Red-zone debate gets personal

Debate over govt red-zone offer gets personal as quake recovery Minister Brownlee and Christchurch Labour MP Dalziel clash over Dalziel's position

22nd Mar 12, 3:10pm by Alex Tarrant

The government's offer to red-zone homeowners in Christchurch has hit a personal note in Parliament.

Earthquake Recovery Minister Gerry Brownlee objected to questions from Christchurch-based Labour MP Lianne Dalziel on the government's plan to offer compensation to red-zone homeowners, as Dalziel herself was a red-zone resident.

That led Dalziel to give an explanation to the House about her personal situation in regards to her red-zone and insurance offer.

See the exchange in the video above.

More soon.

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53 Comments

by powerdownkiwi | 22nd Mar 12, 9:09pm 1332403783

Competence would require a set of parameters which Hugh would choke on.

Dalziel is so last century, no more answers than the mob in power.

I wonder if she knows what is ahead?

by powerdownkiwi | 22nd Mar 12, 9:51pm 1332406296

Powerful argument - one of your better.

by powerdownkiwi | 23rd Mar 12, 7:17am 1332440237

I've been trying to think of a way to explain it simply, so nobody has to do the homework they're reluctant/incapable of doing.

Try this Hugh:

Fiat finance, derivatives, plastic credit et al, have exploded particularly since about 1980. Hugh sees an equation, with incomes on one side, land prices on the other.

That fiat/levered/yet-to-be-paid ponzi, applies to both sides of the equation. Sure, there was a bubble, atop a continued underlying bubble, but incomes are part of the same equation. The austerity required to readdress the debt ponzi, is both contagious, and self-accelerating - incomes will reduce rapidly (relative to purchasing power, not numerically - which fools many) from here on.

That said, to compare the relative incomes of a pristine post-WW1 food basket with a war-ravaged Europe, is selective cherry-picking of data. Much like the clown yesterday quoting 1994 oil production. Spin, in other words.

by PhilBest | 23rd Mar 12, 10:51am 1332453094

POWERDOWNKIWI EXPOSED

Powerdownkiwi has steadfastly refused to even try and understand the difference between inflated land prices as the result of a regulatory racket, and a free market in land for urban development, that prevents anyone making a fat unearned capital gain on raw land.

Powerdownkiwi's perpetual change-the-subject arguments are IRRELEVANT to this issue.

He rabbits on about laws of thermodynamics and fossil fuel scarcity (all BS anyway, the rate of discovery of fossil fuel reserves has continued to rise unabated) when what we are trying to have a sensible discussion about, is rackets and Ponzi schemes in land for urban development. Whether oil is running out or not is IRRELEVANT to whether or not land bankers get to make fat unearned capital gains and drive up the price of housing markets at the expense of first home buyers. In fact this racket renders our economy and society LESS resilient to the future shocks that Powerdownkiwi claims to be concerned about.

All becomes CLEAR when one realises that Powerdownkiwi owns a lifestyle block beyond an urban fringe on a significant NZ city, that he picked up at fair, low prices. So of course he wants the regulatory racket perpetuated so that he will be a millionaire at some stage in the future, when the urban growth reaches his own "land bank".

He actually isn't so thick that he doesn't understand this, after all; contrary to the impression he tries to give us. ANY fool can understand the land racket, even Powerdownkiwi. He is merely the worst kind of capitalist rent-seeker-gouger of the kind who are the main crooks implicated in the great rip-off of younger generations today. The endless "baffle-em-with-BS" he swamps this forum with, is just a typical example of the lengths to which shameless self interest will take a man, whether a Wall Street trader or a land banker beyond the urban fringe.

by powerdownkiwi | 23rd Mar 12, 11:17am 1332454625

PB - Kindly provide the graph of increased global discoveries.

http://energybulletin.net/primer.php

graph entitled: 'the growing gap'.

Documented rebuttal, please, or withdraw and apologise.

And please be careful what you assume and accuse - I'm not a vindictive man, never taken a court action (never been in court except on jury service), but there's always a first time.

I bought our place for what is was for sale for at the time - what alternative did I have? It was the second of the two real-estate purchases I've ever done - the other being our first (450 sq ft) house 23 years earlier. Your turnover track record in real estate, PB?

Our place in not subdivisable, and not for sale - it was our aim for it to be a lifeboat, and to demonstrate what can be done in that regard.

Kindly hold your accusations in check - maybe a 10-minute pause before you hit the 'send' button?

by PhilBest | 23rd Mar 12, 5:29pm 1332476970

Close to the bone, was I?

You can't own a lifestyle block a few k's out from a city and NOT expect to become a multimillionaire eventually when the city grows to where you are, as long as the land planning racket continues.

