Robert Taylor and idleidolidyll's political debating thread

[Robert Taylor]

This Naomi Klein anti-"corporatist" propaganda is nauseatingly irritating.

McDonald's Corporation set itself up in New Zealand almost 30 years ago. In that time it has sourced almost all of its ingredients, premises and fit-out from local suppliers, provided employment for thousands of people, paid taxes and offered choices to fast-food consumers that didn't exist before. It has also contributed to significant growth in New Zealand's fast food industry, paving the way for other franchised operators, most of whom are turning a dollar as well.

To blame McDonald's for New Zealand's current fascination with processed fast foods is facile and misleading. There are other more significant drivers of this trend, like diminishing household incomes (in real dollar terms), largely due to left-wing idealists who want us to be all equally poor, backward and oppressed.

What is the crime in economic growth? What is wrong with success? Surely a desirable objective must be to produce a bigger economic "cake" for all New Zealanders, rather than obsessing about "fairly" allocating a cake that gets smaller every year?

Hankering for the good old days when you had to wait half an hour for some greasy spoon proprietor to engineer a Hawaiian burger or heavily club a lump of shark into submission is taking an overly rose-tinted view of those times.

All things in moderation. And let whoever wants to move into New Zealand and ply their trade or craft do so. I hope they're successful in contributing choices profitably and sustainably.

We have a plethora of people in Parliament that have no business sense and have been closeted in the academic profffessions that are often a little isolated from the real world ( thats being kind ).

So do you wonder at the nonsense that is being spewed forth from that top heavy juggernaut?

The A4 Skyhawks are going to be moved outside of their storage hangers and ''protected'' against the elements by some sort of high tech cling film. And it actually fell out of a ministers mouth that being outside they wont deteriorate! Saddam Hussein was also a harmless everyday family man....

I agree with what you say ''all things in moderation''. Heck it would be possible to have a small number of apolitical PRACTICAL people running the country who are both business friendly ( business generates tax ) and compassionate/ proactive about every citizen having equal opportunity and a decent standard of living. That would involve removing the squandering and thieving bu....it that is happening at opposite ends of the food chain.

[Clockwork]

To blame McDonald's for New Zealand's current fascination with processed fast foods is facile and misleading. There are other more significant drivers of this trend, like diminishing household incomes (in real dollar terms), largely due to left-wing idealists who want us to be all equally poor, backward and oppressed.

But if the politcal right-wing wants us all to be wealthy, educated and free..... who will they get to do all the dirty jobs and work for minimum wage? From where will they get their margin? How will they undercut their competitors?

[Robert Taylor]

But if the politcal right-wing wants us all to be wealthy, educated and free..... who will they get to do all the dirty jobs and work for minimum wage? From where will they get their margin? How will they undercut their competitors?

In summary....''us and them, us and them, us and them........''

Dont we all need to get over this?

[Hitcher]

But if the politcal right-wing wants us all to be wealthy, educated and free..... who will they get to do all the dirty jobs and work for minimum wage? From where will they get their margin? How will they undercut their competitors?

Business success isn't just about undercutting one's competitors. That presumes that people always buy on price. They only do that when there is no other point of differentiation between competing products. Discounting is a fundamentally flawed proposition on so many levels.

The first rule of business is always to stay in business, but there are only two drivers of this: providing outstanding customer service, and constant innovation. Failure to do either will result in business failure at some point.

And "dirty" jobs will always be with us -- like death and taxes. Ultimately the market will determine rates of pay and conditions of employment. Unnecessary regulation foisted on people by the politically correct who obsess about "fairness" will always distort the market, generally to the detriment of those whose livelihoods are depend on those roles.

[Clockwork]

Business success isn't just about undercutting one's competitors. That presumes that people always buy on price. They only do that when there is no other point of differentiation between competing products. Discounting is a fundamentally flawed proposition on so many levels.

Ulimately that's entirley what it comes down to. Even when businesses don't sell at the bottom end of the market they will still look to maximise their bottom line by minimising labour costs...... Nike for instance.

Directors of any company only have a duty to maximise the return to the company's shareholders. That requires selling at the highest price the market will bear and manufacturing for the lowest price available. To act in any other way (without contraint such as laws to protect workers, consumers, environement etc) would be to sell the shareholders short.

[Hitcher]

Directors of any company only have a duty to maximise the return to the company's shareholders.

That should be true, but this goal shouldn't condone blatant exploitation or the taking of an anal short-term view. Most company directors in New Zealand are woeful and have little appreciation about operating sustainably successful businesses. This is hardly surprising, because senior managers in New Zealand are equally woeful. Lack of role models, or managers in roles that are well out of their depth and who have no understanding or appreciation of what constitutes best practice generally means they and their businesses are doomed to continually make the same mistakes they've always made.

I hate short-termism almost as much as I hate managers who blindly implement the "latest" business model without first considering what sort of business they're in and developing a clear and compelling vision of what "success" looks like.

[Ocean1]

Ulimately that's entirley what it comes down to. Even when businesses don't sell at the bottom end of the market they will still look to maximise their bottom line by minimising labour costs...... Nike for instance.

Directors of any company only have a duty to maximise the return to the company's shareholders. That requires selling at the highest price the market will bear and manufacturing for the lowest price available. To act in any other way (without contraint such as laws to protect workers, consumers, environement etc) would be to sell the shareholders short.

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[Clockwork]

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I'm simply saying that Government has a responsibilty to regulate commerce for the benefit of society. I suspect that makes me a socialist, in part at least.

