Make me a cake or I'll call the Police

Gareth Lee is a bully and a prick.

Gareth Lee

Before I start, for the avoidance of doubt, let's get three things clear:

1. I'm not a Christian, and I find some elements of Christianity to be not only irrational but also immoral.

2. I'm not gay.

3. I fully support two people of the same sex being able to get married, just like two of the opposite sex, and I find fear or hatred of people because they are homosexual/lesbian/bisexual to be both irrational and immoral.

So from a libertarian perspective, the Asher's Bakery case in Northern Ireland is an interesting one.

The long and the short of it is that a gay rights activist in Northern Ireland asked a bakery to bake a cake with a pro-gay marriage slogan on it, and the bakery objected because the owners oppose gay marriage, because of their religious beliefs.

The court has ruled that refusing to bake the cake is illegal "discrimination".  What this ruling represents is a fundamental infringement on two rights:

1. Freedom of trade;

2. Freedom of speech.

It's not "your" Banksy

Who owns graffiti?

Let's say you own a building.  Yes, I know that for some this concept of property rights is rather alien, but humour me for a moment.  It's your building.  You have a wall on the property line up against the footpath or another public space.

If someone spray painted it you'd think that you had every right to do what you wish with your wall, as long as you don't put others at risk.  You could leave it, remove it/paint over it, or even remove the wall right?

Banksy Wood Green

No.  You see this is exactly what has happened in Wood Green, London.  

The anonymous artist 'Banksy' had painted this image of a child working in sweatshop conditions making bunting.  The owner of the building, a pair of property developers, cut out the wall to sell it at an art auction in the United States, sparking outrage.   Locals were outraged considering that the art was "theirs", because it could be seen publicly.

The sale was halted as even the FBI allegedly asked Scotland Yard to "investigate" according to the Evening Standard, but Scotland Yard has refused to investigate as it is not a criminal matter.

The locals who thought a wall, that they didn't own, was theirs, managed to gee up a few local politicians, ever keen to hop on a bandwagon and treat property rights as ephemeral.  Alan Strickland, a Labour councillor (big surprise) for Haringey has said he wants it returned.  Local MP, Lynne Featherstone (Liberal Democrat - another party with little respect for private property rights) has also called for it to be returned asking "will we get it back"?  Who is this "we"?  

Why do politicians think that just because a (relatively small) group of loud people demand other people's property that this is "ok"?  Do they really think that the future of graffiti on a private wall should be put to public acclaim?  Does it mean anyone can paint your external wall and if he gets a gang of locals and a couple of leftwing politicians on side, that you can't paint over it?

One of the owners points out the irony:

I cannot believe it’s over graffiti on a wall that has caused this. We had a case with one of our buildings where we had graffiti and the council told us they would fine us over £1000 if we didn’t remove it.“The council have done nothing to protect it. They’ve not helped us in any way. They’ve just caused us more problems and more problems"

So on your own property, the council fines you if it doesn't like it, but then harasses if it does?

It ought to be simple.

If Banksy (or anyone) chooses to paint on a wall of a building that he doesn't own (or without the permission of the owner), then he takes the risk that it is removed, obliterated or left as is.  Bear in mind that using someone else's property temporarily is the crime of conversion, and that the painting may be seen as vandalism.  Art it may be to some observers, but it isn't their property.  You don't have the right to tell other people what they may do with their property.

The owners were quite within the rights to ignore the baying crowd and remove the wall.  The baying crowd that didn't offer to buy it, that didn't do anything to protect the wall, that are only too willing to demand something that isn't theirs becomes theirs.   Cheered on by politicians that belong to parties that would tax the property owners every year to pay for the bloated states they support.

Not one of them offering to buy the wall themselves with their own money, they just want to regulate and interfere.

What of Banksy?  Well if he wants his art to be protected then he might approach the property owners before he paints on their walls.   Yes that "isn't the point" and is part of the anarchy that the anti-establishment loves, but property rights are important.  Because when you can't control what you own, then you don't own it.   So if he wants to be "pure", then accept that sometimes the property owners wont like it, sometimes they will accept it and sometimes they will say "thank you, that's our wall".

New Zealanders already own them

Such is the cry of the impotent leftwing cry in New Zealand politics against privatisation of state owned businesses.  It is this position, and the infantile debate about privatisation that passes for political discourse in New Zealand that demonstrates how far removed the country can actually be from the rest of the world.

The only countries in the world that decry privatisation are the likes of Venezuela, Iran and North Korea.  In the rest of the OECD it is mainstream policy and has been for some time.  However, in New Zealand the debate is at a level that I think reflect a combination of the base level of debate through television and talkback radio, and the agendas sold by some in academia and education, pushing what can best be described as the Green/Alliance leftwing legend about the reforms of the 1980s and 1990s.

The latest phrase thrown in is just banal.

"New Zealanders already own them" or "You don't have a right to sell something New Zealanders own".

Of course it is cravenly misleading political rhetoric, like the bald faced lie that opening ACC up to competition is privatisation, because some of its customers will choose a private competitor. Like the complete blanking out of history by Labour politicians who happily consented to Michael Cullen seeking to sell part of the re-nationalised Air New Zealand to its arch rival Qantas - because Qantas was keen to snuff out any chance of the knee-capped airline becoming a bigger competitor, and Cullen was too inept to see through its rhetoric. 

New Zealanders do not own SOEs by any standard definition of what ownership of property means.

