Paid subscribers are welcome to throw me questions for an hour from midday on the events of the week around housing, poverty and climate change in Aotearoa-NZ's political economy
You're assuming they don't. Actually, my understanding is it's a regular practice, particularly by the Americans and Israelis against Iran, for example. Here's one that took out a chunk of Iran's nuclear programme. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/oct/02/iran-western-spies-cyber-attack And that's the one we know about. For obvious reasons, China, Russia, Iran and North Korea tend not to talk about how much damage the western attacks do. I doubt we're involved, but as a Five Eyes member, I suspect we know about them, and know when we're caught up in the retribution.
Rep. Curt Weldon : Thank you. Let me see if I can liven things up here in the last couple of minutes of the luncheon. First of all, I apologize for being late. And I thank Bob and the members of the caucus for inviting me here.
...
But the point is that when John Hamre briefed me, and gave me the three key points of this change, there are a lot of unanswered questions. He assured me that in discussions that he had had with people like Bill Gates and Gerstner from IBM that there would be, kind of a, I don't know whether it's a, unstated ability to get access to systems if we needed it., Now, I want to know if that is part of the policy, or is that just something that we are being assured of, that needs to be spoke. Because, if there is some kind of a tacit understanding, I would like to know what it is.
Because that is going to be subjected to future administrations, if it is not written down in a clear policy way. I want to know more about this end use certificate. In fact, sitting on the Cox Committee as I did, I saw the fallacy of our end use certificate that we were supposedly getting for HPCs going into China, which didn't work. So, I would like to know what the policies are. So, I guess what I would say is, I am happy that there seems to be a comming together. In fact, when I first got involved with NSA and DOD and CIS, and why can't you sit down with industry, and work this out. In fact, I called Gerstner, and I said, can't you IBM people, and can't you software people get together and find the middle ground, instead of us having to do legislation.
What’s your reflection on this from a NZ energy security perspective, especially the knee jerk exploration ban from the current administration? Especially considering in all reasonable forecasts we will be using hydrocarbons for transport, manufacturing etc for a long time to come, which at current prices will hurt a lot of kiwis dearly.
Interesting question James. I'm not in favour of the 100% renewable electricity target by 2030. Getting the final 5% or so is really expensive, although it's getting less so as battery costs come down and we use a lot more solar. But overall, I favour policies that increase the costs of using fossil fuels in a way that aggressively reduces emissions faster than we're doing at the moment. It does cost people more to drive petrol and diesel cars/utes/trucks, but that reflects some of the rising global cost of carbon taxes and ETS schemes. It helps us prepare for brutally high costs from 10-20 years out and avoids all of us building up collective carbon liabilities will be brutally expensive for the nation. The other problem of not acting is the Europeans in particular will shut us out of trade.
Ha! Good points. That nuclear decision was one of Merkel's biggest mistakes. Europe will be able to say it's hitting its overall emissions targets, while NZ is not, even though Europe is still using gas. The 1m tonnes of coal being burnt every year at the moment at Huntly is a real problem.
Not necessarily, with a mix of decentralized (rooftop?) generation, offshore wind, use of marginal land, etc. and build out of a green hydrogen economy
Thanks for the reply, I do feel like oil prices and energy security are slightly different topics as you miss 1) the fiscal implications of imported oil vs domestic in a high price environment and 2) rapid swings in price due to external factors like this do not give time for governments to mitigate impacts on parts of society I.e the poor. Fair that you could say “I don’t mind higher prices leading to aggressive emissions reduction” but how are we ensuring this doesn’t affect the vulnerable/poor who rely on this as a stable
The just transition point is well made. My view is we should be transferring wealth from the richest to the poorest through building subsidised new climate-friendly homes and investing in low/no carbon transport, including mostly cycling, walking and electric cars.
Thanks Duncan. You're gonna hate me for saying this...but...it depends. If the war depresses European economic activity and global trade, then that takes some steam out of inflation and could slow or reverse the recent rise in interest rates. Or...if the jump in energy costs and some sort of global military spending spree fires up even more inflation (eg Korea and Vietnam) then interest rates could rise sharply. But volatility is a slightly different question. Interest rates much more volatile in the last two years than previous 10. I suspect the volatility continues for another few years...
