Census Cancelled

Statistics New Zealand has announced that it will not undertake a Census of Population. According its media release,

Wide-ranging improvements to the data system will modernise and future-proof how New Zealand’s economic and population statistics are produced… By tapping into information New Zealanders have already provided, we will deliver more relevant, useful, and timely data to help inform quality planning and decision making.

This decision was a long time coming. The Department of Statistics had been widely criticised for the low response rate to both the 2018 and 2023 censuses.

I have argued for many years that our society has changed, so it is almost impossible to do a census in the way it was done in the past. We need to understand that in our changing society, a traditional census of the population is becoming almost impossible to do. I wrote the first draft of the following article in 2019 to explain the problem.

Social Change
All the organisations that included cold-calling on households as part of their activities have given up and switched to other methods. The reason is that when you call on most dwellings, there is nobody home to respond to the call. In most households, all adults are working, so there is no one home during the day. Visiting at night or the weekend does not produce much better results, because many people work at night or the weekends, too. They are also busy in various social, sporting and cultural activities.

• Only a few decades ago, many people made their living doing door-to-door sales, selling brushes, health foods and medicines, insurance and other products. Those activities are no longer profitable, so marketers have switched to party plans and on-line sales as a substitute.

• Many charities undertook door-to-door collections on a Saturday morning. For some this was their main source of funding. These collections are no longer viable, because it is hard to get collectors willing to knock on doors and too many people are away from home on Saturday morning.

• Church ministers no longer undertake casual pastoral visits in the way they did in the past, because it is too difficult to find people home.

• Most churches no longer engage in door-to-door evangelism. Even the Jehovahs Witnesses have moved towards displays on city street corners. (Their stand beside the Bridge of Remembrance rightunder the noses of the census experts working a hundred meters in the office of Statistics NZ is a public demonstration of the social change).

A number of social changes have made it impossible activities that require cold calling impossible.

• Many dwellings now have locked gates and intercoms, which make it impossible for cold-callers to enter. Many other dwellings have dogs loose in the yard, which prevent people from calling on their house. Organisations cannot demand their employs enter dwelling where the dogs could be dangerous.

• More and more people are living in gated communities, which are impossible to enter, if you do not know a resident who will open the gate. The residents will often be upset, if one person lets a census taker onto their site.

• People buying houses as an investment sometimes choose to leave them empty, rather than running the risk that tenants might damage the building. Collecting information from these dwellings is impossible, because no one is ever there, but collectors do not know that and waste time going back against and again.

• Many people live in more than one dwelling. They go to one dwelling while they are working and go to a different one when they are off work. Some people will live a couple of nights a week with their partner, and live in their own home for the rest of the week. Children often spend every second week with their mother and the alternate weeks with their father. These fluid living arrangements make it increasingly difficult to contact people in the place where they live.

These social changes make it impossible for organisations that rely on cold-calling to operate in the way that they did in the past. It explains why most have given up and switched to other ways of operating.

The same applies to the operation of a census of the population. Attempting to contact every person living in a nation has become an impossible activity. A method that relies on calling at a dwelling and giving the forms a resident who will get the other members of the household to complete them and be there when the census taker returns for a second visit to collect the forms is an impossible task, given the way that society is structured.

A couple of decades ago, there was someone at home most of the time, usually the mother of the family. She felt a duty to do the right things and could organise her family to complete the forms. If her husband did not get around to doing it, she would complete the form for him, often without him knowing. More adult children were living at home, so their parents would persuade them to complete the forms, or do them for them. They could persuade any boarders that they should complete the forms. That has changed in modern societies.

• Mothers are no longer at home, because most are working. Finding someone at home who will take forms and undertake to return them when they are complete has become much more difficult. I presume that women have always been much more conscientious about these things than men.

• One person no longer has the moral authority to tell another member of their household what to do. It is no longer acceptable to complete forms for other people, unless they are children or medically incompetent.

• Young adults no longer live at home. They often live together in flats. There is no one with moral authority to badger people into completing a task if they do not get around to it.

• Once neighbours could tell a census worker quite a lot about the people living the house next door. Now they often don’t know the people who live there, and they would be unwilling to give a government official information about them if they did.

• Many people have holiday homes that they live in during the weekends. This makes them harder to contact.

When undertaking a census, it is not sufficient to contact a household once. They have to be contacted at least twice, once to know how many forms to leave, and a second time to take the completed forms back. That is hard, but if a household is tardy in completing the forms, a census worker may have to contact a household them three or four times before they obtain the completed forms. In a society where people are frequently not at home, this becomes very difficult to do.

All over the world, statistical offices are finding it increasingly difficult to run population censuses using door-to-door visits. Many have switched to other methods for collecting information.

Allowing on-line collection is a partial solution to the people. Mobile people who are hard to contact at home, are usually comfortable sharing information on-line. Young people are comfortable sharing information about themselves on Facebook and Instagram. An on-line census is a much better way to collect information from this generation. However, it does not solve the problem, because the people who are not comfortable sharing information on-line will get more and more difficult to contact.