Don't kid me you don't understand this. I don't see any other reason for you being such a know-it-all on everything BUT the land planning racket. Everybody gets it except YOU, or rather, it suits you to CLAIM not to.

Using the "track" function, one sees that Powerdownkiwi must just about live to make Malthusian propaganda arguments the main feature of this site; which site would otherwise be a useful economics and finance blog. I don't know why Hickey et al tolerate it.

You've done a good job of proving your point on how efficient a "lifeboat" lifestyle block can be. Full marks for that. I just see no reason whatsoever for you to be so bloodyminded on the issue of "planning permission" that Hugh Pavletich so usefully draws attention to, and he deserves our thanks for that, not endless sneering from scientific smart-asses about utter irrelevancies like the law of thermodynamics.

If your ideas on sustainable living became widely accepted now, guess what is the main obstacle to significant numbers of people getting to live like you do. Planning permission to do anything beyond the urban boundary, in any quantity. That's what. Why, why, why, do you forever refuse to see this? Why aren't you on Hugh's side?

Perhaps you are pure as the driven snow in your motives. Perhaps you don't see windfall capital gains coming a decade or two down the track. But perhaps you detest the idea of lots of other people having a lifeboat? Perhaps you are a Jonah who wants to see as many people as possible perish in unsustainable urban high density living conditions, when the big crunch comes. Have you got plenty of automatic weapons and ammunition stockpiled? Otherwise all the "self-supporting" stuff is pointless if your own prophecies are at all serious.

My own Real Estate track record? Never owned property. Only a fool buys property in a bubble. I regret not buying something before the bubble, that's all, but I'd want to have sold it again now and be renting again anyway, in ideal circumstances.

Re Oil supplies:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0622/p25s02-wogi.html

http://www.eia.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/feature_articles/2004/worldoil…

http://www.ogj.com/articles/2007/11/wec-saudi-aramco-chief-dismisses-pe…

http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm?aid=764

http://www.energyseer.com/NewPessimism.pdf

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/304/5674/1114.summary

http://www.financialsensearchive.com/stormwatch/geo/pastanalysis/2006/0…

by robby217 | 23rd Mar 12, 6:19pm 1332479973

LOL

Yes I've always thought it a peculiar strategy that the impoverished hoardes are rioting in the cities, but it will possible to barn raise your own chickens just up the road and nobody will be beating down your door.

I've also thought the juxtaposition between pdk sailing superyachts (those edificies of the minimalist) even if only ocassionally, whilst telling everybody else they need to pedal power their washing machines slightly amusing.

by PhilBest | 23rd Mar 12, 7:39pm 1332484786

I'd regard PDK as nothing worse than "amusing", too, if he got some scruples re land planning rackets. I find a lot about him to admire, I respect his example re low energy building and sustainable living. If he was out there telling Gerry Brownlee that at least some of Hugh's $50,000 sections should have "Powerdownkiwi" homes on them, making an all up price of well below $150,000, I'd regard him as a hero. Sailing superyachts would be entirely consistent in such a person. I am frankly baffled by his isolationism, sitting up there in his sustainable home on his sustainable lifestyle block and arguing for hours every day on the internet, that 90% of the population should be "priced" out of existence over the next few decades by strict regulations that force up the price of living; "because" the planet running out of resources is going to do this soon anyway........

HUH.......???????

I have pointed out to him that it is the LOW living cost, unregulated, profligate Texans who will outlast all the rest of us, precisely because they didn't waste so much of their capital on precisely NOTHING, (via regulatory distortions to living costs) "just in case". They can trade in their V10 Dodge Pickup Trucks for Honda Jazz's, start growing food on their 2 acre sections, tighten their belts a few notches, and be fine. While the rest of the 1st world who have already been paying through the nose for years just to get their few square feet each, of living space, will be the first who can't afford the rising prices of food.

by speckles | 23rd Mar 12, 6:21pm 1332480076

The one trick pony's are getting desperate...

by Trolleyboy | 23rd Mar 12, 6:41pm 1332481280

PDK might be waiting for a long time, for Dunedin to grow as far as the Kilmog. Not been here recently, Philbest?

by PhilBest | 23rd Mar 12, 7:18pm 1332483497

That's a good argument, so why doesn't PDK make it himself?

But there is shitloads of money to be made by anyone who gets planning permission for development of any kind on any land they paid rural prices for. It might come down to "who you know".

I know of consultants who do submissions to councils on behalf of rural land owner clients, making as clever a case as possible that the council should "permit", just this much extra land in the next urban plan, and no more, please, because our client wants to be one of the few lucky lottery winners, harrumph, sorry, didn't mean that, we meant "because just that much land is needed for growth and any more would be "unsustainable", yadda, yadda, yadda......"

by Nic the NZer | 23rd Mar 12, 8:43pm 1332488632

It should be obvious that the only thing preventing Dunedin from expanding is planning permission. Duh.

by Nic the NZer | 23rd Mar 12, 11:18pm 1332497880

Actually I am a bit worried about this development in analogistic thought. If we make the obvious analogy that Dunedin is like a gradually inflating property balloon, contained in a thin film of bureaucracy, then we have to draw the obvious conclusion.

