tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-59994532024-03-09T10:14:42.862+13:00Half-full cupThe improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, skepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin. Thomas HuxleyUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger336125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5999453.post-53231875670942815392021-02-11T18:18:00.003+13:002021-02-11T18:18:27.303+13:00A fly on the wall of the 9th floor - 2021.PM: Granters, we simply Have to Do Something about these house prices. 19% in a year, and much more in some provincial localities. This is gonna Cost us if we don't handle it. What can we Do?FM: Well, to be perfectly Francis, Jace, you haven't helped the cause by saying out loud that house prices should Keep Going Up. I mean, talk about Mixed Messages. We are gonna try to dampen demand - after Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5999453.post-20070949453449839002021-02-03T12:13:00.000+13:002021-02-03T12:13:04.295+13:00Steel Wheel Dreaming The eternal 'boost Rail' mantra runs into a lot of awkward spatial facts in Godzone.No rail ever to:West coast SI south of Hokitika, north of NgakawauWest Coast of NI between Helensville and WaitaraThe entire East Cape region between Gizzy and OpotikiMost inland regions of Marlborough, Tasman, Mackenzie, QueenstownRail used to exist but is now gone in:All inland parts of the SI except the Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5999453.post-70007359098265321852020-06-30T15:22:00.001+12:002020-06-30T15:22:58.331+12:00Massive violence - the solution to 'Inequality'
It's worth slogging yer way through Scheidel's 'The Great Leveller'. Contra to the simplistic strain running through so many comments on economics, which boils down to a Utopian wish for 'policies to reverse inequality', Scheidel's magisterial survey of inequality across several millennia shows two aspects clearly:
Inequality is baked into agrarian (and its later variants including Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5999453.post-72805394826584056382020-06-24T09:40:00.001+12:002020-06-24T09:40:18.192+12:00Pike River - a fatally flawed design mandated by Gubmint
Pike River was at base a Gubmint-enforced faulty design, and any regulatory 'failure' was well downstream of that.
The seam at PRCC sloped upwards, through known-to-be-gassy coal (it's substantially the same as coal found at Brunner and Strongman - both famous historic disasters).
This should have placed a very high design emphasis on excellent mine ventilation.
DoC controls both the surface Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5999453.post-42757145812595625292020-05-16T19:49:00.002+12:002021-02-03T12:16:08.432+13:00Machinery Training in the olden days
I look back on my machine-operator training: operating dozers, loaders, scrapers, graders, rollers, crusher plants, excavators, rock quarry blasting, and of course trucks. Total training for any one of these was less than a day. It was always a case of - get 'er rolling and don't Break it'...
Most such operations depend much more on muscle memory and a feeling for machinery, than any amount of Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5999453.post-20482475546411111032020-05-14T12:39:00.000+12:002020-05-14T12:39:30.458+12:00Old-style Gubmint versus the current risk-averse, high-cost modelAn Interest commenter avers that in the olden days, if the Gubmint got involved, Things got Done, referring to my exploits on the Cat D7 in Invercargill..
My rejoinder:
- No TLA DC's or Modest Fees.
- No Worksafe (the old D7 was sans muffler, hearing protection unknown).
- No Traffic Management (I walked the D7 all over public roads on planks and traffic had to take its chance).Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5999453.post-66326618541536247082020-04-25T16:04:00.000+12:002020-04-25T16:05:26.042+12:00Muddling through the Transition
Opening up means asking - to who, under what conditions. Most comments are simply tribal reflexive so far: red/blue, prepper/unprepared, subsistence existence/urban luxury, quasi-religious incantationists/full-on science. None of that is frankly very useful.
Some heretical thoughts:
We know what we can Export but there's not much notion of How long-term. If FF is goneburgerUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5999453.post-1635929289537288152020-04-22T16:00:00.003+12:002021-02-03T12:20:45.913+13:00We should always demand that local government runs the ruler across all spending - article rejoinder
As a former (pre-1989, so old-world, prudent-rural-Council) LG Treasurer (no fancy CFO titles back then) I have been quietly appalled at the way in which staff have usurped Councillors.
