Oil and the Liberal Right

July 29, 2006

The recent increase in the price of oil and natural gas seems to be quite predictable to most military strategists and scientists but seems to be totally incomprehensible to right-wing, liberal politicians and economists. The fact is that most economic libertarians just can’t seem to grasp the concept of resource scarcity and its implications.

Today’s post-industrial, liberal yuppie floats around in a virtual world of ‘knowledge’, ‘communications’ and ‘networking’ where the concept of physical resources is pretty meaningless. Resources, in the liberal worldview, can be obtained and transformed into products so easily, that developed countries have little to fear from rising resource prices or disruptions in supply.

Since resources are so trivial, there is no competition between states for resources or need to conserve them in the national interest. Economic libertarians even claim there is such a thing as a ‘resource curse’, in which some countries, like Brazil, are relatively poor because they have too many resources (someone must have forgotten to tell oil-rich Norway, the world’s richest country).

Prior to the 1980s it was generally assumed that wealth came from production and that production requires access to cheap resources; Japan certainly though so when it attacked Pearl Harbour in 1941.

Many neo-liberal economists are also claiming that the current surge in oil prices is due to ‘irrational’ speculation and that investors are over reacting to political tensions that are only indirectly related to supply and demand. No doubt there is some truth in this argument, especially in the short-term. However, the long-term demand for oil looks set to rise enormously while oil supplies from politically stable countries are rapidly declining. It is only natural for investors to be getting excited about price rises.

It is also somewhat ironic that market pundits, who argued in the 1990s that it is ok to invest in ephemeral computer companies, are now criticising investors for being ‘irrational’ for investing in essential resources.

Most developed countries either have no oil themselves, or are rapidly exhausting their domestic supplies. The UK is in a particularly difficult situation because it is running out of oil and natural gas and all its nuclear power plants will soon need replacing. However, it is remarkably blasé about its looming energy crisis with no clear commitment to replacing its nuclear power stations or developing alternative forms of energy supply. The U.S still has significant petroleum reserves but these are rapidly being consumed by an ever-expanding population.

Being of the liberal bend, most U.S economists continue to sing the praises of high immigration. The fact that high immigration is making America more indebted to Asia, and more dependent on an unstable Middle East, isn’t seen as a serious cause for concern.

The Bush administration’s intervention in Iraq further highlights the unrealistic thinking of the liberal right in regard to oil supplies. Iraq is a county with a long history of political instability and factional conflict. U.S neo-conservatives though, believe, or did believe, that Iraq can be transformed into a western-style democracy and that oil flows can be restored to above pre-war levels.

At present, oil flows are beginning to pick up, but are still below pre-war levels and the war has already cost the U.S a huge amount of money. Iraq is beginning to sort itself out politically, but not the way the U.S intended. Iraq is slowly ethnically cleansing itself on geographic lines like the former Yugoslavia. However, this process could take many years if not decades. Furthermore, if the U.S intervention is to pay for itself, then oil supplies will have to be cranked up to far above pre-war levels and no ethnically divided, middle-income country has ever pushed oil production up to such levels.

It could be argued that the U.S is at least stopping China from gaining control of Iraqi oil and increasing American influence in the region. However, the massive spending on the Iraq war could have gone into a wide range of domestic measures to improve oil supply and reduce oil dependence. Also, the more the U.S has to borrow money to pay for oil imports and overseas wars, the more indebted it becomes to Chinese investors.

In contrast to the U.S and the U.K, China is taking a hard- headed, pragmatic view of oil scarcity. While the U.S is increasing its demand for oil through immigration, China is trying to contain demand through its population control programmes. China also has no scruples about dealing with corrupt, authoritarian regimes and is striking unconventional deals with many different countries to reduce its dependence on any one region.

The rising cost of oil and gas is a real threat to the economies of most western countries yet the dominant liberal-right has little idea about how to play the old fashioned, territorial game of resource politics.

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Posted by mikecourtman

Right-Wing Liberalism

July 29, 2006

Mark Richardson, at the Australian website, ‘Conservative Central’, points out that today’s ‘neo-conservatives’ are arguably more liberal than conservative and that it’s probably more accurate to label them ‘right-wing liberals’.