If somebody takes a needle and bursts the bureaucratic film then there will be a loud bang and bits of Dunedin will become suddenly scattered throughout the country.

by powerdownkiwi | 23rd Mar 12, 10:49pm 1332496154

Trolleyboy - chuckle.

We did have a serious discussion as to whether the sprawl would reach out this far, but even if peak energy wasn't till 2030, the high-water mark is no further than Waitati. We'll be safe.

Waitati, of course, is a Transition Town, and has it's own Energy Project, so it's a few light-years ahead of the lead head. Good place to be near, good community, good people. They've got open-orchard planting in public spaces, a village green, way ahead of those drab, tiled, pending-slum sattelites aroung Chch.

by robby217 | 23rd Mar 12, 11:40pm 1332499252

Respectfully pdk, how is commuting from Waitati into Dunedin in any way more sustainable than living in Dunedin. Unless you trek over the hills, or cycle the motorway on a daily basis?

by powerdownkiwi | 24th Mar 12, 12:13am 1332501213

Respect back, fair question.

I bike often. In my thirties, I commuted on them (recumbents and a tri-bike) now, I don't need to work away from home. Yesterday though, I biked to a local school, facilitated (you get them to do the logic-path/outside the square thinking) a group of 11/12 year olds in a solar-dehydrator design project, then biked home.

Next - most folk (and that includes most green-minded folk) assume city 'work' will continue. Obviously, more rural work is 'real' than office work, and when the credit system falls back to the point it matches the real underwrite, most city 'work' won't exist. Hard to grasp, I know, but folk like me have applied a fair bit of thought to the repercussions, and the repercussions of the repercussions.

For the times you do have/want to go to town (for me that's about once a week) there's a thrice-daily bus (the rail is a five minute walk away, itwill happen one day) and we just text the driver that morning, to pick us up. Very NZR paper-bus circa 1955. We are close to fully self-sufficient, though, so it isn't really needed.

Waitati folk don't expect long--term to commute, hence the Transition Town/Energy Project/ comunity gardens / village green/ etc. Google Waitati, see what I mean.

by PhilBest | 24th Mar 12, 2:24pm 1332552284

".......most folk (and that includes most green-minded folk) assume city 'work' will continue. Obviously, more rural work is 'real' than office work, and when the credit system falls back to the point it matches the real underwrite, most city 'work' won't exist. Hard to grasp, I know....."

That's one thing I have constantly "called" the resource alarmists on, when they use peak oil as a pretext for "investment in Commuter Rail". At least PDK is better than that.

Resource alarmists should be supporting low density living a la Frank Lloyd Wright. Again, both PDK and myself admire Wright. I find it baffling that PDK can admire Wright and diss Hugh Pavletich. There is a high correlation between cities in the USA with very low density, and housing affordability (median multiples of 3 and below); precisely because the land is so cheap. "Housing affordability" is entirely consistent with getting an acre or two to live on if you want it, and this near to employment opportunities - lifestyle blocks in the wops are unnecessary. This is why those cities are in fact the most resilient cities in the world, to "resource shocks".

The effect of the "containment" racket, is that people get less and less land each, for higher and higher prices. Kiwis pay several times as much for one tenth of an acre, than what households in "affordable" cities in the USA pay for a whole acre.

But will PDK "get it".......? And what am I supposed to think is the reason why he won't?

by PhilBest | 24th Mar 12, 2:15pm 1332551719

You'll be safe.......?

When resources run out and the masses in the metropolis are killing each other for food?

Robby217 above "got it".

robby217 | 23 Mar 12, 6:19pm

"LOL, Yes I've always thought it a peculiar strategy that the impoverished hoardes are rioting in the cities, but it will possible to barn raise your own chickens just up the road and nobody will be beating down your door......."

by Augusta Funds Mgt | 27th Mar 12, 11:35am 1332801302

Posting articles from the "Post Carbon Institute".........wow I bet thats a really unbiased source of information. What a joke. Your worse than Wolly with his "Market Oracle" lunacy. By the way Wolly, all those articles you posted from Market Oracle over the last 2 years have proven to be complately wrong. Interesting that you dont reference that source so much anymore....

by steven | 27th Mar 12, 11:52am 1332802378

Your usually high standard I see, lets see, to class as biased or vested interest they would have to have an agenda that was behind what they actually say. For instance banks funding an institiute that was pro-banking de-regulation. Or Exxon funding say whatsupwithtaht's website / work anti -AGW work (not that I am aware they do).

oh wait, guess what,

Or yourself looking for investors in your commercial property business so you have a vested interest to say its business as usual.

