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To: Hawkmoon who wrote (39180)	10/5/2003 12:55:20 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74559

Okay Hawk, I give up. I don't believe you read what I wrote. A government toll bridge built with borrowed money produces profit. Pure and simple. Same with NZ's crown corporations. They produce profit. Suit yourself. I know blind ideology when I see it. I've given up trying to convert religious door knockers too. There are none so blind as those who will not see. I agree that most government spending is pure overhead, waste, drain on the productive and even counterproductive. But that doesn't mean all of it is. It's not an inherent law of government that all is profitless waste. But even waste is economic activity. Buying a pack of smokes or buying a buying a government sign saying "Queue here for nothing" are both economic activities. But both are total wastes, merely transferring the money to somebody who might do something better with it. GDP is made up of "production" which includes a lot of such items. I don't think that's rewriting economics. Mqurice

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (39180)	10/5/2003 1:52:52 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Hawk, I haven't given up after all; this might persuade you. Way back in 1983 I was given the job of Technical Services Manager in Wellington [before renaming to Helengrad] for BP Oil. Among other things I had to do was run the laboratory, which did quality control, customer services testing, a bit of research and development testing and bits and pieces. It was pure overhead. A veritable government department and looked like it and behaved like it. The sales people looked on overhead and HQ as a drain on their productive efforts. Branch offices would send in samples from customers for testing. They weren't charged for this service, which was just an overhead. People sent in all sorts of stupid samples, when all they really needed to do was think, or do some simple test there and then with the customer, such as seeing if the oil was wet or really filthy looking. I decided we should charge branches for the service to cut down the demand and also to measure better the value of what we were doing. It turned out, our cost was so high that I could get the work done cheaper and better by a contractor laboratory in Nelson. So I was going to cut that line of overhead if we couldn't get our costs down. Also, we had lots of expensive equipment, which I thought we could use to earn money, such as octane quality testing and cetane number testing. Mobil's syngas plant needed their synthetic petrol tested for example. We got the syngas business and more besides. Pretty soon we had real cash flow. It was becoming a profit centre. An odd thing happened. People perked up and started taking more pride in what they were doing. They weren't just bludgers anymore, they were making money for the company. They were dealing with customers. I didn't see why we couldn't become the main profit centre for the company if we had enough talent. Given enough time, I'd have set up a CDMA research and development centre and have built an internet [which I'd been pushing for, although I didn't know it existed at the time, my theory being that everything that doesn't need a wheelbarrow should go via computers - the computer department was taken over by accountants; there was no recognition of the real value of computers and communications]. So, overhead or production, the functions were identical. Get samples, test, report. Same as for a government. Run well, they could be profit centres, not cost centres and overhead, run by bludgers. So you see, government is just like that too. The fact is, a lot of people prefer to be bludgers and don't want their performance measured with standards to achieve and profit to make. A government sinecure is a great way of life [for some]. I'd say the military could also do with a dose of becoming a profit centre. Each civilian killed would come straight off the bottom line and compensation paid. Each Al Qaeda convicted and executed gets a big bonus payment. The military slogan "Hurry up and wait" might change. Square bashing, when costed out, might be found to be not so cost-effective as rifle shooting training [one of my father's WWII complaints about the army - he said most soldiers were clueless on shooting and needed training; he was schoolboy champion at Auckland Grammar School, when guns were big time and schools taught shooting and the murder rate in NZ was tiny, despite people being poor and life being a battle]. It might be better to hire 50 super duper well-equipped professionals than 10,000 uneducated plodders who might do more harm than good. Groups of 7 and groups up to about 50 are powerful, think well, bond well, enable most functions, mobile etc etc etc. Big numbers are problematic and become self-paralyzing. Mqurice