The liberal right promotes many ideas that are at odds with traditional conservatism including: large-scale immigration, public and individual debt, commercialised government over small government, and the continued expansion of the service sector.

In New Zealand, a large number of ‘neo-conservatives’ and libertarians, such as the National party leader Don Brash, are former Socialists and many still have an expansionist, Marxist attitude to immigration. Don Brash apparently supports high immigration provided immigrants adhere to ‘enlightenment values’, as he stated in a campaign speech before the 2005 election. Hence, ‘neo-conservatives’ and libertarians support high immigration provided immigrants assimilate into the local society.

Traditional conservatives however, have a cautious attitude to immigration because they are doubtful that large numbers of immigrants can be successfully assimilated. In contrast, right-wing liberals make a number of questionable assumptions about immigration from non-western cultures, including: that immigrants want to assimilate, that they can assimilate, that they can assimilate quickly and can assimilate in large numbers.

For right-wing liberals assimilation is about education and will power and that once exposed to western enlightenment values most people will want to conform to them. However, most of the world doesn’t conform to western values. There is also increasing evidence from Europe and the U.S that large numbers of non-western immigrants don’t want to conform to western values.

In France the birthplace of enlightenment liberalism, governing elites have assumed that once Muslim immigrants are exposed to French education, and the French language, they will absorb mainstream western values. As the number of non-western immigrants has risen though, fewer immigrants are integrating into French society. Subsequently, France is now starting to pursue a pragmatic, skilled-based immigration policy over an idealistic, liberal immigration policy.

The liberal right promotes small government in its rhetoric but in practice tends to support relatively large-scale, technocratic government. In terms of total spending as a proportion of Gross National Income, the state in New Zealand has not declined during the post-1984 era of neo-liberal reform. Spending on education per pupil for example, has continued to increase without any clear improvement in academic standards- a common pattern in many western countries. Similarly, spending on such things as management salaries, advertising, and corporate image building in the public sector, has continued to soar.

In 1992 the ‘neo-conservative’ National government repealed the 1983 Apprenticeship Training Act. This caused a rift between the state and the trades sector, in training manual workers, that has resulted in a significant shortage of tradesmen. The National Party believed that state run training courses could produce better tradesmen than public-private partnerships lead by the private sector. It practice, liberal elites of the right trust the practical common-sense of manual workers even less than their left liberal counterparts.

Libertarians and ‘neo-conservatives’ strongly support public and private indebtedness. In the U.S, Ayn Rand follower Alan Greenspan presided over the biggest budget blowout in U.S history while the Republican Party has done little to tackle the looming crisis in Medicare funding. Here in N.Z, the National Party continues to pour cold water over proposals for compulsory saving, and in the 1990s allowed student debt to get out of hand by allowing students to borrow lump sums for living costs while studying.

Unlike traditional conservatives, the modern right in N.Z isn’t very interested in production. The National Party, for example, hasn’t shown much interest in providing tax concessions for businesses wanting to increase r and d spending. Libertarians and ‘neo-conservatives’ are however, very interested in boosting consumption and expanding the service economy. In the era of neo-liberal reform there has been an explosion of shopping malls, longer retail hours, increased advertising aimed at children, and reduced restrictions on alcohol consumption and prostitution. Although the National Party was once considered to be a socially conservative party is has failed to take a strong contrary stand on any of these liberal reforms.

In ‘neo-conservative’ countries like New Zealand and the United States it is difficult to find policy areas where modern ‘neo conservative’ parties and their supporters have actually cut back bureaucracy, increased saving, decreased private debt, or restricted the expansion of the service economy. Similarly, neo-conservative governments have generally been supportive of large-scale immigration.

The populist backlash, in favour of limited immigration, that has occurred in France, Denmark and New Zealand has shown that neo-liberals will only give up expansionist liberal policies when forced to by a desperate and alienated electorate.

