New Christchurch International Convention, Gambling and Pleasure Centre Announced

Sir Very Clownley, ably flanked by Dodger Button with Hob Carker bringing up the rear of the entourage, today swept into town to announce the imminent construction of the VOSCO-WalPart-QuantityBins-Yakuza-BurstRail International Convention, Gambling and Pleasure Centre.

'We are pleased to have been able to secure the services of this prestigious international cartel, for our fair city', Sir Very said by way of introduction.

'Not only are we going to enjoy the patronage of a vast number of international gamblers, convention-chasers, organisers, and 1-percenters, but we have been able to negotiate a number of additional benefits.'

' For a miniscule 10% of the facility's turnover, the Yakuza-BurstRail part of the consortium will push through an Airport-CBD light rail system which will incorporate the much-talked-about University-to-CBD link'.

'So, not only will international playaz be able to whizz in and out, as it were, but the fine young students of our esteemed Halls of Learning will be able to partake of the multitudinous delights of this facility, and perhaps to pay off part of their vertiginous student debts via a flutter on the tables, or of course by taking up one of the many employment opportunities offered. Waitpersons, croupiers, security, IT, chefs, drivers and many other menial if not actually horizontal positions are envisaged.'

'The bulldozers for this rail extension are due to start Thursday next week, so if you are a Fendaltonian, and the house next door suddenly crumbles before the onslaught of a large yellow machine, you'll know what's going on. It's called ConsultationLite.'

'The rates, employment, choo-choos and general ambience offered by this proposal were simply too good to walk away from.'

' So we haven't.'

'Enjoy!'

(I know We will - we are all Honarary Life Members)

Where we sit....

 I'm a conservative in most matters now - markets work - why supplant them?

But we don't and never have had a 'free market' - it's always been a Mixed/Hybrid beast, and the early religious restraints and latterly Gubmint codes and regulation, are needed to keep everyone honest. Ish.

Markets work just fine and have done since the dawn of trading around 4000 years ago: they are nothing but a switchboard between people with something to sell (like the copper miners at Great Orme in North Wales) and other people with something to sell (the traders from the Mediterranean who travelled all the way up there with foodstuffs in amphorae), the former lacking what the latter have in surplus and vicky verser.

A massive plus in markets (gentle commerce, in Adam Smith's phrase, recycled by Pinker in ''Better Angels') is that they innately if slowly build mutual trust and kick off a Civilising Process. We're at the far end of that now (see below, it is possible to discern a De-civilisng process at work in our fair land...) so all this progress is somewhat taken for granted. But the main alternative, which tends to be control by a (male, quelle surprise) elite, by fear, violence, repression and tyranny, has been the default setting for most of modern humanity's (last 50K years) history. And it is frighteningly easy to push that 'Factory Reset' button: PNG being a current example.

Culture has almost everything to do with everything, as any competent manager will attest. A common case-study in MBA-land is the new manager, determined to change culture in a business, firing, fairly much randomly, 10-20% of staff to kick-start the change effort. It puts down this marker: 'Things are gonna Change around here'. But what we have in funky l'il Godzone is a set of two cultures vying for the minds of the young.

There is or was a much older, formerly better-civilised European-derived culture which in its heyday valued adherence to widely held norms, reinforced by a religion that had itself shed most of the excesses yet retained the ability to bind (religare). It valued deferral of reward, hard work, a spiritual journey based on an individual's response to wise books, and a self-introspection that gradually but firmly expanded the circle of empathy, squeezed out excesses like torture-executions, rewarded simple states of being like marriage and the delight in children, and mandated fair dealing and trust in commerce.

But this culture cannot now be said to exhibit much if any of these qualities: viewed from that high point, it can be said to be degenerate, hollowed out, unattractive, and failing.

The other culture is of course indigenous - a communal, pre-literate, tribal culture which has been propelled over 10-15 generations into close and unrelenting contact with the above. Its historic version values Tribe over Other, strength and dominance over compassion, and in general exhibits all the hallmarks of the Factory Default setting which we all came from. For a primer: Nicholas Wade's 'Before the Dawn'.

The mixing has been as one would expect, very patchy. We are left with a decayed and decadent Euro fragment, an abiding and unrelenting distrust of religion or indeed any other dominant binding philosophy, a present-centred mind-set which steeply discounts the future, a Partner culture with distinct tribal reversion tendencies especially at political level, attitudes generally which tend to favour dominance and lack of empathy over the alternatives of gentle commerce and trust, and a financial utter dependence on intensive food production for a newly dominant China, itself flexing international muscle, and approaching carrying capacity in order to do this on our land.

So, 'culture matters', and 'incentives matter'.

