OnPoint by Keith Ng

Another monster surplus to slay, eh? God, those billions really are a blight on New Zealand. How will we possibly... okay, you get the point.

At least this time National is coming out and bluntly saying they want to raise debt levels - but that okay. It's a reasonable point - debt isn't necessarily a bad thing - but Bill English's framing of the issue is a bit disingenuous.

The key message he was trying to get across was that debt wasn't a bad thing and that investment in infrastructure is usually funded by debt. That's fine. But then he goes on to say:

So there is no debt problem and hoarding cash as if you did has become a pretty severely limiting factor in future investing,"

That would be the case if the government was trying to run a surplus instead of investing in infrastructure. But this is not the case. Where they have not funded infrastructure projects, it's been because the project is not cost-effective on its own merits, not because it doesn't want to take money out of the surplus.

In fact, the exact opposite has been true. In the last election, National pointed out that the government has been funding infrastructure out of cash so that it makes their surplus look smaller, accusing them of dodgy accounting. (FYI: They have been funding infrastructure out of cash. It is unusual, but whether it's dodgy is a question of public accounting.)

It means that whether infrastructure is funded from cash or from debt makes little difference (apart from interest) on the long-term debt, and the whole infrastructure argument is a big fat red herring. If there is underinvestment in infrastructure, it's because there's underinvestment in infrastructure, and neither the surplus nor the cash vs debt argument factor into it.

If National is serious about infrastructure, then they need to say where the problems are and commit to increasing spending on it. Until then, this sounds more like the first half of a line that goes:

1) More debt is fine,

2) Infrastructure should be paid for out of debt.

Therefore...

3) We can afford a bigger tax cut than what Labour will offer. (Surprise!)

Or a monorail.

I'm not against the idea of a tax cut, or even of spending the surplus, but I'm just sick of this compulsion to spend because it's there. Sure, there's money in the bank, but why spend it? What are we getting in return? What's the *value* of the spending, compared with decreasing debt?

The problem for National is that the value of a tax cut for the country as a whole is necessarily theoretical. You can't measure it's long-term effects on the economy and the people - but you can measure its value to individuals. So, the talking points cycle between the outright bribe, an intellectually-gutted talkback version of classical liberalism ("give us our money back"), and some well-flogged rhetoric about "more incentive for our best and brightest, stem the brain drain, etc."

There is a perfectly good case out there, explain why it's better for us to be spending the surplus on tax cuts or whatever rather than on paying off debt. I'm eagerly waiting for it.

Last time I had raw fish for breakfast was in Oslo, and the raw herring pickled in vinegar did not go down well. Yesterday's, at Tokyo's Tsukiji Fish Market, was considerably better. We had mackerel and eel sushi, which were great, but the fatty tuna and the sea egg ones were awesome.

In the actual wholesale market nearby, you could get tubs of sea eggs, though presumably, it would be unwise to pig out on it in front of the telly.

They take their fish seriously, as you'd expect. Here is a buyer carefully studying cross-sections of tuna. A lot of poking, but no microscopes.

Fish, fish, everywhere - as well as soft-shelled crabs...

...octopus...

...and mud eels...

...which we had for lunch.

After two days in Tokyo, I have yet to be accosted by a robot. And my friends Michael and Mariko have even taken me to a park - with trees and stuff! All in all, it's far less Blade Runner than I'd expected it to be, though presumably, that's just because the Replicants running the city want to keep a low profile.

Except in Akihabara, otherwise known as the geek district. Grown from a specialist electronics area, it's turned into a full-blown geek-a-rama, and not really in a good way. One shop summed it all up with its inventory: Electronics equipment out front, semi-ornamental weapons (telescopic batons, ninja stars, semi-ornamental knives) in the middle, and finally, down the back, rubber vaginas. There was a natural synergy between the products.

The area was also famous for the "maid cafes", where all the waitresses are dressed like French maids. That's... um, yeah.

I've always thought that you can't get lost on the subway. I was so very wrong.

The problem isn't that these grids are massive and complex. The problem is that I don't even know which *segment* of the grid this is supposed to represent.

The plan is to travel west in Japan over the next two weeks, then ferry to China, then head west some more. A lot more. Through the length of China, then south, until I go back to India. My natural gravity towards calamity will also draw me towards Nepal during its first election since the prince when nuts and shot the royal family. I hope I'll like the Maoist insurgents as much as I like skinheads.

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Meanwhile, here are two more NGA's for you:

Click here for more NGA.

Click here for more NGA.