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Posted by mikecourtman

Dumbing Down Culture

July 22, 2006

In recent decades there has been a steady decline in the intellectual content of many aspects of Western culture from secondary education and television, to museum displays and political commentary. Although this intellectual decline is portrayed as the inevitable effect of economic deregulation it has also been fuelled by a suspect ‘blank slate’ theory of human nature.

American evolutionary psychologist Stephen Pinker describes the contemporary definition of human nature as a ‘blank slate’ theory since it is based on the assumption that human nature is infinitely mouldable. However, it is arguable that most of the population believes that genetics are at least as influential in shaping human capabilities and behaviour. Now evolutionary psychology is starting to confirm the common sense assumption that human nature is primarily influenced by genetics.

In contemporary thinking it is assumed that if ‘boring’ high culture, and intellectually challenging subjects, can be made more appealing to less educated, lower IQ people then such people will become more cultured and intelligent. However, if human intelligence is primarily determined by genetics then this is an unrealistic goal that will result in a big waste of resources.

In contemporary secondary schools many students are leaving school at 18 with little more knowledge than many children who left school at 15 in the 1950s. In my view, a large part of the reason for this is because a lot of teaching time is devoted to abstract discussions that only benefit a relatively small proportion of students- those that have a natural interest in abstract thinking. Children who lack the aptitute abstract thinking would be better off being taught more facts and practical skills. Although secondary education shouldn’t be as dry and rote learning orientated as it was in the 1950s, the pendulum has clearly shifted too far in the liberal direction.

Similarly, at the tertiary level many practical training courses are padded out with pop psychology, politically correct theory, and unnecessary management concepts that would be better taught at a later stage of left out completely.

Given all the abstract theory that is taught to today’s students one would expect that their general knowledge would be high and that they would have a big interest in topics like science, politics, and history. Sadly, for the blank slate theorists, there has been no popular increase in ‘hi-brow’ media such as classic literature and broadsheet newspapers.

Surprisingly, although there have been a lot of initiatives to cut costs in education the number of para-professionals in the public education sector as a whole also increased substantially. In fact as education has become more commercialised it’s actually got more expensive and inefficient.

If education were primarily driven by commercial considerations then it would make sense to make education more conservative and less progressive. In the private sector it is prudent to trim any activities and staff that are of unproven value. Yet in most Western countries education providers continues to add new courses, pad out existing courses, and keep kids at school longer without any evidence that pupils are actually benefiting academically or professionally.

In cultural institutions like museums there has also been a lot of rhetoric about market driven reform and the need to appeal to a wider audience with a ‘dumbing down’ of exhibitions in many cases. However, again staff numbers and wages have increased without any clear evidence that this has stimulated tourism or increased public knowledge of art, local history, natural science, e.t.c.

In public television there has bee a decline in intelligent drama and comedy, in depth news and documentaries. Again, although this may make some economic sense it is noticeable that the number of staff in television has not declined. Hence, as a cost cutting exercise television reform hasn’t really succeeded. If cost cutting were the main goal then public broadcasters could simply reduce the number of channels and programmes without having to compromise quality. This could also minimise advertising as fewer channels would allow broadcasters to sell advertising space at a higher premium.

Public spending on culture in recent decades has been premised on an optimistic, ‘more is good’ philosophy based on a particular view of human nature. If people are moulded by their environment then this is perfectly logical. However, if human nature is largely a given, then an uncritical, expansionist policy is likely to prove counter-productive, regardless of whether it is driven by the state or the private sector.

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Posted by mikecourtman

Psychometrics and Welfare

July 12, 2006

There is currently a lot of debate in New Zealand about reforming the welfare system, with the left arguing that welfare problems are a product of environmental factors, and the right arguing that the ‘welfare culture’ undermines individual willpower. There is little talk though, about genetic factors in welfare dependency, and the role psychometrics can play in social welfare policy.

Today’s workplace is an increasingly complex and competitive environment with few sheltered government jobs. In the 1960s it was government policy to create jobs for those with marginal capabilities. In the present economic climate this is not really feasible because of the decline of low-skilled work in factories, farms and offices. Today we need to know how many people on welfare can actually fill essential government vacancies and private sector jobs. However, the Government can’t make fair assessments about welfare recipients unless it has some reasonably objective means of assessing their capabilities.

