Robert Heinlein on Bad Luck

Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) is fond of this quote:

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as “bad luck.”

A Little Battle hymn

What Labour needs is a Rallying Cry, so, to the tune of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, here's one.  That first line is filched from Tom Waits' 'Whistling past the Graveyard', in case y'all was a' wonderin'....

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the draining of the ditch
Which some aver we dug ourselves And filled with Carp and Bitch
But excavation's over it's a Brave New World of which
I'm Leader! Marching On.

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Tory! Tory! Sock it to ya,
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
The Left is marching on!

The housing bubble rattles on, All FHB's aghast
Their Kiwisaver pot falls short of Land Inflation's Blast
The worker suffer at their desks, Poor dears, their lot is Cast
With Labour's fate. March on!

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Labour's here to listen to ya
If you're Boss-class, gonna screw ya
O-ver you, we'll March On!

The cleaners and the rest-home workers slave away each day
Their toothless unions cry aloud 'We can't live off their pay'
The power bills are swingeing, and the rents have shot away,
The Destitute March On!

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Labour's here to dish out Moo-lah
Where it comes from, well, Petunia,
Trust Us, March blindly On!

RMA and Housing Unaffordability

 This (RMA and housing unaffordability being linked) is a sad but in hindsight predictable trajectory.

I won't retrace all the steps (I've thoughtfully assembled them all here) but two great streams are evident.

1 - The RMA was intended from the outset to be Effects-based.  This should have meant that small effects = wave it through, effects offset by e.g. paying off those affected = problemo solvato, and in general, a risk-based approach to everything.  Small risks = small costs, quick process times, small economic externalities.

But the TLA staff of that time, and indeed ever since, would not adjust to this (admittedly, radical) methodology.  They had always run off Plans, Zones, Rules, Regulations and in general, 'things wot could be looked up'.   Risk assessment and judgements about Effects, (including the first and most obvious question:  'So What?' ), were and remain completely beyond their training, intellectual capacity, experience, and inclination.  So none of the effects-based stuff really ever happened except for nationally significant cases.  Where, and by no coincidence, the intellectual horsepower was indeed available.

So, in reaction and by (staff, not elected Councillor) design, what we got saddled with was what we have (and which the Productivity Commish has brilliantly skewered in their latest tome):

• Arbitrary, lengthy, costly and opaque processes
• Thousands-pages long Schemes and Plans which take expensive consultants weeks of paid-for time to interpret for applicants
• Schemes and Plans which rely totally on spatial zoning, massive schedules of haram and halal uses, (most of which are cheerfully ignored by those with high fences and quiet work habits):  the old, repealed Town and Country Planning Act schtick, revivified and shambling around like - well, in fact, Being - a baleful zombie attack.
• Schemes and Plans which are frequently internally inconsistent, are subject to constant amendment via scheme changes and case law, and are, maise naturellement,  wildly inconsistent across TLA boundaries.
• All of which imposes simply staggering economic deadweight costs on unfortunates such as your good self, who get to wrestle the Hydra and pass on the associated costs into house /plot purchase prices.

2 - As if this was not sufficient, there is a further, more subtle and even more dispersed economic externalilty caused by the TLA's adherence to spatial zones.

Zones and monoculture uses, cause commutes.  It's as sad and as simple as that.

So by not being able to live over the shop, bunk down in an employer-supplied donga in the far corner of the yard on a construction site or meatworks, live a bike ride away from the mall, walk to the brewery, and in general do everything that any of us Boomers can remember from their youth, there is Cost upon Cost imposed upon, oddly enough, the least able to accommodate it:  the young, poor, indifferently skilled, or really old.

In darkest Invergiggle in the late 50's, within walking distance of our Ythan Street home there was:

• A church across the intersection
• A fibrous plasterer's yard next to that
• A garage-sized small grocery right next door (milk dipped out of the can, flour out of the bin)
• A flour mill
• A butcher
• A fishmonger
• A primary school, a Tech, an intermediate and a High school
• A railway line (unfenced)
• A Municipal Baths

But, in them far-off days, TLA's did roads, streets, drains, three waters, bridges and a very few Parks.  Nothing else.

Mixed uses.  No apparent zones.  And, hey, it worked a treat.  Until the Planners and Improvers (UK motto"  'We Finish what the Luftwaffe Started!") got a hold of everything.

For our Own Good, of course.

Plans 'Inadequate' - Gubmint to CCC

Response to a Stuff article:  Govt-slams-planning-changes-as-inadequate

The plannerista do not understand four fundamental things about our world:

1 - the RMA talks only about Effects of any activity.  There is nothing, zip, zilch, nada, about spatial Zones and other squiggles on maps.  Zones are an artifact of the old Town and Country Planning Acts which were repealed coupla decades ago.  Time the real intent of the RMA, there from Day 1 - to measure Effects and effects alone - was recognised in practise.

2 - Economics 101.  Several effects:

2a:  Zoning (say a rural/urban boundary) immediately causes massive economic value movements:  urban zoned land completely unimproved is worth around 10 times rural land.  Guess who pays the difference?  Guess who benefits from the unearned increment?

(This is, BTW,  a prime driver of housing unaffordability:  your 600 sq m section is worth, at rural land prices of $50K/ha, allowing 1/3 loss to roads, reserves etc, around $4,550.  Guess who Pays)

2b:  Time=money - a fact universally acknowledged, especially by your Banker.  Yet planning, consenting, inspecting and other Council flapdoodlery cheerfully injects massive Time into processes.  This causes costs but, quelle surprise, not to the Councils.  So they have zero incentive to minimise Time, yet are oblivious to the costs caused elsewhere.  Ask any builder or developer what these delays cost.  Guess who Pays?

2c:  There is a massive number of staff, all beavering away at monstrosities like the District Plans.  This has two results, neither useful.  One is that rates and/or recoveries need to fund a large staff base.  Guess who Pays?  The second is that very little actual value is added from all this busywork.  Take a single-storey residential build.  The risk is absolutely minimal:  no-one was killed in the quake sequences because of catastrophic structural failure (exogenous factors, chimneys and URM excepted) in a single-storey house, yet most were either unconsented (too old) or lightly consented (1950's to 1980's).  Added value is negligible, cost is substantial.  Guess who pays?  A risk-based approach would be preferable.  Both of these outcomes can be classed as Deadweight in an economic sense (ask Dr Google for a definition).

3:  Plans. regs, and other screeds of paper, have become so voluminous that even the Plannerista cannot always follow them.  The Plans are frequently outmoded, internally inconsistent, or simply badly expressed.  The response is - always - "well, this stuff is So Complex that we recommend you use Consultants, have a long series of Pre-Application Meetings, and we'll come to some arbitrary decision in six or seventeen months".  Guess who Pays.

4:  The pity of it all is that, for all the Planning, Planners and Plans, they still don't understand that Councils compete with one another.  While CCC spnds $33m on the Plan Revamp, Waimak, Selwyn. Ashurton and Hurunui DC's are busy eating CCC's lunch, as evidenced by consents issued, population shifts, and expressed human preferences.  After all, why subject yourself to a Planning Nightmare, when just across yet another squiggle on a map, a much easier future awaits?  Preferences trump Plans.....

Now, what would a sensible Plan say?

Build anything Anywhere, subject only to the RMA and Building Acts.

But that is far too sensible, and besides, scores of Planners have a Patch to Protect.

Theirs.

Guess who Pays?