Social change takes place slowly, so the consequences appear slowly. However, they are most serious for activities that need participation by 100 percent of the population. A door-to-door salesperson only needs to find a few people at home for their activities to be economical, but most have still given up. The problems are much greater for census takers, because they need to find 100 percent of people at home, which is much harder to do.

Anti-Government Attitude
In the past, people trusted their governments and did what they told them to do. If they were asked to complete a census form, they felt obligated to do it. That has changed.

The proportion of people who do not trust their government and are hostile to its activities is growing. These people do not trust the government, so they do not want to give it their personal information.

The declining trust in government is reflected in voter participation in government elections. In recent elections, parliamentary elections more than twenty percent of the population do not vote. (Only 6 percent did not vote in 1984). More than half of the population do not vote in local government elections.

The decline in voter turnout reflects a declining obligation to support government activities. If twenty percent of the population did not bother to vote in elections for the government that can control their lives, then it should not be surprising if half of them did not complete a census form that has very little impact on their lives.

Our migrant population has increased rapidly. Many migrants have come from nations that use the information people provide to monitor their behaviour and harass them. When they come to New Zealand, they are often reluctant to give information to the government, because they fear it could place them in danger.

Busy Lives
Modern people live busy lives. Completing a census form might only take half an hour, but many modern people do not have half an hour to spare. So even people who are happy to complete the census, often don’t get around to doing it. We all have things that we intend to do, like phone an acquaintance, read an article, repair a blown light bulb, weed the garden, but we don’t get it done, because we get busy with other things. Things that we want to do get pushed down the list, and eventually forgotten.

A census form often just gets forgotten. People intend to do it, but then something happens to distract them: extra hours are offered at work, a relative dies, rugby training starts, Game of Thrones is on TV, a friend gets cancer, so the census form gets forgotten. No one asks for it, and before long the time for responding is over, without the form being completed.

Very few people get prosecuted for refusing to complete the census. The fine is only a few hundred dollars, so fear of prosecution is not a real incentive.

When people give examples of how a census should be done, they assume the easy examples: a conscientious person with lots of time. Unfortunately, a population census can be wrecked by the small proportion of people whose lives are not ordinary.

Response Rates
Censuses have always been hard to do. The politicians seem to be obsessed with response rates, but they are just one measure of quality, and they are a slippery concept to measure. The response rate is the number of the population responding divided by the total population. The problem is that the denominator in this formula is not known. To estimate the percentage that has responded, you need to know the size of the total population that you are trying measure. That number is not available, because it one of the figures that the census is trying to measure. You only know the number that responded, so a response rate can only be produced by guessing the number that should have responded.

When the census relies on contacts with household, you need to estimate the total number dwellings that are occupied by people, so that you can measure the number of households you should have had a response from. The total number of dwellings is known, but unfortunately, it is hard to count the number of dwellings that are unoccupied, because their status is not obvious, even if you knock on the door. The occupants might be away for the day. So response rates have to be taken with a grain of salt, particularly those from the past, when guestimates of the total population being surveyed were much weaker. And I presume that diligent statisticians have always found clever ways to tweak their estimates to make their response rates look better. That probably explains why a 95 percent response rate was achieved in 2013.

Non-response is unavoidable in every statistical survey, even if it is mandated by the government. The key issue is what is done about the non-response. Statisticians have robust techniques for dealing with non-response, so it is not really a serious problem, provided it is well managed.

Complex Organisation
Most businesses start small and grow gradually. They learn and develop as they expand. A census has to be undertaken within a few weeks. Organising a census means taking on thousands of employees all at once and training them for a task they have not done before. They cannot be employed for too long, because the cost would get too high. No matter how good the screening process, some of the employees selected will be duds. The problem is that by the time that is discovered, the census is finished and the damage is done.

Most businesses develop and adapt as they expand. A census has to be completed in a couple of weeks. This means that there is very little ability to adapt and resolve problems as they emerge. By the time a pattern of problems emerges, it is to late to make a significant change, because by that time the census period is nearly complete.

Getting good people to work on a census is not that easy. Once there was a large pool of family carers at home, who were pleased to have a temporary job that would allow them to earn a few extra dollars while their children were at school. Many of these had done administrative jobs before they had children, so they were well-suited to census work. That situation no longer exists. The pool of carers and retired people who could do the job are already employed.

• Census work cannot be done while children are at school, as that is the time when the fewest people are not home.

• Most people do not feel comfortable cold-calling on people they do not know.

• People do not want to go onto a situation where a dog is loose, but that is part of the job. Several census worker get attacked by dogs each census.

• Census workers will get yelled at by people who are angry with the government. That makes the job quite unappealing.

Getting good people to be census workers is increasingly difficult.

Poor Quality Information
A population census relies on self-complete forms. These have to be designed so they can be understood by everyone. This is very difficult. The form has to be designed for someone with a reading age of about nine. The questions have to be kept simple, so they are easily understood, but this is not always possible because even simple questions can be complicated for some people.

