|
A letter to the editors and other policy makers of New Zealand
What'smynumber? It's a revealing question. Since 1992 you and I are no longer exist
as citizens with rights to conserve our electrical potential. We are now
owned by "energy corporations" and have become mere tradeable
commodities and are now mere "energy numbers".
August
2011
I
would like to draw your attention to the intense election campaign that
started several weeks ago. In many ways its political impact is almost
certain to prove to be far more potent than the official campaigns that
have yet to start. This is because the era of Cheap Mineral Oil/Gas has
just passed and thus this election occurs at a pivotal point in history. We
will be formally voting against or for an orderly transition to a new
era. We will be voting for whether NZ is a proponent of global warfare
or a saviour from such a catastrophic event.
(Such
as event is an imminent prospect as money is rapidly becoming debased as
a means of exchange and storing wealth because it has no longer has real
collateral in cheap mineral oil. We are seeing nations becoming
desperate and making futile attempts to provide real collateral for
their currencies by inflating the value of other minerals such as gold.
These activities form a recipe for war.)
Last
elections we made pivotal decisions about how we use our carbon
potential. Tragically our media were completely distracted by allegations
that Winston Peters had acted in an improper way. Thus there was
very little intelligent comment in our media on the central issue of the
day: how do we best conserve our carbon potential?
As
some of us predicted, as soon as the ETS regime became law the Winston
Peters Distraction immediately ceased. It had served its purpose and
diverted critical discourse. While we were obsessing about the supposed
impropriety of Winston we New Zealanders had formally imbedded the Eronian
Carbon Trading system into our legislation, thereby destroying much of
our capacity for sovereignty, equity and stewardship. The adoption of
the ETS ethos was a major step in setting New Zealanders on a path
towards insolvency and since 2008 we have seen the predicted escalating
implosion of our wealth occur on scale with our abuse of mineral oil/gas
continuing unabated.
I
hope our media are not going to be distracted this election from the
critical issue: how do we best conserve our electrical potential so we
can survive in the post Cheap Mineral Oil/Gas Era? Will our media drop
the ball this time by being distracted by a
game of rugby?
 
A
New Zealand town is reflected in this shop window loaded with
handcrafted rugby balls. It is an example of how the World Rugby Cup
dominates our sensibilities.
Maybe
I have missed intelligent commentary on the current massive media
campaign to shape our awareness of our electrical potential?
Maybe
you have wondered how a majority of people can profess to be against the
privatization of our remaining SOEs (Meridian Energy, Mighty River
Power, Genesis Energy and Solid Energy) while also professing to support
the Parties who intend to privatize them? Polls
indicate 60% are against the sale proposal while 60% intend to
vote for the parties pusing the sale.Well the dissonance may not be
what it appears to be and a very subtle explanation can be found in the
names of the SOEs.
In
brief, this seeming conflicted response is actually very consistent with
our society's fatally flawed visions of the nature of energy, power and electricity.
It is testimony to the ingenious capacity of the ego for both
consistence in dissonance and denying reality. See footnote re symbol
use.
Even
if a citizen does not see much of our New Zealand television or
broadsheets or news websites it is extraordinarily difficult to avoid being clobbered by
the intensive Banker Spin providing the political framework for the
transfer of our remaining assets into the hands of the money merchants.
There
have been all the Genesis Energy ads for its bond issue to pay for the
supposed “asset swap” with Meridian Energy. The alacrity with which
Michael Cullen committed to motorways the special $700
million dividend Meridian Energy generated when it sold its
Australian windfarm assets remains memorable. There is little reason to
doubt John Key will also pour this “Meridian
dividend” into further subsidies for the oil companies i.e.
debt generation too.
Then
of course there is the usual flow of material into our letter boxes from
the likes of Contact Energy, Genesis Energy, Meridian Energy et al
inducing us to believe the Electricity Industry Reforms promote wise
uses of our electrical potential and offer us freedom of choice. (They
fail to mention, for instance, that the latest Electricity Authority
decision effectively disenfranchises citizens by entrenching the removal
of our right to own and broadcast our personal dwelling information via
their electrical meters to whom we choose.)
This sheet arrived in my letter
box this week.
It is a classic example of
the unsustainable equation:
energy = power = electricity =Bulk-generated electrical products.