For your Friday enjoyment, here are two YouTube clips. The first one is a positive and empowering message made by an advertising agency as part of a viral campaign for a company in the beauty industry trying to stab all the other companies in the beauty industry in the back. It's crisp, slick and fascinating.

The second one is a spoof of it. It's hilarious and merciless. Make sure you watch the first one first, and that you watch this next one right to the end. It's worth it.

In other news, this is my new Motofone F3. With the batteries out. Can I get a "woooooo" over here?

I like to call it the Headless Chicken trick. The neato bit is that the display is made by E-Ink, the company that's developing e-paper technology for Philips. The bistable display (once it's in one state, it stays that way) is based on the same technology as e-paper, though it has a resolution of about 200. That's like an old-school digital watch screen, but bigger.

It only uses power when it's changing states (i.e. going from black to white), and even then, it's still a lot more energy efficient than normal LCD screens, because it doesn't actually emit light. Like paper, it relies on reflect light (though it has a tiny backlight, too.

It's the most bleeding-edge piece of technology I've ever owned, but it's the least sophisticated phone I've ever had, too. Its bleeding-edge display is functionally equal to ye digital watches of yesteryear (see photo). It displays a maximum of 12 characters at a time, can't distinguish between upper and lower case. It has no 3G, GPRS, camera, Bluetooth or IRDA, which makes sense, because it doesn't have the memory to store nor the means to display anything that it would receive.

The whole get-up is designed for poor people in developing countries - rural India in particular. Its interface (no words, just icons and voices) is made for illiterate people and its designed with price in mind. It cost me, brand new, $60. It speaks English, French and Swahili.

Usually, I'd feel dirty about talking up a cellphone so much, but in this case, the sheer brilliance of this phone is an indictment of whole damn cellphone industry.

I am no cellphone luddite. I have been using big fat PDA-phones with touchscreens and internet browsers for a few years, but I'm just taken aback at how practical, intuitive and beautiful such simplicity can be.

It's a phone. It calls people.

It's such an elegant design, it makes me want to weep. Of course, it's not for sale in the US or Canada, and I'm not sure about it's availablity anywhere else (you can get it on TradeMe, though). And for good reason. If the idea of $60 phones caught on, phone makers wouldn't last very long. The whole industry is advanced through making people take unbearably grainy photos in inappropriate situations, download annoying ringtones in ever more annoying quality, etc.. What on earth would they do if people just wanted a phone that, you know, made calls?

I'm in awe that the designers had the balls to buck a decade's worth of industry convention and go back to basics in such a spectacular way.

Excuse me. I have to go and touch my phone now.

They are here. Finally. The robots have armed themselves and are now ready to rid the planet of its organic scourge. Pity the fools.

The US Army have finally deployed armed ground robots in Iraq - essentially a remote-controlled gun, scope and cameras on a tracked platform. It looks kinda like a weaponised Johnny 5, with less personality and a lower centre of gravity. The one armed with a six-barrelled grenade launcher was the scariest. I think I would utterly shit myself if one of those little buggers came wheeling after me.

Favourite quotes:

"Anything can happen when a robot is given a machine gun."

"[It's] a significant emotional event..."

Let it out, soldier. Let it out.

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Meanwhile, No Right Turn has some beefy reportage from the Journalism Matters conference in the weekend. And kudos to the Herald, for putting Judy McGregor's speech - which is pretty critical of APN, the Herald's publisher - on their website.

I/S was appalled at how badly journalists are paid. More to the point, how badly we're underpaid, as demostrated by everyone who switches industries and suddenly make a whole lot more money.

We bring it on ourselves, I think. As an industry, we talk ourselves up as bearers of a civic duty, how fantastic the job is, how we'd hate to sell our soul to become a PR hack. It's all true, but damn, it makes for a lousy bargaining position.

I was once told apolegetically by [a section editor] of [a metro daily] that they only paid 25c per word, but that on the bright side, I would get to establish my reputation by being published in [a metro daily]. It was true, and I did the story. But what good is having a good reputation all it meant was that you could work for 40c per word?

It's interesting that trade press (industry publications) with a fraction of the readers of metro dailies will actually pay more for stories. My hypothesis is that a) those who set freelancing rates know that we do it for the love, and are therefore happy to oblige by setting below-market rates, or b) the marginal returns on attracting better journalists with more money isn't worth it (i.e. More money might get them a better journalist doing a better story, but a better story doesn't do enough for the paper to justify the investment).

The EPMU has a full list of freelance rates here. It makes no sense whatsoever (the rates, not the list). For example, the best paying freelance gigs in New Zealand are NZ House and Garden and AA Directions. No offence to AA Directions, but, jesus, AA Directions?