Ever heard of term "digging your own grave"? you are doing an excellent job of it....you come across as a complete idiot.

regards

by PhilBest | 27th Mar 12, 2:32pm 1332811960

And no-one benefits from inflated urban land prices? The Rockefellers and George Soros love the environment, that's why they fund conservation activists. The capital gains they reap on their property portfolios is just irrelevant, yeah, right.

You Malthusian types are the ultimate "useful idiots", and you scream and point fingers at vested interests far less evil than the ones whose useful idiots you are.

by Augusta Funds Mgt | 27th Mar 12, 4:08pm 1332817697

Thanks for defining what biased means Steven, you are an incredibly helpful guy. Now go and have a think about whether an organisation dedicated to the concept of phasing out fossil fuels is going to be biased on the matter of peak oil. And dont come back until you having something uselful to say.

by robby217 | 23rd Mar 12, 1:20pm 1332462005

... don't forget the sailing of superyachts.

by Nic the NZer | 23rd Mar 12, 9:36pm 1332491780

Its a bit rich for you to talk about baffeling others with BS. Steve Keen deals with your own market dogma here Phil,

http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2012/03/16/advanced-political-economy-lectures/

Seems that you don't have a leg to stand on?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjEcj8KpuJw

by PhilBest | 24th Mar 12, 2:07pm 1332551247

Nic, there is "market dogma" and there is "market dogma". What YOU call "market dogma" MIGHT just be rejected by true free marketers such as followers of "The Austrian School of Economics" as dangerous rent-seeking distortions to a true free market economy.

You are getting into the area of rent-seeking in fractional reserve banking and so on, here. What I am saying about rent-seeking surrounding land use regulations is very much part of the same problem.

Steve Keen is a genius. I doubt very much that you follow him, otherwise you wouldn't use him as an argument against what I am saying here.

I am the first to argue that the finance sector has gained far too much share of "total income", but this is a consequence of gaming a system created by Statists, not a consequence of "untrammelled free markets". Who abolished gold standards? Who created monopolies on legal tender? Who created urban growth boundaries? Without urban growth boundaries, much of the opportunity for rent-seeking via mortgage market securitization etc is eliminated. Without company taxes, many more productive businesses could finance their own growth instead of having to crawl over broken glass to the finance sector. Company taxes are the ultimate "spite tax" with destructive unintended consequences. Henry George got it right about "labour" and its employers actually being on the same branch of the tree; it is a tragedy that "finance" and "land owning" oligopolies succeed in introducing distortions that they can "game", with the co-operation of terminally ignorant and venal Statists, while "labour" wastes its energy fighting its own employers.

by Nic the NZer | 25th Mar 12, 2:02am 1332594142

In fact you will find Keen is dealing with your form of "market dogma". This is the idea that selfishness of the individual is utility maximizing for the whole.

It would be highly inappropriate, and ineffective, to change housing market regulations in a government attempt to push house prices down at present. Thats not dealing with the problem in any way shape or form.

by PhilBest | 26th Mar 12, 3:53pm 1332730391

One of us does not know what they are talking about. I don't at all see Keen as opposed to my understanding of these issues. He's a good man, in fact. You seem to have constructed some kind of straw man "PhilBest" of your own imagination.

"Dealing with the problem"? In any way, shape or form?

Have you bothered to read my points on this forum about what 60 years of strict land use regulations have done to the UK economy?

Like, we would be clever to do the same to our economy and society?

What for? To appease the Gaia Earth Mother? Heck, cancel the Enlightenment and bring back the medieval papal theocracy, it was LESS of an obstruction to progress.

by Nic the NZer | 26th Mar 12, 11:01pm 1332756093

Its laughable that you think imbalance in the UK economy has been caused by land use restrictions. Notice Prof. Keens analysis doesn't talk a great deal about

1) The gold standard

2) Legal tender monopolies

3) Urban growth boundaries

Thats because they are trivial matters in comparison to what he does discuss. The macro economic impact of private debt, which he shows in many of his posts has a strong and direct correlation with house prices.

In a similar way, you appear not to understand the relevance of the ramifications of the lack of a weak axiom of revealed preference existing for markets. Thats relevant for just about everything you are saying, the relevance being, a market doesn't have to reduce costs. De-regulation doesn't need to bring down costs, in fact it could raise them (even given the infinitely unlikely possibility that you happened to find the market in an equilibrium).