Symbol use: Energy (17 ) Power (1) Electricity (4)
Meridian
Energy Symbol association: Meridian Energy; energy planning;
energy usage;
energy plan; energy needs; energy rates; energy needs; Meridian Energy
Centre;
energy bill; continuous energy; energy savings; electricity; electricity
supply;
electricity outage; power
It
is near impossible to miss the blitz of PowerShop advertisements
(featuring, for instance, our latest bogeyman Moammar Gaddafi and Richard Nixon as an
Afro-hippie). These ads accost us on our webpages, confront us from the
bus shelters lining our main roads and they loom over us from huge
billboards on high buildings.
 
  
 
Apparently the rationale is to
capture our attention by placing despots in unlikely situations. These
ads are a classic example of the ingenious capacity of the ego for
denial of change/stewardship. The irony is PowerShop is part of a
despotic regime that disempowers all New Zealanders...
Similarly
it is almost impossible not to be impacted by the current dominant
barrage of spin for the Electricity Industry Reforms and associated
privatization of our hydro dams and other devices: the What’smynumber?
campaign.
It’s
so hard to avoid. I sit in the bus waiting at the traffic lights and I
am confronted with a huge billboard with people with dollar signs
attached to their foreheads. I stand for fifteen minutes in the checkout
queue at my local bulk-supply supermarket and it is near impossible not
to be mesmerized by the row of several huge TV screens sited behind the
counters. Each relays the same parade of people with dollars signs stuck
to their forehead repeating in an endless cycle the mantra that choice
and competition is alive because of the Electricity Industry Reforms.
     
These ads are potent. There are about 1.9 million connections to the NZ
and, as of 17 September, the Electricity Authority site claims
"399,279 calculations have been made, identifying potential
savings of $62,980,879". The savings
figure quoted is meaningless for a number of reasons. They are not
actual savings from churn and the quoted average saving of $150 is
miniscule against the costs for all citizens of the Electricity Industry
Reforms.
No
one I know thinks to question the "freedom of choice" mantra. Indeed I am becoming very
aware of the extraordinary ignorance that prevails of our electrical
potential and of our nation’s history. Very few people now seem aware
of the amazing sacrifice, generosity and foresight of our grandparents
in creating and bequeathing on our Baby Boomer generation a freehold,
integrated and, for its time, a very intelligent national electrical
grid system.
There
are several reasons explaining this ignorance.
*The
Economic Reformers of NZ in this past generation actively wrote this
contribution out of the history books: Government
policy makers, media and academics speak as though the national
high voltage electrical grid miraculously sprang into existence with the
Electricity Industry Reforms. People who questioned this new regime were
stripped of their credence and brutally shut down.
*The
Economic Reformers of the 1980-90s valued the grid system at its nuts,
bolts and wires value while severely undervaluing its civil protection
and intelligence
potential. Most of its wealth potential resided in the latter.
*At
a subliminal level the Baby Boomer generation who were at the heart of the Reforms made a decision that they
would rather trade this wonderful gift from past generations for massive
subsidies to maintain their profligate car-jet lifestyles. Such
behaviour involves serious denial of stewardship/change and this is
profoundly evident in their language.
*Our
population has exploded 10% in the last decade with considerable churn.
Most people born here after the mid-seventies are too young to have
experienced the historical reality of our community-owned freehold and
democratic MEDs and Power Boards. Few have experienced the horrors of
war and witnessed severe deprivation. In other words, over half our
population lacks awareness of vital context. Labour’s policy of asset
retention reflects and speaks to a vacuum.
This
week Q/A advertised that it was going to feature a discussion
of about the proposed “asset sales”. Ever the optimist I
looked forward to a substantive discussion of how best to use our
electrical potential to successfully transition beyond Cheap Mineral
Oil/Gas. It was not to be.
Both
panel members, Don Brash
and David
Cunliffe have an enormous amount in common: both historically
evidence profound delusion in that neither understands the reality that
our economy is based on a vast under-valuation of mineral oil. Their
fundamental worldviews are almost identical.
Don
is credited with and prides himself on bringing down inflation in the
1990s using fiscal measures. The reality is mineral
oil prices descended in the period of his tenure as Reserve Bank
Governor to an absurd $US10 a barrel by 1999, which equates to an
equivalent value of 0.04 cents per man-hour of labour.
This
was the prime reason for the decrease in inflation. If mineral oil
prices had been rising then inflationary pressures would have become
explosive beyond any fiscal measure – as they are about to prove
again. Even a valuation of O.4 cents per manhour of labour equivalent
decimates the wealth of all our systems based on 0.1 cents per manhour
of labour equivalent, which most of them are now.