If you own a shareholding in a business, whether by shares, or in partnership, or private equity stake, or even as a secured creditor, you have a wide range of rights in relation to the assets and liabilities of that business.

First and foremost is the right of alienation.  You can sell, gift or surrender that stake to whoever is willing to buy or receive it.  You are not forced to own it.  After all, if you were, you'd be forced to bear liabilities as well as receive proceeds from profits.  

Secondly, ownership bears the ability to gain dividends from profits and capital gains from appreciation of the assets. Conversely, it also means you bear liabilities (in the form of your assets being devalued and shareholding able to be surrendered to creditors, or rendered worthless through the market).  Ownership is dynamic.  Like owning a home, or a painting or a car, what you own can make you money, or can lose you money, but ultimately you gain or lose value according to how it is managed, used and ultimately the market for buying it.

New Zealanders do not have either of these rights in relation to SOEs.  There must be a few environmentalists who'd rather not own a coal mining business, but they can't sell out of the state shareholding in Solid Energy.  As New Zealanders individually can't sell out of SOEs, only the state can, it is absurd to claim that the state has "no right" to do so, when in fact the elected government is led by a political party that campaigned on that platform.

The government does have the right to sell any asset it holds, and indeed it has a democratic mandate to engage in its small SOE part privatisation programme.  To reject this is to claim the state should never sell anything again, and to reject the mandate of the electorate.

New Zealanders don't get dividends from SOEs.  The state does.  New Zealanders don't get a dividend cheque to spend on their mortgage, their kids' education or their businesses.  Those on the left will argue that they do get the "fruit" of government spending, but government spending is distinctly unequal among New Zealanders.  It tends to cluster around rent-seeking groups, such as employees in the state sector, businesses that receive subsidies, the state education and health sector, state housing and welfare recipients.  Is that what people want their dividends spent on?   Of course if the state was going to spend that anyway, it is arguable taxes would increase, although again, taxes aren't equal either.  If everyone had equal shares, they would get equal dividends, but the benefits (and costs) of the state are not equally distributed.

So to claim New Zealanders "own" SOEs is a complete fallacy.  They can't sell or give away their ownership, even if they wanted to.  They can't gain the fruits of ownership.  Yet they do bear the costs.  Loss making SOEs may get additional funds from the state.  Kiwirail being the obvious example.  Those who pay the greatest tax bear the greatest loss.

This "public ownership" is effectively meaningless.  It is, legally, Crown ownership.  The government owns SOEs and it is up to the Minister of Finance to exercise the rights of ownership.  The state owning something doesn't mean you own it.  It spends the proceeds on what it wants, and if it loses money, it takes it from your taxes.

Yet have you noticed how opponents to privatisation get awfully wound up about selling businesses, but the state taking your money through taxes and buying them, that;s another story.

In the past decade New Zealand taxpayers have been forced to buy an airline and a railway, but nobody who says there is "no right to sell" argues it about buying.  Apparently the state has every right to borrow or tax to make people buy a business, or invest in an existing one (take Kiwibank).  

What does that mean?  Well if you follow it to the logical conclusion, it means the state can buy up anything it likes, but never sell it.  Ultimately it means nationalising the entire private sector and all private property.

The real debate that should be had is whether it is appropriate for the state to own businesses at all.  It gets diverted because those wanting to debate are wanting to scaremonger.

It's why the Greens, Hone Harawira and others on the left raise their racist bogeyman of "foreigners" when it comes to privatisation.   The very people who cry racist whenever they find an unequal outcome between two groups they subjectively define by ethnicity, raise hackles of what is nothing more than pure nationalist hatred regarding foreign nationals or companies owning businesses in New Zealand.  The implication being that foreigners "rip people off", New Zealanders don't.  That foreigners will "take their money and run", New Zealanders never spend their money on luxuries, foreign travel or invest overseas.  Foreigners "don't understand us", because New Zealand state owned businesses have always been a roaring success and delivered just what everyone wanted.

If you want to know one reason why Air New Zealand did not get fast approval for Singapore Airlines to lift its shareholding from 25% to 49% by the last Labour government, the word "xenophobia" might explain something.

So no kiwis, you don't own SOEs - a collective of politicians exercise ownership rights over them, spend the profits arising from them, and collect from you when things are going bad for them.  You have no more right to say they can't be sold than you have to say the state shouldn't buy a car, a plot of land, or a new locomotive for Kiwirail.

The late Roger Kerr wrote extensively about privatisation, it would be a start if some journalists in New Zealand actually took some time to read some of it, such as the review of the actual performance of privatised state businesses and their history.  It would also be nice if some of them asked the politicians who oppose privatisation whether they also oppose the state buying businesses on behalf of taxpayers.

Brash and cannabis UPDATED

I voted for ACT, once, in 2006.  It has disappointed me consistently since.

In 2006 I suggested to Rodney Hide to invite Don Brash to stand in 2008.  Well Don is standing now, without Rodney.

In 2005 I suggested Rodney Hide campaign in that election on legalising cannabis.  I was ignored.  Now Don is doing it.

The arguments in favour of it then are still valid now:

"ACT needs to be more than the party of Business Roundtable economics - sound though that is.

It needs to sell freedom...

Why?

Because there is nothing more fundamentally liberal, than asserting that adults own their own bodies, and have the right to ingest a substance on their own private property without the state criminalising them for it...