Your complete ignorance of anything relevant is quite palpable in the further conclusion that corporate tax is a "spite tax", I guess the implication being that a low tax economy would be more stable. John Galbraith draws the opposite conclusion in fact, the boom and bust cycles inherent in the capitalist economy are tempered by a regressive income tax structure (which of course must include significant corporate tax) based largely on Keynes theory of economics.

http://lachlan.bluehaze.com.au/books/galbraith_money.html

Galbraith doesn't make a great technical case for the influence of this on debt, or inflation, but its pretty apparant that this takes off along with Thatcher and supply-side economics being visited apon the UK economy.

http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2012/03/15/economics-without-a-blind-spot-on-debt/

I refuse to pander to mistaken notions of economics which happened to be state of the art circa the enlightenment. That is of course not a dis-service to enlightenment thought but a whole hearted endoursement of its true spirit.

by PhilBest | 27th Mar 12, 10:04am 1332795852

Shows how much YOU know, if you think what Keen is talking about has nothing to do with everything I am talking about.

The explosion in debt is everything to do with both fractional reserve banking AND urban growth restrictions. Keen may not yet be as intelligent as he could be about urban growth boundaries, but he has long since covered the matter of fractional reserve banking and probably assumes his readers to be intelligent enough to keep the role of fractional reserve banking in their minds as he discusses further implications. In fact, what he says makes no sense at all otherwise.

But household debt is lower and much more stable in all the cities in the USA where house prices are low and stable, because of an absence of growth constraints. The US economy is in the least trouble among world's economies because so much of it didn't have a bubble at all. It is countries like NZ and Ireland and Spain that are utterly stuffed because we didn't have a single zone of sanity where households and businesses could escape to to get on with life without having to load up with mortgage debt.

What JK Galbraith said, is nothing to do with corporate taxes. You show your ignorance, along with tragically high numbers of people in modern society, of the fact that company profits are not anybody's income; they are not anybody's income until they are distributed as dividends. You can tax incomes including dividends, as high as you like, without cutting of your economic nose to spite your face by strangling every growing new business in its cradle by taking a significant share of its on-paper profits off it, just when it needs cash to pay for increased stock and debtors and new equipment and so on.

But as I often say, the leaders of "labour" are simply far too thick to understand any of this; or else they are actual Quislings out to destroy the economy.

by Living in Clover | 22nd Mar 12, 9:05pm 1332403505

Who would want to be a politician and listen to all that puffery and pontification all day, everyday!.

It's a wonder anything gets done at all.....

by Chris_J | 23rd Mar 12, 12:18am 1332415121

What a disgraceful performance from Gerry!

It is clear to all that the red zone offers are unfair, to argue that they are indeed fair defies logic. How does paying an arbitrary amount become fair?

There are about 7000 red zoned properties. I would estimate that about 2000 had GVs well above market value. Probably 3000 had GVs at around market value. About 2000 would have had GVs below market value - many of those significantly below.

Some GVs were over $100,000 above market value. One property on the market in Keller St Avonside at the time of the first earthquakes was advertised at 30% less than GV - ie the Government offer was 50% above market value!

Another had sold just before the Govt offer for just 25% of its GV land value, (this was 8a Rupert Place).

If the offers had been based on market value (which is actually what EQC insure for) everyone would have had a fair result.

The reality is that many people with lightly damaged homes in the red zones may be better holding out and taking the EQC land insurance plus the private house payout AND keeping the house and either renting it or keep living in it. For example if you have a renovated house that is slightly out of level or has a crack in the floor but is still fairly ok (like about 40% of red zone properties) which had a market value of say $450k and a market land value of say $175k but with a GV of say $300k total with a land value of $100k, then:

you could perhaps fight for the full replacement payout from the private insurer which might be $400k (towards a new build or replacement property) and EQC are liable for the market value of the land up to 500m2 which is pretty much the $175k market value PLUS you can keep the house and land and perhaps keep it rented.

So holding out and fighting for full replacement and the EQC land entitlement could net $575k PLUS keeping the red zoned property, where as giving in and taking the Govt offer of $300k would leave you $150k out of pocket.

It is completely unfair how the Govt is dealing with this and it makes absolutely no sense why they would do this, when in fact making a fair offer would on average cost no more and all we have now is the people for whom the deal is a winner, taking the offer, and those for whom it is a dud deal sticking their toes in.

What has someone in the situation above got to lose by refusing the Govt deal? They have full replacement insurance and EQC cover market value of the land to 500m2 - I'd say if red zoners are in doubt they have nothing to lose sticking their toes in at all. The Govt CANNOT confiscate property without paying compensation, and clearly the courts are willing to throw out unfair decisions made by Govts (ie Crafar).

by robby217 | 23rd Mar 12, 1:54pm 1332464086

I think Rupert Pl. is pertainant from the standpoint of the term 'market value', as this area was affected by the lateral spreading being within the river loop etc, the haircut taken on that land basically is the new market value. If you had a 50-80yr time horizon it could become valuable once again even if just for a small commercial structure, given the surrounding area could become a park.

