Competition alive and well down under

Share |

According to the senior executives of Jetstar and Air NZ, the recent and 'short lived' offer of $1 and $5 flights to Auckland is a sign of real and effective competition in the aviation industry. That's right, the airlines were offering 600 tickets for just 1 hour the other day, and on just one of their hundred-odd routes, and that constitutes competition.

In fairness, there is going to be some competition in this area, and the reasons are:

1. Displacement of services from Christchurch - The new terminal is complete at Christchurch airport, and I am guessing that the airport authority will be looking to raise airport fees paid by the airlines. This I believe is why Jetstar is trying to lure people to Dunedin airport. This is particularly appealing for all those travellers coming from the South. That's right, you might have to travel as far as 8 hours from the far south because of the limited connections offered from Queenstown and the premium prices you pay for them.

2. New market entrant - Air Asia is a new discount entrant into the market. It will lure passengers, but it is only going to take market share from those flying to Asia; so Jetstar after Pacific Blue's exit is going to retain the lion's share of the Australian market.

Dunedin is a big of a hole. Its a very ugly city, and its layout is messy. But it seems, if you can both chancing 1-hour discounts, and you are lucky enough to hear about one, they are not really competition. Really they are token gestures offered by airlines, and duly reported by the media. Sounds like cheap advertising to me. Yep, there are plenty of airlines offering 'discounted tickets'; the problem however is that there are:

1. So many conditions attached to them they are not worth having, i.e. No meals, no flexibility to change the flight, substantive luggage restrictions, highly pernicious penalties complying with their restrictions.

2. The need to carry the risk of buying a ticket you cannot cancel. I suspect they have made as much on unused tickets as those used.

3. The burden of having to read their 9-page list of conditions; or carrying the risk of not reading them.

Yes, competition in the modern era is an illusion. Its all about perceptions, or 'smoke and mirrors', or 'bait and switch'. There is a law against bait advertising in Australia....this seems to breach it. But of course there are those wonderful inventions - the 'asterisk' (i.e. *). They are magic to the business community. They only need to ensure that they have one on the advertisement, and all conditions are in play....and that makes it not 'bait advertising'.

For sane people like myself, the letter of 'statutory law' denies too much, and that the spirit of the law is in breach. Statutory law offers no prospect of justice so long as:

1. It remains arbitrary - no rational, principled basis, no spirit, just 'letter of the law' loopholing. i.e. The law has no context.

2. Justice is expensive - high legal fees, and the prospect of court appeals

I recall a case of a car rental company being challenged in the court by a customer who was charged enormous legal fees for the privilege of saving $50. Seems like a false economy to me. No one it took 10 fees for the practice to be challenged. In the 'common law' case of bank fees, the banks are being sued in a class action in Australia after 20 years of duping customers.

NZ Property Guide Philippine Real Estate Guide Japan Foreclosed Guide

Author Andrew Sheldon| Applied Critical Thinking | www.SheldonThinks.com

Racial prejudice in NZ

Share |

NZ does have a problem with racial prejudice. This must rank as a significant problem for a country which is countenancing the benefits of foreign immigration and tourism. There are several problems:

1. Superficial contact by NZ citizens with foreigners

2. A significant disempowerment by New Zealanders

3. National stagnation and the associated poor government policy

NZ people don't really understand foreigners because they don't engage with them. They snub their noses at them, all the while preserving some public precept of 'political correctness'.

New Zealanders might well celebrate the democracy which gives them a pretense of empowerment or 'participation'. The reality is that democracy gives them no effective opportunity to engage on public policy, and if given the opportunity, a great many of them would lack the self-assuredness to do so anyway. Does that mean it should be denied them? No. Does it mean their opinions should carry some weight? No. It means democracy is a flawed concept. Nothing is right by 'virtue' of the majority believing it to be right. Facts are more important than perceptions, and it is merely protection of the facts by other members of society which protects people from realising so. It might be self-evident to people of science, or people held 'ultimately' accountable like doctors, engineers, and the like, but the reality is that our political system gives primacy to perceptions. So NZ's racists can preserve their values along with their anonymity.