The Economist called for this two years ago - hardly a newspaper of the lunatic fringe."

As I said then, this move changes the political landscape.  A position monopolised by leftwing authoritarians (the Greens) is now taken by a party that has long purported to believe in freedom.   ACT can advocate for a change in cannabis laws based on principle as well as pragmatism.

It may risk a loss of conservative votes, but they will go to National anyway.  Brash can minimise it by being himself.  Hardly a dope-head, he can argue, convincingly, that the status quo has failed and that the problems of cannabis are better addressed by:

- Employers retaining the right to require testing under employment contracts;

- Drug testing as part of road safety legislation;

- Strict enforcement of laws against supplying to minors;

- Encouragement of educational and health measures warning of the health risks.

Don Brash in recent weeks has come out in favour of replacing the RMA with a property rights based approach, including putting such rights in the Bill of Right, ending Auckland's experiment with US style "new-urbanism", which is about restricting the supply of housing that people want, to encourage people to buy the housing the planners want, to use the transport they are making everyone else pay for.

These are great leaps forward for ACT in terms of being a party that believes in individual rights and individual freedoms.   I look forward to more!

UPDATED:  Unsurprisingly, ACT's replacement for Rodney Hide -John Banks - is having none of it.  It raises the obvious point, that for ACT to return to Parliament and actually be in favour of freedom, it is far better for North Shore voters to elect Don Brash and for Epsom voters to not vote for John Banks.   If ACT is going to have a purge of its anti-freedom factors then the man who left Auckland with huge public debt, and who voted against the legalising of consensual adult homosexual acts is hardly going to be any help.

Vandals and thugs are children of the Labour philosophy

UK Uncut, a radical leftwing protest group, has been exposed for what it really is - a bunch of young angry violence prone thugs who, as usual, misuse the term "peaceful protest" for "vandalism, trespass and intimidation".

It is they that formed the backbone to the breakaway protests in London on Saturday, and the cover for the so-called anarchists who went on a vandalism and trespass spree across London's West End.  I say "so-called anarchists" because if they really were anarchists, they wouldn't have wanted the Police to step in had the owners of the premises they trashed used force to defend their properties.

UK Uncut are an odd bunch, you see they want more government (not exactly aligned with anarchists then) and want more tax, so the government can spend more money, presumably on them. UK Uncut is waging war on successful British businesses because it wants to strongarm them to pay more in tax - not that any of them are alleged to be breaking the law - but UK Uncut doesn't think these businesses should arrange their affairs to minimise tax.  The philosophy being that when businesses make profits, the state is entitled to take part of that.

I can't quite understand how anyone, particularly groups of students can get excited about getting businesses to pay more tax, like they worship the state as big mother, which has weaned them and gives them what they want.  It's so anti-aspirational as to be pathetically sad.

Tim Worstall of the Institute of Economic Affairs has fisked this lot with ease, showing the economic illiteracy of UK Uncut.   UK Uncut assumes bizarrely that British companies would remain if taxes were raised dramatically, it assumes that when companies pay more tax that somehow that means that "rich fatcats" lose - when many of the companies have shareholders which are pension funds and the like, with profits shared among thousands of shareholders.   Full details of the fisking here.

However, the mob who vandalised are more than just disenchanted idiots.  They vandalised the Ritz Hotel because they were "anti-rich", they occupied the exclusive department store Fortnum & Mason; Mason because it is upmarket (one wit said "Proper Tea is theft", as Fortnum & Mason has an excellent tea section).  Banks including ATMs were wrecked because they just oppose banks.  Didn't matter that the banks attacked in some cases were not bailed out.   In fact nothing mattered other than trashing the property of businesses they had an ill-conceived prejudice against.  Nice.

However desperate the TUC and Labour are to distance themselves from these thugs, there is a more fundamental underlying point.  Whilst neither entity provoked or encouraged the vandalism (and both are embarrassed by it), the simple truth is that they all share the same philosophy - a fundamental hatred of entrepreneurial success and a belief that the property of others is not sacrosanct.

Both Labour and the TUC perpetuate the myth that the recession is entirely the fault of "the banks" and that "the banks" must pay - they blame the budget deficit on the banks, when it is palpably not true.   Labour had been running large deficits for years, only the collapse in tax revenue has made it more rapidly unsustainable.   

Labour and the TUC want to tax banks more, vandalise them in a far more civilised way, without sticks and stones, and make Britain even less attractive for the financial sector.   They want more of your money, they want to give the money to those who haven't earned it, they want to spend it on monopoly state run health and education services, regardless of whether they meet your needs - because government is good, government always knows best.

They hold the same empty belief that capitalism doesn't really work, that the reason the world isn't the way they want it is because people trade, people make money, people produce goods and services and sell them to people who are willing to pay, employ people who are willing to work, and that life isn't fair!  They belief there aren't equal opportunities (there aren't, the Khmer Rouge tried to fix that), that everyone has a right to a job (a right provided by whom?) and that the "rich" make money off the back of the poor.

It is the same belief that other people owe you a living, an education or health care.  The idea that if other people have property or money, then you have a right to some of it.  It is moral cannibalism, the idea that the mere existence of someone gives them unchosen obligations to give the fruits of their labour, effort, exchanges and mind to others who demand them.   It is the Marxist myth - from each according to his ability to each according to his needs.  The cleverer you are the more of that is demanded from others, and what you get back is just 'what you need'.