Income is an example. At first thought, it would seem easy to collect. For some it is, but for others, it is not, and a census form has to cope with the tricky cases. Some people know the amount of their take-home pay, but they do not know their gross pay. People on casual jobs, with several employers find it very difficult to say what their income is for a particular period. Self-employed people often do not know their exact income until well after the end of the financial year. The income questions in a population census have to be sufficiently vague to make the information provided fairly useless.

The ethnicity of New Zealanders is increasingly diverse and complicated. This means that collecting information about ethnicity in a self-complete form is very difficult. If people do not understand the concept being asked, there is no one to ask. If too many guide notes are put in the form, it clutters the layout and makes it hard to follow.

There is always pressure from public agencies to add extra questions to a census form. A decision has to be made on how long the form can be without becoming an obstacle to collection. When completing voluntary form people get tired, so if they encounter questions that they find hard to answer, they often give up. The census is a long form, so not surprisingly, many people give up before they get to an end.

Some people are mischievous when they are completing a government form. They put in false information, just to be funny. I understand that in one census, a dozen people reported an occupation of Prime Minister, and several said they were the queen. People put mischievous responses when they are reporting their ethnicity or religion. This natural behaviour cannot be stopped, but it reduces the value of the information collected.

If governments need information about people to support social policy, they would be far better to use voluntary interviewer-administered surveys of representative samples. This is a far cheaper option than trying to take a full census. It is more efficient, because a social survey can provide detailed information that is far more useful. It will also produce more reliable information, because people are less likely to lie to an interviewer.

Governments have Information
The reality is that governments already have most of the information that they attempt to collect in the census. People supply this information in the forms they complete when engaging with the government for various services. Statisticians call this information “administrative data” as it is collected through administrative processes.

The government knows the number of people living in New Zealand. It can derive that from the numbers of births and deaths registered, and from immigration data reporting the numbers of departures and arrivals. Being a couple of islands, makes this much easier than it is for countries on large continents with fairly porous borders. Statistics NZ could continue producing reliable population projections even if there was never another census of the population.

Inland Revenue has accurate information about the incomes of all New Zealanders. They know exactly how much each person earns. Governments would be better to use this information than relying on vague information supplied in a self-completed form. When people apply for National Superannuation and Social Welfare Benefits, they have to supply a huge amount of information about themselves. When families apply for “Working for Families” benefits, they have to supply information about their family and their partners. Governments are collecting data about us all the time, often without us being really aware of it. They should use this information better, rather than relying on expensive and unreliable information from a census.

The government says it needs census information to allocate health funding. Using census data is actually a lazy way to do it. The Ministry of Health collects information about people who visit doctors and more detailed information about people who get hospital treatment. The Ministry of Health already knows where the sick people live, and what is wrong with them. Statistical techniques are available for projecting this information forward, so governments should be using health information to allocate health funding. This would be better than relying on census data that does not record anything about health needs.

Governments also say that they need census data to know where to build schools. That is nonsense. The Ministry of Education has information about every child attending school and preschool or kindergarten in New Zealand. They know about every child born, through the birth registration process. The schools provide a statistical return to the Ministry of Education twice a year. This a better way to obtain information about social problems at the schools. The government should use this information that they already have to allocate education funding, and make sure that it is directed to where it is needed, rather than relying on census information that tells them very little about the education needs of students.

Building consents provide information about districts where new housing is being built. Using the information about the type of dwellings, it is quite easy to estimate the number of children that will be moving into these new residential areas. The government has this information before the houses are built. This should be used when deciding where to build new schools. If they wait for census information to be available, they will build the schools too late to meet the need.

Census information is used to shift the electorate boundaries for the general election. Running a census is a fairly inefficient way to do it, because, by the time the data is collected and the boundary adjustments made, the information used will be well out of date. Through the land information system and valuation process, the government knows where every dwelling in New Zealand. is. Through the building consents process, they know where new dwellings will be built, even before they are built. It is quite easy to estimate the number of people in each dwelling. The need for changes to the electorate boundaries mostly come from new housing development. Using the information about dwellings that they already have, governments could establish electorate boundaries that are fit for purpose.

Conclusion
Operating a population census in a modern society is becoming an increasingly impossible task. That does not matter, because governments have far better ways of obtaining information.

Challenging Organisations

A reader asked told me about their experience in a Christian organisation that had gone off the tracks. He asked the following question.

How should a ministry deceiving the public, the community and its members be treated when one is discovered?

This is a good question, but a difficult one.

I think that the response will depend on the situation of the person who has become aware of the person in the troubled organisation.

Leadership
If the person is in leadership, they should have the right to speak to the other leaders of the organisation. If the person is trusted by the other leaders, their warning might be heard. However, if the problem begins with the main leader, the other leaders are more likely to line up behind him, and the person challenging will be perceived as a troublemaker. Their message might be rejected.

