Posts by Andre Alessi
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Hard News: Because it's about time we…, in reply to Gabor Toth,
(I suspect that those controlling the flow of Fair Trade coffee are just as guilty of this practice).
Not really. For non-fair trade coffee, much of the increase in price along the production chain for coffee beans happens at the middlemen who buy the beans from the farmers-they’ll pay them an absolute pittance (often not even enough to cover the farmers’ costs for things like fertilizer, which leads to very real instances of debt slavery) and then they’ll sell the beans on at a horrendous markup.
For fair trade coffee, the middlemen are replaced by farmers’ collectives themselves, who generally match the prices of the non-fair trade beans, but then return the actual profits back to the farmers and their communities. The fair trade organisations who then buy from the collectives and distribute the coffee locally are usually not-for-profits, so the additional markup there is only intended to cover costs (but still tends to make fair trade coffee slightly more expensive than non-fair trade coffee.)
I won’t comment on the further markup that happens once the beans are delivered to your local cafe though, but again, that’s a pretty significant step.
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Seriously though, this is how you do an entertaining sci fi movie these days:
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OnPoint: Election 2011: GO!, in reply to Dougal Clunie,
If true it should be fairly straightforward to show how well the privately-owned Contact has outperformed Might River, Meridian and Genesis over the last 10 years... No?...
I'd be a bit careful drawing straightforward analogies here, even within a particular sector. Most of the time the devil is in the details with this sort of thing (which is why I'd never be completely against the idea of asset sales ever.) Bottom lines don't always tell the whole story, especially if a given privately-owned company is being propped up by external parent companies financially (as happens with a few local companies.)
You also need to keep in mind that actually creating efficiencies within a corporation is a long-term, (usually) quite expensive and painful operation. Staff are encouraged to leave (with redundancy packages) or else stay and bring the same culture they had under state ownership. New technology costs a boatload to set up, regardless of who owns the company. It can be the work of years for companies to start turning a profit during all this, while other industries allow for a quicker turnaround.
There are often grumblings in the media about this rebranding exercise or that training seminar costing X thousand dollars in the public sector, and this is part of what drives the belief that state owned assets are "inefficient" (even though it's seldom relevant to the bottom line.) But turning a company private inevitably results in more events like these, just without the corresponding blathering from talkback radio about wasting money.
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Hard News: Only what we would expect a…, in reply to Matthew Poole,
I'd love to see more targeted tax credits replacing blanket tax cuts. It makes sense at a practical level by encouraging specific behaviours, and it completely bypasses the "taxation destroys business growth" crap that is still getting recycled even now.
But there's always the issue of whether New Zealand business will actually come on board, culturally speaking, with policies like these. Sure, start-ups will leap at them, but what we really need is for the stodgy old corporations who actually drive the economy to join in, and I have a strong suspicion that breaking the habits of a lifetime in that regard won't be easy.
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OnPoint: Election 2011: GO!, in reply to Juha Saarinen,
Sorry, Keith… I don’t understand. What has this go to do with Goff and Key dyeing their hair?
You know, I can't even remember the names of their spouses. A refresher is obviously in order!
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...as there are a lot of indirect issues like efficiency gains...
I've always been skeptical of the "privately owned companies are more efficient" meme, especially in the context of the New Zealand economy and work culture. Yes, I don't doubt that in some specific cases businesses can be made more efficient when they're not owned by the government, but that's because those specific businesses are allowed to get away with specific bad business practices due to either poor ministerial/managerial oversight or to specific political considerations related to the nature of the products or services being supplied.
Those conditions are, I am sure (after working with and for a bunch of companies both state-owned and not) not especially common in today's economy, so selling off these assets with the belief that they'll suddenly become more profitable (with the corollary that any state-owned asset is automatically not efficient) is questionable at best-or perhaps the word is "aspirational"?
There are also issues around the small labour market we have here (even if you sell these assets off, the reality is that the majority of people you have working within the company-who thus determine its efficiency-are likely to remain working for said company after its sale) and the relatively light investment in productivity-increasing technology within New Zealand business generally.
A minor point, I guess, within the overall discussion, but I think it's a key one when it comes to tackling the psychology of why Joe Twitter thinks asset sales are always a good thing.
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Muse: Linky Love, in reply to Paul Campbell,
I have to disagree – sometimes it happens the other way around – Alf Garnett/Archie Bunker for example
True, but it's rare, and that approach stands out on American telly as unusual. I mean, it's hard to argue that the main characters in Friends were supposed to be pleasant and inoffensive, but I would seriously consider murder-suicide over having to inhabit the same room as the lot of them. Probably the best example of all this is Will & Grace, I guess-the titular characters were meant to be sympathetic in their normality, but they were so bland that the quirky offsiders, Jack & Karen, carried the show because they were allowed to be unpleasant (as much as anyone could carry such an awful piece of tosh.)
On the UK side, you have brilliant creations like David Brent, Alan Partridge, the Royle Family, Malcom Tucker etc
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Cracker: Gimme Shelter, in reply to KingKenny,
I saw Smashing Pumpkins at that first BDO, and to this day it amazes me when someone mentions how great they are. It's all opinions about art in the end, but what I saw was a bored, tired band going through the motions.
I never saw them at the BDO, but I did see them at the Supertop during the Mellon Collie tour, and to this day that still stands out as my favourite live concert ever.
It was everything a rock concert should be: loud guitars, sweaty crowds, and hardly any frills. About the only thing they had in the way of a light show was some cheap and crappy projector showing "trippy" marbled images on the back wall. And Jimmy Chamberlain kept playing even when the rain started leaking through the tent roof right on top of him. Billy was not overly chatty, but they gave 100% to every song they played, and seemed to be enjoying it as much as the thousands of teenagers who were singing along to every word.
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Cracker: Gimme Shelter, in reply to Russell Brown,
A journalist of my acquaintance who grew up going to church and thence to Parachute assures me that there was much more devillish behaviour at Parachute than is commonly acknowledged ;-)
The interesting thing about Parachute is that it has always been seen as an excuse for teens to have sex, drink and do drugs. Whether or not you think that dilutes the Christian theme of the festival (I don't, since I think those things are what any teenagers in that context will always do) it's certainly never been about denying the pleasures of the flesh.
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Hard News: Only what we would expect a…, in reply to Sacha,
And I have yet to hear any convincing explanation of how cutting government spending reduces non-government debt. Magic beans, perhaps.
Consistency matters. After all, if they were claiming this thirty years ago, they can't stop claiming it now without being called hypocrites, flip-floppers, etc.
Never mind that the policy has never worked, it's a "principle" so we're all stuck with it.
See also: crime and punishment policy, tax policy, employment law, etc