I think thats what I was thinking. Its pretty hard to know for sure so I am still leaning against fixing any mortgages for too long or at least keeping some short term. From a long period of stability we are in for a bit more uncertainty to come I guess
Yep. I'm not suggesting either fixing or floating, or fixing for a particular period. I'm not an authorised financial advisor and my views on interest rates are purely general in nature. Everyone should seek financial advice, including anyone from the FMA who may happen to be reading this...everyone's individual situation is different. But if you believe rates will be volatile in either direction, waiting would be something you could do... :)
They have been. Lots of pictures and videos of stinger deliveries from the UK and US in recent months. That was one of the reasons Putin was so keen to get on with it. If he waited, the pain from the hail of stingers on his tanks would be too much. It may be too much in the long run, even without the time for stocking up further.
Hi Bernard - With respect to Child Poverty, is this not a serious misnomer? It is not a child's fault that its parents may be in some degree of poverty. And talking about child poverty is an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff approach. Like so many political solutions, politicians try to deal with the consequences. Is not the "root-cause" of child poverty, parents who have children who are not 'qualified' to be parents, ie they cannot afford to pay to raise and nurture children. Maybe would-be parents should be put through a 'fit-and-proper-persons' evaluation and then issued a Warrant of Fitness.
Hmmm. Thanks Dave. I don't think I'd like to give the power to stop anyone from having children to the state. China did that, and it didn't work out well. I also disagree on blaming the victims for poverty. We have to invest in peoples' living situations so they're healthier, happier, warmer, less stressed, more connected to their own families and communities, and ultimately more productive. That's much more likely to improve everyone's lives, including by reducing the inevitable costs for everyone of not improving peoples' lives.
Thanks for your reply Bernard - I hope something can be done, as it just tears me up every time I read about some innocent child being brutalised and abused by it own family members. They just have no defences and society ends up with another walking wounded.
It is absolutely essential to determine the causes of poverty in New Zealand. One of the main causes of poverty is the astronomical cost of housing (and consequently rents) which has been caused by Ardern and the Labour government and employees of the Reserve Bank (RBNZ).
Yeah I think it's a little bit more complex/entrenched issue than that fella. Those factors are certainly contributing - especially LVR removal by RBNZ - though equally Labour have arguably done more than most governments to try and address the issue. Pandemic asset bubble is not unique to NZ by any means...
Currently, the main cause of poverty in New Zealand is the astronomical cost of housing (and consequently rents) which in recent years has (have) been increased by policies of Ardern and the so-called Labour government and employees of the RBNZ and have massively increased existing entrenched poverty. Some other causes of poverty in New Zealand are:
1) the grossly excessive cost of government ((central and local) which exact taxes and rates)
2) the colossal/enormous/huge/massive profits made in NZ by banks
3) the disgustingly obscene inequity of incomes in NZ. The top 10 percent income bracket has a greater total annual income than the bottom 70 percent bracket. (revealed by data I obtained directly from IRD by official information request)
4) some politicians, government(central and local) employees and council "controlled" entities employees being paid (out of taxes and rates) disgustingly obscene incomes more than 10 times the median(from IRD information) gross income
5) GST The culprits for this are Douglas, DeCleene(RIP), Prebble(Richard) and the so-called Labour government they were part of
6) insufficient/several tens of thousand insufficient public/state rental accommodation houses/units. Ardern and the so-called Labour government cannot be forgiven for increasing this appalling deficiency
7) drug addiction (especially alcohol and methamphetamine)
It seems as if there will always be people who are vulnerable to conspiracy thinking. I expect it has always been this way; now they've got social networks and livestreams which provide both an amplification that did not exist before - and filter bubbles.
We can observe these groups gathering support and becoming more organised here and abroad.
Who is tracking this? Is anyone building a fence at the top of the cliff?
Thanks...er...Plague. :) You're right that there has always been the conspiracy theorists around. The trouble is they were previously shouting into the bushes from their soap boxes on the town square. Now the shouting is amplified and turbocharged into billions of news feeds because it is emotive rage-bait that the algorithms love.
On this topic, has any country (besides China) successfully regulated social media content. We can't be the only people struggling with misinformation!
That is a great question Sonya. There are various attempts going on. Britain is trying to limit obscene content from getting to kids. Australia is trying something similar. Here? Crickets. Or maybe that should be cicadas... :)
"Facebook changed its audit and risk oversight committee charter to include a commitment not just to monitor and mitigate objectionable material, but also to prevent it."
Putin's Russia regulates social media content to suppress any moves against his rule. It's done by brute force, e.g. Facebook gets slowed down tremendously if it has content that the Russian authorities disapprove of, by monitoring, e.g. all Russian users have to store their user data on Facebook servers located in Russia. Also all network centres for the internet have a black box that all internet traffic must flow through - the black box can monitor traffic to sniff out stuff it is interested in.