The only way this can be imposed is by force, by violence.  The anarchist protestors are willing to do this directly, the politicians and unionists will use the state to do it (and already do).

The best response to this is an unashamed defence of capitalism.  A defence of the principle that people should be entitled to set up businesses, make money, hire who they wish and keep the proceeds, as long as they don't use force or fraud to do so.  It is more than just pointing out that waging war on capitalists means they will leave, with their money, Zimbabwe like, and the looters and vandals will have nothing left.

UK Uncut is ridiculously stupid - if it got its way, businesses would flee the UK and so would wealthy entrepreneurs rather than be taxed. 

Of course if you are weaned on a state education that teaches you how wonderful the things are government does, and to be envy and hate filled about those who have more than you, then you're going to concentrate on hating rather than creating.

That's what you saw on Saturday in London.

A touch of North Korea for New Zealand

I can tell from first hand experience, that this story from Not PC, is philosophically and ethically identical to how north Korea sees its citizens.

You are owned by the state, your property is the property of the state if it so wishes, the state is sovereign.   You are to take this as an honour more than anything else.

Moreover, individuals whose greatest achievement is stringing together some sentences in Microsoft Word dare tell those who have worldwide acclaim for REAL achievement (and his wife) that their property is somehow more special if the party state sees it as special for the nation.

The NZ Herald reported: "Ministry for Culture and Heritage chief executive Lewis Holden said today its focus was on getting the watch back because of its heritage and historic importance to New Zealand."

So a collective nation carries "importance", like it has a collective brain, and therefore Holden (now there is a name with heritage for some) must get zee watch back!! It is too important for the people, the party, the state, the nation for filthy foreigners to get their hands on it.

The appropriate response to this is a two fingered obscenity.

Yet one could ask the Minister and the government if it approves of such nationalisation of private property of the family of famous achieving New Zealanders.

Of course the real reason any of this is happening is a family feud, whereby the progeny of Sir Edmund Hillary are upset that mum is selling the watches.  Who is right? I am not in a position to say, it should  be a matter for the courts. What should only be a dispute about chattels among relatives now has the state stomping in, invited of course, by the same progeny (after all, they deserve more than simple property law to mediate such disputes) to nationalise the disputed property.

There hasn't, of course, been a peep from the government, in any party, just going to show, once again, that ACT can't even raise a peep when its alleged principles are sold out like, well any politician really.

Erosion of private property rights in the UK

Three issues in the past few days have exemplified how the notion that private property rights are sacrosanct has been seriously eroded in the UK. They are around pay TV, mobile phones and bed and breakfasts.

First, Ofcom, the UK media regulator deemed that the UK's most successful pay TV operator - BSkyB - must be forced to sell content from its Sky Sports 1 and 2 channels to competitors at 23% less than it currently chooses to do so. The reason? "Sky exploits this market power by restricting the distribution of its premium channels to pay TV providers." This "reduces consumer choice." "

Now BSkyB has brought more choice to British TV viewers than any other broadcaster. It offers 615 TV channels, and people pay for it voluntarily, unlike the BBC which is paid for by state enforced demand notice. The story of BSkyB is how it started operation to the UK without a licence, because it was operating entirely from outside the UK. It easily bet the state endorsed BSB, bought it out and became an enormous success story, against the odds (the story is in this book). It lost money for many years, never seeking a penny from taxpayers, and became successful because it took risks, it bought broadcasting rights for major sports events and people wanted to pay for it.

In other words, it was a great British entrepreneurial success story, something to be proud of. So what does the state do? Kneecap it. It wants to boost the competitors, the lacklustre Virgin Media (which bought out the poorly performing cable TV companies NTL and Telewest), BT's (once the focus of Ofcom diktats till it was cut down to size) Vision service and even the barely known Top Up TV. What it does is say the broadcasting rights Sky bought from various sports codes are NOT Sky's, but the "people's", so it is helping out Sky's competitors.

What will be the result? Sky's competitors wont bid for the sports broadcasting rights, so the price paid to the distributors and clubs will be lower, since Sky will only be bidding against the beleagured commercial networks ITV and 5, and state owned Channel 4 and the BBC. It means Virgin Media, BT Vision and Top Up TV will have to make less effort to appeal to viewers, they can be clones of Sky.

It is another example of pseudo-entrepreneur Richard Branson seeking the gloved fist of the state to take from his competitors to help him out. A charlatan indeed.

Remember, what did Ofcom ever do to increase consumer choice? The UK has one of the most vigorously competitive pay TV sectors in the world, one which has not been subject to the ridiculous rules on price and content that is seen in the US, and the content rules in Australia. As the Daily Telegraph says "the UK desperately needs strong media conglomerates that can compete internationally. In a globalised digital era when Google is eating ITV's lunch, that means we must stop being so parochial and let British companies grow and succeed.That might mean, say, Sky and ITV gaining an uncomfortably strong domestic position. But – like a monthly subscription to Sky Sports – that's a relatively small price to pay."

However, dare the politician speak up against the wide open mouthed "consumer" in favour of the property rights of the producer.

The second issue is about mobile phones. In the UK four companies operate national mobile phone networks of their own - O2, Vodafone, Orange/T-Mobile and 3. In all they, and their wholesalers (for example, Virgin Mobile uses the Orange/T-Mobile network), have 121% market penetration. In other words, there are mobile phone accounts for every adult and child in the UK, and a fifth have a second! With a vigorously competitive industry, multiple network providers, you'd think the free market could reign. Oh no. Ofcom, yet again, sets the price those companies can charge other operators (including fixed line operators) for terminating their calls.

