration of organic soils and degraded lands are the most significant technical measures to lessen the impact of climate change.

Nearly, 90 per cent of this potential will come from capturing carbon in the soil before it escapes into the atmosphere, according to the report, "Food Security and Agricultural Mitigation in Developing Countries: Options for Capturing Synergies."

Now, I know there are a class of people that take some perverse pleasure in insisting that chemically augmented crops are "just as good if not preferable" to organic; but I hope they're not also convinced "the earth regulates itself". Because this report clearly, but tactfully states that yes, the Earth has a great organic potential to regulate carbon itself - but we've been poisoning it on a hyper-industrial scale for 60 years.

The chemical seeds and fertilisers corporations will not be happy with this solution. So expect it to be buried, like emissions, like renewable energy, electric cars, etc, etc. Chances are this report will lie around like the other 40 years of reports warning this very situation would happen.

Unless, maybe - we tell our governments to do something different.

We've poisoned the Earth's lungs and soiled its air. Some say we didn't know any better, fine - it's not about guilt. Just use our enormous creativity and wealth - and democracy - to fix the damn thing up.