Yep. The Chinese are even more aggressive. I'm not proposing that approach. It's more about regulating the algorithims. We regulate car makers to ensure their cars are safe. Why not social media?
My view is the algorithms should be regulated to not amplify this stuff. Doesn't have to be removed. Just not amplified. Facebook and Google and Twitter already tweak the algorithms to cut out the music and movie violations and nudey pix, but are remarkably reluctant to get rid of this stuff. The reason is it increases engagement and time in the news feed, which is what they're selling to advertisers. Here's a good example of what happens when all the wrong things are incentivised. https://popular.info/p/how-an-obscure-far-right-website?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web
How about instead creating a reliable bastion of evidence based truth ...
Set up three full time well funded but independent fact checking units at Auckland, Wellington & Dunedin universities. Have them respond to queries from the news media, politicians, & social media. The latter using special tags or id in a reply from anyone.
Each query for fact checking is sent to all three fact checking units, each required to check the issues independent of the others, querying qualified experts as available. Responses are collated in to a URI linkable public fact database/wiki which is updated with new evidence.
Only require the social media to prevent blocking of replies from the above fact based body. For example on Twitter anyone could do a search for the an account like @LiarLiar and @FactCheckNZOfficial and see all the instances where they have been corrected.
Also
Require the mainstream Media ( mostly in good faith ) to fact check each article AND opinion piece that they post and fully "do the utmost to rectify any published information which is found to be harmfully inaccurate." - see
I think the way forward on algorithms is to set/agree standards and then have them audited and a public certification of audit result (not by financial statement auditors, ie accountants). IE similar way we deal with financial statements.
Hi Bernard - pleased to see that others have started asking about the funding of the protesters at Parliament. Evidently a big commercial kitchen has been set up in Grant Road - so plenty of money is flowing in from somewhere. David Farrier has explained the complexity of the involvement of evangelical Christians, who otherwise seemed to be strange bedfellows. Part of the intractability of the protest in political terms is that the protesters' demands are so diverse. Can we understand it better by considering the motives of the funders?
Why is Unemployment so low when we have closed the Tourism sector do you think? And not really a question but I tried to piece that thing together from RB. Basically one Govt dept is buying bonds that another Govt dept created to raise money and some bonds are going to be bought and then destroyed so that one of those agencies can create some more bonds later if it wants to? That makes no sense to this layman. At all.
Thanks Warwick. It is amazing isn't it. I think a lot of those employed in tourism were actually backpackers and migrants with visas that expired during lockdowns and left. Secondly, in recent years we got used to importing 50,000 to 100,000 migrant workers a year, so not having them come in has meant soaking up locals who may not have previously gotten the job.
The kiwifruit industry depends on them too. They easily outnumbered any RSE workers last harvest. We should be grateful to them. Probably don't treat them all that well in terms of seasonal contracts, wages and living costs. I know one personally that quit the first week in the season with more than 2 days lost to rain in it. Another one screaming at me over a dominos order ..."In Vilnius I can get 1 meter square pizza AND box of heineken delivered at 3 am. FOR twenty dollars"
An excellent question for me to put to Meridian. I suspect Meridian would not like the tagging to go both ways and want surety of price for the volume it produces. If you only wanted to ride prices higher, and never lower, there would have to be a substantial 'derivatives' cost to bear. But has got me thinking about how that deal is negotiated.
It would be nice to know if such a pricing scheme would go someway to even temporarily lowing wholesale electricity prices to households and better still put into the development of renewable sources.
Per dollar pricing would be sensitive, but the pricing structure in general as a whole should not be, especially given the disproportional effect the deal has on the wholesale electricity market for all of the rest of the electricity consumers in New Zealand. Also shouldn't the NZ Commerce Commission have oversight of the numbers in the deal to make sure either Meridian or Rio Tinto's owners are not screwing of the rest of us?
I think the argument is that from the structure you can infer the price, which affects both Meridian and Rio Tinto so all terms are commercially sensitive. The impacts on the other participants are not considered relevant, there is still supply and demand and the market is functioning.
Commerce Commission have no remit around energy prices, there is a working market and competition so they can't get involved. Their focus is the monopoly lines businesses and Transpower. The Electricity Authority are in charge of the functioning of the market, but would not be involved in a commercial contract between parties.
What seems strange to me is that the Western powers ( who ever they may ) apparently doesn’t seem to have excluded Putin from operating in the international banking system as said by a political commentator which could have given him something to think about ?