Resigned Leader
If the leader has resigned from their role due to their concerns about the organisation, they will have less credibility with the other leaders. Any criticism of the organisation that they articulate will be seen as “sour grapes.” The remaining leaders of the organisation will attempt to dampen their influence. They might be able to give a warning to the people in the organisation with whom they have strong relationships, but outside that group, they will have very little interest.

Members of the Organisation
A member of a Christian organisation should be able to raise the concerns with its leadership. But there is a big risk that they will not be listened to. The recent history of Christian organisations indicates that whistle-blowers will frequently be ignored and, worse, will be treated badly.

If the leadership bring their power against the person who gives a warning, it can be very unpleasant for them. Many followers of Jesus have suffered terribly when they attempted to challenge the leaders of their organisation. I cannot think of a situation where warnings have been heard, and the organisation changed when the leaders understood the problem.

A member of an organisation can speak to other people in the organisation that they know and warn them of the problem, but they will be seen by the leadership as troublemakers. The leaders will speak against them and portray them as disloyal. The people who they speak to will have to choose who they trust. Many will side with the leadership, against the member expressing concerns.

Members who have left the Organisation
People who have left the organisation will have greater freedom to speak, but they will have less credibility, except with people who know them and trust them. That is likely to be a small group. So, even if they speak out boldly, their influence will be limited.

The leadership will portray the person speaking as betraying the organisation and trying to undermine it. They will describe the person as bitter. They will say that they are deceived because they were challenged by the leadership and are speaking out of their hurt.

They will be attacked by the leadership in an attempt to discredit them before they gain any influence. If the person speaks out publicly, the leaders of the organisation will attack them in order to dull their influence.

Hard to Prove
The person who is concerned about the spiritual state of an organisation will have difficulty proving their case. The experience in many organisations dealing with accusations of sexual and spiritual abuse shows that they will often be ignored, even when there is testimony from several people. Many cases that have been raised have been investigated by lawyers appointed by the leadership team and discounted or ignored.

The people who have raised the claims have often been ostracised by people they have been connected with over many years. These attempts to challenge the leadership of an organisation have mostly failed, even though justice was on their side. Experience in the United States shows that “victim-shaming” is a very effective tool for shutting down people who are criticising an organisation.

If the challenge is about an evil spiritual influence, it will be even harder to prove to a leadership team. The challenger can describe what they have discerned in the Spirit, but the leaders will be able to reject their claim by saying they have discerned something different. The leaders will have people they trust who claim to have the gift of discernment, and will take their word over that of someone that they don’t trust.

The leadership will often denigrate the character of the whistle-blower to undermine their discernment. Leaders tend to take criticism as a sign that they are doing the right thing. Attacks on whistle-blowers by leaders and their supporters have frequently been vicious.

Prophets
In some regions, people who are recognised as “a prophet” by several churches might have emerged. Agabus is an example (Acts 11:27-30; 21:10-14). A prophet to the churches in a region like Agabus might have sufficient respect to successfully challenge a church or organisation that is going astray.

The problem in the modern world is that very few prophets of this type exist. Prophets get ahead these days by being attached to a megachurch, or by joining a group of prophets. Most churches are led by pastors, and the prophet is expected to submit to the pastor, which tends to undermine their independence and leave them too compromised to freely challenge error.

Conclusion
In most situations, there will be nobody who can challenge an organisation that has lost its way. God will have to deal with the problem. This is a pessimistic conclusion, but it is confirmed by the experience of those who have tried.

Building Right
In my books, I explain how the prophetic ministry should be pushed down to the eldership level. Every church should have several elders, and though most will be pastoral, at least one should be an evangelist, and one should be a prophet. Having a prophetic ministry built into its DNA should help a church or organisation stay on track.

The prophet will have a strong relationship with the other elders. If one of them seems to be taking the church in the wrong direction, the prophet will be able to challenge them. Having a balanced leadership is the best safeguard against an organisation losing its way.

The problem for IHOP KC was that the “Kansas City” prophets were unaccountable itinerants. They had joined together to support each other, but in practice, they were probably condoning and covering up each other’s sins. They were not in a place where they could challenge the direction that the organisation was moving.

Mike Bickle
I witnessed with Mike Bickle’s well-known prophecy that God was going to change the church dramatically in one generation. However, I was puzzled by his response to it. I expected that he would press in to find out how God wanted to change the church, so he could articulate it for believers to grab hold of. However, he never seemed to do that. Instead, he started an intercession organisation that was structured in the same way as the church that God had said he wanted to change dramatically. It seemed like he was locked in the past, not pressing into the future.

I have always been a bit sceptical about intercessory ministries. I believe that the New Testament teaches that every follower of Jesus needs to be an intercessor. This makes our intercession more effective, because we will be praying in areas where we have influence and authority.