Tax only affects the latter, and I somehow do not think that fiddling with IRD codes and deciding whether and how to tax who for what, is gonna tackle the wider issue of Culture - what we do around here.

Now, if only it were as simple as firing 10-20% of the population , to convince the rest that "Things Have Changed'.

Bob Dylan sang:
'People are crazy and times are strange,
I'm locked in tight, I'm outta range,
I used to care, but
Things have Changed'

I don't think it's that simple. Especially not on such a small set of islands....

What Local Governments Do

New Central Gubmint legislation could "potentially neuter a big part of the what this country's local governments currently do"

Which is (e&;oe):

• restrict land supply against a rising demand thus causing ECON101 price rises
• as the first side effect, handing a luvverly CG to a selected lucky few landowners
• as the second side effect, watching as that vastly increased land price for undeveloped land instantly transmits itself across all comparable developed land plots in the adjacent market, thus multiplying the initial if localised CG thinly across that entire market.
• as the third side effect, handing banks and financiers a vastly increased interest revenue stream, as eager or desperate buyers borrow to buy said plots (existing or new)
• effectively lock out new entrants to the housing market
• effectively transfer development to the many thousands of lifestyle blocks outside the MUL/RUB or other squiggle on a map
• levy fees, contributions and other costs upon any and all attempts to develop the land or densify existing properties
• add multiple cost layers to any attempt to develop, densify or otherwise improve properties in a way which attracts a resource consent (a sampling: pre-application consult, require engineers/surveyors/feng shui consultaterations, inject time into processes, impose conditions during the process)
• display a breathtaking ignorance of such basic economic fundamentals as supply and demand, or the time value of money
• make decisions, plans, policies and processes which (what else) ignore economic fundamentals
• act rilly, rilly surprised when one of the following occurs:
• massive public opposition to cherished policies and plans
• first home buyers throw in the towel
• developments Unexpectedly are cancelled or deferred (Always the U-word!)
• people don't want to live where and how the Planners want them to live

For the life of me, I just cannot imagine why a Gubmint would want to clamber in and alter Any of the above.....

Modular Housing, Factory-produced.

Factory produced housing components have been around since the 1870's (look at early Kauri Timber Co catalogues....) but the transition to producing sections is painfully slow (roof trusses, some pre-built simple walls, some exceedingly simple modules).

Benefits of real production-volume and high-design-quality builds of this sort would be:

• Real QC. On the factory floor. Instead of which we get 'Inspections' on site by underpaid, ratty, barely competent TLA staff, who do however have the fulll power to halt the job until that weather seal or bracket or widget is tweaked, adjusted, or otherwise have Yet Mo' Cost sunk into it. And the Next 'Inspection' will be by a different minion, with different ideas, but just as much Power to Obstruct.....
• Real assembly, by staff who can be closely supervised, timed, who use highly automated tools, and a whole lotta CNC wizardry. Instead of the slapped together on site approach, by drug-addled hammer hands, loosely supervised, but of course wearing HiVis, and wearing Approved Safety Hats (tin-foil lined on Karamea and Waiheke jurisdictions) and Steel-capped Boots. Talking around with earthquake repair guys, it seems that having floors 30-40mm out of level, gibbing ceilings that are the same out of square, etc, is par for the course in new on-site builds....
• Real design. Conduits and designated ducts for all services (black/grey/potable water, electrics of various voltages (solar, 12vDC for marine-style LED's, 400V or 230V AC for appliances, workshop etc), gas, refrigerant (for heat transfer from fridges, driers, hot water etc to where it's needed) and so on. Maintainability is just so poor (because not designed in) in most current housing. Doesn't need to be this way.
• Real cost advantages. High-volume, yet customised production lines. Low, but highly skilled, labour requirements. Low margin possible if enough volume passes through. Possibility of deals with financing to provide an end-to-end type cover, and cut out the plethora of middle layers (ranging from the TLA Pre-Consent Discussion session (un-needed), through architects (replaced by CAD design, imported electronically), quantity surveyors (replaced by a BOM), and of course those Hammer Hands (and their local Tinny House).

But this approach will be thwarted, obstructed and outright blocked by the usual suspects:

• TLA's and employee guilds, who are not gonna let the real 'inspection' pass out of their clammy ineptocratic hands, into whole-product factorys' certification....
• TLA's who see a luvverly lucrative revenue stream, produced by demanding Extra Time Everywhere at an Exorbitant Hourly Rate, threatened.
• Building Standards wallahs, who will have about as much to do with eventual housing quailty as happens with vehicles or boats (Peter Cresswell's favourite example)
• The materials cartel, who have a really nice lock of the individual-component market, and who will find ways to either take over or block any such real 'competition'
• I'm sure eager common taters can thinka more along these lines.