It seems to me that Putin is now eyeing up the next animal to stalk as the Western powers just talk sanctions which Putin from, his annexation of Crimea, has kicked for touch.
Thanks Gary. Yes. I'm surprised Russia hasn't been disconnected from SWIFT yet. That's a problem with engagement as a strategy. It's great as everyone goes in the same direction for ever. Unravelling it is a nightmare and can be just as painful for the unraveller as the unravellee.
As much as I despise Putin and his regime, the US is definitely not faultless in this situation.
Their constant expansion of NATO is definitely a contributing factor. The agreement made when reuniting Germany to not expand NATO eastward has been broken so many times. I’m not suggesting the west should leave Eastern Europe to its own fate, but there was surely agreements that could have been reached to leave a buffer of neutral counties between Europe/Russia - provided both the US and Russia guarantee the sovereignty of those nations.
I like to reverse the situation. Imagine if China was to create a SATO alliance with Brazil and several other South American countries and year after year expanded further north. What would the US reaction be to Mexico refusing to rule out joining SATO? Would they sit idly by? The evidence from the history of Cuba suggests they wouldn’t.
Despite a lot of the rhetoric placing 100% of the blame on Putin, the truth is this is two global superpowers, who refuse to submit to multilateral oversight, playing geopolitical games to further their own interests.
Thanks Ryan. Yep. America is not pure either, although I haven't gotten to the bottom yet of that 'promise' about NATO. For a long time it seemed irrelevant, until Putin decided it wasn't. Also, I'm not sure America would invade Mexico in your scenario, and they never actually invaded Cuba, although they sort of tried with the Bay of Pigs. Without success...
Even given the UK leaving the European Union, the political collapse of the USA & even if Putin is removed from office, I do not think that the EU would abandon NATO for an European Continental Alliance with Russia as a partially dominant member.
What is the best strategy to prioritize first home buyers over older people with multiple, sometimes empty homes, who can easily leverage loans on housing rather than investing in productive enterprises???
That is a key question. It depends who's making the lending decisions and how they're regulating. Currently, the RBNZ is a 'neutral' regulator and essentially says the bank is in the best decision to assess the risk/return balance for any loan decision. But that does favour the equity-rich encumbents who have all the benefit of all that unearned and untaxed capital gain, along with the time and income from being older. One way to do it would be limit lending to only new homes. But then you're essentially using bank regulation for social and equity policy. My view is the Govt should simply build a shed load of homes for social housing and to sell. And keep doing that until the price of homes and rents get to an affordable level.
Real close to home - isn’t it time to go and talk to the protesters? I know… their violent/crazy messaging and behaviour. They are citizens too and some of them might have voted. Send someone out to talk to their nominated representatives to listen?
Thanks Polly. I've done that a few times over the last couple of weeks. When I tell people I'm a journalist in the Press Gallery, they shout abuse at me and spit at me. They wave signs at me that say journalists should be executed. Then they send death threats to the homes of me and my colleagues. That tends to dampen my appetite...
Much has been made about prortsers throwing shit at the police, but has anybody provided any evidence in a world where smartphone cameras are ubiquitous ?
Hi Bernard, why doesn’t the West use cyber warfare like Russia does? The west is always up for bombing people but is computer hacking a step to far?
You're assuming they don't. Actually, my understanding is it's a regular practice, particularly by the Americans and Israelis against Iran, for example. Here's one that took out a chunk of Iran's nuclear programme. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/oct/02/iran-western-spies-cyber-attack And that's the one we know about. For obvious reasons, China, Russia, Iran and North Korea tend not to talk about how much damage the western attacks do. I doubt we're involved, but as a Five Eyes member, I suspect we know about them, and know when we're caught up in the retribution.
Fair point, that makes sense.
http://www.techlawjournal.com/cong106/encrypt/19990928a.htm#weldon1
Date: September 28, 1999.
Weldon statement.
Rep. Curt Weldon : Thank you. Let me see if I can liven things up here in the last couple of minutes of the luncheon. First of all, I apologize for being late. And I thank Bob and the members of the caucus for inviting me here.
...
But the point is that when John Hamre briefed me, and gave me the three key points of this change, there are a lot of unanswered questions. He assured me that in discussions that he had had with people like Bill Gates and Gerstner from IBM that there would be, kind of a, I don't know whether it's a, unstated ability to get access to systems if we needed it., Now, I want to know if that is part of the policy, or is that just something that we are being assured of, that needs to be spoke. Because, if there is some kind of a tacit understanding, I would like to know what it is.