So what is being argued is what historical value should be paid out by insurers, whether this is a historical rated value, or a 'market value'. But the latter is a rather ethereal, how do you determine what the market value actually was at a given time without having sold it at that time.

This being the case it would be interesting if the govt. left open the door for a 3rd option, ie. do battle with EQC+Insurer yourself to come to a payout agreement.

Why houses aren't paid out at replacement cost (taking into account the actual policy you had), and land based on the rated value of what you had.

Hard to think you could get away with renting out a red zone property given that eventually council sevices will likely be removed and future insurance would be difficult, for both home owner and renter. EQC would certainly not cover it again, otherwise what is the point in having the government intervene and declare a 'red zone'.

I'm not disagreeing with the premise that there is inequality here, but that was always going to be the case once the government intervened, ie green zoners wanting to go red and red zoners wanting to stay green.

by steven | 23rd Mar 12, 11:35am 1332455733

Your usual standard I see, lets look at "rate of discovery of fossil fuel reserves has continued to rise unabated" in terms of actiual graphs or data because discoveries peaked in the 1960s and are negligable by comparison today.

So URL please?

As a oil geologist said a few years back just about every square yard of the planet seens to have been gone over on average 4 times, each time by different oil companies looking for oil. What has found has been found....anything else is at best creative accountancy, or more likely, fraud.

Oil is relevent because without it nothing else will be "the same but bigger than the past" moving forward.......

regards

by robby217 | 23rd Mar 12, 2:25pm 1332465922

Seriously guys does every single article have to devolve into a discussion of oil supplies?

Can't you pick your moments a bit better ...

by PhilBest | 23rd Mar 12, 7:08pm 1332482888

Exactly, Robby217, I have complained again and again to B Hickey et al about this. There are other blogs where the Malthusians should hang out. People who come to a site like Interest.Co.Nz want to just get on with discussing serious stuff like urban economics or whatever else is relevant to the subject of the thread.

Hickey should devote one thread to discussions of peak oil and resource alarm, and any time this subject is raised on an irrelevant thread, the comments should be deleted along with an editorial note that the person's comment has been redirected to the dedicated "resources debate" thread.

I wouldn't mind having all my anti-Malthusian arguments concentrated in one place along with the Malthusians arguments.

by robby217 | 23rd Mar 12, 7:42pm 1332484931

Hell I'd even suggest pdk and steven get a weekly column.

by David B | 23rd Mar 12, 8:44pm 1332488681

Hear, hear, Phil, I totally agree with you. Sadly and inexplicably, Bernard Hickey won't do anything about it, but I wonder if he realises the extent to which the 4-5 Malthusian nutcases that rush to smother and smear every single thread here with their antisocial agenda, not only damages the credibility of this site but seriously detracts from its overall stated purpose?

by steven | 23rd Mar 12, 9:43pm 1332492237

It was actually you who mentioned oil discoveries, trying to infer that oil would play no part as it wasnt a problem....and btw you have yet to prove you claim. I await.

So lets look at PBs view...its the urban land limits that seem to be the root of all evil?...v my contention that the biggest problem is a) expensive energy crippling our economy and b) the ponzi scheme we call the finance sector as its seen regulation removed...

So simple really....ppl can read the multiple sides of the story and make their own minds up which way to go.....

regards

by PhilBest | 24th Mar 12, 2:31pm 1332552666

Steven, there is "deregulation" and there is "deregulation". What YOU call "untrammelled free markets" MIGHT just be rejected by true free marketers such as followers of "the Austrian School of Economics", as dangerous rent-seeking distortions to a true free market economy.

You are getting into the area of rent-seeking in the finance sector, fractional reserve banking and so on, here. What I am saying about rent-seeking surrounding land use regulations is very much part of the same problem.

Without urban growth boundaries, much of the opportunity for rent-seeking via mortgage market securitization etc is eliminated. Without company taxes, many more productive businesses could finance their own growth instead of having to crawl over broken glass to the finance sector. Company taxes are the ultimate "spite tax" with destructive unintended consequences. Henry George got it right about "labour" and its employers actually being on the same branch of the tree; it is a tragedy that "finance" and "land owning" oligopolies succeed in introducing distortions that they can "game", with the co-operation of terminally ignorant and venal Statists, while "labour" wastes its energy fighting its own employers. The Trade Unions and the socialists should stop accepting "planning" as a sacred cow of the Left and actually support affordable housing for their constituents, against the Tory land owning rent-seekers, for once.

But that would mean getting a brain transplanted into their sloping brows.

by PhilBest | 24th Mar 12, 2:40pm 1332553211

I have yet to prove my claim re oil? Shows how carefully you actually read my postings.

by PhilBest | 23 Mar 12, 5:29pm

Re Oil supplies:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0622/p25s02-wogi.html

http://www.eia.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/feature_articles/2004/worldoils...

http://www.ogj.com/articles/2007/11/wec-saudi-aramco-chief-dismisses-pea...

http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm?aid=764

http://www.energyseer.com/NewPessimism.pdf

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/304/5674/1114.summary

http://www.financialsensearchive.com/stormwatch/geo/pastanalysis/2006/05...

