Gidday Dave
Yeah I pretty much agree with the first paragraph, from my perspective
differential rent on pastoral production was the basis for NZ's sad and
deeply flawed little variant of fordism - fordism in the sense that Jessop
has advanced (Bastard keynesian economics+welfare state+some way of paying
for it). I'm getting into the business of trying to quantify some of the
these flows and work shy wide boy that I am I was fishing to see if you had
any quantitative data.
Interestingly enough for this argument Dave Neilson has just recently
marked a doctorate for a student of Rob Stevens that deals pretty much with
the role of differential rent in the NZ & Aussie economies. I havent read it
yet but I'll dig out the reference if you like.
I'm probably closer to Rob Steven than you in that I see the economic
patterns evident in the NZ economy prior to the seventies as being
intimately related to the consumption patterns of the english worker,
strongly prior to WWIIless directly post war.
I've been trying to get a model of the NZ economy to fly thats built round a
variant of the post keynesian idea of balance of payment constrained growth
(thirlwall's law) that has our propensity to export being exogenously (to
our economy) determined and an endogenous determination of the propensity to
import. Sadly this is flying as well as a one winged jumbo at the moment-
maybe its just a bad idea but I like it.
I'd agree that NZ's existence has become, unlike myself, less bloated and
more emaciated with time but would tend to see this as related to the
decline in the differential rent on pastoral production that we have
extracted from the carnivorous denizens of the core capitalist countries.
As to the removal of protection for the internal economy I dont think this
is reducible to the needs of international financial capital alone, though
it very well maybe compatible with their interests, as I'm sure that
international financial capital could have lived with considerably less in
the way of liberalization in NZ - Why did we go so far so fast when other
economies have been way more circumspect in pursuing this trajectory?\
cheers
Bill
----------
>From: "Dave Bedggood" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Subject: Re: M-TH: Is NZ a bloated semi-colony?
>Date: Fri, Oct 8, 1999, 5:43 AM
>
> Gidday Bill,
> Yes NZ earned differential rent on its pastoral production for much
> of its history I agree. But a lot of this dissappeared into the hands
> of the financiers, banks etc who had the mortage on the land etc.
> i.e. much of it back to the motherland. That part which was retained
> by the owners of the best land became the capital fund for a weak
> national bourgeoisie which set up factories in backyard sheds with
> tariff protection and then state subsidies to survive.
>
> I don't take the view that NZ was part of the centre living off the
> British working class (like Rob Steven) or the periphery for that
> matter, but like most of the white-setter colonies was a 'special'
> sort of privileged semi-colony so long as protection was tolerated by
> and profitable for imperial finance capital. I would venture to
> say that the loss of this protection has sent NZ down the
> semi-colonial stakes towards a less bloated and more emaciated
> existence.
>
> What do you say?
> Dave
>
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