Point of Order: How good (or bad) is China’s economy?

If you enjoy extreme scenarios, you won’t want to miss the rant essay Why Chaos Favors the Strong in the Coming Great Decoupling on the Campbell Ramble blog — a spirited case for a strong power slowly strangling a weaker opponent that merely looks strong.

Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 24/7/24

Online lotteries for charitable purposes are among the beneficiaries of govt’s assault on red tape

A raft of measures designed to make it easier to do business, or to encourage greater competition, or to run lotteries on-line for charitable purposes, has been posted on the government’s official website in the past 24 hours.

Dr Eric Crampton: Shakedown finances

There are a lot of problems with the Paul Goldsmith / Willie Jackson media bargaining bill.

I hit on some of those over in the Stuff papers this week.

A snippet:

Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 12/7/24

An OECD report shows why Seymour is intent on shredding red tape

Our daily monitor of ministerial machinations and Beehive braying has been on the blink for the past week, alas. No, not a technical problem. Rather, a matter of ill-health.

Today we are catching up and herewith record the headlines posted on the government’s official website since we last buzzed on July 4.

Dr Eric Crampton: Despair - construction consenting edition

Kainga Ora is the government's house building agency. It's been building a lot of social housing.

Kainga Ora has its own (but independent) consenting authority, Consentium.

It's a neat idea. Rather than have to deal with building consents across each different territorial authority, Kainga Ora can run building consents, inspections, and Code of Compliance Certificates through Consentium.

Brian Easton: How Did FTX Crash?

What seemed a booming success a couple of years ago has collapsed into fraud convictions.

I looked at the crash of FTX (short for ‘Futures Exchange’) in November 2022 to see whether it would impact on the financial system as a whole. Fortunately there was barely a ripple, probably because it was too small and most investors were not sufficiently integrated into the rest of the financial system to be borrowing from it to speculate on cryptocurrencies,

Bronwyn Howell: Can international social media censorship succeed?

Twenty four years ago, New Zealand’s Prime Minister David Lange strode the world stage as the symbolic face of the international antinuclear movement. 

In 2019, his political descendent Jacinda Ardern now similarly stands, alongside French President Emmanuel Macron, as the face of a new international moral campaign against the use of social media to organize and promote terrorism and violent extremism. 

The pair will host a summit of global leaders and tech industry executives on May 15 seeking a pledge to eliminate (i.e., censor) terrorist and violent extremist content on social media platforms.

Richard Epstein from the US: Growth - the blue state model has failed

The defining economic truth of the last decade has been the want of sustained growth. Progressives and classical liberals agree that economic growth is a good thing, but they differ profoundly in how to best to achieve it. 

The only way to spur growth is to undo the structural barriers to gains from trade by pruning the law books of taxes and regulations that block these transactions in the futile effort to achieve redistribution. The combination of lower administrative costs, greater legal certainty, and improved private returns fueled American growth in earlier times, and will revive it today.

Viv Forbes from Australia: Death by Delay

“The difference between taking a part of my life,
and taking my whole life, is just a matter of degree.” Anon

There was a time, before the baby-boom generation took over, when we took pride in the achievements of our builders, producers and innovators. There was always great celebration when settler families got a phone, a tractor, a bitumen road or electric power. An oil strike or a gold discovery made headlines, and people welcomed new businesses, new railways and new inventions. 

Frank Newman: Heritage hassles

A decision by the Environment Court has blocked the demolition of an earthquake prone building in Wellington. That has reignited the debate about how much of the past should be preserved and who should bear the cost of protecting items of heritage value.

The Court acknowledged the Harcourts Building on Lambton Quay has “significant seismicity issues” and can't be rented out but said the building contributed strongly to the “Lambton Quay streetscape”. Having no commercial value did not justify its demolition, the Court said.

Eric Crampton: Coroner recommends

Search Google NZ for "Coroner recommends" and you'll find:

• Coroner recommends quad-bikes be equipped with rotational towballs
• Coroner recommends that all farm houses be fenced off. "Mr Scott called for farmers and Labour Department officials to lobby the government to make fencing compulsory on all farms"

Karl du Fresne: Four months in and National's looking wobbly

It would be overstating things to say the wheels have fallen off the National government four months into its second term, but they’re looking decidedly wobbly.

Pumped up by its resounding election victory and freed from the constraints it imposed on itself with its ultra-cautious first-term agenda, National has been far more ambitious this time around. There’s a new toughness in its approach, though it still shrinks from tackling some of the big issues such as Working for Families, national superannuation and interest-free student loans.

Richard Epstein: Is Women’s Empowerment a Bureaucratic Imperative?

Times are tough. Both the European Union and the United States are facing stagnant economic growth, high levels of unemployment, excessive debt, and an aging population. I am not alone in urging the European Union and the United States to make major reforms of their labor markets as an essential step toward economic growth. Sadly, serious progress on reform has lagged behind on both sides of the Atlantic.