Because that is going to be subjected to future administrations, if it is not written down in a clear policy way. I want to know more about this end use certificate. In fact, sitting on the Cox Committee as I did, I saw the fallacy of our end use certificate that we were supposedly getting for HPCs going into China, which didn't work. So, I would like to know what the policies are. So, I guess what I would say is, I am happy that there seems to be a comming together. In fact, when I first got involved with NSA and DOD and CIS, and why can't you sit down with industry, and work this out. In fact, I called Gerstner, and I said, can't you IBM people, and can't you software people get together and find the middle ground, instead of us having to do legislation.
...
Hi Bernard,
What’s your reflection on this from a NZ energy security perspective, especially the knee jerk exploration ban from the current administration? Especially considering in all reasonable forecasts we will be using hydrocarbons for transport, manufacturing etc for a long time to come, which at current prices will hurt a lot of kiwis dearly.
Interesting question James. I'm not in favour of the 100% renewable electricity target by 2030. Getting the final 5% or so is really expensive, although it's getting less so as battery costs come down and we use a lot more solar. But overall, I favour policies that increase the costs of using fossil fuels in a way that aggressively reduces emissions faster than we're doing at the moment. It does cost people more to drive petrol and diesel cars/utes/trucks, but that reflects some of the rising global cost of carbon taxes and ETS schemes. It helps us prepare for brutally high costs from 10-20 years out and avoids all of us building up collective carbon liabilities will be brutally expensive for the nation. The other problem of not acting is the Europeans in particular will shut us out of trade.
Won’t Germany have to stop using Vladimir’s gas before they take the high ground with us? Shutting down their Nuclear Plants was bloody naive IMO
Ha! Good points. That nuclear decision was one of Merkel's biggest mistakes. Europe will be able to say it's hitting its overall emissions targets, while NZ is not, even though Europe is still using gas. The 1m tonnes of coal being burnt every year at the moment at Huntly is a real problem.
Yes and Solar and wind farms would ruin our(Not)natural rural landscape😂
Not necessarily, with a mix of decentralized (rooftop?) generation, offshore wind, use of marginal land, etc. and build out of a green hydrogen economy
Thanks for the reply, I do feel like oil prices and energy security are slightly different topics as you miss 1) the fiscal implications of imported oil vs domestic in a high price environment and 2) rapid swings in price due to external factors like this do not give time for governments to mitigate impacts on parts of society I.e the poor. Fair that you could say “I don’t mind higher prices leading to aggressive emissions reduction” but how are we ensuring this doesn’t affect the vulnerable/poor who rely on this as a stable
The just transition point is well made. My view is we should be transferring wealth from the richest to the poorest through building subsidised new climate-friendly homes and investing in low/no carbon transport, including mostly cycling, walking and electric cars.
I am curious what the range of volatility is for interest rates this time next year given the range of inflationary pressures and now war.
Thanks Duncan. You're gonna hate me for saying this...but...it depends. If the war depresses European economic activity and global trade, then that takes some steam out of inflation and could slow or reverse the recent rise in interest rates. Or...if the jump in energy costs and some sort of global military spending spree fires up even more inflation (eg Korea and Vietnam) then interest rates could rise sharply. But volatility is a slightly different question. Interest rates much more volatile in the last two years than previous 10. I suspect the volatility continues for another few years...
I think thats what I was thinking. Its pretty hard to know for sure so I am still leaning against fixing any mortgages for too long or at least keeping some short term. From a long period of stability we are in for a bit more uncertainty to come I guess
Yep. I'm not suggesting either fixing or floating, or fixing for a particular period. I'm not an authorised financial advisor and my views on interest rates are purely general in nature. Everyone should seek financial advice, including anyone from the FMA who may happen to be reading this...everyone's individual situation is different. But if you believe rates will be volatile in either direction, waiting would be something you could do... :)
Essential Reading "Winter is Coming" Gary Kasparov. He has been warning about Putin for years.
Thanks Chap. Yes. He's very good. Here's a topical thread from him this morning that's well worth a read. https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1496865471995523080
Thank you!
Should the west have not been pouring anti-tank drones into the Ukraine military for months?
They have been. Lots of pictures and videos of stinger deliveries from the UK and US in recent months. That was one of the reasons Putin was so keen to get on with it. If he waited, the pain from the hail of stingers on his tanks would be too much. It may be too much in the long run, even without the time for stocking up further.
Thanks. Looking forward to the Hoon.