This
is because mineral oil does about 99% of all our lifting, pulling and
pushing as well as most of our fertilizing. This is an insane
under-valuation of this wondrous material. SUV use and mass jet travel
boomed under Don’s stewardship while most of the integrity of our
national electrical system and much of our democracy was destroyed.
David
Cunliffe is similarly delusional. He worked to destroy much of our capacity to
provide a sane, equitable valuation of mineral oil by voting in the ETS
while also voting to imbed the fatally flawed Electricity Industry
Reform legislation into our national technology.
(Note: the ETS and the EIR have the same origins and this is exemplified
in Enron. Enron of course collapsed in the biggest corporate failure in
history, causing enormous misery around the world. It’s a
warning and small precursor of what is to come if we persist with our
delusional behaviour.)
It seems fair to conclude that almost all of the media discussion of our electrical, carbon and solar
potential is occurring in this delusional framework. Thus I have been
searching for ways to alert people in our media to this dangerous vacuum
in our national discourse.
The
Electricity Authority campaign What’smynumber?
links people to the
Consumer Powerswitch and so I thought it timely to create
a short video that analyses Consumer Powerswitch using the
Sustainability Principle of Energy.
This Consumer NZ website is an ode
to unlimited consumption and non-science. It provides another classic
example of the fatally flawed equation:
energy = power= electricity =
Bulk-generated electrical products.
In just 10 of its pages pages we find the equation manifest in 128 uses
of the energy symbol, 89 uses of the power symbol and 60
uses of the electricity symbol.
I track the history of
Powerswitch’s three prime symbols (power, energy and electricity) and
show its use of them is clearly proving unsustainable, as the principle
predicts. The video also explains the drivers of this unsustainable
behaviour and illustrates the potency of the Sustainability Principle as
a psychoanalytic tool.
In
brief:
The video alludes to the barbaric Battle
of the Currents that occurred at the advent of the age of
reticulated electrical products.
     
Animals, including human beings, were burned to death using electrical
currents as an elite of brutal bankers fought for control of our
electrical potential and the wealth of our planet. Their battle for
control continues unabated.
The
video
then discusses how this evolved into
a century long war by an elite of merchant bankers on the state of
science in our communities so as to prevent the development of
distributed generation of electrical and other products that might
compete with their Bulk-generated products.
The
video makes it clear that the chronic malaise of Consumer Powerswitch
is endemic in our culture. Some of our most respected citizen’s
protection agencies act as the frontline assault troops in this war on
the state of science in our communities and wise uses of our electrical
potential.
     
Examples
shown: Greenpeace, WWF, Switchme, Ministry for Economic Development,
WWF(Australia), The Royal Society of NZ, Age Concern, Citizens Advice Bureau
We are all casualties of this war, especially our children.
The
video is entitled The
Ego and Consumer Powerswitch and you can watch it at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGaNpyNaKd8
I find writing letters such as this
one tiring and painful for a number of reasons:
I am diplopic. This letter has
taken days to write.
I can understand if it is not
welcome and know from experience that there is a very high chance the
letter will be dismissed as the work of an extremist or fool.
The insights in this letter are
largely derived from working for over two decades for “service
driven” municipal electricity departments and witnessing first hand
their transformation into “profit driven” agencies for the bankers.
* The Reform legislation effectively unleashed on scale the psychopathic
element that resides in us all. Writing the letter causes me to relive
the trauma and violence I experienced.
* These terms, “service driven”
and “profit driven”, describing imperatives are not my terms. They
were the official discourse as managers described the transition from
community-owned to banker-owned systems. The managers also explained how
they would be on a steep learning curve as they were completely
unfamiliar with managing debt because historically the community
owned-enterprises were all freehold in NZ.
I hope my endeavours to enrich our
national discourse have not been in vain.
Dave McArthur
Footnote: Our use of our prime
symbols generates and reflects our culture. Millennia of history prove
that any society that makes flawed uses of them soon implodes. You may
be interested in my correspondence
with our Minster of Education (Hon Anne Tolley).
Note the extraordinary care that
she and her officials take to avoid defining science, energy, power and
electricity. This is because they know if they provide a definition
based in the state of science then it will highlight how our national
curricula is dominated by unsustainable uses of these vital symbols. If
they provide the definitions used in our schools then they risk ridicule
when these are set against definitions based in the state of science.
