New Zealand Too Small

A post now about my country of birth, little old New Zealand. NZ has failed but not woken up to that fact yet. How it failed was it did not invest enough in the right areas, it did not grow its population, and it did not listen. But there are exit chutes available and I'll mention them here, in order from the less preferred by me to the most preferred. Here goes, the way I see it NZ has 4 options:

4. Become part of Australia. This is the easiest option, NZ is already a State in fact and can just snap its fingers and voila. However the reason this isn't the answer is to do with business cycles and the way Australia itself functions. NZ already has direct access but Australia treats NZ like branch office, the latter effect would just get worse. Australia just doesn't have enough grunt by itself either, adding NZ doesn't add much to what is itself small (Oz), and in terms of economic cycles Australia is often going in the opposite direction to NZ.  So Kiwiland can give this a swerve.

3. Form an empire of the South Pacific Rim. Not as silly as it seems, join all the South Pacific Islands together with the western seaboard of South America, together with NZ and the eastern seaboard of Australia. This is an empire situated in a basin, from the eastern side of the Great Dividing Range across the ocean to the Andes. The problem with this is legal systems and language.

2. Join the EU. To achieve this, NZ could merge with a small European country, such as Denmark. Denmark has 5.7 million people, NZ 4.5 million. Culturally there is not much separating them, they both hold territory at the extremities, Denmark with Greenland and NZ with the Ross Sea in Antarctica. This could be a match made in heaven. Legally, culturally, economically, and even with language there would not be much to worry about. I like this option a lot. Both countries double in size overnight and both gain.

1. Become a State of the USA. Yes I've said this before and this option is the most fancied. NZ stands to gain a lot, principally in terms of access to capital and in industrial development. The legal systems, culturally, linguistically, there is very little to learn and the US gains resources. I have looked at the pros and cons of this here: http://kenhorlor.blogspot.com/2016/05/new-zealand-51st-state.html

Long term what cannot continue is the ever growing size of government unmatched by real GDP growth. NZ needs to industrialise, its failure in this respect will see its farmland collapse. Maybe not in my lifetime but almost certainly in the lifetime of my grandchildren and that's a real concern.