“Globalization brings reorganization at the international, national and sub-national levels. Specifically, it brings the reorganization of production, international trade and the integration of financial markets.”

Agreed for sure – having freer trade in some things, such as some goods and capital, intrinsically changes the economy.

And I do not disagree with you that, in a world in transition, or with imperfect mobillity, there is scope for a government to do something to help.

However, in terms of the sale of farms, the distributional impact on the poor is completely irrelevant – a rich domestic farmer and a rich foriegn capital owner are both liable to pay tax here to support the poor, and to look after the land under the letter of the law.

If we think that land owners should be paying a rental or dividend to the rest of society, then that is an argument for a land tax, not again foriegn ownership

Two things here:

1)  Job growth isn’t the same as production – job numbers fell in agrculture even though output rose sizeably.

2)  Going to the HLFS numbers the contribution to job growth from construction + ALL rental services and real estate (so including non housing related rental services) was 20.1% of employment.  The 60% figure involved taking a lot of industries that were assumed to be part of the boom – which is very very very debatable.  I would note that taking all of the increase in construction and real estate employment in itself is an exageration of the impact of a “bubble”.

Even with this exaggerated figure taken from an old news release and old data, this 60% figure is a lot less than the 80% you had placed down.  The data is free on the Stats site – and it does not tell a story of an economy that has only grown off the back of an “unsustainable bubble”.

Another 38,000 people could lose their jobs in the next couple of years as the economy slows, and people working in real estate, housing construction, retailing, manufacturing and business services are most at risk.
ANZ National Bank chief economist Cameron Bagrie said these sectors had grown off the property-market boom and accounted for 60% of new jobs over the past five years.
 http://www.stuff.co.nz/sunday-star-times/latest-edition/376946/Downturn-puts-38-000-jobs-at-risk

“I notice on the Crafar farm you said (something like) “if a person who lives in NZ wants to sell his farm to somebody who happens to be in China, then i don’t see a problem”. Presumably it isn’t a problem that there are a lot of Chinese and that countries like China are (said to be) scrambling to secure food for the future? That is the sort of scarcity I was thinking of?”

The sale of a small subset of land, for a price that I presume is equivalent to its value.

There can only be prices when we have scarcity – that is the whole issue.

Just because I disagree with you about allocation under scarcity doesn’t mean I don’t believe scarcity exists – making that presumption about an economist is like saying a physicist doesn’t believe matter exists … and that is not an exageration.

“Given that NZ’s population follows the normal curve there will likely be a proportion who will for one reason or another be likely to suffer by lower wages at one end and more expensive property at the other end and (if so) isn’t it rational for them not to support your Crafar Farm approach?”

This doesn’t follow sorry.

“How does the “lump of labour” (fallacy) apply in a situation such as in the commons Elenor Ostrom  talks about where a resource seems to be used to the full?”

The lump of labour fallacy is a macroeconomic phenomenon talking about the labour market at a whole – Ostrom is investigating allocaton in the face of a specific type of common good problem, for specific markets.  The existence of common goods in society has nothing to do with the lump of labour policy.

“Does it follow that population growth is a “great achievement” as Robbin Clements said when the South island population reached one million. 80% of job growth was due to the property boom (up to 2008 I think)? In the past you could identify an activity that created  wealth as in when they broke in the hill country. Today some people are suggesting that all you need is people and ideas and more the more people the better.”

It is not true in the slightest that 80% of growth was due to a property boom – the ony bits of economic activity that may have been excessive due to the boom were construction and real estate services, and they accounted for a lot less that 80% of the lift in per capita GDP.

Measured economic activity is just about what people produce, ideas and resources are all important.  Given we have a scarce endowment of resources, we’d like to make the best use of them possible – while as a society still ensuring that the worst off get a fair deal.

Given that NZ’s population follows the normal curve there will likely be a proportion who will for one reason or another be likely to suffer by lower wages at one end and more expensive property at the other end and (if so) isn’t it rational for them not to support your Crafar Farm approach?

How does the “lump of labour” (fallacy) apply in a situation such as in the commons Elenor Ostrom  talks about where a resource seems to be used to the full?

Does it follow that population growth is a “great achievement” as Robbin Clements said when the South island population reached one million. 80% of job growth was due to the property boom (up to 2008 I think)? In the past you could identify an activity that created  wealth as in when they broke in the hill country. Today some people are suggesting that all you need is people and ideas and more the more people the better.

Ignorant, maybe, not idiots. Unfortunately, the ignorant are often unaware of their ignorance so they’re happy to pass cheap comment on difficult matters. That’s probably what gets economists into so much trouble when they try to solve all the world’s problems with only opportunity cost 😉

*actually with

Excuse: changed the wording of the sentence between coffees. 

Off to get another coffee. 

*without

obviously 

I think it is time to stop bemoaning economists ability to educate people about what they do and just accept that people are idiots.