So I have a confident Prediction.

Nice thought.

Won't Happen.

A Tale of Two Scrapers

A follow-up piece - how Did I manage to Break a Scraper in Half?

First up, I was working for the Copulating Spiders - the ol' MoW insignia. The gear was probably 20+ years old (in 1972-3), and instead of a proper Cat tow-pin between dozer and scraper, MoW being the cheapskates they always were, had thoughtfully supplied a shortened piece of truck axle. Didn't quite fit the hole - rattled around a bit.

A fully loaded scraper could hold around 15-20 cubic metres of spoil (roughly a 3x3 floor pan, and could be crowded in good stiff clay to 3+ metres high) so I guess total weight could run 35-45 tons all up. A twin-drum winch on the dozer needed for the two operation cables: one for blade height, one for apron trim and material eject/spread.  Dozer was a 3T series Caterpillar D7 - see one at work here.

The usual round (this was topsoil stripping, to a temporary heap) was

• run the dozer in high gear to the pickup, 
• change (on the fly, yes, possible) to low, 
• drop the blade into the material, 
• let the material crowd (if it would) until it spilled over, 
• raise the pan to travel position, 
• crawl back to the heap and up it, 
• wind the dump winch which first raised up the front apron and let the material out, and then pushed the whole rear wall of the scraper forward, ejecting all material. 
•  Bring 'er back to travel mode, high gear, off the heap, 
• wash, rinse, repeat. 50-100 times per day - an average round was perhaps 3-5 minutes.

Working this gear gets quite repetitive, so the old mind tended to wander.

So it was, coming off the heap in high gear, with quite some surprise that I was awakened from my reverie to hear both winches screaming their heads off. Turned around to ascertain the cause.

Oh dear.

The tow-pin had sheared. The scraper was in two pieces, quite a few metres back from the accustomed position. The cables were running out against the brakes, hence the screams.

The scraper, empty but running down a 20-degree slope, had promptly dug in the towbar to the ruffled surface of Gaia, run clean over it tilting it around 180 degrees so it ended up facing backwards, and comprehensively foobarred the ball joint that joined the front set of wheels plus towbar, to the rest of the scraper. Not a good look. A two-piece scraper.  Here's a one-piece....

What to do?

Uncouple the cables from the winches (hammer and wedge), run back for the dozer blade and hook it on, string its cable onto one winch, and proceed to move the pieces out of the way of the heap.

Then confess all to the bosses, but point out that a Real Caterpillar Towpin would be henceforth a Good Idea.

We ended up (days later, this was Gummint work, y'unnerstand) going way out to the backblocks of Fortrose, and bringing back another even more ancient scraper, with which I (lopsidedly - darn thing had two different sized tyres on the back, which controls cutting attitude) completed the earthworks.

With (what joy!) a Real Caterpillar Towpin which appeared, along with the immortal words 'Let's see if you can manage to f... This one Too!'


A little addition, about Elfin Safety.

The old D7 had zero electrics: it was a hand-crank petrol pony motor start.

But the crank handle was vertical.

So, the Elfin Safety issues to start the beast:

• stand, in yer gummies, on an iced-up top track, in a typical Invercargill frost.
• prime the pony motor and offer up a small prayer to the appropriate deities
• Insert the crank handle from on top of the bonnet (about chest height IIRC)
• Pull it gently around to compression on the pony motor.
• Take another purchase on the crank (no thumbs around the handle...) and mutter another smaller prayer.
• Pull the crank smartly towards you.
• If lucky, pony fires and runs. Trim it, engage the clutch and turn over the main donk.
• If not lucky, pony backfires and pulls you straight into the edge of the bonnet (curved, fortunately).
• If really not lucky, bounce off bonnet, slip on top track, clobber appendages on the way down to the cold hard ground a metre below.
• If inclined to Push the crank to start, expect the backfire to merely throw you off of the track. No bonnet edge. Take yer pick.

Ah, and they call 'em the good 'ol days....

Ancient History ( a slice of a younger , machine-operator Waymad)

The context is that common taters aver that a residential subdivision needs a lotta Plannin'.

Maybe.....

A much younger Waymad built the rough levels in a section of an entire subdivision (Newfield - the hilly bit, Invercargill) with a Cat D7 and a cable scraper (which I broke in half, but that's a story for another day.) Yes, there were Plans - and a few sticks in the ground, and the occasional surveyor with a dumpy, but nothing a tech drawing refugee from the local Technical College could not handle. Strip the topsoil out to a temporary heap, cut out the main road and footpath levels to 20mm or so, level the sections, respread the topsoil on siad sections, done. Services, K&C etc, laters. Not a lot to it.

