Posts by BenWilson
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How terribly irrational.
Fear not. Legions of arbitragers will sort it out, driving down to Christchurch to get us our cheaper fuel.
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you either have to cut or borrow.
Say what? There's at least 2 more options: Raise tax (and any other income) or sell assets. Also any mixture of all four.
Also, there's incentivizing reconstruction by lowering tax on it. Tax cuts targeted at reconstruction, rather than just income or profit. -
Hard News: What Now?, in reply to Emma Hart,
Peter Hyde (Vicki's partner) has written this pretty good summary of the situation right now, especially in the Eastern suburbs.
I'd pretty much guessed as much when I made my prioritization list.
As Peter would put it, it seems like time to move major resources from Rescue City (in which there is bugger all chance that anyone is alive to rescue any more - hard truth), to Refugee City. High priorities would seem to be the very basic things, water, food, shelter, sanitation. Then power, phones (which might come for the most part from phones getting charged), and transportation. Would anyone in the zone disagree?
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OnPoint: On Price Gouging, in reply to Ben Winters,
As any economist will tell you, there is no one method that does best in every case.
Yes. In this case, the free market method does not work. Any economist could tell you that, and at least one has when he made this thread.
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I hope I'm not expected to shave my tits first.
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Hard News: The First Draft, in reply to Markp,
My 5 cents anyway ...
Heh, I doubt DPF would take it well to be told that he should turn his site into Public Address.
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OnPoint: On Price Gouging, in reply to Ben Winters,
The proposition that <i>none</i> of them have the means to move supplies of petrol an hour down the road at short notice is self evidently ludicrous.
Yes, there are many petrol companies operating there, and getting petrol to Christchurch on short notice is exactly what they are doing. They already have all the infrastructure set up, every aspect of the business worked out, all the contacts etc.
Yes, probably some entrepreneurs could get more gas down there. It would have fuck-all impact, the distribution of gas is big business, with economies of scale. Gas stations are set up to crank large numbers of customers through efficiently. They're everywhere.
The main thing causing queues was not rationing. It was a massive spike in demand. The rationing simply meant more people could get some gas. If they were prepared to queue for hours, that meant they really wanted it.
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to Christopher Dempsey,
Christchurch, as a city, took 150 years to be built and it will take another 150 years to be rebuilt. City building isn't an off-the peg exercise as some are wont to think.
I feel pretty sure you can whack up buildings a lot faster now. It really depends on how much money is spent, and how much political will there is to get it done.
It's not nice to say it, but actually just getting on with it good and fast could be extremely stimulatory to the economy. There's never been a better excuse to pump 10 billion through. Could this be the "tradie-led recovery"?
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OnPoint: On Price Gouging, in reply to Keith Ng,
But the *source* of that inequality isn't in the pricing of goods, but in the income distribution.
That's not the only source of inequality. It could come down to who is lucky enough to get to the shop first.
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Meanwhile, I just read a Kiwiblog earthquake thread for the first time since Tuesday. Really should not have.
I went there on Thursday, mainly out of curiosity about what this catastrophe would do to their group dynamic, would it be similar to PAS? The first thread degenerated rapidly into a flame war, but they seemed to get it out of their systems, and had got with the program of actually using the blog for something useful by the second day. I noticed that most people had the same position on gouging that Keith does, too, despite the high neo-liberal quotient. I think the same dynamic eventually happened, that disaster penetrates even wingnut minds and solidarity began, with as close as they would ever get to conciliatory remarks between the contributors. Redbaiter contributed mightily by being nowhere to be seen.
I don't know how it went after that, though, I don't feel any emotional connection to anyone that writes there by preference, and no new information was forthcoming. They don't seem particularly connected on Twitter or Facebook. Does rather confirm my opinion that the site is dominated by socially isolated angry men.
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