Posts by Stephen Judd
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Paul Williams: I have just finished reading John Quiggin's Zombie Economics, and am about to re-read it, so I confess I may be unduly influenced by the chapter on privatisation. I suspect many PAS participants would enjoy this book.(related article here.) Quiggin is an Australian, and I'm afraid New Zealand features as a cautionary tale in many places. Not without justification, either.
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there are arguments that ownership isn't the only way in which you can achieve public policy goals, regulation and incentives are others.
Oh, absolutely. My point is simply that even partial privatisation effectively closes off a government's options. In some cases, of course we won't care about that, but I think it's a case-by-case sort of decision, whereas the neolib wisdom is that it's always best that governments don't own things.
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It’s still quite hard to think of a clear underlying philosophy on why they shouldn’t own fashion stores though.
If there were clear policy objectives that could be met by doing so, then there would be an argument for owning fashion stores. That's why we own a bank, for example. The fashion stores idea strikes me as wrong basically because I can't think what important policy problem that would solve.
This relates to my earlier comment about private ownership and the corporate model making it hard for state operations to implement policy goals. To me, it is the extent to which state ownership enables policy that justifies that ownership. When we neuter the state's ability to direct the governance of an operation, why then sure, what's the point of the state owning it? People who believe government is intrinsically bad also agree with this point, and I believe that this is the ideological base for the right's love of asset sales, and why the economic justifications don't add up.
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I roast my own beans at home, partly for economic reasons but mostly for amusement.
One thing I noticed when I began doing it was that US-based web sites raved about how much better home-roasted beans were. My observation is that while I can often get results that are comparable to what I can buy from a local roaster, they’re not markedly better. From this I infer that the beans typically available in the US are crap, probably mostly because of the long bumpy trip from a big plant to the end user. When you think about it, the number of local boutique roasteries in NZ is crazy high. Any non-rural cafe in NZ can get great fresh beans easily if they want.
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A consequence of partial sales no one (except Bryce Edwards) seems to be talking about is that they will help cement the corporate model under which state enterprises are managed.
I expect it will be much harder to get a partly-privatised power generation company to investigate alternative generation methods, or encourage consumers to reduce consumption, or any other policy objective that isn’t strictly profit-related. Even the limited influence obtained by electing directors will be diluted. And the company certainly couldn’t be turned back into a government department without a great deal of pain and squealing.
There seems to be this assumption that government can only ever own assets for the income they produce, rather than the policy objectives they can achieve. I don’t think that’s true at all.
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Gabe: Well, Sbucks does not use bad coffee, in fact it is still considered specialty because it is Arabica, meaning it is grown at high elevations, and it is from a single-origin. But, by no means does specialty signify “good coffee.” Sbucks has gotten sooo big that they are now buying coffee from cooperatives (many different farms with varying degrees of quality), whereas the majority of the other roasters prefer to buy single-estate coffees (aka single farm coffees where quality is consistent and exact origin is available for the end consumer).
Me: So they still get to say they’re “specialty,” but in reality they’ve lost some rights to this claim. They’ve just grown too big.
Gabe: Yeah. They have already lost a lot of customers to McDonalds/ McCafe due to quality and price. McDonalds has better coffee.
Me: Whoa, really?
Gabe: Yeah, McDs has won numerous blind tasting competitions and they have cheaper prices.
Me: In terms of the bean, what’s the diff? And have you participated in these competitions?**
Gabe: In my opinion the difference between the two is not so much the bean, but the way they roast. McDonalds has an outside company roast their beans for them that solely focuses on roasting whereas SBbucks roasts for themselves and I feel has become complacent and lacks innovation in terms of blending and adding new flavors.
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Anna Leask's story of January 20 says: "Two other high-profile 46-year-olds, TV stars Simon Dallow and John Campbell, have gone public to say neither of them is the arrested man."
Whereas on January 2, the Sunday News wrote:
"Speculation has since been rife as to the man's identity. TVNZ's Simon Dallow and TV3's John Campbell – both born in 1964 and living in Auckland – have been the subject of erroneous online gossip. Neither is the charged man.
Campbell's TV3 colleague Mike McRoberts is furious, saying the speculation is wrong and is damaging innocent reputations. "
Which seems far more consistent with what John Campbell and Simon Dallow just told us. I wonder if Leask saw the Fairfax story and took a paraphrase too far.
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HERALD DENIES "CELEBRITY" BEATUP
A big newspaper did it and ran away.
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Naked Lunch, was the upstairs place. I was too scared to go there
AAAAAH! Thank you! I spent a LOT of time lurking up there after gigs downstairs, and they catered my wedding, so I'm pretty ashamed of not being able to remember the name. You shouldn't have been scared, the operators were very nice people.
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Hard News: Because it's about time we…, in reply to Jacqui Dunn,
There was at least one place with a working espresso machine and clientele in 1988 Hamilton, although damnit, the name escapes me now. Something blue something. Oh, and Pigeons. Make that two. By 1990 there was Metropolis and that place upstairs at Ward Lane whose name I can never remember either. All staffed by competent operators.