IQ testing is a good predictor of success in many areas of life including success in job training and in government work, and is frequently used by the U.S military, which has to assess large numbers of applicants from low socio-economic backgrounds. At present, Work and Income Support only assesses applicants work interests and not their actual work capabilities. However, just because someone wants to do a particular type of job doesn’t mean they can- a fact that the military is clearly well aware of.

It is estimated that around 5 percent of the general population have learning disorders of one form or another and this percentage is likely to be much higher among those on welfare benefits. IQ testing can also be good for indicating the presence of learning disabilities. More often than not, a large gap between the verbal and non-verbal scores on an IQ test indicates the presence of a learning disability, while low scores on particular subtests, such as coding, often indicative of an attention disorder.

Ideally IQ testing should be employed at the secondary level as this would allow schools to give better career guidance and would not bias test results. Although testing could be done on long-term welfare beneficiaries it is possible that some welfare recipients might try to undermine the testing by deliberately trying to achieve low scores. Psychometricians are also developing ways to tests people’s reactions and ability to make quick decisions which is important for many jobs- particularly those involving the use of dangerous machinery.

Many of the long-term unemployed are now moving off unemployment benefits and onto sickness benefits with a big increase in people claiming sickness benefits for mental disorders. Increasingly, governments are responding by providing subsidised counselling for disorders like anxiety and depression. Before sending people to counselling for subjectively defined disorders like ‘depression’ welfare providers should test for the presence of learning disorders which often cause such affective disorders and which are easier to objectively assess.

The increase in sickness benefits could also be partially offset by introducing a sub-category of sickness benefit that requires recipients to look for part-time work. It is likely that many people with mental health disorders lack the mental stamina to undertake full time work but may be quite capable of working on a part-time basis. Indeed, they may benefit from the mental and physical stimulation from regular, part-time employment.

As it is currently conceived, the New Zealand welfare system is based on poorly defined, subjective criteria derived from outdated, ‘blank slate’ thinking about human abilities. It is time for the Government to adopt a modern, scientific approach to welfare that goes beyond the current thinking of the liberal left and the libertarian/neo-conservative right.

1 Comment | Genetics, IQ, Welfare | Permalink
Posted by mikecourtman

Immigration Industry

July 9, 2006

As someone with a strong distaste for spin and misinformation a recent trawl around internet sites dealing with immigration to Australasia has provided me with plenty to get annoyed about.

Under the topic of ‘immigration consultants’ on Google, I found an Australian gem at‘http://www.migrationint.com.au which outlines various types of jobs through which people can enter Australia under the skilled migrant category. Under the categories of ‘associate professionals’ and ‘skilled professionals’ were expected job types like ‘plumber, ‘civil engineer’, ‘roofer’ and ‘nurse’. However, I wasn’t expecting to see jobs like ‘real estate salesman’, ‘archivist’, ‘librarian’, ‘acupuncturist’, ‘museum or art gallery technician’, ‘drug and alcohol counsellor’, ‘chef’ and ‘TV Journalist’.

Well, to anyone from overseas who expects to get a job in a library, museum, art gallery or archive in Australia or N.Z I can assure that there are plenty of qualified local graduates for such positions who can’t find jobs in these fields. Jobs in archives are particularly difficult to get into, despite paying about the same as many unskilled manual jobs. Similarly, unless you are a top level clinical psychologist don’t expect to get a job in counselling. Also, given the competition for positions on journalism courses we should be able to recruit enough TV journalists. As for acupuncture well, we have enough new age, anti-scientific, types as it is without importing more.

Even in some areas where there is a shortage of workers is it questionable whether Aust and N.Z should actually be importing more workers. For example, there is apparently a shortage of chiefs, but there is also a surplus of unprofitable restaurants. Do we really want to support unprofitable industries that pay poor wages?