According to the Daily Telegraph, the current price is 4.3p/minute, it is to drop to 0.5p/minute by 2014. Allegedly it is partly due to EU pressure, as clearly it thinks it has some moral authority to set prices for contracts between private companies. Orange and Vodafone are unimpressed saying respectively:

"If these measure are put in place they will stifle innovation. Any incoming government should be mindful of what these ill-considered proposals mean for the future of their country. Handsets may no longer be subsidised, you may have to pay receive calls."

and "A cut of this magnitude deters future investment, makes it less likely that the UK will continue to lead in mobile communications and is at odds with the Government's vision of a Digital Britain."

Of course the bigger question is "Why the hell should the state interfere in contracts between companies in an open fully competitive market"?

Naturally, those advantaged by it are happier. "3" is a relatively new network, so its customers make more calls to competitors than it receives. BT, long been battered into submission by the state for being the former monopoly (and which has withdrawn from a long line of overseas investments in recent years) has also welcomed it.

What WOULD happen if Ofcom said "Set the price you wish"? Well the operators would negotiate rates based on what they thought their customers could bear. Their customers don't want to be on networks nobody wants to call after all.

Again, the UK has spawned one of the world's most successful mobile phone companies, with Vodafone the largest mobile phone company in the world by revenue, and second largest by subscribers. It's UK competitors are French-German, Spanish and Hong Kong owned, and it has thrived. New Zealanders might note that without it they would have waited far longer for text messaging, prepaid mobile phones and competitive pricing with Telecom.

However, what incentive does Ofcom have to NOT meddle?

Finally, a gaffe. Conservative Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling was recorded, off the record, by an Observer journalist saying that those who run bed and breakfasts from their homes have a right to turn away gay couples. This is contrary to "human rights" laws which say otherwise. His point was that there should be respect of people of faith who have genuinely held beliefs. His point is the wrong one.

Now, he has since felt the need to backtrack on this, pointing out he voted for the said laws which ban such discrimination, and he voted for civil partnerships to be allowed. There is little sign he himself holds so-called "homophobic" views. Of course, those on the left are out like sharks to claim the Conservatives "haven't changed".

The point he should have made IS about private property rights. It is your home, you decide who enters it. If you run a B&B then you should also be able to turn away anyone, for whatever reason or feeling you have. Simple as that. If you, as a prospective customer or visitor don't like it? Then use free speech to say so, but don't expect the state to come banging down the door to force anyone to let you in.

You don't have a right to enter anyone's property without the owner's permission. Now had Grayling said that, he might have escaped some of the dirt thrown at him. If you had children and ran a B&B, you might not ever want single men staying, or you may not want priests or whatever. You don't need to justify yourself, it's your property.

Sadly, in the UK today, the argument of private property rights is peripheral. Both Labour and the Liberal Democrats actively reject such rights and will surrender them at will. However, the Conservative Party hasn't the wherewithal to argue differently.

It's about time there is a choice that does!

Who is the thief?

Let's say the mafia strongarms money out of you and your business regularly, say it does so to "protect" you, but is not very good at it.

Let's say your much bigger neighbour finds ways to evade the mafia strongarming so much money out of his business, quite successfully.

Then is the fact the mafia got less money from your neighbour, because your neighbour hid its money in clever ways, means your neighbour has effectively stolen from you (because the mafia might have taken less had it had what it thought it should have got from your neighbour)?

Just a way of looking at this.

In rebuttal to this.

Maori TV offended - so what?

I didn't see the TV3 sketch obviously, I don't care whether I did or didn't, but notwithstanding that TV3 should have a right to free speech. It is privately owned, you don't have to pay for it or watch it. If its customers are offended then they can pull advertising if they wish.

There is no right to not be offended. It doesn't matter if you didn't find it funny.

In a free country nobody else is required to please you.

After all, the Maori Television Service is highly offensive to those who don't want to be forced to pay for any TV channels. I have never considered TVNZ to be anything to do with my values or my culture, for example.

The Broadcasting Standards Authority is increasingly anachronistic when anyone can easily obtain video and audio content from across the world via the Internet, not that international broadcasting is new. It is time to wind it up, and for people, parents especially, to be reminded that:
1. Owning a TV is voluntary. I know of at least two families who deliberately do NOT.
2. Turning the TV on is voluntary, and you can turn it off too.
3. What is broadcast by television is the choice of the broadcaster. If you don't like it, don't watch it.
4. Unless a broadcasting is inciting commission of an actual crime, the broadcaster is party to a crime, engaging in defamation of an individual or breaching copyright, there should be no legal remedies against it.

So next time TV3 offends you, turn it off. Next time Maori TV offends you, turn it off.

Shame you can't stop paying the state when it offends you.

National's big motorway through private property

The NZ Transport Agency is going ahead with the scaled down tunnel option for the Waterview connection motorway - the last stage of the Western Ring Route in Auckland. It is important to note that funding has NOT been approved for construction yet. What has been done is that the route has been decided, and so the road will proceed, once funding is approved, whether or not the property owners agree.