Part is structural: Councils employ a CEO, who then employs all other staff. So there's an instant disconnect. Councillors tend to be actively discouraged from interacting with staff ('Policy, not execution', 'Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5999453.post-15892850055326902122020-04-20T12:50:00.001+12:002021-02-03T12:24:00.726+13:00Green's High-Speed Rail dreams
Well, the Greens have come up with a $9 billion plan to electrify the main trunks (NI plus SI) at least around the major cities and get high-speed (160km/hr), high-frequency-of-service trains running.
At an electrification cost per km of around $USD10m/km, that $NZD9B will extend electrification for 450 km at a USD/NZD rate of 0.50.
But I suspect the proposal has at least five deep Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5999453.post-25144793048361711032020-04-14T11:56:00.001+12:002021-02-03T12:25:33.220+13:00The 'economy' is not a Machine, but an Anthill (sort of)
A common failing is to think of the economy as a machine, which is subject to controls - levers and dials - which can be twiddled or pulled with well-understood results.
It simply isn't. What we characterize as an 'economy' is the aggregate result of millions of transactions between individuals, firms, 'little platoons' (the plethora of voluntary and uncommanded associations that folks generateUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5999453.post-11355018426725274032020-04-08T13:01:00.002+12:002020-04-08T13:01:20.438+12:00Councils, CEO and Staff - once again, I wearily explain their relationships
This was a response to a comment which confessed that 'As voters we are failing'. My reply: No, don't be too hard on yourself (and by extension, on the rest of us Ratepayers strapped to this Rates Rocket).
Voters only vote for Councillors.
Councillors have only one Employee - the CEO.
The CEO employs everyone else.
So all staff under the CEO actually are insulated totally from Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5999453.post-88431625534020435502020-04-08T11:39:00.002+12:002021-02-03T12:28:07.376+13:00Autarky - flavour of the 2020's?
Let's draw out some Consequences of the 'all for it' themes - all varieties of autarky - a common characteristic of medieval economies:
No more foreign idiots = between 50 and 75% of the tourism industry, employing 400K workers, is toast. Add 'em to the welfare rolls or retrain 'em - all Gubmint cost, paid for by You Know Who.No Importing Australian produce = no metals (Li, Cu, Fe, andUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5999453.post-56527224345388803242020-03-31T15:29:00.003+13:002021-02-03T12:29:00.099+13:00Covid and Councils
Well, we're not gonna need Conference Centres for a while either. And as several Councils have declared themselves to be in a Climate Emergency, they won't be needing:
those divvies from the airport companies (who just facilitate Nasty Emissions)Tourism and business development agencies (neither is gonna come roaring back in the next year or three, so just fire 'em all)Rates penalties set at 10%Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5999453.post-75272680283994197212020-03-24T12:05:00.003+13:002020-03-24T12:05:51.402+13:00Define 'essential'
The Gubmint's definition of 'essential services' (tucked inside the Covid19 Levels blurb here) includes the airy statement 'including their supply chains'.
This raises the eternal question of exactly what constitutes 'essential' parts of a 'supply chain'.
E.g. the 3-waters functions of TLA's are certainly Essential. But suppose a water main blows (we've had four instances in our street Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5999453.post-10036859401854552772020-03-16T19:55:00.004+13:002021-02-03T12:31:33.121+13:00The Reverse-Bill-of-Materials conundrum
This is a reverse-bill-of-materials moment for the economy. A BOM is usually intended to show what one needs to Build something, and often a BOM is largely composed of many 'kits' - sub-assemblies, and that recursion can go many layers down to arrive at the ultimate content. That's what makes such a nonsense of trying to, for example, derive a 'carbon footprint' for a finished product of any Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5999453.post-54042237638351941142019-06-18T10:07:00.001+12:002021-02-03T12:34:24.390+13:00Those Canterbury Plains - many centuries of change
All environments are local, and the Canterbury Plains have been through many centuries of vast change - affecting climate, sedimentation, rivers, surface water bodies and of course soils. A quick history:
Originally, forest from mountains to sea. Check the Forested Areas map in 'Tangata Whenua'...Extensive 12-13 century burning of the forest cover, as the early Maori chased moas and other forestUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5999453.post-37958931346618713662019-06-05T14:04:00.001+12:002019-06-05T14:04:19.199+12:00A Tale of Two Gabbys
Gabby Hakoops, esteemed slack-key guitarist to the King of Diamonds, stood before the Witchsmeller Pursuivant, accused of playing Gabby Faure's 'After the Dream' instead of the programmed 'Ride of the Valkyries' at a recent State Banquet for the Queen of Hearts.