Admittedly, official government sponsored sites are more realistic and hard-nosed about labour shortages but even here there are some questionable listings. For example, on the NZ government site http://www.immigration.govt.nz/, most of the skilled job listings are for technical and skilled manual sectors like construction and medicine. However, there were also listings for furniture manufacturing. Now, given that Chinese competition is rapidly closing down many cabinet-making firms isn’t it a bit disingenuous to lure immigrants on the promise of work in the furniture industry. This smacks of the short-term dishonesty of the British bureaucrats who bought Pakistani immigrants into Yorkshire in the 1960s to work in unprofitable mills that were soon to close. If jobs in industries like furniture-making are advertised then they should at least be listed as temporary positions.

Under the ‘Investor category’, on the NZ government’s immigration website, conditions appear to be pretty stringent for would be immigrants with tough English language and minimum capital requirements. There are no requirements though, that investments must be put into productive activities that generate jobs for New Zealand workers. Should people be allowed to become NZ citizens just because they have sufficient capital to buy their way into the country? Where a country has loose restrictions on investment based immigration then organised criminals are more likely to establish themselves. A laissez-faire approach to immigrant investment also tends to encourage illegal immigration since some investors can use the opportunity to import cheap labour from their country of origin and employ them in businesses such as restaurants, brothels and garment shops.

Although the shift towards skilled-based immigration and tougher English language requirements in Australasian immigration policy is a positive move immigration consultants don’t appear to be communicating national labour needs to perspective immigrants. Similarly, central government is also not immune from spin and still appears to have a blasé attitude to immigration and investment.

Leave a Comment » | Immigration, Labour shortages | Permalink
Posted by mikecourtman

Western Overconfidence

July 5, 2006

The overly generous attitudes of many Western nations to China indicates just how overconfident their elites have become. China is just as much a threat to the vulnerable West as it is an opportunity. In particular, Westerners should not underestimate the intelligence of the Chinese or overestimate their own capabilities.

Since 1945 the West has steadily been losing ground to East Asia in hi-tech manufacturing and design. According to the field of psychometrics, East Asians have higher ‘performance IQs’ than Caucasian Europeans and this seems to correlate with the decline of Western manufacturing. The Japanese and Koreans build more cost effective and reliable motor vehicles than Europeans and Americans and seem to be able to adapt much better to complex just in time management practices.

Although the West has some brilliant designers many of their designs are too complex for Western workforces to mass-produce. A couple of recent examples: the delays with the new Aerobus Jets because of their unnecessarily complex electronics and the recent recall of 110, 000 Jepp SUVs due to faulty heated seats. If the West came up with simpler designs, with fewer superfluous features, then Western workers might be able to build them to a higher standard. This approach is certainly working for Skoda (albeit on a relatively modest scale).

In competition with China many Western firms are hamstrung by environmental legislation such as the Kyoto protocol, which China as a ‘developing country’, is not pressured to comply with. However, China is rapidly becoming the world’s second biggest consumer- it is already the world’s largest consumer of concrete and steel for example. Only struggling countries, with limited resources, should get special exemption from agreements like Kyoto.

There is also very little pressure on China to float its currency, which is kept artificially low and gives it an unfair trade advantage over both developed and developing countries. The arguments put forward by US paleoconservatives like Patrick Buchanan, in favour of retaliatory tariffs, are also rarely given serious consideration in the US media. However, Buchanan makes a strong point – how can Western firms compete without protection when they can’t freely export to China?

Even in areas where the West is more competitive than China, Western governments still take a soft line in trade negotiations. China provides a potentially massive market for Western agricultural goods and New Zealand has already rushed into a free trade deal with China. The New Zealand media though, doesn’t say much about Chinese farmers receiving significant production subsidies, even though it is very critical of the E.C for protecting Europeans farmers.

The Western media industry is held up as a showpiece of the so called ‘knowledge economy’ yet its profits are undermined by rampant piracy in China. If Western countries expect to import large amounts of goods from China they are going to have to export large amounts of products to China. This simply isn’t possible though, if their primary exports can simply be substituted by illegal copies. The Western media industry is only a viable export option if the West has the power and the will to enforce fair trade in media products – unfortunately, at the moment, such willpower is clearly lacking.