Now I agreed with Steven Joyce pulling the plug on the Helen Clark Commemorative Goldway, which was sheer pork barrel politics of the worst kind - putting one section of a motorway underground because it went through the then Prime Minister's electorate, when all of the rest of the route is at surface.

I also fisked a lot of nonsense from some other blogs about the project. It never had funding agreed before under the last government, and the land was NOT designated for the route.

So what's left?

In principle I agree a motorway ought to be built, one day, to connect the southwestern motorway (SH20) to the northwestern motorway (SH16). However, under two conditions:

1. It should be built respecting private property rights. Yes it was foolish for Auckland councils to abolish designations for building a motorway between Mt Roskill and SH16 nearly 40 years ago, but local property owners shouldn't bear the burden of this. If properties can be bought to build it then so be it, but those who don't wish to sell should not be forced to. Frankly given the enormous construction costs of the motorway, it may simply be a matter of being more flexible about the exact route, or offering more. $88.2 million has been approved to undertake property purchases. Hopefully that will all be achieved voluntarily. It is wrong otherwise.

2. It should be built when it is worth doing. How do you measure that? Well, without a commercially run network it is difficult. As a single tolled project it wont stack up, because the Auckland City Council has untolled roads in parallel that it uses ratepayers money to partially pay for. So a private builder faces unfair public sector competition. So I'd argue that either enough money is generated from the future fuel tax and road user charges consumed using the road, to pay for it, or it generates enough savings in time, vehicle operating costs for the users (and those on roads they once used) to make it an economically efficient project (using standard NZTA benefit/cost analysis). At the moment, it isn't worth doing.

The Mt. Roskill extension has just recently opened, and there are no reports that there are big queues between it and SH16. The Manukau extension remains under construction, as does the duplicate Mangere Bridge. Similarly the Hobsonville deviation of SH18 (last section of the Upper Harbour Motorway) is under construction. Until they are all complete, it is difficult to determine if such a hugely expensive motorway is worth building yet, with the bureaucratically based road funding system that exists. Certainly the "supercity" will not help.

$3.4 million in final investigation funding has been approved and is effectively what officials are spending now to get the route designated and go through the RMA. However, full construction funding approval is still a little off. The National Land Transport Programme shows that $22.7 million will "probably" be approved to spend on detailed design in the next two years, with $42.4 million "probably" approved for pre-construction site work for 2010/11 before the full project can proceed. The full construction cost is put at $976.3 million, to start in 2011/2012, just in time for a general election.

Assuming, of course, the property owners let it be, the RMA doesn't hold it up and the costs don't blow out of control. One thing we can sure of, the Greens will oppose it, because they think we wont need new roads when oil "runs out".

David Farrar gets it but...

Yes on Kiwiblog he posts about "The Stalinist Wellington City Council" because WCC does not want new town centres and shopping malls to compete with existing shopping districts.

He is decidedly libertarian saying "So the Council has decided Kilbirnie and Miramar can get big shops, but Rongotai and Seatoun can not? I’ve got a better solution - let every business decide where they want to be located, and let the public decide if they will shop there."

Yes exactly David of course.

Now in the comments he gets some flack for saying Stalinist, given WCC doesn't run gulags, suppress free speech or have gun toting secret Police. Of course it is a hyperbole, but it is one with a core underlying point. Stalinists were central planners, those who thought they knew what was best for everybody and everything, and believed human beings could be moulded according to what was best for them, nor for their surroundings to be moulded into what human beings wanted.

That you see is the problem - planners want people to fit a plan, not for plans to fit people.

The comments are well worth a read, with Owen McShane, PhilBest and Paul Walker making perhaps the best.

Take this from Owen:

"Stalinist planning is planning from the top down based on the notion that central planners have superiour skills and knowledge and have the authority to direct and control the economy and of course the use of land. Stalinist planning refuses to acknowledge the efficiency of market led allocation of resources and the resulting spontaneous order..

We used to have a Town and Country Planning Act which gave councils the authority to direct and control the use of land and to manage the local economy. The RMA was supposed to have reversed this Stalinist approach by removing that authority and replacing it with the mandate to focus on adverse effects on the environment. Of course the central planners did not like this at all and soon persuaded the courts that you could not manage environmental effects without directing and controlling the use of land.

Climate change alarmism has now provided all the excuses they need."

The market "failures" are actually government failures to use the market, roads being the classic example.

Now what I'd like to know is why David persists with the National Party when it seems to positively embrace this in the RMA, and is doing nothing to change it, whilst promoting a mega-city that will enable Auckland to do one "Stalinist" plan for the whole region?

Why is Libertarianz now the only party that is fighting is?

Conflict of the commons... again

That is how to explain the conflict reported in Sunday News between street prostitutes and “The Papatoetoe Community Patrol”. It is as simple as that.

You see, the streets are owned by Manukau City Council, paid for by all ratepayers and by motorists. "The Papatoetoe Community Patrol" does not own them, neither do the street prostitutes, so whilst the streets and footpaths remain in “public ownership”, neither has any less right to be there.

From the perspective of private property rights, I do not have a problem with the street prostitutes plying their trade, but also not "The Papatoetoe Community Patrol" using persuasion to discourage people from being customers or sex workers. As long as no violence or threats of violence, against people or property as used, then let it be.

