The Developed World

I spent much of 1987 trying to get a job without success. But one of the few interviews I got was here, at Lane Walker Rudkin, on Montreal St in Christchurch.

The Labour government was cutting tariffs on manufactured goods in New Zealand at the time, a move that would eventually drive most local clothing and shoe makers out of business. LWR was one of the few large clothing companies to survive. They went into receivership in 2009.

After man killed god (as much as I hate paraphrasing Nietzsche) at the end of the nineteenth century, it only took one hundred years to replace him with something equally irrational. And New Zealand lead the way in man's abdication of responsibility in part of his own civilization (the economic system) and the abandonment of capitalism (manufacturing), in favour of service industries, currency speculation and the trading in esoteric financial instruments known as free market economics.

New Zealand's balance of trade has never recovered.

And manufacturing is now the preserve of the Developing World.

But that's okay, we still have tourism. Roll up! Come see the Broken City!

It's open to the public.