[Hitcher]

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I'm simply saying that Government has a responsibilty to regulate commerce for the benefit of society. I suspect that makes me a socialist, in part at least.

Depends what you mean by "regulation". Most governments, left-leaning ones in particular, have no understanding of business. Any commercial experience they have comes from running meat raffles, and they have trade unionists in their ears constantly harping about what a pack of pricks business owners are. Consequently that's what underpins their regulatory approach. All businesses want is lower compliance costs and government (at all levels) out of their tills. Is that too much to ask?

[Ocean1]

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I'm simply saying that Government has a responsibilty to regulate commerce for the benefit of society. I suspect that makes me a socialist, in part at least.

Fairy nuff, (to quote Viffer).

I ain't interested in any debate using labels like socialist or capitalist though.

Indulge me while I think out loud if you would, feel free to point out where I get it wrong.

People get their tits in a knot over money, without ever thinking exactly what it is. In order to manipulate anything at all it's vital that you understand the processes involved and the effects different interventions have on those processes.

Money is a unit of value. That's it, nothing more or less, if we didn't have it we'd be trading skills and goods physically. It shouldn't come as any surprise then that money accumulates around entities that have or trade in a high level of skill or valuable goods.

So far so good. Let's introduce the concept of tax. In order to make possible things that individual entities can't or don't do we can collect some of their goods/skills in the form of money. In some cases it's used to make infrastructure that actually helps these entities almost as much as it costs them. In other cases it's a total loss but is seen to be socially important. Some consider all taxation to be theft, and in fact the legal mechanisms that make it possible are unique. Some consider tax should be collected from each equally, and distributed so as to benefit all equally. Some see it as a way to redistribute the money itself, in order that all should have a similar lifestyle. The fundamental difference is one of equity, some require equity of opportunity and some require equity of outcome, regardless of an individual’s commercial value.

A compromise seems inevitable. However, at some point along a line of possible taxation the entities creating the value itself can't support the burden, they struggle to remain healthy. A touch further and they die. There is therefore a point at which growing taxation reduces the number and health of viable commercial entities, and therefore the overall tax taken. In establishing exactly where the point is that gains a government the highest real income it's not a bad idea to ask a financial expert rather than a politician. The answer varies, as you'd expect, but the rates of taxation I've heard suggested by such is in the order of 15% to 20% of overall GDP. Total. The ideal rate varies little between an individual and the various collective groups of individuals called companies.

This level of taxation is supposedly that which gives the government the highest actual spending power. It doesn't, however consider political goals, those motives that largely control voting behaviour. Both incorrect perceptions about how money is made and individual selfishness dictate that political parties which propose policies returning the most money to the highest number of voters will win. That's why overall taxation is some 3 times than that which would produce the best overall result.

The fact that they then fail to deliver on those election promises shouldn't come as any surprise, the function of the policies was to buy votes, not to provide the highest value overall return. This trend is relatively recent, perhaps 25 years, (although some will disagree) and it's one that has substantially reduced the value of the NZ economy, to the detriment of everyone. It's also a zero-sum trend, if it continues it WILL kill the economy dead.

Labels now eh? Socialists make no excuses about the damage they do to value-making entities, they see people in need and they don’t care who suffers in order that help is supplied. The “new right”, in an attempt to buy those very same votes claim to be pruning the apple tree in order to produce more and better apples by cutting it at ground level.

[James Deuce]

The A4 Skyhawks are going to be moved outside of their storage hangers and ''protected'' against the elements by some sort of high tech cling film.

That's actually standard operating procedure at the USAF/USN "boneyard" in Arizona, however there are a certain percentage of aircraft that are maintained at readiness and serviced every 6 months - it's not unusual to see Skyhawks, Prowlers, Intruders, Corsair IIs, F16As (some of them are the ones that were offered to us) and Phantoms running a few circuits. However Arizona is very dry and the soil is a neutral PH. Our Skyhawks have been stored in a much more hostile environment, even indoors, and there is no way anyone will buy them now. They've been unserviceable far too long and simply need to be chopped up for scrap.

[Clockwork]

Depends what you mean by "regulation". Most governments, left-leaning ones in particular, have no understanding of business. Any commercial experience they have comes from running meat raffles, and they have trade unionists in their ears constantly harping about what a pack of pricks business owners are. Consequently that's what underpins their regulatory approach. All businesses want is lower compliance costs and government (at all levels) out of their tills. Is that too much to ask?

You are probably right, Governments are often incompetant when designing rules and regulatons, frequently bureaucratic and inefficient. But I don't think that is just the fault of Governemnt. I work for a Very profitable high street bank, they too have lots of rules and regulations in place to protect themselves from fraud/incompetence/risk etc... From my point of view many of their rules are equally absurd and must be costing the company a fortune. In both cases though, the problem is not the objective but the execution. I don't think business without rules is the solution.

[Clockwork]

...
The fundamental difference is one of equity, some require equity of opportunity and some require equity of outcome, regardless of an individual’s commercial value.

A compromise seems inevitable. ...

Arn't we simply debating where the compromise should lie?

To be honest I see Social welfare as a cross between an insurance policy against rampant crime/civil unrest and an excuse for not being as charitable as perhaps I should be.

[Hitcher]

I don't think business without rules is the solution.

Neither do I. The issues are "what sort of rules?" and "how many are necessary?"

Sounds like your bank could stand a visit from Cardinal Finn and his team of business process inquisitors.

[jrandom]

Sounds like your bank could stand a visit...

Nobody expects the Finnish inquisition!