Hakoops averred that the sheet music was, in his words, 'Pukaroo', that it had been safely stored in a Music Shack with a locked, Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5999453.post-52670729224189278032019-05-26T15:55:00.000+12:002019-05-26T15:55:59.575+12:00A Baseline for Wellbeing AccountingIn a scoop, Interest has been made privy to an important advancement in the Wellbeing Accounting space.
All wellbeing measures, to be credible, require a baseline from which to adjudge progress in the various indicators. This is not easy to establish: the requirements include solid records, a sufficient sample size, and a time lapse of well over a century to let the noise in the dataUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5999453.post-9081778290226952222019-05-26T15:53:00.002+12:002019-05-26T15:53:50.621+12:00Millenarial Movements
The Historian Norman Cohn, in his 1957 book, The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages, found that Millenarian movements always picture salvation as:
Collective, in the sense that it is to be enjoyed by the faithful as a collectivity.
Terrestrial, in the sense that it is to be realized on this earth and not in some other-worldly Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5999453.post-36654870125837048192019-03-29T20:26:00.002+13:002019-03-29T20:26:49.408+13:00The bitter fruit of the 'Personal is Political'Jeffrey Tucker writes that
"The attempt to turn every subjectively felt personal issue into a collective cause with a collective action has hatched a brutal form of identity politics that has generated no end to social conflict, with vast carnage along the way."
The 60's slogan has morphed into a profoundly divisive attitude, with the predictable result that
"in practice .. to Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5999453.post-72562686007127514842019-03-27T11:57:00.001+13:002019-03-27T11:57:14.896+13:00The mathematical futility of long-term climate projections
The entire climate-prediction edifice as currently promoted, is founded on quicksand, as time-series research at LSE demonstrates - the Hawkmoth Effect rules. The issue comes down to several Inconvenient Modelling Facts:
Complex systems do not generally have the mathematical property of Structural stability. This leads to quite different projections, using the same initial conditions,Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5999453.post-28790210940834548502019-03-26T12:01:00.000+13:002019-03-26T12:01:24.974+13:00Zoning Causes Commutes "We must strive to provide employment close to where people live” Parfitt (of Auckland Council) says. “Long commutes place a huge, unproductive strain on both people's quality of life and our transport infrastructure."
Well, the Plannerz insist on separating all sorts of uses by zonerating to the nth degree. No longer can the shopkeeper live in the flat above the store, the temporary Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5999453.post-81710959084058781542019-03-26T11:32:00.001+13:002019-03-26T11:32:39.182+13:00Christianity and Islam - the differences
The difference between the Christian and Islamic systems is that the former has had a Reformation, and the latter hasn't. During the course of the schism in Christianity (dating roughly from Luther in 1517 and Henry VIII in 1538 when the Dissolution was ordered) the texts were gradually re-examined over the next couple of centuries, and the Old Testament was largely consigned to the dustbin. SamUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5999453.post-75851710789322408772018-10-24T10:05:00.000+13:002018-10-24T10:05:04.716+13:00Angelo M Codevilla on the new American Revolution
Two articles, both by Angelo M. Codevilla, both in a distinctly elegiac tone regarding the fate of the USA. His core theory is that a revolutionary threshhold has been crossed, and that what happens next is uncertain in the extreme. The links are in date order, and need to be read in sequence in order to make much sense.
Short Bio
After the Republic
Our Revolution's Logic
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5999453.post-84297075928141862212018-09-19T06:09:00.003+12:002018-09-19T06:10:08.401+12:00Tertiary FundingIn answer to a question about why SIT needs an Auckland branch...
The zero fees model (I was there at the inception) depended on the original bums-on-seats EFTS funding: mo' Bums, Mo' Munny. It's easy to see that, with the injection of an initial capital sum to enable the show to get through the first year or three, the EFTS funding would let it wash its face thereafter provided sufficient bumsUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0