Chris Rattue: Team NZ is a big business and not necessarily a good business

Come on Dalts. Pull the other one.

Team New Zealand yachting boss Grant Dalton has thrown his hands up in horror at the scurrilous suggestion part of an America's Cup hosting fee might find its way into (drum roll) his pocket.

You've got to think some would end up in his pocket, somehow.

Seriously, even when you shove a few shillings in a charity bucket outside a supermarket, it ends up in a salary, somehow. We're not that damn stupid.

Or to put it another way: When you set out to save a whale, that money ends up in a bank. In other words, you are also supporting a bank.

And if Grant Dalton won the America's Cup on home waters, backed by our money, his future prospects would be very bright. Or am I over-simplifying this?

That small matter aside, Team New Zealand is big business and I think we've got every right to be as cynical and enquiring as we like when it comes to that.

Dalts is a great sailor/leader, no doubt. He can do things most of us couldn't even dream of. Fair play to him. That doesn't mean all this TNZ is beautiful stuff is real.

Dalton likes to portray his team as a bunch of little Kiwi battlers. Go check his list of major sponsors, and tell us he's running a dinghy club.

If Dalts is feeling hard done by, he can at least console himself knowing that his cause is let down by the big picture.

The big lie was Rogernomics, the 1980s rush to free enterprise which inferred that health and wealth would trickle down. Ever since, the wealth has been gushing upwards, and real national health has plummeted.

The original America's Cup dream was actually funded by some of these new frontiersmen, a couple of bankers with - in my view - highly questionable attitudes around society values.

No, when you live in a little country where the head of the local farming cooperative is earning more than $8m a year and gets an increase to give Beauden Barrett's goalkicking success rate a decent nudge, all those top dogs are fair game.

Big business will say anything to get its own way — take all inferences the good ship America's Cup is vital for the country with a big vat of sea salt.

The fact is, there is no comprehensive, holistic, deeply intelligent analysis which can tell you that, and even then any conclusion is a matter of perspective. The simple answer is none of us truly know, that the situation isn't simple.

(For instance, in the real world I believe all this fawning over the rich and famous may increase feelings of alienation in many people. This could nullify any alleged economic benefit.)

There is perhaps one ultra-sophisticated computer in the world which does take a subject seriously — that Black Rock-Aladdin investment system in America is so deep it gets predictions right, perish the thought. But the next time someone chucks a number at you, chuck it right back.

This is the age of rationalisation, where everything is turned into a numeral. It is so easy. Scientists from way back knew it was coming, although the extent of its misuse would probably have shocked many of them.

The sort of statistical analysis we are constantly being hunted with means that when you buy a spade via the internet, the system has a good old think and tries to sell you another one. There were 1970s shopkeepers with more brains than that, and a lot more soul.

Sport is simply another contributor.

Like just about everything these days, TNZ's bid for assistance is backed by what I see as primitive and narrow mathematics designed to succeed, not reveal.

Philosophy, heart, soul, culture and emotion has been replaced by a fake world in the debilitating efficiency age. This includes the pseudo patriotism that lines up before every test match, hand on heart, face grimacing, team mates clutched closely, anthem turned up loud.

But can you tell me again why it is so overwhelmingly important to beat Australia, when I don't actually feel like that anymore?

This large investment in goodness knows what includes all the money we give people to win a few gold medals, and the money we will give to Team NZ.

Make New Zealand Great.