Hi Bernard - With respect to Child Poverty, is this not a serious misnomer? It is not a child's fault that its parents may be in some degree of poverty. And talking about child poverty is an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff approach. Like so many political solutions, politicians try to deal with the consequences. Is not the "root-cause" of child poverty, parents who have children who are not 'qualified' to be parents, ie they cannot afford to pay to raise and nurture children. Maybe would-be parents should be put through a 'fit-and-proper-persons' evaluation and then issued a Warrant of Fitness.
Hmmm. Thanks Dave. I don't think I'd like to give the power to stop anyone from having children to the state. China did that, and it didn't work out well. I also disagree on blaming the victims for poverty. We have to invest in peoples' living situations so they're healthier, happier, warmer, less stressed, more connected to their own families and communities, and ultimately more productive. That's much more likely to improve everyone's lives, including by reducing the inevitable costs for everyone of not improving peoples' lives.
Thanks for your reply Bernard - I hope something can be done, as it just tears me up every time I read about some innocent child being brutalised and abused by it own family members. They just have no defences and society ends up with another walking wounded.
Hi Dave, might be interesting to research root causes of adult poverty before attacking unqualified parents too harshly.
It is absolutely essential to determine the causes of poverty in New Zealand. One of the main causes of poverty is the astronomical cost of housing (and consequently rents) which has been caused by Ardern and the Labour government and employees of the Reserve Bank (RBNZ).
Yeah I think it's a little bit more complex/entrenched issue than that fella. Those factors are certainly contributing - especially LVR removal by RBNZ - though equally Labour have arguably done more than most governments to try and address the issue. Pandemic asset bubble is not unique to NZ by any means...
Currently, the main cause of poverty in New Zealand is the astronomical cost of housing (and consequently rents) which in recent years has (have) been increased by policies of Ardern and the so-called Labour government and employees of the RBNZ and have massively increased existing entrenched poverty. Some other causes of poverty in New Zealand are:
1) the grossly excessive cost of government ((central and local) which exact taxes and rates)
2) the colossal/enormous/huge/massive profits made in NZ by banks
3) the disgustingly obscene inequity of incomes in NZ. The top 10 percent income bracket has a greater total annual income than the bottom 70 percent bracket. (revealed by data I obtained directly from IRD by official information request)
4) some politicians, government(central and local) employees and council "controlled" entities employees being paid (out of taxes and rates) disgustingly obscene incomes more than 10 times the median(from IRD information) gross income
5) GST The culprits for this are Douglas, DeCleene(RIP), Prebble(Richard) and the so-called Labour government they were part of
6) insufficient/several tens of thousand insufficient public/state rental accommodation houses/units. Ardern and the so-called Labour government cannot be forgiven for increasing this appalling deficiency
7) drug addiction (especially alcohol and methamphetamine)
8) etc, etc, etc
Hi Bernard
It seems as if there will always be people who are vulnerable to conspiracy thinking. I expect it has always been this way; now they've got social networks and livestreams which provide both an amplification that did not exist before - and filter bubbles.
We can observe these groups gathering support and becoming more organised here and abroad.
Who is tracking this? Is anyone building a fence at the top of the cliff?
Thanks...er...Plague. :) You're right that there has always been the conspiracy theorists around. The trouble is they were previously shouting into the bushes from their soap boxes on the town square. Now the shouting is amplified and turbocharged into billions of news feeds because it is emotive rage-bait that the algorithms love.
On this topic, has any country (besides China) successfully regulated social media content. We can't be the only people struggling with misinformation!
That is a great question Sonya. There are various attempts going on. Britain is trying to limit obscene content from getting to kids. Australia is trying something similar. Here? Crickets. Or maybe that should be cicadas... :)
Here's a piece from InternetNZ's CEO Jordan Carter calling for regulation, but he doesn't have any specifics. https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/opinion-analysis/300522715/social-media-monopoly-risks-harming-new-zealanders
I suppose any attempt to regulate will be seen as government censorship by the small unwashed hanging about Parliament...
Yep. That's why I prefer regulation of the algorithm to avoid spreading these posts, rather than trying to block them whack-a-mole style.
I guess the Christchurch call didn't come to anything...
Zip. Worse than useless. Lots of great lobbying opportunities for Facebook execs.
That's not entirely accurate.