Te Anau useta be grass verges and gravel tracks, off the main drag. Making streets was a two-man operation: a grader with towed vibratory roller, tractor to buzz around, sweep and tow, contractors for K&C and gravel, sealing last. Services (water only) already there. Not a lot to it.

We useta seal 20+ miles per year, from a starting point of average County gravel roads. One rough-cut grader, one do-everything-else grader (Cat 112, me), contractors for gravel, make yer own topcourse from screened river run and clay from a likely local roadside bank, excavated with - what else - a grader. No plans. No surveyors (a level bolted to the front cab rail in the graders was all we ever used). No engineers (except if they fancied a long drive into the sticks, which was not often). Experience, feel, a taste for the right clay, and the knowledge that every single person ya met was a ratepayer, who Paid you, and who Expected Service. Not a lot to it.

Them were the days, so you can see why I get a little excited about the current ways: 12-tonne diggers everywhere, mostly at idle, Elfin Safety up the wazoo, a whole lotta jobs for the unskilled, and 'a lot of planning needed for a subdivision'.

Maybe.

A lotta Cost fer a subdiv, more like......

Lifestyle Blocks

Well, lemme just tee up the Broken Record for another spin. Right.
RPM - check.
No dust on needle - check.
Lower needle - check

The popularity of lifestyle blocks is a direct response to the relative unavailability of, and exceedingly high price of, serviced urban plots.
There are roughly 175,000 lifestyle blocks scattered around the larger cities in NZ.
Auckland - every direction.
Wellington - the Wairarapa,and the West Coast (Plimmerton to Foxton)
Christchurch - all directions
The agricultural production from these blocks is negligible.
The commute distance for these blocks is typically 50-80km.
The average lifestyle block is of the order of 1 to 3 ha (a typical urban plot is 0.06 ha or 600 sq m)
The average lifestyle block is serviced as to power and water, but disposes its own sewerage on site.
Few lifestyle blocks have public transport connections in a reasonable distance, of a type suitable for business commuting.
Most lifestyle blocks therefore have heavy dependence on private, fossil fuelled vehicles, with low vehicle occupancy.

And yet most common taters wail about the Weevils of Urban Sprawl......and uphold the Sanctity of MUL's, RUB's and other squiggles on Planning Maps.

Funny ol' world, innit.

Green reaction to Whiteware Initiative

Mr Normal Russian, spokesperson for the Alliance of Indigenous Laundrettes (AIL), had this to say about the initiative to bulk-buy whiteware for lower-decile consumers:

"We absolutely oppose this initiative, for seven reasons.
1 - the whiteware is made of plastic and metal, substances that don't occur in that form in Nature.
2 - the whiteware is foreign-made and denies Aotearoans the chance to make their own (from substances other than metal and plastic, of course)
3 - the whiteware is dangerous - there have been many - well, dozens, OK, one in Aotearoa - fires and explosions caused by the operation of these devices
4 - the whiteware uses electricity, which now has to be bought from Rich Aotearoans since the MRP float, further perpetuating the inequalities in this allegedly egalitarian land.
5 - the whiteware is to be made available for private usage, which denies the possibility of community, joint or shared use to the recipients.
6 - the whiteware is to be financed using dollars which have been earned by the export of Dairy, Meat and Oil - all products which to be perfectly Francesca we would all be better off not producing.
7 - the whiteware is in any case unnecessary - there are many rivers throughout Aotearoa full of Large Stones , which in combination can be (and are to this day in many, many countries) used to launder clothes quite satisfactorily.

There are many, many more reasons, but we regard Seven as a Particularly Significant (if not Magical) number, so that's it.

Questions?

Rates required

Every line item in a Council's Long Term Plan (LTP) , rolls up into one of several main buckets.




The political-dynamite bucket is Rates Required, because the media and the commentariat know exactly what that means in economic terms: the Council's Long arm, in Your short pocket, after your stash.



So they will move heaven, earth (and every other plausible line item which requires funding), into Some Other Bucket. Leaving Rates Required as a high but explainable figure.



The trick is to keep the punter's mind on Rates Required, because the machinations in 'Fees and Charges', or 'Contributions', or 'Other Revenue', then slide straight under the radar.



So Councils will not stop charging these ridiculous figures per section or lot, because they have ineptocrats to house and feed, plans to write for other ineptocrats to read, and all safely out of the sight of real public scrutiny.



It's a bit like the Bankstaz. Run into a bit of an issue, create an off-balance-sheet vehicle of some sort, shift the problem deals into it, and continue to pass audits and stress tests.



Shell game, really, but there you have it.



Those Fees, Charges, Contributions, Levies etc are all input costs to ratepayer purchases - just at several removes. In manufacturing lingo, Raw Materials, not Finished Goods.