In any case, oil is not the only energy source, and nor is it anything like the main cost of "automobility" or anything else that uses energy. The REAL cost of the "lowest-cost automobility" option is far lower now than 30 years ago in spite of the increases in oil prices. There was no way, 30 years ago, you could have got cheaper automobility as a fraction of your income, than you can today by buying a 12 year old 1300cc Japanese car.

Then there is the fact that technological progress actually continues today in spite of the political Luddites best efforts to stop it and thus fulfill their own prophecies........But I am breaking my own rules about thread topic diversion. I wish all these arguments we have had again and again and again (on the rare occasion I am on interest.co.nz unlike the perennial presence of the Malthusaians - goodness knows what they get away with when there is no-one bothered to call their bluff and BS) could be collated on a single thread and contained there in perpetuity.

by marewa | 24th Mar 12, 5:14pm 1332562494

Ok, I'll bite. I had a look at your first reference. Dated, predicted outcomes didn't eventuate, data doesn't reflect what has happened in the seven years since, and contains conflicting opinion from a professor of physics in Sweden (and president of the ASPO).

And this helps your case how?

regards.

by steven | 24th Mar 12, 5:22pm 1332562927

Par for the course...so if you follow PhilBest's advice you are making life impacting decisions based on lies, or old data, or no data or a political outlook that is fring of the fringe........at best you have luck on your side that he might be lucky and correct....

Hence why I and others pull him up, welocme to join us.

regards

by andyh | 24th Mar 12, 6:02pm 1332565350

Have to say Phil thats a pretty shonky, largely out of date collection of anti-peakoil links you've managed to cobble together there fella. Jeez man if you'd have asked even I would have provided you with a few more up to date anti-peakoil propaganda pieces than that.....

Its no fun tormenting the rednecks when their ammunition is so stale.

by marewa | 24th Mar 12, 5:22pm 1332562966

Oh, and another thing. That 2007 Aramco link, number three. This is a little more recent from the same people (2 days ago) Aramco to import more fuel on supply shortage...

by steven | 24th Mar 12, 7:12pm 1332569555

You confuse yourself but hopefully no one else. I dont know what you hope to achieve expect political points, trouble is even if your wacky ideas were correct they are nullified by us all being post-peak oil...

I dont know where to start on this really....its all so wrong, I cant believe anyone post this rubbish without knowing its false and in gross error.

I can but assume your intensions are malicious.

the first is

csmonitor? christian science? oh come on, they are not even rational but fundi wackos. CERA is unbelievable....and guess what that piece is post 2008 peak and yes we had a recession which killed demand, hence the price collapsed....nothing what so ever to do with supply.

Over the next 5 years there will be 13mbpd coming on line, except we are losing 7mbpd per year....so over 5years there nees / needed to be 35mbpd, oh dear, simple maths that one.

OPEC 45 from 38, even Saudi says that wont happen....they are the only one with known spare, except Iraq that can probably double its present ooutput in say 5 to 8 years...still way off...when you consider the NET position, ie others declining and internal use growing signficantly...

CERA predicted a growth from 2004 to 2010 of 11 million....the actual increase was.....oh um....

You may care to look at this to realise CERA is drivel,

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7831

Or if you want 82 grew to 86.....only 4....kind of blows out CERA....then there is 3rd world demand also on that link.

However this is all liquids and not crude oil production, ie liquid content of gas or condensates...is 83 to 6, actual crude 74.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7909

Or 72 to 74, so 2 v 11....CERA over-estimated by 500+%....the expected growth..ASPO said pretty much zero...

This is one of the best Ive seen looking at the expected fall in output...

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7785

dates April 2011.....so les than a year old.

The second one is dated 2004, or 8 years old.....and based on 2000 data, or 12 years old info....its obsolete, long surpased.

The third is 2007, so 5 years old....and is from a vested interest, aramco....hardly verifiable and in fact long known to be questioanble.

the fourth is 2008 and again aramco.....vested and un-verifable...see above.

fitfh, a decade old, using data over that...critque of others work but offers no real alternatives ie has proved accurate.

Here it seems he's been shown to be wrong for many years,

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-romm/michael-lynch-who-predict_b_2…

One of lynch's quotes from 2009,

"Oil remains abundant, and the price will likely come down closer to the historical level of $30 a barrel as new supplies come forward...."

Im sorry but where is oil proving to be $30?

sixth I cant read as its a paywall but is 2004 again...

7th is long debunked....