Also note how the Minister’s link to a TKI page that no longer exists.
To
reiterate, this fatally flawed use of these vital symbols is endemic.
The Broadcasting Standards Authority has officially ruled that our
“energy”, “power” and “electricity” symbols can be used
interchangeably.
**********************************************
Postscript
September 2011
Gordon
Campbell explores some of the deceits surrounding the planned asset sale
in the September issue of Werewolf magazine on Scoop News. Below are my
comments in which I point out that the myths are nearly all dangerous
delusions and attempt to add a number of extra dimensions to the
discussion.
Click on picture to link to Gordon's article.
Ten Myths About Asset Sales
by Gordon Campbell
Selling down the public’s stake in
energy companies and Air NZ makes little sense, socially or economically
Comments
on article
Thank you so much
for this article Gordon. Our children will bless you for your endeavour
– if they get to survive to adulthood. This is now in doubt.
Your conclusions
that the “sale” of these assets will cost us dearly are correct.
However the article lacks context and vastly underestimates the costs of
this deeply corrupt action. Here, very briefly, are some of the reasons
why:
Myths
All our narratives are myths. The question is whether the
myth is sustainable or not. The myths surrounding the transfer of these
national assets to the global banker oligarchy are unsustainable and are
better symbolised as dangerous delusions. The exception is Air NZ, which
is a national liability.
Physics
The physics of mineral oil is that a 42-gallon barrel of mineral oil has
the energy equivalent of about 25000 man-hours of labour. It now does
99% of all our pushing, pulling, lifting and most of our soil
fertilising now. It is not a resource. It is a finite, effectively non-renewable material and
in the last two generations we have destroyed most of the wealth
inherent in global mineral oil. The only imminent alternative source of
wealth resides in wiser uses of electrical phenomena.
Diseconomics
NZ does not have an economy. We have a diseconomy in that our
use of materials is based on ever growing consumption and extreme
wasteful practices. It is, on balance, extremely non-conservative. All
our systems, including our credit system, are based on an insane
undervaluation of mineral oil $US25 a barrel or 0.1 cents per man-hour
of labour. The global price, still insanely cheap, is now approx $US100.
Consequently our diseconomy is exploding while both our real wealth and
our means of exchange is evaporating.
A secondary
driver of the diseconomy is the repeal of legislation such as the Glass
Steagall legislation, which tended to limit the risk of credit creation
to be disconnected from real collateral. This plus the immense capacity
of a few individuals to game the stockmarkets using massive computers
means that the proposed transfers of control of our SOEs to the money
speculators effectively makes them WOMD that will be used to destroy us.
Note: even some
of those swindlers who have accumulated enormous wealth through these
psychotic and corrupt trades are suddenly realising the monster they
created now threatens to devour them.
Technology
By the late 1980s it was apparent a great confluence of new technology
was occurring: “smart” dwellings and appliances broadband and solid
state metering systems. Since then the emergence of cellular radio and
the Internet have amplified this extraordinary confluence.
Until 1992 NZ
still retained real elements of democracy. Traditionally every community
in democratic ways owned its local 230-volt grid system plus its
intelligence. This localised, democratic framework meant NZ was in the
ideal position to enjoy the immense wealth potential of this great
confluence while providing humankind with a sustainable model of how we
can best use of solar, electrical and carbon potentials.
History
The first systems for reticulating electrical products in NZ
communities occurred in the 1890s and were privately owned. By about
1905 it was clear private ownership was a costly, failed model. Our
cities brought up their local company freehold, hence the Municipal
Electricity Departments. The private ownership model completely failed
rural communities and rural people formed cooperatives to build their
own freehold, democratic generation and reticulation systems from
scratch, hence the Power Boards. Thus NZ became a land in which 60
community grids serving all New Zealanders worked cooperatively
together.
By the late 1970s
Anglo-American credit systems based on the insane undervaluation of
mineral oil were imploding and the global elite of money traders were
desperate for new sources of real wealth for collateral. Our Parliament,
especially the Labour Party, obliged them by instituting Electricity
Industry Reform legislation. This, plus the “sale” of Telecom and NZ
Rail broadband, enabled the global banker oligarchy by 2000 to assume
control of most of our electrical potential and leverage credit/debt off
it.
