What transforms a raw material into a resource is knowledge — knowledge of how that stuff might satisfy a human need, and how to place it in a causal connection to satisfy that need. (The great Carl Menger explained this process way back in 1870!) And since new knowledge is potentially limitless, so too are resources.
Infinite, because the ultimate resource is the human mind. – Peter Creswell
School should be a safe place. Home should be a safe place. Surely there is nobody, nobody who would speak against a ban on cell phones in schools? It’s a good move.– Kerre Woodham
I’m putting ambition, achievement and outcomes at the heart of our education system. I want every child to be inspired and engaged in their learning so they can achieve to the best of their ability and gain skills and qualifications that will support them into further study and employment.
Children and young people at school today are New Zealand’s future. Receiving a world-leading education not only sets children up for success, it sets New Zealand up for success – economically and socially.
But our declining achievement statistics clearly show that the school system is not delivering for all students. To turn this around, we need to make fundamental changes, including getting back to basics. – Erica Stanford
Well, it’s pretty hard [to impose anything considered crushing] in the New Zealand sentencing regime. – Judge Brooke Gibson
The fundamentals of this idea work, right? Phones are distracting, we all know this because we’ve all got one. And if they’re distracting to adults, who have some degree of self-discipline, they’re going to be much more distracting to kids.
And distraction is bad for grades and it’s bad for behaviour, so if we follow it through – obviously it’s common sense to take the phones out of schools.
There are too many naysayers on every suggestion nowadays, so the lesson I’m taking is – in the future, ignore them. – Heather du Plessis-Allan
I just saw the gun and thought f*** that, I’m tired of cowboys running this town, infesting the Viaduct, and it’s time we acted to bring this s*** to an end and make these lunatics accountable,– Leo Molloy
Competition is nearly always the best way to regulate markets and ensure that consumers win. It is a powerful force for improved asset allocation and driving prices down, it drives productivity improvements and is a massive spur for innovation. It is a hugely positive economic force.
Too often we downplay it here because “New Zealand is small”, or “you need scale”, or people might not want to run businesses here, or because it’s inefficient, or allegedly unfriendly to the people that work in the industry. Or it’s just not that important.
Yet without it we become a slow-moving cost-plus economy where only those already winning win. – Steven Joyce
If you – like me – loathe authoritarian, faux-progressive scolds, it’s actually been a good few years. I know it might not seem like it, with the ‘Queers for Palestine’ contingent currently running riot on American university campuses, but hear me out. Across the Anglosphere, one politician after another, beloved by the media but increasingly disliked by the public, have exited the stage, often jumping before they were pushed. – Tom Slater
Covid added further fuel to this fear and loathing of the populace. Politicians, already gripped by the panic about supposedly dim, irresponsible voters being manipulated by disinformation, gave full vent to their most authoritarian tendencies – locking us down and raging against any dissent. Arguably, no one did so as enthusiastically as New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern, who was showered with praise by the globalist great and good for subjecting her own citizens to an unhinged ‘Zero Covid’ experiment. Naturally, she also became a campaigner for global censorship during this time, telling the United Nations in 2022 that ‘misinformation’ constituted a modern ‘weapon of war’, and calling on global leaders to confront climate-change deniers and peddlers of ‘hate’. She announced her resignation as prime minister and Labour leader in January 2023, just as she was enjoying her lowest-ever poll ratings while in office, all to the swoons of international media. – Tom Slater
Politicians seem to be going out of their way to alienate and infuriate voters, pursuing unpopular policies at the very same time as they demonise and clamp down on debate. On climate, they have embraced a programme of national immiseration, to be borne on the backs of the working classes, who are expected to just accept being colder, poorer and less mobile. On immigration, they have thrown open the doors to migrants and refugees on an unprecedented scale, without seeking public consent and without ensuring proper provision for – or vetting of – those arriving. On culture, they have embraced a new form of racism under the banner of anti-racism, and a misogyny and homophobia posing as ‘trans inclusion’. Meanwhile, voters are beginning to realise that all those calls to censor ‘hate’ and ‘misinformation’ are calls to censor them. – Tom Slater
Wokeism. Climate extremism. Kindly authoritarianism. This is now the operating system of Western, ‘centrist’ politics. – Tom Slater
Everywhere, political leaders are pursuing the same batshit, authoritarian policies and everywhere they are colliding with reality – and the electorate. Yousaf, Varadkar, Sturgeon and Ardern may have stepped down, but they did so in the face of growing public fury. Biden and Trudeau may not get the same privilege. Plus, while technocratic centrists remain in power or the ascendancy in various nations, they are at least being forced to adapt, albeit insincerely, to the new political reality – one in which voters are increasingly unwilling to put up with the punishing green policies, out-of-control transgenderism and woke censorship that have been rammed down their throats for years. – Tom Slater
The new authoritarianism is far from defeated. It is a feature, not a bug, of our technocratic ruling class. Worse than that, it is what gives our leaders meaning. The conviction that they are saving the world from a climate armageddon, that they are the protectors of all those supposedly easily offended minorities, that they must censor and re-educate the masses for our own good, has provided moral purpose to an otherwise simpleminded and disorientated elite. It won’t be easy to dislodge this stuff. But as one political leader after another exits the stage, having shredded their authority with voters, we see that the common sense of the demos remains our greatest defence against the insanity of the elites – if only we can find better ways to channel it. If there is hope, it lies in the masses. Always. – Tom Slater
Rebating GST on rates to council pushes councils away from user charging on stuff that can reasonably be user-charged. It also distorts toward council over private service delivery – at the margin, some things best provided privately get shifted into council’s wheelhouse because council provision is tax-preferred.
And if you set it instead such that councils get a GST rebate on both rates and user charges, you still have the distortion toward council over private provision. – Eric Crampton
Climbing is an exercise in self-absorption. There is nothing mystical about it. You don’t take in the view. You don’t commune with the mountain. You plant your stick and take two steps and plant your stick and take two more. Your eyes are down, your breath is audible and your indomitable will is in dialogue with your domitable flesh. Go on, says the will. Stop, says the flesh. – Joe Bennett
There’s a lot to be said for being a cattle beast. You live with friends. Your food is all about you. You own nothing but an ear tag. And castration frees you from the main source of worry and expense. Admittedly you make one bad journey in the end, but you don’t see it coming, and your mates go with you. And you’re spared the horrors of old age. – Joe Bennett
The Reserve Bank’s prudential and monetary roles should be split across two separate agencies. A monetary authority with independence in the use of monetary policy to keep inflation within tight bounds. And a prudential side restricted to dealing with actual prudential risk. – Eric Crampton
Retirement. I do not understand it. I do not comprehend it. I cannot fathom why a person would remove themselves from the joy of commercial life by choosing to play golf or spend more time with the grand children, as if grand children had any desire to play bridge with old people who smell of cabbages.
I do not fear death, although I’m not excited about the prospect. What I fear is irrelevance. Of being locked out of meetings that I do not wish to attend, of not responding to emails that, as I type, are demanding attention, of not having urgent calls to screen.
Moments to myself are precious because they are a break from the endless demands from family, colleagues, clients, editors, creditors, regulators, social media trolls and the relentless pressure to find enough cash to cover the wages bill every week.
I love these demands. They tell me, or at least create the illusion, that I am wanted, or perhaps just needed. That my existence matters, if not to humanity but to those within my circle. If this was to vanish, if I was to spend my days pottering about the garden reading books for pleasure rather than for purpose, for what do I exist? – Damien Grant
Homepaddock 
[…] Quotes of the week […]
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