In my view, most organised intercession is ineffective because intercessor organisations are praying for areas in which they do not have authority, so there they cannot release God to act. In many cases, a claim to be an intercessor is just an excuse for doing nothing. It is an excuse for never sharing the gospel or discipling new believers. Consequently, intercessory organisations are often an obstacle to change because they validate inactivity. Therefore, I am not surprised that IHOP lost its way.

Bible Translations

A reader asked me which English translation of the bible I prefer.

I don’t have strong views about translations. Most are of value, provided the reader understands the basis on which they are done. I have always used the New International Version (NIV) because it was a fresh translation when I started teaching and preaching (and easier to read in public than the (KJV). I realise that it is not perfect, but I know my way round my NIV bible, so I have stuck with it.

I also used the New American Standard Bible (NASB) because it is a more literal translation, but harder to understand.

The balance between accuracy and readability is one that every person must work out for themselves. Because I am quite analytical and a bit nerdy, I prefer to err on the accuracy side. But for most people a translation that is readable will be more important.

I always say that the “best translation” is the one that you can regularly read and understand. That will vary from person to person. It is no use having a totally accurate translation, if you never read it. People who are not confident readers are probably better to go with one of the modern paraphrases, such as the Passion Bible.

I think to is good to switch translations from time to time, because it helps you see things that you missed. If one translation gets stale, a new one might be more illuminating.

I am currently reading from the First Testament translated by John Goldingay and the Second Testament by Scot McKnight. Their approach to translation is to try and make their English as much like the structure and style of the original Hebrew and Greek text. This makes them a bit harder to read, but I have found these translations quite refreshing.

One thing that I like most about the second Testament is that Scot McKnight assiduously avoids the religious words that dominate most English translations. This gives a different slant on what Jesus and Paul were teaching.

For example, Scot uses the word “deliverance” for the “sozo” related Greek words instead of the usual religious translation “salvation”. I find this really refreshing, and it has forced me to think more clearly about the gospel message and the nature of what Jesus achieved.

“Salvation” has become a religious word carrying meanings that Jesus and Paul did not intend. Using the words “Deliver/deliverance” gives the New Testament a different emphasis.

Prophet and Lion

1 Kings 13 tells the story of a prophet who challenged King Jeroboam, but was killed by a lion on his way home. I have always been intrigued by this man who is not named. Why did he end up being killed, when he had completed a very challenging prophetic task?

Jeroboam was one of the most evil kings in Israel’s history. In the Old Testament, he is the benchmark for political evil. Jeroboam built two gold bullocks for the people to worship. He established priests in Bethel (where Jacob had met Yahweh), and made an altar to make burnt offerings. It is not clear who they offered to.

A man of God came and challenged Jeroboam while he was standing by the altar ready to make an offering. The prophet declared that human bones would one day be offered on this altar. He said that the altar would be split in half and spill its ashes as a sign to the king.

Jeroboam called for his guards to seize the prophet, but when he stretched out his hand it shrivelled up and the altar split in half before him. The king asked the prophet to pray for him and plead with God for his hand to be restored. There is no hint that the king repented of his idolatry. The prophet sought Yahweh’s goodwill and the hand was restored.

The King then asked the prophet to come to his house and eat with him and receive a gift. He offered up to half his household. The king was obviously grateful for the healing of his hand, but he did not seem to repent. The prophet was uneasy about dining with the rebellious king, because he could easily be compromised. He said,

Even if you were to give me half your possessions, I would not go with you, nor would I eat bread or drink water here. For I was commanded by the word of the LORD: ‘You must not eat bread or drink water or return by the way you came.

The prophet then went out by a different way from the way he came to Bethel.

I wonder if God did really say that he should not eat or drink until he got home. That is a strange thing for God to say, as a prophet needs to be alert and sharp, whereas going without food and drink would make him weak and vulnerable. I am reminded of 1 Kings 19:5, where God sent an angel to provide Elijah with food when he was sending him into a tough spiritual encounter. God wants his prophets to be sharp.

I wonder if God had told the prophet not to socialise with the king. Given that he had not repented, God would not want the prophet to be in fellowship. So probably did tell his prophet to avoid the king and go home without visiting his house.

Maybe the prophet exaggerated what God said, to make his refusal to accompany the king more emphatic. The anti-climax after a prophet has given a powerful word is the time when he is most vulnerable. So I can understand that the prophet exaggerated God’s command and said he was not allowed to eat and drink until he got home, to enforce his message to the king and provide justification for refusing his fellowship.

Expanding God’s word is a huge temptation for prophets. The prophet is so committed to God’s word, that they sometimes reinforce the word with their own additions to make the word seem stronger. This is a mistake. God’s word is always powerful and can stand on its own. The Holy Spirit will make it effective.

Old Prophet
An old prophet heard what the prophet had done. He invited the prophet who had delivered the word to Jeroboam to his house for a meal. It is not clear what his motivation was, but he seems and seemed to want to get in on the glory of the miracle that God had done. This is a temptation for the old prophet. Had God called him to go and speak to Jeroboam. I suspect that he might have, because it makes sense that he would have used an experienced prophet for this tough task. Having missed out on a great victory, I suspect that the old prophet invited the successful one to a meal, so he could share in the glory of the victory he had heard about.