The elites of the Western world are spending too much time salivating about making money out of China and not enough time worrying about the Chinese making easy money out of the West.

Leave a Comment » | Economic issues, IQ | Permalink
Posted by mikecourtman

A Slack Effort From Slack

July 2, 2006

Despite its controversial cover, David Slack’s- Civil War and other Predictions is a disappointing effort that provides few novel insights into New Zealand’s major social, economic and environmental issues.

In the first section of the book Slack canvasses relations between Whites and Maori over the Waitangi Treaty settlement process. He argues that Whites have slowly come round to accepting the Maori point of view and that Maori claims are eminently reasonable. However, as with most discussions of redistribution issues between Maori and non-Maori racial categories and demography are not addressed. Many Whites that oppose redistributing resources back to Maori privately cite racial ambiguity as a primary reason. The Maori population is heavily interbreed with the European population hence the common refrain, ‘why does that guy deserve a treaty handout, he’s Whiter than I am’. Similarly, due to intermarriage, it is very difficult to assess just how large the Maori population actually is and census numbers fluctuate appreciably. Although the Treaty settlement process involves tribes rather than Maori per se, many non-Maori primarily see it as an issue about racial preference.

On the very important topic of immigration Slack glosses over most of the big issues. He seems to dismiss the debate over immigration as ‘cheap political capital’ that occurs ‘every couple of years’ with each immigration wave. However, what matters is who comes and how many. New Zealand is a relatively equalitarian society in large part because of an abundance of land relative to labour, which is maintained by immigration restrictions. Furthermore, despite all the recent economic reforms, the nation still mainly lives off the land through farming, fishing and tourism. Large numbers of immigrants may water down how much of the ‘resource pie’ each person gets. Even worse, if large numbers of unskilled immigrants arrive we may also lose the option of trying to compensate for physical resource depletion by developing hi-tech industries.

Since the 1970s the number of non-western immigrants arriving in N.Z hasn’t been that large so there has not been that much serious disruption. However, what will happen, for example, to New Zealand’s largely Western culture if the country losses its European majority? In Western Countries such as the United States and France where the White majority is now under threat political divisions and ethnic tensions are becoming very serious, as seen in the French street riots and ‘White Flight’ from Southern California.

The issue of immigration is also conspicuously absent from Slack’s coverage of environmental issues. He puts forward some reasonably sensible arguments from Green politician Jeannette Fitzsimons about issues such as peak oil and consumerism but never mentions immigration and population growth. Environmental pollution is essentially caused by two factors- industrialisation and population growth. Hence, if you don’t address population growth (which in New Zealand largely comes from immigration) you are effectively trying to deal with the pollution problem with one hand tied behind your back.

The last section of the books deals with cultural tolerance and political correctness. Slack largely dismisses political correctness as a knee-jerk response to relatively trivial issues. However, he overlooks an important issue that is saturated with political correctness- the treatment of children and adolescents in today’s society. Many people are put off teaching and parenting by the behaviour of children and increasingly ambiguous norms regarding how children can be disciplined. Can teachers shout at children, physically expel them from a classroom? Can parents slap children on the leg, hand e.t.c if them deem it appropriate? What can and can’t I do if I catch a teenager vandalising my car?

On the topic of homosexuality Slack argues that the majority is now in favour of gay rights and people have overcome their bad old ‘1950s attitudes’ thanks to progressive politics. He doesn’t mention though, that changing attitudes to homosexuality may be related to such factors as the relatively small size of the gay population, the containment of the aids problem in N.Z, the development of modern condoms, the end of military conscription and the importance of gays in the modern service economy.

Despite all my criticisms of Slack’s book I will acknowledge that it does cover some issues quite well and there are some intelligent points on legal topics and economic policy. However, when I see a controversial title like ‘Civil War’ I except some really brave, incisive commentary and in this respect Slack fails to deliver.

Leave a Comment » | Immigration, Media, Race | Permalink
Posted by mikecourtman