Yet, in at least one respect, the United States is in far better shape than the European Union. I refer to the advancement of women in business, particularly their representation on corporate boards. For the EU, compulsion is the preferred path, while in the United States, to date, voluntary action is the name of the game.

Richard Epstein: How the FDA Violates Free Speech

In R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. v. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the District Court for the District of Columbia has blocked for the time being the FDA’s strenuous campaign to issue stringent health warnings on cigarette packaging and advertisements. The 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act gives the FDA the power to “issue regulations that require color graphics depicting the negative health consequences of smoking.”  Pursuant to that authority, the FDA had published regulations that required all tobacco companies to place a set of pictorial and written textual warnings on the packages of all cigarettes sold in the United States, effective in September 2012.

The FDA’s proposed new warnings are graphic and make it appear as if the inhalation of tobacco is tantamount to the inhalation of hydrogen cyanide with its certain and lethal fate. For those who have the stomach to look at these warnings, they are prominently displayed on the FDA website. In one, we see the ghastly image of a male smoker with smoke coming through a hole in his trachea and the anti-climactic words, “Cigarettes are addictive.” Another choice image compares two pink and healthy lungs with two discolored and pitted lungs over the caption “Cigarettes cause fatal lung disease.” The FDA has ordered tobacco companies to place these various warnings on cigarettes packages, where they must cover over 50 percent of the space. To put it mildly, these second-generation warnings amount to a steep upgrade over the current set of tame written warnings, which in one form or another have been a staple of cigarette packages since 1965.

Richard Epstein: Obama’s Jobs Bill - Read It and Weep

The dim news about the current economic situation has prompted the Obama administration to put forward its latest, desperate effort to reverse the tide by urging passage of The American Jobs Act (AJA), a turgid 155-page bill. The AJA’s only certain effect is to make everything worse than it already is by asking Congress to tighten the stranglehold that government regulation has already placed on the economy.

That sad fact would certainly elude anyone who accepted the president’s justification for the AJA when he sent the bill to Congress. This bill, he said, will "put more people back to work and put more money in the pockets of working Americans. And it will do so without adding a dime to the deficit." How? Why, by closing "corporate tax loopholes" and insisting that the wealthiest American’s pay their "fair share" of taxes.

Owen McShane: Maori at the Crossroads

A group of Maori organizations and Iwi leaders are sending some clear signals to other Maori, and to Government in particular, that they are standing at a crossroads.

One road will take Maori into a future in which they participate in the modern world, and contribute to economic growth and development, driven by technology development and employing people on high wages. They may also benefit from growing dividend streams as a result of significant investments in state owned enterprises.

The other road locks them into the world view of tribalism, and in particular enforces the religious beliefs of pre-European times, such as mauri, and taniwha and which regards science as the enemy – being the “latest force of colonization”.

Roger Kerr: Productivity Commission Should Examine Kiwifruit Monopoly

Every Econ 101 student learns that monopolies are bad.  They maximise profits by restricting output and raising prices.  Consumers are exploited and national income is lower than it would otherwise be. Note that it is not just a matter of a monopoly producer raising prices (above some competitive level) and reaping higher profits.  The normal supply and demand factors that determine prices continue to operate.  To be successful in raising and maintaining higher prices the monopolist has to be able to restrict supply as well.

In today’s open and competitive economy, opportunities for monopoly behaviour are few and far between.  In addition, we have laws – in particular the Commerce Act – aimed at curbing such behaviour.

Owen McShane: New Layers of DURT (Delays, Uncertainty, Regulation and Taxation)

One of the main reasons for unaffordable housing, and an overall shortage of supply in New Zealand, is the multitude of planning documents that have to be dealt with by applicants even when making the simplest of applications. 

There is a natural tendency for these layers to grow because the environment is essentially infinite and hence finally requires an infinite number of plans. So we need to check out any set of proposals as to whether they will require further layers by legislative fiat. Similarly, if we want to encourage innovation we need to keep the patent, copyright, and trademark processes as simple as possible and compatible with international intellectual property law.

Roger Kerr: Property Rights, Regulatory Takings, and Compensation

Sleeping with elephants is a risky business.  Australian car manufacturers learned this lesson again recently. In October 2008, industry representatives negotiated a $1.3 billion Green Car Innovation Fund with the Rudd Labor government.  This would have provided $1 in taxpayer money for every $3 in investment from multinational car companies, with the aim of accelerating production of locally made hybrid cars.

Last February, barely two years later, with only $400 million of the Fund spent, Julia Gillard’s government pulled the pin on the scheme – by way of a media announcement, not even a call to the companies concerned.

Roger Kerr: A Ban-Happy Country

An ingrained New Zealand characteristic is the urge to ban things that some people don’t like. Part of the urge may stem from our propensity for knee-jerk reactions to social problems. Rather than live and let live, or face the fact that the problem might be a matter of encouraging people to take responsibility for themselves, we look to the ‘gummint’ to pass a law against it.

Or it may derive from what the American journalist and humourist H L Mencken defined as Puritanism: “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” Today we might call this paternalism or wowserism rather than Puritanism.