The old prophet did a couple of things wrong. First of all, he said,

I two am also prophet, like you (1 Kings 13:18).

A true prophet does not need to announce his ministry. God’s word demonstrates his ministry for all to see.

Secondly, the old prophet compared himself to the prophet who had been successful and said that he was “like him”. That was not true, because he had not given a word or completed a task that got him into the scriptures. Old prophets should be careful about proclaiming their own success, especially when they have been off task.

The old prophet lied and said that Yahweh had told him that the successful prophet had to come back and eat and drink with him. The prophet went and ate with him. If the prophet had added the words about not eating and drinking himself, he would know they were not true. This would tempt him to go and eat with the prophet, even though God had told him to go straight home.

Listening to directions from an older prophet is a mistake for a younger prophet. He should be focusing on hearing the Holy Spirit’s directions, rather than following the instructions of other prophets. Obeying a command from another person is risky, if you have not heard from God himself. The scriptures note that the older prophet was lying (1 Kings 13:18).

Old Prophet Speaks
The conclusion of the incident is strange. A word of God came to the old prophet and he spoke to the prophet dining with him. You have defied the word of the LORD and have not kept the command the LORD your God gave you. You came back and ate bread and drank water in the place where he told you not to eat or drink. Therefore, your body will not be buried in the tomb of your ancestors (1 Kings 13:21-22).

This is a strange word. The first part was true. The prophet had defied God’s word by stopping and dining when God had told him to go straight home.

I suspect that the second half of the prophecy was not from God. The old prophet had lied, so that would have left him vulnerable to a lying spirit.

I suspect that the second part of the prophecy was given by a lying spirit, because God needed the prophet to live, not die. He just needed him to learn a lesson from what had happened, and be careful about how he behaved after he had successfully delivered a word.

The prophet from Judah had submitted to the older prophet and obeyed his instructions by coming to dine with him. This placed him under the authority of the spirit that was at work in the old prophet. The serious consequence of this submission was that the prophet opened himself to a spirit of death. As he was going home, he encountered a lion and was killed. This was a sad end for a man of God who had begun well.

The prophetic declaration of the older prophet was fulfilled, but that does not mean it was from God. It is more likely that it was the lying spirit who was speaking through him. The word was fulfilled because the successful prophet submitted to the word by accepting it. He implicitly submitted to the evil spirit that was behind the word.

God indicates his view of the prophet from Judah by the reality that the lion does not maul him or the donkey that he was riding. It just stands beside him and guards his body. God wanted him to be honoured, even though he had made a mistake.

After hearing that the prophet from Judah had died, the older prophet said,

It is the man of God who was disobedient to the word of the LORD (1 Kings 13:26).

This is a bit rich, as the older prophet did not have the right to judge the prophet who had died. The older prophet had deliberately lied to deceive him, and possibly released the spirit of lying and the spirit of death that led to his killing.

The older prophet had the dead prophet buried in his own grave (which is a bit odd), I presume that he was still trying to share in his glory in some way, which is a dangerous behaviour.

The old prophet declared.

For the saying which he cried out by the word of the LORD against the altar in Bethel, and against all the shrines on the high places which are in the cities of Samaria, will surely come to pass.

It was good that he honoured the prophet who had died and attempted to validate his word, but it was too late. It would have better if he had stood with him when he spoke against Jeroboam. If he had had another prophet supporting him when he spoke to the king, he might have been bolder and less vulnerable to fear.

Two lessons
The usual interpretation of this incident is that disobedience to God is dangerous. However, the message from this passage is more subtle and more important.

• Older experienced prophets should be careful about how they treat younger prophets. They should avoid trying to bask in their glory and should certainly not lie to make them part of their team.

  An older prophet who lies can harm a less experienced prophet. By lying, even if it is for good, he can release a false spirit that can do a lot of harm.

• Less mature prophets should be cautious in their relationships with older prophets. They should not take the older prophet’s word as gospel, especially if it is flattering. Flattery is really dangerous for a prophet who has successfully delivered a word. It can leave them open to spiritual attack. It does not matter who the flattery comes from, it should always be resisted.

  During the period after successfully delivering a word from God, every prophet should be alert, because this is the time when they are most vulnerable to spiritual attack and deception.

  After delivering a confronting word, a prophet can feel a bit flat, even if his word was received as truth. He probably needed the older prophet to encourage him, not trick him and judge him.

Fulfilled
The story ends in the time of King Josiah. He tore down all the altars in Judah. He also destroyed the altar that Jeroboam had built at Bethel. When he saw the tombs on the hillside around it, he dug them up and burned them on the altar to defile it, as the prophet had prophesied would happen (1 Kings 13:2).