"Facebook changed its audit and risk oversight committee charter to include a commitment not just to monitor and mitigate objectionable material, but also to prevent it."
https://i.stuff.co.nz/business/126716517/nz-super-fund-ends-campaign-to-reform-facebook-alphabet-and-twitter-in-the-wake-of-the-christchurch-terror-attack
Putin's Russia regulates social media content to suppress any moves against his rule. It's done by brute force, e.g. Facebook gets slowed down tremendously if it has content that the Russian authorities disapprove of, by monitoring, e.g. all Russian users have to store their user data on Facebook servers located in Russia. Also all network centres for the internet have a black box that all internet traffic must flow through - the black box can monitor traffic to sniff out stuff it is interested in.
Yep. The Chinese are even more aggressive. I'm not proposing that approach. It's more about regulating the algorithims. We regulate car makers to ensure their cars are safe. Why not social media?
My view is the algorithms should be regulated to not amplify this stuff. Doesn't have to be removed. Just not amplified. Facebook and Google and Twitter already tweak the algorithms to cut out the music and movie violations and nudey pix, but are remarkably reluctant to get rid of this stuff. The reason is it increases engagement and time in the news feed, which is what they're selling to advertisers. Here's a good example of what happens when all the wrong things are incentivised. https://popular.info/p/how-an-obscure-far-right-website?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web
How about instead creating a reliable bastion of evidence based truth ...
Set up three full time well funded but independent fact checking units at Auckland, Wellington & Dunedin universities. Have them respond to queries from the news media, politicians, & social media. The latter using special tags or id in a reply from anyone.
Each query for fact checking is sent to all three fact checking units, each required to check the issues independent of the others, querying qualified experts as available. Responses are collated in to a URI linkable public fact database/wiki which is updated with new evidence.
Only require the social media to prevent blocking of replies from the above fact based body. For example on Twitter anyone could do a search for the an account like @LiarLiar and @FactCheckNZOfficial and see all the instances where they have been corrected.
Also
Require the mainstream Media ( mostly in good faith ) to fact check each article AND opinion piece that they post and fully "do the utmost to rectify any published information which is found to be harmfully inaccurate." - see
https://itheresies.blogspot.com/2004_11_01_archive.html
I think the way forward on algorithms is to set/agree standards and then have them audited and a public certification of audit result (not by financial statement auditors, ie accountants). IE similar way we deal with financial statements.
Hi Bernard - pleased to see that others have started asking about the funding of the protesters at Parliament. Evidently a big commercial kitchen has been set up in Grant Road - so plenty of money is flowing in from somewhere. David Farrier has explained the complexity of the involvement of evangelical Christians, who otherwise seemed to be strange bedfellows. Part of the intractability of the protest in political terms is that the protesters' demands are so diverse. Can we understand it better by considering the motives of the funders?
Absolutely. So many grifters. So many Bishop Eftposes.
The Eftpostles
Why is Unemployment so low when we have closed the Tourism sector do you think? And not really a question but I tried to piece that thing together from RB. Basically one Govt dept is buying bonds that another Govt dept created to raise money and some bonds are going to be bought and then destroyed so that one of those agencies can create some more bonds later if it wants to? That makes no sense to this layman. At all.
Thanks Warwick. It is amazing isn't it. I think a lot of those employed in tourism were actually backpackers and migrants with visas that expired during lockdowns and left. Secondly, in recent years we got used to importing 50,000 to 100,000 migrant workers a year, so not having them come in has meant soaking up locals who may not have previously gotten the job.
The kiwifruit industry depends on them too. They easily outnumbered any RSE workers last harvest. We should be grateful to them. Probably don't treat them all that well in terms of seasonal contracts, wages and living costs. I know one personally that quit the first week in the season with more than 2 days lost to rain in it. Another one screaming at me over a dominos order ..."In Vilnius I can get 1 meter square pizza AND box of heineken delivered at 3 am. FOR twenty dollars"
Yum.... There is some karma going on here for those employers who have been fast and loose and cheap with their people over the years...
Is the price of electricity to the aluminium smelter partially tagged proportionally to the global price of aluminium? If not why not?
An excellent question for me to put to Meridian. I suspect Meridian would not like the tagging to go both ways and want surety of price for the volume it produces. If you only wanted to ride prices higher, and never lower, there would have to be a substantial 'derivatives' cost to bear. But has got me thinking about how that deal is negotiated.
It would be nice to know if such a pricing scheme would go someway to even temporarily lowing wholesale electricity prices to households and better still put into the development of renewable sources.
Meridian are unlikely to answer any question about the Rio Tinto pricing - details are top secret even inside the company.
Per dollar pricing would be sensitive, but the pricing structure in general as a whole should not be, especially given the disproportional effect the deal has on the wholesale electricity market for all of the rest of the electricity consumers in New Zealand. Also shouldn't the NZ Commerce Commission have oversight of the numbers in the deal to make sure either Meridian or Rio Tinto's owners are not screwing of the rest of us?