But given that these inputs wind up on section and lot pricing (and then - the bywash effect - feed straight back into Existing Section pricing - a nice little CG for the householder who can then borrow against it or cash it in and light out for other parts), it is still the Council's long arm, in your short pocket.



Councils are, quite simply, economically clueless in this area. And they have completely foobarred the housing and residential land markets....



Sigh.

Farming and Infrastructure

'Farming' cannot ever be talked about as though it's a single activity. It depends exquisitely on a host of factors: altitude, soil type, depth of soil, rainfall, rain shadow, growing degree days (which are crop-specific), and that's just the beginning.

Parts of the Canterbury Plains (e.g south bank of the Waimak from Annat to Courtenay) have been cropped intensively for a century and a half, and are still going strong. Te Pirita was Strugglers Flat for that same century and a half until the Selwyn Plantation Board, tired of the ETS hoo-ha, mulched every single one of their downland planations, sold it for dairy, and with the application of mucho dihydrogen monoxide, the dairy farmers made those dry stony plains Verdant.



'Infrastructure' has a surprisngly long life. There are Roman drains still running under York Minster, and much of central Christchurch horizontal infrastructure dates back to the efforts of the Christchurch Drainage Board in the early construction period 1875-1889. That's 130 years give or take.

So when learned common taters worry about 'intergenerational equity' and how it is sooo last-century, let's just recall that 7 generations of Christchurch have benefitted from one concentrated burst of 19th century drain-laying.

LG gets a long overdue Purpose Re-definition

Statute has been amended: see the redefinition of 'Purpose - sec 10 - reproduced below.

If I was still in LG wiv my cold hand on the financial tiller, I'd be looking at the Social and Cultural hangers-on and thinking - Gosh - how long am I gonna see your well-remunerated faces 'round 'ere for? Being as how yer Statutory Purpose has been negatorated? In fact, I'm not sure I'm allowed statutorily to Pay y'all next week!

As Bob the Dylan sings 'Things have Changed' - (written and performed for the film 'Wonder Boys') Oh, the new LG purpose: (I've just kept the straight definition, there's a lot of inserting and replacing as it's yet another 2002 Act Amendment):

“(b) to meet the current and future needs of communities for good-quality local infrastructure, local public services, and performance of regulatory functions in a way that is most cost-effective for households and businesses.”

and 'good quality' is defined as:

In this Act, good-quality, in relation to local infrastructure, local public services, and performance of regulatory functions, means infrastructure, services, and performance that are— “(a) efficient; and “(b) effective; and “(c) appropriate to present and anticipated future circumstances.

 LG readers - in the words of the aforementioned:

"People are crazy and times are strange
I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range
I used to care, but things have changed"

How to Fix the Housing Mess

A thought experiment.... There are so many dimensions to what needs to happen that no Gumnut is gonna get them all done. It will take a crash and another generation. But a preliminary list:

• Stop the local Gumnut racketeers. Roll them all the way back to reserve contributions in land or cash, and no other levies or new-section imposts. Because every such section-cost input, has to be paid for by householders, from a mortgage, with interest. The message is slowly getting through, but not to the bureaucrats, who quite rightly perceive that cutting off funding is cutting off their oxygen. I delight in making a submission every year, using fairly much this language, to the local Council's Draft Annual Plan, and demanding to speak to the Council in person. Does absolutely no good, but it puts a non-bureaucratic view on public record.
• Restrict Local Gumnuts to core specified activities in infrastructire provision. They've gone hog-wild over Social and Cultural Wellbeings these last 10 years, and their costs are unsurprisingly through the roof thereby. But in Other Thasn Rates cost trees, natcherally, because we cannae have a Rates Revolt, can we. So Rates are wound back, and Other Fees and Charges reach for the sky....Release the buskers, event planners, community liaisers, cultural advisers to better employments such as factory hands (building houses of course, see below) with a massive productivity gain/deadweight decrease. But do expect some blowback.
• Find a way to tune house-related lending: LVR's, capital ratios, whatever. Cheap credit just fuels the fire when supply is so restricted.
• Do away with zoning. This causes massive MUL land value distortions, and as the rise in capital value is untaxed once yer local friendly Planner does the next squiggle on the map to incorporate Your bit inside the red line, better to ban map squiggles for a generation or two. As Hugh P notes, a direct result of MUL's is the rise in rural lifestyle blocks, which typically grow only ponies and thistles, and occupy far more physical area than the relaxed or abolished MUL could have ever consumed at urban density. An Unintended Consequence....
• Yes, a Tobin Tax - stamp duty, CGT or something to increase friction in sales, would help. But results around the worls are decidely mixed, and one has to shudder at the thought of Yet Mo' Gray Suits needed to be administering the whole shebang....
• Light a fire under ComCom re the materials duopoly, or heck just tweak the duties on said items, and import a few dozen shiploads of Chinese gib or US cabinetry, tools, fittings and doodads, and bankrupt the sods.
• Do away with local Council planning and inspection, and use a uniform, centralised mob. The differences between jurisdictions are crazy, drive builders and engineers mad, and raise costs as common solutions cannot easily be created, disseminated and used.
• Factory-build houses and drop-ship them to sites. Only foundations ever need to be truely localised to site and circumstance. Once you have a platform anything on top should be assembled in QC-controlled spaces, by anyone but drug-addled hammer hands, and picked/packed/shipped/assembled by factory certified putter uppers. This will drive unit costs through the floor, and will cause a great winnowing of the Exterior Decoration crew - architects and designers - into more productive employment. Factory hands, what else. Win/win/win/win, I'd say.
• Wind back the LBP nonsense (the factory certification should cover all competencies) because it's an overreaction and an overhead and has driven many older craftsmen right out of the business.
• Mandate eaves, pitched roofs, external guttering, and a design ethos which allows easy access to plumbing and electrics for repairs via access panels, conduits, etc. Lack of these features causes unmaintainability, lack of watertightness, and other woes. The guidebook here is Stewart Brand 'How Buildings Learn (what happens after they're built)'. Exceptions can be permitted only under a notified resource consent process (make the buggers really suffer....)
• Institute a central photo database of every new build showing the as-built location of services (wiring, pipes, etc) before walls or foundations are skinned over. Index photos to site/floor plan and elevations. Huge help in later additions, maintenance etc. Keep this as-built record up to date (yes, I know, counsel of perfection....)

