A Whole Lot of Less is More

Recent Sunday Columns

Hello! I have made a collection of recent Sunday columns free to all to read and share. The links are here:

Less Is More

What an appetite for destruction we have acquired, in the name of convenience and mindless consumption.

More Less is More

The recurring heroes of Christopher Luxon’s sloganeering are New Zealanders who are working hard, trying to get ahead.

How valiantly they toil in the face of a useless government, just trying to get ahead.

Many people nod approvingly at such words. They, too, see it as noble and principled to be the kind of person who works hard to get ahead.

But what does it actually describe, this ideal?

Even More Less is More

When you measure things by GDP, you can get perverse results.

For the next year, maybe several more, many engineers and tradies and people in fluoro vests and hard hats will be hard at work getting all this storm damage repaired. Insurance companies will be making many payments. So will the government. This will count as GDP, for this is the tool we use to measure economic growth.

But what growth is it, really, to get ourselves back to where we were before this storm arrived, this brutal demonstration of what global warming has in store for us?