I think the argument is that from the structure you can infer the price, which affects both Meridian and Rio Tinto so all terms are commercially sensitive. The impacts on the other participants are not considered relevant, there is still supply and demand and the market is functioning.
Commerce Commission have no remit around energy prices, there is a working market and competition so they can't get involved. Their focus is the monopoly lines businesses and Transpower. The Electricity Authority are in charge of the functioning of the market, but would not be involved in a commercial contract between parties.
"Commerce Commission have no remit around energy prices"
https://comcom.govt.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0016/211444/Letter-from-Minister-Faafoi-Electricity-Price-Review-10-December-2019.PDF
https://comcom.govt.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/212032/Commerce-Commission-letter-to-Hon-Kris-Faafoi-Response-to-Electricity-Price-Review-27-February-2020.pdf
See the latter Attachment: Further details of our intentions ...
Gary Dyall
What seems strange to me is that the Western powers ( who ever they may ) apparently doesn’t seem to have excluded Putin from operating in the international banking system as said by a political commentator which could have given him something to think about ?
It seems to me that Putin is now eyeing up the next animal to stalk as the Western powers just talk sanctions which Putin from, his annexation of Crimea, has kicked for touch.
Thanks Gary. Yes. I'm surprised Russia hasn't been disconnected from SWIFT yet. That's a problem with engagement as a strategy. It's great as everyone goes in the same direction for ever. Unravelling it is a nightmare and can be just as painful for the unraveller as the unravellee.
As much as I despise Putin and his regime, the US is definitely not faultless in this situation.
Their constant expansion of NATO is definitely a contributing factor. The agreement made when reuniting Germany to not expand NATO eastward has been broken so many times. I’m not suggesting the west should leave Eastern Europe to its own fate, but there was surely agreements that could have been reached to leave a buffer of neutral counties between Europe/Russia - provided both the US and Russia guarantee the sovereignty of those nations.
I like to reverse the situation. Imagine if China was to create a SATO alliance with Brazil and several other South American countries and year after year expanded further north. What would the US reaction be to Mexico refusing to rule out joining SATO? Would they sit idly by? The evidence from the history of Cuba suggests they wouldn’t.
Despite a lot of the rhetoric placing 100% of the blame on Putin, the truth is this is two global superpowers, who refuse to submit to multilateral oversight, playing geopolitical games to further their own interests.
Thanks Ryan. Yep. America is not pure either, although I haven't gotten to the bottom yet of that 'promise' about NATO. For a long time it seemed irrelevant, until Putin decided it wasn't. Also, I'm not sure America would invade Mexico in your scenario, and they never actually invaded Cuba, although they sort of tried with the Bay of Pigs. Without success...
In that situation would the US place a trade embargo on Mexico as it did on Cuba?
Even given the UK leaving the European Union, the political collapse of the USA & even if Putin is removed from office, I do not think that the EU would abandon NATO for an European Continental Alliance with Russia as a partially dominant member.
What is the best strategy to prioritize first home buyers over older people with multiple, sometimes empty homes, who can easily leverage loans on housing rather than investing in productive enterprises???
That is a key question. It depends who's making the lending decisions and how they're regulating. Currently, the RBNZ is a 'neutral' regulator and essentially says the bank is in the best decision to assess the risk/return balance for any loan decision. But that does favour the equity-rich encumbents who have all the benefit of all that unearned and untaxed capital gain, along with the time and income from being older. One way to do it would be limit lending to only new homes. But then you're essentially using bank regulation for social and equity policy. My view is the Govt should simply build a shed load of homes for social housing and to sell. And keep doing that until the price of homes and rents get to an affordable level.
Real close to home - isn’t it time to go and talk to the protesters? I know… their violent/crazy messaging and behaviour. They are citizens too and some of them might have voted. Send someone out to talk to their nominated representatives to listen?
Thanks Polly. I've done that a few times over the last couple of weeks. When I tell people I'm a journalist in the Press Gallery, they shout abuse at me and spit at me. They wave signs at me that say journalists should be executed. Then they send death threats to the homes of me and my colleagues. That tends to dampen my appetite...
Many thanks to all. Have a great weekend. And we may see a few of you in the Hoon webinar at 4pm today.
Fair enough, maybe parenting and other life skills should be in school curriculums.
Much has been made about prortsers throwing shit at the police, but has anybody provided any evidence in a world where smartphone cameras are ubiquitous ?