The king asked, “What is that tombstone I see?” The people of the city said, “It marks the tomb of the man of God who came from Judah and pronounced against the altar of Bethel the very things you have done to it.” “Leave it alone,” he said. “Don’t let anyone disturb his bones.” So they spared his bones and those of the prophet (2 Kings 23:17-18).

When his prophecy was fulfilled, the prophet from Judah was honoured, whereas the older prophet was not mentioned, even though he was buried in the same tomb.

Economic Theory

Rod Carr is a leading New Zealand economist. In a recent article called Markets Have No Morals, he explained the benefits and the flaws of the standard economic theory that has prevailed for the past fifty years. In this post, I tease his comments out a bit to make them clearer. The words in italics are mine.

Benefits
The 1980s saw an explosion in enthusiasm for using markets to allocate scarce resources. That enthusiasm set off a period of rapid and comprehensive deregulation and privatisation.

• Taxes, tariffs, and subsidies were ‘inherently bad’ as they caused resources to be “misallocated”.

• The pursuit of profit was “inherently good” as resources would flow to their most valuable use.

• Least cost was assumed to create the most value for society (least cost alcohol or tobacco harms society).

• Markets are effective at efficiently allocating scarce resources.

• Markets allow producers and consumers to act in self-interest, leading to the best outcomes for society. (Pareto Optimal in the limited sense that no one can be made better off without making someone worse off, which is not really optimal at all).

• At the time, there was little doubt that markets could allocate financial capital more efficiently than politicians, technocrats, or corporate conglomerates (The global financial crisis showed that this is not true).

• The market acolytes were in control at the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organisation and most central banks and Treasury Departments in the world, taught, advised and acted to promote light-handed regulation, tariff-free trade, low taxes, private property rights and market-based solutions.

Assumptions
Markets are ruthlessly efficient at allocating privately-owned scarce resources with a price, provided:

• Price is determined in free market exchanges between many buyers and many sellers (most markets are not free).

• Complete information is available to all participants (rarely true)

• Search and transaction costs are trivial and .

• All the impacts, costs and benefits, are reflected in the prices buyers are willing to pay and

• Sellers are willing to incur (producers push many costs onto the community).

However, this set of ideal circumstances is rare (It probably never occurs). Economists build economic models based on their assumptions, so there models do not match reality.

Selfish, Myopic and Reckless
Markets are myopic, reckless and selfish. Markets are short-sighted:

• A direct result of discounting the future due to uncertainty

• Market participants face a constraint on their access to cash.

• Understate future benefits and exclude or understate future costs.

• Underinvestment in long-life infrastructure.

• Degradation of natural ecosystems and

• Underinvestment in public health and education (explains why our hospitals and schools are struggling).

Markets are reckless:

• They create an asymmetry that sees profits accrue to those with private property rights, while costs are left to lie with the general public.

• Limited liability companies limit downside risk and encourage risk-taking. (Limited liability is a hugely significant government intervention that business owners never admit, despite claiming to believe in free markets.)

• Children do not inherit their parents’ debts (but benefit from wealthy parents).

• Irreversible biodiversity loss is unpriced yet deprives future generations of options and choices while exposing them to unknown risks and costs.

• Decisions today without accountability have irreversible consequences, seriously reduce future choices, raise future costs, transfer risks to other members of our society and undermine social cohesion.

Markets are inherently selfish.

• Markets are indifferent as to the distribution of benefits and costs throughout society (This is a massive problem, because the rich get richer, and the poor stay poor).

• Market acolytes argue that the efficiency gains from market-determined resource allocation allow the winners to compensate the losers, leaving society better off (a rising tide lifts all boats), but political obstacles prevent this from happening.

• As it turns out, the winners attribute their winnings to personal attributes, such as hard work, thrift, ability, and are reluctant to pay enough tax or gifts to compensate the losers.

Rod Carr concludes that markets are a tool to achieve strategic, social, political and economic outcomes, not a result to be pursued for its own sake. Markets should be a tool to enable people and not a mantra to enslave us.

Rule of Idiots

Chris Hedges on the Rule of Idiots.

In the last days of all empires the idiots take over. They mirror the collective stupidity of a civilization that has detached itself from reality.

The last days of dying empires are dominated by idiots. The Roman, Mayan, French, Habsburg, Ottoman, Romanoff, Iranian and Soviet dynasties crumbled under the stupidity of their decadent rulers who absented themselves from reality, plundered their nations and retreated into echo chambers where fact and fiction were indistinguishable.

In “Hitler and the Germans,” the political philosopher Eric Voegelin dismisses the idea that Hitler — gifted in oratory and political opportunism, but poorly educated and vulgar — mesmerized and seduced the German people. The Germans, he writes, supported Hitler and the “grotesque, marginal figures,” surrounding him because he embodied the pathologies of a diseased society, one beset by economic collapse and hopelessness. Voegelin defines stupidity as a “loss of reality.” The loss of reality means a “stupid” person cannot “rightly orient his action in the world, in which he lives.” The demagogue, who is always an idiote, is not a freak or social mutation. The demagogue expresses the society’s zeitgeist, its collective departure from a rational world of verifiable fact.