Not one of these is politically possible, can withstand the deadweight of custom, guilds, unions and convention, or can be defended against the Legal eagles of said duopolies and assorted corporate interests. But it was a fun thought experiment, hey?

Economic madness in housing policy

The economic damage caused by these crazy policies is what needs to be hammered home: HughP has been very focussed on the 'broken-record' approach and it is gradually seeping through. Perhaps. Let's tabulate the said damage: - Median multiples in perma-unaffordable zone - Acquiescence in a materials supply cartel - Lack of nation-wide type approvals (for e.g. factory-built dwellings) - consents are Still a local-authority issue. Welcome to the ineptocracy! - Complete absence of time-money rules in the entire consents etc processes including the RMA. Quick fix would be to adopt current IRD rules - just try missing a tax payment and see what happens! - Disenfranchisement and disengagement of young citizens shut out of the housing market - Consultants, lawyers, engineers, insurers all feasting on the corpse of what passes for the development industry - 100% pure deadweight - Regulation of everything that is an input to the industry - if only the synthetic-cannabis rules could apply (use it until sufficient numbers of addled users clog up the A&E's of the nation, then stroke chin and say ' why, something's Gotter be Done) - Granting untaxed capital windfalls to landowners by continuing to squiggle on maps - Acquiescing on land-banking - Transmission of this economic malaise (as it applies to new-house pricing) throughout the housing market, as existing-home sellers who wish to buy new at roughly the same level of amenity, need to sell at near the same price (and trouser the CG, mais naturellement, if they play it right) Play this record at Every Opportunity, and don't forget that it Cannot be fixed by voting in a new lot of faces at either national or local government levels. It's a classic cluster-f**k. This stuff is systemic......

Tribes...

A village/tribe (direct descendants of the monkey clans - see 'Before the Dawn' - Nicolas Wade) may well be the default setting if we have to hit the factory reset button. But consider the losses in this highly sustainable way of living: •kiss goodbye to most present rights, including personal freedoms and gender equality. Tribes are ruled by The Big Man (note that gender) and if'n yer not in with The Man's crew, (like, wearing the wrong colour cap down Main Street) you'll shortly find yerself on a Ship of Fools (on a Good Day) or pegged out on the local beach at low tide (on a Bad Day). •kiss goodbye to most scale enterprise: mining, metals, the shaping thereof etc. Enterprises and capitalism depend on the utmost trust between total strangers, and tribes/clans do not take kindly to strangers (that's part of their core definition..,.) •kiss goodbye to cities and hence to the clustering and innovation thereby made possible: the various Renaissances that have taken place over the centuries have arisen from the cross-fertilisations of (quelle horreur!) Different Types Mingling: tribes don't take well to such uncontrolled goings-on. The genius of the Anglosphere is that we invented portable, discretionary (choose your own) tribes via countless associations, enterprises, and ventures, after millenia of imposed tribes via blood, locality, religion etc. The Enlightenment did for all that. Mind you, the re-tribalisation of the world has been long predicted, and Blut und Boden still has a visceral appeal to the revanchists amongst us....

