Monthly Archives: August 2014
Amazon and its human robots
Further to an earlier post on robots, automation and their future effect on employment is this Salon excerpt from the book “Mindless: Why smarter machines are making dumber humans” by Simon Head. Its case study of some of Amazon’s warehousing operations around the world shows why for many jobs, being replaced by a robot will be […]
National and Labour in denial on housing affordability
National’s big election initative on housing was a woeful anti-climax. The offer to top up qualifying first home buyer’s Kiwisaver deposits does nothing to address affordability. Indeed if the First Home Buyer subsidies of Australia and Britain are any indication it will drive affordability further out of reach as rising prices more than outweigh slightly larger […]
Robots, Unemployment and the Universal Basic Income
Remember the futurist dream of the 50’s and 60’s? The one where machines, computers and robots did all the menial jobs and provided not only business with increased productivity but employees better job fulfillment and more leisure time. It might still happen but it is going to take a radical change in the status quo […]
MAD DOGS and whales
It seems ironically fitting that the “whale”, as Cameron Slater likes to refer to himself, should be in Israel when Dirty Politics broke cover. This is because not only is Israeli politics a hornets nest of internecine warfare, but also because of Israel’s promotion of its “Mad Dog” persona and the Samson Option, the threat to bring […]
What Whale Oil says about us
With a face only the most one eyed mother could love and an oral orifice that delights in spewing forth personal bile, Cameron Slater is either a very clever, self promoting narcissist or a self loathing creep looking for attention. Maybe both. The saddest thing Nicky Hager’s book Dirty Politics causes us to reflect on, is […]
Print some money for Christchurch
The debt problems of the Christchurch and Auckland City Councils have been in the news of late. Now I’m not going to defend the records of the last few administrations in those cities. In Auckland in particular there seems to be a meglomaniac desire to become a “global centre” with all the trappings, to play […]
nz youth: Burn more flags and shout all you like
The Internet/Mana alliance has been a breath of fresh air into the stale status quo of New Zealand politics. Not for Hone Harawira or Kim Dot Com the poll driven, focus grouped, bland pronunciations of Labour and National, and increasingly the Greens, boldly trying to offend as few of the smug bourgeois “centre” vote as […]
Time for New Zealand to leave the UN
The United Nations like the League of Nations that preceded it is nothing but a sham, a pretence for civilised debate while the economic and military behemoths of the world serve their own interests, regardless of what is expressed in its chambers and with impunity thanks to the ludicrous Security Council veto. Little old New Zealand, who so […]
Your money starts life as debt – Its official!
If there was any remaining doubt the Bank of England has confirmed what heterodox economists have been saying for decades. The economic text books are wrong. Banks do not accept deposits from savers and intermediate them into loans to borrowers. Nor do they rely on the multiplier effect or are limited by reserves. The loans in fact […]
Where are you on Gaza Helen Clark?
Having a browse of Helen Clark’s tweets of late you could be forgiven for thinking she has no strong personal position on Gaza. A number of retweets, mostly from the BBC, that bastion of British conservatism, reporting casualties in Gaza does not a protest make. Sure she is not the Secretary General but she is in […]
unframed 