NZ is the farm. It might have a high number of foreigners living here, but that is just the 'appearance' because most of them are born in 'compatible' countries like the UK, America, Australia, and the Pacific Islands.

Perhaps the best opportunity for dispelling racist beliefs is to allow people to comprehend the value of others. One of the problems getting work for foreigners is the prejudice in the community. It is very hard. A foreigner needs the validation of a Westerner in order to get recognition. It is easier where a NZ'er has lived overseas. It is easier in the cities and those areas with significant tourism or Asian communities. I was out for dinner last night, and the waitress did not even acknowledge my Asian guests. They are fluent English speakers...and yet there was perhaps an unwillingness to deal with them. They might not have noticed unless I pointed it out.

Racism is a form of ignorance to be sure...but we can say that about anything. More significantly it is a failure to think...a failure to judiciously gather evidence, make differentiations when necessary, and to recognise that whilst generalisation is part of the knowledge formation, so it understanding the context (i.e. Pertinent factors). The problem is these people are not thinking because they have been protected. NZ is a protected socialist state, and so long as it lives behind the coveted protection of farm exports and regulated property prices, it is not going to succeed.

It is always my way to blame government because in most cases the folly extends back to government policy, or the culture which is embedded in the same values which preserves our democratic tradition. Mindless democracy. Until people are challenged intellectually, this country is no going to prosper, and if we step outside moral relativism, the entire world will be held back in absolute terms.

The historical legacy needs to change or NZ will be left behind. You might think 'all well and good', but the reality is that NZ needs foreign population because of the brain drain of the 'more astute' New Zealanders to Australia...if not further afield. Australia steals NZ minds right out of university. NZ needs to change its model or its just going to drift backwards until the day it makes a huge oil discovery. You live in hope!

NZ Property Guide Philippine Real Estate Guide Japan Foreclosed Guide

Author Andrew Sheldon| Applied Critical Thinking | www.SheldonThinks.com

Large companies have disappointing ethics - supporting scams

Share |

Here is an example of another large company engaging in unethical business practices. We warned Vodafone NZ about their activities over a month ago, and they are still carrying out the activity. They refused to refund us, but they did give us 20c credit to cancel the service.

Here is the scam. If you go to a website like this - a major newspaper - and you see an IQ test on the side left bar. It invites you into doing a test. Of course if you are curious, you engage as its free right. Continue on and you get to a point where you think you have to enter your tel number in order to get the IQ test result. You don't at this point know if you are paying for the test result, but you suspect that the tel number will be used for an advertising service, or follow up email.

What you don't see is the disclaimer because it is out of view. If you have a small netbook like me, then you will not even see the disclosure, which is not even in the same dialogue box as the box where you place your tel number. Clearly this is designed to be misleading.

Days later after my GF placed my cell phone number into this box, my cell phone credits were emptied. We contacted Vodafone, who refused to reimburse us. They did give us a 20c credit to cancel the scheme. We attempted to contact the company behind the scheme. The only number goes to a call centre in the Philippines. They were useless, but we were given a number in the USA. They were also useless.

This is the way business is going - international rackets to earn punitive, misleading fees. Banks started the process, and now telephone companies are going the same way. Of course maybe you think its just $20. Not worth complaining about.....but look at the banks...its $25 for an overdraft, its $20 for a zero balance. Sometimes you don't chose these things, they are imposed. You are buried in rules, such that you cannot live a life without a lawyer. And who would sue a person for $20. You would sooner slit your throat...or as most people do...simply repress it.

Everyone I know is repressed...except my immediate partner. People don't think because thinking only exposed your vulnerability to corporations engaging in scams. This is the world as structured by the "representative democratic" tradition. The politicians like this because it leaves them in political power, whilst their corporate affiliates loot you. They underfund regulatory agencies so you have no capacity to complain. For the hell of it - I suggest complaining here - http://www.comcom.govt.nz/online-complaint-form/

You might just receive an email explaining that they are under-resourced. I've heard it all before. The same crap in Australia.