Intelligence
The major source of wealth in the community-owned, freehold
electrical systems was the intelligence potential of the system.* This
intelligence is the capacity of the system to transfer information
freely between all parties to the system. The massive wealth potential
of the confluence of the new technologies was not the technology but
rather intelligence potential of the technology.
The psychotic and
psychopathic nature of the modern private corporation necessarily
destroys this intelligence. New Zealand is now a global exemplar of this
necessary destruction and our electrical systems have become essentially
debt generators.
* An illustration proving wealth primarily resides in the
intelligence of these systems is the fact that the “sales
consultants” administering the transfer of community assets to private
companies valued the meter and ripple control system of a dwelling at
perhaps $5 (most had been written off under our accounting system
decades earlier). The new owners – the bankers of the private
corporations - levered off the intelligence inherent in this technology
so that within two years of “purchase” of them their agents were
on-selling the meter and ripple control of a dwelling for over $700.
Their private profit - our communal loss.
Psychology
Psychopathy is the inability to experience compassion. Psychosis is the
inability to comprehend reality. We all retain elements of both. The
ultimate reality is the continuous universal change in which we are
stewards.
The excesses of
the Industrial Revolution have been enabled by the increasing dominance
of the ego with its incredibly ingenious capacity to deny
change/stewardship. This denial is reflected in our language, general
lack of science and escalating debt, pollution and waste. The exploding
diseconomy of the 20Century is founded in the widespread belief in this
fatally flawed equation:
energy
= fossil fuels = power = electricity = Bulk-generated electrical
products.
This equation is
manifest in the emergence of both the “energy sector” consisting of
“energy companies” and the legal redefining of individual
citizens as tradeable “energy numbers”.
The practical
impacts of this dangerous delusional equation were WW1, WW11, most wars
last century and now the extreme probability of a catastrophic global
collapse by about 2013.
Treasury
The modern corporation is the pure manifestation of our
capacity for psychopathy and psychosis. And the NZ Treasury is the
essence of the modern corporation. Its methodology is founded in
profound psychosis and psychopathy. No truly sane person could gain
employment or make a sustaining contribution at NZ Treasury. For
instance its analysis is totally delusional because it is based on the
premise that there exists eternal mineral oil at 0.1cents per manhour of
labour equivalent. Thus it vastly undervalues the subsidies provided
car, truck and jet users.
Similarly
Treasury has consistently demonstrated it has no capacity for evaluating
intelligence. For instance, it has consistently valued electrical
systems for their nuts and bolts value, thus undervaluing them by
hundreds of billions of dollars. We see Treasury policy manifest in our
exploding diseconomy and associated debt.
2011
Election
This election occurs at pivotal moment for humanity,
including all NZers. We have already largely voted the outcome at the
petrol pump and airline counter. At present we are voting for imminent
catastrophic warfare.
Officially the
election campaign is just beginning. However for about four months all
our political parties and media have been complicit in a massive
subliminal advertising drive to ensure the successful transfer of the
control of our remaining assets to the global banker oligarchy. This
includes prime national assets such as Meridian Energy, Solid Energy,
Genesis Energy and Mighty River Power. (Note how the language of the
disecomomy equation dominates this sentence.)
Choice
We can vote for cars, trucks and jets, for the increasing
destruction of our carbon, electrical and solar potential and for
warfare. Or we can vote to conserve these vital potentials and peace for
our children.
We can choose to
reverse our voting behaviour decision by changing our daily behaviour
and voting at the ballot box against the transfer of our remnant control
of our electrical potential to psychopathic bankers.
I know the
decision is not easy. I am a Green Party member and acknowledge the
Green Party seems determined to play a pivotal role in promoting the
asset transfer, in destroying the state of science in our communities
and promoting the diseconomy in general.
However we can
choose to remain silent or to speak out, as I am doing, and make it
clear the transfer of these national assets is a criminal act in terms
of the past generations that sacrificed to bequeath them on us freehold
and in terms of the future generation for whom the transfer of wealth
means war, poverty and misery.
Footnote.
I have circulated a letter to several of our leading editors alerting
them to this massive subliminal election campaign in which tens of
millions of our dollars are being spent using agencies such as Consumer
NZ, Citizen’s Advice Bureaux, Electricity Authority -What’smynumber?,
PowerShop, “business advice” columns and “energy company”
propaganda. You can read the letter here. This hidden yet
right-in-your-face campaign threatens the remnants of our democracy.
TOP
|