Now I find taking number plates to make use of the lack of privacy in the Motor Vehicle Registry to send letters to customers is rather nasty, a nosy finger pointing judgmentalism that some people don’t live their lives the way a “holier than thou” group does – or thinks it does. After all, far too often are groups of judgmental people populated by those with their own embarrassing secrets. It smacks of the Stasi in East Germany, snooping who pry on everything everyone does, but it can go both ways – prostitutes and their customers could always take photos of the patrol, or find ways to thwart them. Each to their own of course.

Nevertheless my point is simple. Privately owned footpaths would offer the opportunity to resolve this. For example, if you owned the footpath outside your property you could ban or allow any legal activity. A body corporate owning a whole street could do the same.

However, whilst it remains “public”, this sort of problem will remain. Different members of the public want to do different things in public places that do not involve initiation of force.

You can be certain that an extrem großen stadt for Auckland wouldn’t dare think of allowing property owners to take responsibility for their footpaths, in exchange for a reduction in rates. If all of the footpaths of a shopping district were owned by a body corporate they could happily ban street prostitution, or allow it. However, given what little interest this government has shown so far in protecting private property rights, I don't hold great hope for any significant change.

In the Shut the F Up file

Whaleoil reports on how unemployed ex.never was a Cabinet Minister, Judith Tizard, is slamming the government for delaying enactment of the Copyright Act amendment that she screwed up.

Radiolive reports Tizard saying "artists and musicians are being robbed of their livelihoods by illegal downloads"

Given that:
a. Labour and commentators across the political spectrum are damning the appalling mismanagement of this issue, essentially by her; and
b. She was part of a government that has as its raison d'etre robbing people of their livelihoods in part to pay for the livelihoods of artists and musicians who couldn't earn a living selling their art and music to willing buyers...

I think it's time for Judith to do what she said on election night, and have a quiet life.

Protection of intellectual property is very important, but Tizard has proven she doesn't have the competence to be respected on this issue. Other people are trying to fix your mess Judith. A little humility would go a long way.

Greenpeace uses property rights to protest

Luddites they may be, and driven by an irrational desire to strangle British airports (which will simply transfer business to continental European ones), but Greenpeace is at least taking a rational approach to protesting the plans to build a third runway at London's Heathrow airport - buying up some of the land needed.

Emma Thompson, Alistair McGowan and Tory nitwit brat Zac Goldsmith have all put up money to buy a field north of Heathrow, which BAA wants as part of its proposed third runway, according to the Daily Telegraph. The intent, of course, is to stop BAA being able to buy all the relevant land, and frankly - from a libertarian point of view - they should be perfectly entitled to do so.

You see ultimately they can make a rational choice. BAA can offer a price which is as much as it is willing to do so to buy the land, and if Greenpeace can take the money (which could fund countless other campaigns) or sit on the land and let BAA try something different.

Of course BAA can ultimately undertake compulsory purchase because it is legally allowed to, and like most businesses today, will use the law to the extent it can to make money. Greenpeace of course doesn't give a damn about property rights, it happily supports those breaking and entering private property to engage in protests - like a recent bunch of fools at Stansted Airport.

So all in all, it's not something significant - an organisation that has scant regard for private property rights is using it to delay a rational commercial project by a private company. I've always said that if BAA can finance a third runway at Heathrow commercially, and buy the land to build it, it shouldn't be prevented from doing so. There may be issues around noise, but unless flights comprise a nuisance over and above that accepted by property owners on flightpaths, it shouldn't be an issue. Yes, I have lived under the flightpath myself.

Of course, if someone can put forward a private business case for a new airport for London at Thames, like Boris Johnson supports, let them do so. However, I wont be holding my breath, sadly.

How should Maori Party voters vote?

Yes yes, they shouldn't, I know - they should vote Libertarianz, but seriously it’s not really me to help out those who I think are voting for statist collectivist racially based party, but the thing is that MMP does it for them, and Maori Party voters figured it out last time anyway. They have something supporters of virtually all other parties have – a party vote that is best NOT given to the party they support. Why?

The magic of the overhang. You see last election the Maori party won 4 electorate seats, but only won just over 2.1% of the party vote. Typically, a party is entitled to its share of the seats in Parliament according to the party vote, as long as the party wins either 5% or one electorate seat. Yes, I know most of you already knew that. However, the Maori Party won more electorate seats than it won proportionate to the party vote, which means an overhand. The Maori Party has one more seat than it would’ve got had it won one electorate seat and then just had its party vote counted.

So what does this mean? Well for starters the size of Parliament crept up by one, which meant that the number of seats for a majority crept up too.

More importantly it shows that the party votes for the Maori Party were as good as wasted – and indeed many Maori Party voters, probably unconsciously – reflected that, since in all seats won by the Maori Party, Labour won the party vote.

Maori Party voters got the best of both worlds, from their perspective. represented by a Maori Party MP and Labour list MPs.

What it means is that voting for the Maori party on the list is pretty much futile if you believe the Maori party will win more electorate seats than it is likely to get as a proportion of the party vote – which is highly likely.

For those of us who believe in less government it means, ironically, that we can either encourage those who vote for the Maori Party on the electorate vote to vote for a party that supports private property rights and less government (Libertarianz or ACT) or encourage them to, vote for the Maori Party (stopping Labour getting their vote. You see if the Maori Party wins many more party votes then the overhand disappears, there are less MPs in Parliament representing the Maori seat voters, which probably means less Labour MPs – a good thing from my perspective.

