Wobbly

Rodney Hide writes in the Herald on Sunday in his inaugural piece last Sunday:

My history is as a centre-right politician. But I have no desire now in persuading you to vote this way or that. I have done that for years. I also have no desire to bag one political party over another. There's enough of that already.

Besides, my particular political philosophy was always too radical even for the Act Party.

I started in Parliament a libertarian. That means I wanted government nice and small and confined to just a few keys tasks such as protecting us from the thugs and bullies.

I ended up an anarchist. I have concluded we would do better with no government at all. New Zealand before 1840 had some downsides. But the downsides were small beer compared to the social and economic devastation wrought by big, bloated and out-of-control bureaucracy.

I reckon we could fix the down sides of no government without having to give a small bunch of people enormous power over the rest of us. I have no doubt I was the first Anarcho Government Minister. It is a great contradiction.

I am out of step politically. I know of only two New Zealanders who agree with my political philosophy and one of them is wobbly.

I'm only an anarchist 3 days out of 7, so I'm not sure whether I make the wobbly line.*

Hide's proudest achievement?

I am proud of what I got done. The best for me was sorting out Auckland's governance. Auckland now has one mayor and one council to provide the vision and the leadership the city and region badly needed. Len Brown and his team are doing a good job.

I wonder whether in a future column Rodney will reconcile anarchism and Tiebout competition with city amalgamations. I'd assumed that the Auckland Supercity project was one he'd been handed rather than one that he'd wanted and that he'd taken it mostly to raise ACT's Auckland profile and to demonstrate competence over a complicated project.

I don't live in Auckland, but mergers elsewhere have tended to result in ratcheting up of tax rates and expenditures to match those that obtained in the higher-spending prior urban units rather than in great administrative efficiencies yielding better services or lower rates, though that may be a function of more pernicious union rules in places like Winnipeg circa 1971.

Hide's second column, a defence of Kim DotCom and an excoriation of Key's handling of the American-demanded prosecution, is a barn-burner.

Our Government should have stood up for Dotcom as a New Zealand resident and simply told the US Government to prove it. Dotcom would still be in business and other digital entrepreneurs would be attracted to New Zealand for the lifestyle and for a government that sticks up for its people.

New Zealand can't build a new economy defending old technology and old business models. We could do well to become a safe haven for the new entrepreneurs.

Hear hear.

* The other four, I worry the risks of winding up with bad anarchy are too high given the costs of that outcome. And, there are illiberal anarchies even where market-chosen law doesn't degenerate to Mafia, Inc.