These idiots, who promise to recapture lost glory and power, do not create. They only destroy. They accelerate the collapse. Limited in intellectual ability, lacking any moral compass, grossly incompetent and filled with rage at established elites who they see as having slighted and rejected them, they remake the world into a playground for grifters, con artists and megalomaniacs.

A society convulsed by disorder and chaos, as Voegelin points out, celebrates the morally degenerate, those who are cunning, manipulative, deceitful and violent. In an open, democratic society, these attributes are despised and criminalized. Those who exhibit them are condemned as stupid; “a man [or woman] who behaves in this way,” Voegelin notes, “will be socially boycotted.” But the social, cultural and moral norms in a diseased society are inverted. The attributes that sustain an open society — a concern for the common good, honesty, trust and self-sacrifice — are ridiculed. They are detrimental to existence in a diseased society.

Read the entire article.

US Insolvable Economic Problems

I made a list of some of the serious economic problems being faced by the United States.  One reason why they are unsolvable is that political leaders and their people believe lies about the situation that prevent them from understanding the cause.

The other obstacle is that many of the problems do have known solutions, but they cannot be implemented because they are politically unacceptable.  No politician would promise to implement them, because it would destroy their candidacy for office.

I have summarised the problems, the lies that people believe about them, and the truth that needs to be understood in the following table.

US Problem	Lies	Truth
Structural Trade Deficit ($850 billion)	Deficits are necessary to supply dollars to the nations (wrong – they did this when running a trade surplus. The nations are stealing from us Foreigners pay tariffs	Strong dollar limits exports and encourage imports A high-cost structure is the problem, - health care - education - social problems Lack of skilled staff Financialisaton shifted industry to cheap labour. Tariffs might help but would also increase inflation.
Persistent Budget Deficits ($2 trillion)	Deficits do not matter	Donors demand tax cuts. Political processes demand pork. The massive military machine costs money. The only solution is to increase taxes and/or reduce spending, but this is not politically expedient.
Government Debt ($30 trillion)	We owe it to ourselves so it does not matter. The Fed is too slow.	Persistent budget deficits feed debt. Interest is now one of the largest budget items. Debt pushes up interest rates which slows the economy and hurts consumers. The big beautiful bill is making the debt situation worse.
De-industrialisation		Financialisation moved industry to cheap labour nations for profit. China is skilled in industrial production China has an educated population More STEM graduates than the USA. Tariffs will shift some industries back to the US, but they will have to be specialised activities that can support expensive labour. Free market capitalism combined with debt-led consumerism throws up the problem.
Military Weakness	To be a world hegemon, the US must keep China down.	The US military relies on China for imports of technology. The US cannot afford to be the world policeman. The US military does not have sufficient personnel, and military recruiting is getting harder. The US military demands extremely expensive hardware which is not effective in a peer-to-peer war. Complex technology takes too long to develop and is too expensive to use against weak enemies.
Debt-fuelled consumption	Cheap consumption makes people happy. They will not accept a reduced standard of living.	Consumerism depends on cheap labour in poor countries. The US cannot produce the cheap goods that people want. Household and student debt are problematic.
Incompetent political leadership	Technocratic leaders have the solutions that society needs. Challenges to the political establishment are a threat to freedom.	Western politicians are intellectually, morally and politically weaker than ever. They are Detached from reality, assuming they live in a world that does not exist. Elite groups on both sides of the spectrum take turns at leading. Leaders don’t have effective solutions and don’t know how to implement t them effectively. Covid and the global financial crisis confirmed their incompetence. No political appetite for solving structural problems.
Flawed economic model - neoliberalism	Unconstrained free market capitalism will produce economic outcomes for everyone.	The western economic model has failed.Its weakness is confirmed by the global financial crisis. The world economy needs to be restructured but no one understands how this could happen or what should be the outcome.
Migration	The nations are emptying their prisons and mental asylums and sending the inmates to America. Immigrants are "poisoning the blood of our country".	The US needs low-paid workers for its agriculture, to collect the garbage and clean the homes of the wealthy. The US lacks effective processes for managing the selection of migrants. The Migrants arriving are remaining in ghettoes because they fear the law. Many don’t speak English. Migrants are changing the culture at a time when Christian influence is declining. Debate about the merits of migration is impossible, because people who raise concerns about its effects are labelled as right-wing.
Resource Constraints	Drill baby drill!	American wealth was built on an abundance of mineral resources that were easy to extract. Unfortunately, most of the easily extractable minerals are now becoming exhausted. There are plenty of mineral resources still available, but they are more costly to extract and use. This will push up the price of everything.

These are interlinked problems. One cannot be solved without solving the other. Most of these problems cannot be solved politically. Most solutions are politically unacceptable.

Donald Trump understands the seriousness of the problems, but he remains part of the problem, not the solution. His economic decisions and political rhetoric are exacerbating many of the problems.