If National (or ACT or Libertarianz) were clever they would accept and welcome Maori Party supporters vote Maori party in their Maori electorates – but seek the party vote wholeheartedly. For whilst there may be an overhand, the party vote would be held by someone other than Labour.

Perverse? Yes, but that is what the electoral system allows. I once saw an ACT video pre-1996 proposing that National voters vote National in their electorates and ACT for the party vote, for the very same reason. Of course any major party actively pursuing this would be incentivising the other major party to split into Labour- electorate and Labour – party vote, parties, an absurdity, to create an enormous 65 seat overhang of constituencies.

So remember that this election, the Maori Party has every chance of winning more seats than its party vote would entitle it to do, which no doubt is what the Maori Party would want. The bigger question is whether the Maori Party listens to its supporters who will, undoubtedly, predominantly vote Labour on the party vote – or whether it will support National. The latter, surely, would be enormously risky for the Maori Party, but more importantly, if successful, such a partnership would be much much riskier for Labour.

Would Maori Party supporters dare risk a party vote for one other than Labour? Which political party has said it would repeal the Foreshore and Seabed Bill, and defend Maori private property rights? It begins with L - and it isn't Labour.

Catholic school apparently bans cervical cancer vaccine

A Roman Catholic high school in Bury, Greater Manchester, has decided to not permit its students to be vaccinated against the papilloma virus on its premises. Now the report (from the Manchester Evening News) is purely about a letter, not yet sent to parents, about the decision, and nobody from the school has commented directly on the report, so it is only preliminary.

Now I would defend, vehemently, the right of the school to make this decision. It is the school's property, and parents have the choice whether or not to send their daughters to the school. Furthermore, as the vaccine is taxpayer funded, there should be other options to obtain the vaccination if parents so choose. I do not object to the right to withhold it. This is a libertarian stance - asserting private property rights.

However, as an objectivist, I find the stance itself based on irrational and immoral grounds. It has been reported that the letter announcing the reasons for withholding permission
"points out that the vaccine protects against only 70 per cent of cervical cancers, and gives details of possible side-effects to the jab".

Only 70%!! As opposed to all those vaccinations derived from the Vatican, which has done wonders in fighting cancer over the years. Now the side effects are logical to advise about, but that should then be a question of rational trade off.

The real problem the school has is with sex. "Morally it seems to be a sticking plaster response. Parents must consider the knock-on effect of encouraging sexual promiscuity. Instead of taking it for granted that teenagers will engage in sexual activity, we can offer a vision of a full life keeping yourself for a lifelong partnership in marriage".

So dramatically reducing the risk of a cancer that at best could mean a lengthy period of medical treatment, at worse death, is "encouraging sexual promiscuity". Well then by extension there should be NO vaccinations, indeed there shouldn't even be any drugs or treatment for people with STDs or HIV should there? The threat of cancer discourages sexual promiscuity.

So presumably the school and the church regards those girls who get cervical cancer as sinful, and deserving of their fate - because after all, they should have not sinned because, somehow, that protects you completely from the papilloma virus and cervical cancer. As usual, the wisdom of celibate men on these matters

Is anyone delivering the message that "get this vaccine and you can shag without protection happily"? Of course not. The message is more a case of, here is a vaccine that could possibly save your life. Nobody is saying that the risk of pregnancy has gone or the risk of HIV or other STDs. Who thinks that girls go "hold it, I might get the papilloma virus, I will wait till I'm married". Most who do wait do so for a host of reasons which are emotional and rational, none of which celibate men are really in a place to understand well. Much as they understand a "full life keeping yourself for a lifelong partnership in marriage" - an ideal I think is rather lovely, if it is sustained genuinely rather than by altruistic sacrifice.

However it is more serious than that. Women can get cervical cancer from the papilloma virus without having been sexually promiscuous. Indeed people can get HIV without having been sexually promiscious as well. Yet the school, and by implication the Roman Catholic Church cares not about that. Death apparently isn't so important that the achievements of medical science should be as widely available as possible to delay it.

Moral? Hardly. It is one thing to frighten young girls into fearing an eternity of agony and damnation if they dare wander off a certain path, it is another to deliberately deny them a means to prevent the onset of a fatal disease, so that the threat of that disease can be hanging over them if they wander off that path. So not only do they risk being punished in this life, but having that life shortened as well.

The school has every right to do this, but that does not make it immune from criticism for its apparent motives.

UK liberalises planning laws - a bit

According to the Daily Telegraph, the UK is to remove rules that currently mean property owners must seek planning permission to convert lofts or to add extensions of up to two storeys as long as they fall within certain dimensional guidelines.

Good stuff, except new rules are being imposed on laying driveways.

The usually leftwing Liberal Democrats are saying the rules are still too tight. Is it too much to hope for New Zealand to consider liberalising the RMA? Clearly the National Party thinks so.

Nick Smith spits on property rights... again

Although Stuff reports Nick Smith as "Conservation Minister" (wait till after the election guys), Dr Smith wants to confiscate the property rights of Kaiangaroa Timberlands to protect some douglas firs. He wants them protected, which presumably doesn't mean Kaiangaroa Timberlands has any option on not selling them.
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He wont offer to buy them himself, or set up a charity that seeks to raise funds to buy them.
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No they should be bought with taxpayers funds because they are "part of New Zealand's heritage". Nice.
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Now you know how much better National will be than Labour on property rights, as if you had any doubts. Is it any wonder one of my fastest growing tags is "National party disappoints"?