A common tater complains about Housing Material Costs

Oh, it gets better, Boatman. •Duopoly in materials (see the Productivity Commish on this) •Massive front-loading of fees on the land by Rapacious Local Governments who have Four Wellbeings to house and feed •Cheap credit, which fuels the fire •Licensing of every tradie, tool, and anyone silly enough to consider a new build •Planning which generates an unearned and untaxed capital gain (typically 10x rural land price) as soon as yer draw that MUL squiggle on a map •Land banking (in the reasonable expectation of said CG) by Them with Knowledge and Insight (and a tame Planner or three on the Inside) •Elfin Safety, which typically adds 30-50% to the raw cost of e.g. a roofing or other at-height job (scaffolding, railing, harnessing, it's a Long List) •Inspections and Engineering Certification, which can easily exceed the raw materials cost by a wide margin •And never, ever forget the time value of money, throughout this ponderous process. Recall that the 'Mericans built the Empire State in 18 months. Yer'd be very lucky to get a Notified Resource Consent through in that time, and all the while the interest costs tick up, your Banker smiles at the interest revenue stream (or Frowns when yer miss the payment), and the Gumnuts of the world reject yer Permit Application for the 13th time because you haven't Detailed that there Joint in the Gubbinses by the Roof Thatch, which is another three-week go-around with your Engineer not ter mention his Fees. And did I mention that the Banker's grin is getting wider? •Plus (the icing on the cake, economical dead-weight-wise, ht PhilBest) is that all this cost-loading then transmits osmotically throughout the entire housing market, enrichening (and without being taxed on the CG generated) every existing houseowner. Because if'n she sells, and buys new, she'll haveta pay all of the above plus the agent's commission on the sale, to get an equivalent place. Universal pricing signal! Perfection, ain't it? Tip all these ingredients into a supply-starved Housing Context, mix 'em together, and Watch Them Prices Explode! And, like getting Milk from a Latte, or populating an Aquarium from Chowder, un-Mixing this sorry mess is a trifle, shall we say - challenging!

Councils and Cluelessness

The issue with Councils (I used to be a Treasurer of one back in the day - the title says it all) is quite simple to state, and very hard to fix. They now have power over so much of the regulatory aspects of housing and building (a partial list: - land prices (via zoning) - land developmnent (via consents and taxes) - housing design (via consents, design rules) - housing build (via inspections, requirements) - continuing use of house plus land (via Plans, consents and permitted uses) that their ordinary operations, in puddling through all of the above, have a major economic impact on the lives, businesses and prospects of anyone enmeshed in their gears. And yet, at the very same time, Councils are economically clueless. - they have no idea of, let alone penalty for causing monetary loss because of, the time value of money - they have no idea of the principles of monopoly (who else runs the sewers, roads, stormwater?) and take no precautions against the ancient abuses arising from this - they employ staff on salaries, who are completely disconnected from quantum or quality of output, and who thus experience precisely zip/zilch/nada of the consequences which would follow in the business world (termination, bankruptcy, or at the least, serious loss) - they are able to compulsorily demand fees for services (or no consent, buddy), rates (or we'll sell the place from under you), and levies (or no subdivision, you 'orrible greedy developer). Thus they wander serenely about the landscape, causing economic havoc in their wake, and congratulating themselves on a job well done, because they Do carefully count the awards made by juries of their peers... But how to change this horrific combination of power and incompetence - aye, well there's the rub....

LTP season is upon us again!

I occasionally take an interest in the Long Term Plan of of the local Council. It's my money they're spending, and they are obliged to Consult aboot it all.

I generally ask some pointed question: like:

•I see you have budgetted for X million pesos revenue, from Development Contributions. Please set out the average revenue per section expected, segmented into residential, commercial, industrial and Gummint.
•Please provide some economic commentary about these figures, given that they are significant inputs into section prices, and coming as they do early in the development cycle, attract significant developer financing cost additions prior to section sale, and are ultimately paid for by the incurrence of household, public and business debt.
•Please provide commentary about the revenue risk implicit in these averages, focussing on the most likely such risks: development flight to cheaper jurisdictions, housing inflation, buyer resistance, disadvantagement of low-income new-house purchasers.
•Please provide a table showing comparative Development Contributions for adjacent jurisdictions, for equivalently sized Councils across New Zealand, and against a New Zealnd average.

Y'see? A statement (on public record, no less), an education for Councillors who are often shocked! Shocked! to understand just what their faceless bureaucrats are inflicting on anyone enmeshed in their processes, and (best of all) a chance to stand up in front of the Council and tell these hapless fools just exactly what a dire effect they are having upon their local economy, residents and businesses.