Oil is the transport source with a return of 30 to 1 or better....there is not other and transport is about 70% of our needs...

You are the luddite, or maybe reverse-luddite you have no idea on technology what so ever.......so are praying for future tech that only exists in you imagination as its solves your problem....delusional comes to mind.

Bluff and BS, go for it, clearly this is actually you....you have no substance.

regards

by PhilBest | 26th Mar 12, 4:00pm 1332730822

LIKE, the doomsayers on your side, have ever been RIGHT; with their predictions re 1980, made in 1970; and their predications re 1990, made in 1980; and their predictions re 2000, made in 1990; and their predications re 2010, made in 2000.........

Paul Ehrlich, Lester Brown, guffaw, guffaw.

On the contrary, Julian Simon, right again and again.

The chutzpah from your side is astonishing.

Of course it's always, "we are about to be proved right THIS time....."

And no-one ever admits that their proposed fascisms for dealing with the alleged scare, would have done immense harm had we been stupid enought to implement them.

by Andrew R | 24th Mar 12, 4:37pm 1332560252

It strikes me that the future of our energy supply is a pretty basic economic consideration.

Really I get the impression you just want inconvenient truths (i.e. those who fundamentally disagree with you) to be censored from this site.

by steven | 23rd Mar 12, 9:36pm 1332491811

Well,

a) Its threads within threads...so you can ignore a particular thread if you chose.

b) Any investment carries risk and if you ignore the biggest when making a decision then the decision could be a bad one.

Everything we have done for the last say 60 years and been based on more and more fossil fuel useage to underwrite growth being available. Cheap and plentiful energy has been an un-important part of the equation......safely (mostly) ignored, this is no longer the case....

regards

by Alex13 | 23rd Mar 12, 9:48pm 1332492488

Oh no, not the "energy" banalities again... Seriously, trite or freaky stuff can be amusing only for a short while if at all...

by waymad | 23rd Mar 12, 11:47am 1332456453

Some actual local knowledge is needed to make sense of this (the subject is red-zone offers in Bexley, riiiight?)

Point #1 - you're buying the neighborhood when you buy a house. HOUSING101.

Point#2 - the neighborhood is made up of yer - quelle surprise - neighbours

Point #3 - the riverside red zones in Chch are (were?) a varied lot - in school terms, decile 1 through 10.

Arncliff street in Bexley was decile 1.

Hence the values.

Hence Lianne's noble choice to live there, buys the neighborhood, and reaps the whirlwind.

Now if she'd lived in Avonside (relatively leafy, about 1.5 km upstream) there would have been a few cloth-cap principles compromised, but the LV part of the GV would have seen her about square, $ wise.

Yer pays yer money, yer takes yer choices....

by PhilBest | 24th Mar 12, 2:42pm 1332553364

Recent research by Lancare illustrates the "explosion" these past 13 years throughout New Zealand of lifestyle blocks from 100,000 to 175,000 - so that now these "consume" more than 8.700 square kilometres of our land area, in contrast to our urban areas which comprise just 2,000 square kilometres of our land area (0.70%).

This is certainly very much a consequence of the massive differences in land prices per square foot inside urban boundaries and outside them.

by powerdownkiwi | 26th Mar 12, 6:48pm 1332740915

I presume you mean Landcare.

That's not an explosion, it's not eve a doubling. Simon would say there is infinite space, no limits. If he was so right, why are you so worried?

If he was right about there being infinite resources, and no space constraints, presumably the cockies can just squeeze up their animals in the direction of Infinite carrying capacity, and you types can put an infinite number of dwellings on an infinitely-small section, while sucking to infinite supply of oil from beneath it.

Stupid, doesn't even come close to describing Simon, but the question of those who would parrot him, is what's the vested interest?

by PhilBest | 27th Mar 12, 10:13am 1332796423

PDK, you never actually get the point. I have no problem with an "explosion" in lifestyle block living, except in so far that it is a consequence of the racket in land inside the urban boundary.

If our actual urban areas had grown that much, it certainly would be getting described as an "explosion" by all the hysterical Malthusian idiots who are agonising over suggestions that NZ could perhaps have allowed its 0.7% of urbanised land to grow to as much as 0.9%, shock, horror, genufluct and say ten "hail Gaia mothers".

As for "vested interests" it is obvious that you are a classic land bank racketeer yourself. And you have the chutzpah to get all affronted at the suggestion, when nothing else can possibly explain your sheer intransigence on the simple issue of "boundary line drawn by a regulator: land inside it suddenly worth millions per acre, land outside it still worth under $10,000 per acre".

I don't give a stuff about resource runout etc, this is a separate issue and no reason whatsoever to run rackets in urban land at the expense of young people and anyone who did not buy their first home before the racket started.

Stop wasting our time on this blog with what is either pig-s----t ignorance or shameless self interest.