Now, the Open Season for the LTP's is again upon us. Happy Hunting!

Licensed Building Practitioners

This will quite simply cause a polarisation in the market. Most repair/maintenance can be made to look as though it's always been there. So goodbye LBP's, consents, the swinging fees and official scrutiny for this type of work. Who could ever tell that it had happened at all? I recall saying something to this effect years ago....

There simply won't be any point in the middle-level type of extensions, alterations etc. By the time you've stumped up for the engineer, the LBP'ed foundation guy, the LBP'ed structural builder, the LBP'ed interior carpenter, the LBP'ed roofie, the LBP'ed exterior plasterer, the LBP'ed brickie or blockie, the LBP'ed Site Manager, the building consent fee, the inspections fees (one per trade needed!), not to mention the materials (remember them?), the supervisions, the architect if'n yer really stupid, and the resource consent if yer neighbours get a fit of the Nimby's, why, it will be much simpler to give the old dump the flick and buy something closer to what you actually want.

I think this is called 'Unintended Consequences'.

Councils and Time Value of Money

The issue with Councils and bureaucrats in general can be traced to three interlocking aspects, which together have over the years created the leisurely, process-and-rule bound, risk-averse culture we are now seeing.

1 - no revenue reponsibility. Council rates, fees and levies are non-contestable. They can be pencilled in at budget time and arrive on schedule. Guaranteed revenues mean that all Council staff have quite literally no connection with their financing. It is simply taken for granted, like the sunrise.

2 - no concept of time=money. Councils can inject time into processes without paying any monetary penalty. Their hapless customers still have to pay their mortgages, working capital overdrafts, consultants fees and staff. So every day that a Council injects into a process - has a direct and proportionate cost to the affected customer. Heck, Councils even 'stop the clock' when counting days elapsed for a consent. But the customers' Bankers don't.

3 - Council staff are answerable only to the CEO, and the CEO is a Council's (in the elected sense of members around the table) only employee. So there is no direct connection between anything which Councillors might think, want, or do, and the effect on staff. For all practical purposes staff are completely immune to Councillor influence.

So if the staff continue to with-hold, delay, defer, ignore or otherwise foobar the rebuild, just exactly what can be done about it, given all of the above?

Housing yet again

Housing affordability has five components:

1 - cost of land.

2 - cost of building - and as NZ is well under scale, and hence has hopelessly overpriced materials: it's still worth going to the States and filling a 40' container and paying GST plus duty on the contents: most materials are around 20% of the NZ converted cost.

3 - time taken - as time=money - the 'carry' can be significant even for a single build.

4 - credit availability and terms.

5 - Household income levels

The stoopid Councils contribute directly to #1 and #3, the craft nature of building in NZ and the lack of scale accounts for #2, and Gummint policy affects #4 and #5.

In 2001, in Christchurch, it was possible to buy a doer-upper for well south of $50K, in the non-leafy suburbs. By 2003, the same house was x3. What changed?

In 2002 the Labour Gummint, trying to be nice to the hopeless, introduced a guaranteed $100K credit line. Qualification for this was simple: 'can you fog a mirror?'.

Instant result in Chch - every single price in shall we say the structurally challenged house class went up overnight by, spookily enough, that same amount.

So there's the Gummint's little push to unaffordability. #4 shows that easing credit adds to prices. Whodathunk?

And finally #5: the rise of credentialism, soft degrees like media, art and music, and the constant repetition of the mantra 'education gets you up in the world', have all lead to a situation of inflated expectations, but same old employment choices. And now the GFC has commenced a winnowing of the crop: only the truly useful souls can look forward to even a moderate income: the hopeless are condemned to menial jobs or the dole, and as has been the case throughout human history, the well-off are quite capable of looking after themselves. Average incomes are static in nominal terms, and falling in real. As Glenn Reynolds notes:



"The government decides to try to increase the middle class by subsidizing things that middle class people have: If middle class people go to college and own homes, then surely if more people go to college and own homes, we’ll have more middle class people. But homeownership and college aren’t causes of middle-class status, they’re markers for possessing the kinds of traits — self-discipline, the ability to defer gratification, etc. — that let you enter, and stay in, the middle class. Subsidizing the markers doesn’t produce the traits; if anything, it undermines them. One might as well try to promote basketball skills by distributing expensive sneakers."



Oh, and there is no political way out of this, because there are more Tax Consumers than Tax Producers, and the Consumers can, have and will outvote the Producers when push comes to shove. The middle class vote has been purchased by WFF, and despite their occasional unease, they'll stay bought.

So there in a nutshell is the bind we're in. And as any solution involves a choice between the hard way out, and the really hard way out, I don't see much will move until it has to. As the saying goes: what cannot go on forever, won't.