Why does the role of the state matter now?

The global financial crisis is seen by the left as the prima-facie case against free market capitalism.   Just under 20 years after Marxism-Leninism was shown up, on live TV, for what it was, a cold ruthless oppressive heartless nightmare, those who quietly had to admit that communism didn't work were ready to gloat.  

The collapse of investment banks demonstrated what happens when a handful of men are driven by a ruthless desire to make money using other people's money, with little regard for the risks or the consequences.  That was and is the line taken by the left.  The British Labour Party, with barely a hint of contrition, blames the banks - not the fact that it was in power responsible for the biggest bank of the mall, the one that all the others are dependent on, and nay encouraged to use for unlimited credit.

The first stage of the financial crisis saw banks face collapse over poor investment.  In a free market economy a bank that does that would be allowed to fail, but the leftwing response (indeed the conservative rightwing response if one looks at the United States) was to bail them out.  The left now claim that this is what free market capitalism is about.  Really?  Is there any sector where free market capitalists argue for state bailouts?  No.  

They who meme that capitalism is about privatising profits whilst socialising losses are talking utter nonsense.  For this would not happen in a true free market economy.  Indeed, in a true free market economy there would have been a couple of key differences from what happened.

One is the often repeated rules set up in the late 1990s by the Clinton Administration requiring lenders to loan to a segment of people who would otherwise be bad credit risks.   That in itself meant people who shouldn't have had credit to buy homes got it.  An explicitly redistributive measure that backfired.

However, the more intrusive role of the state is the central role it plays in creating money and issuing credit to banks.  The state creates money from nothing and distributes it by lending it to banks at a centrally set interest rate which they then lend onto borrowers at a profit.  That isn't free market capitalism, as a core component of capitalism - the means of exchange - is state created and its value managed by growing its supply (created managed inflation).

In such an environment, the state boosts the economy by ever increasing the money supply, with more credit being issued, supporting positive and negative investments, until at some point, the bubble in prices in investments, whether they be shares or property, bursts.  In Ireland, the state, which offered an explicit 100% guarantee of deposits, shifted the burden onto taxpayers.  In Iceland, the state let them all fail.  

The so-called deregulated free market financial sector was nothing of the sort.  It could operate largely as it wished in developing financial instruments with the public and businesses and each other, but it did not with the blood supply from the state of credit issued from nothing.  

Free market banking is not banks that issue state issued credit which is turned on and off like a tap.  

What we have had is mixed model banking, and we have it again now.

The second part of the global financial crisis has come directly from statism.  Banks have finally figured out that sovereign debt in countries that run perpetual budget deficits, and don't even have the instrument of printing fiat money to pay for it, is not safe.  Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy and increasingly France, Belgium and Slovenia, are all facing up to reality.  The economics of every single one of those states has been ever increasing spending, ever increasing state employment, ever increasing regulation of business and every increasing debt.

The model of the socialist state, that borrows and spends between elections, passing on the burden to the future generation, has been found wanting.  It is a model that the UK has also embraced with aplomb under Gordon Brown and in the US, not just by Barack Obama, but also G.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.  

The level at which people will tolerate taxation is below the level that the left have sold the state to them.  It is that gap that needs bridging across the Western world.  With few exceptions, this is the model that has been swallowed and which virtually all states are now trying to adapt to buy time - yet they are not dealing with the fundamentals.

The US Presidential election is a facsimile of that debate.  Barack Obama believes the answer is to raise taxes to bridge the gap, albeit slowly and to continue with using debasement of the currency, through money printing (quantitative easing) to boost the economy and hopefully ensure GDP grows faster than debt.

Mitt Romney believes in cutting spending, albeit slowly, and although he would also debase the currency he is willing to investigate the merits of a shift to a commodity based currency, rather than currency based on nothing but confidence.  

In New Zealand, this debate is what should be led by Libertarianz/ACT/ the new liberal party.

A belief that the state should hold ever decreasing amounts of public debt, that it should not spend more than it takes in revenue.  That it should encourage independence not dependence, that it should encourage people looking after themselves, their families and each other, not to claim the unearned money of others by force.  That it should promote the benevolence of civil society, community and fellowship, not the sneering, mob rule of people lobbying departments, councils, community boards for new laws, new money, new taxes, engaging in endless rent seeking paid for by force by someone else.

The global financial crisis was not due to free market capitalism, its solutions were not remotely anything to do with capitalism, and today the seeds are being sown for the next financial crisis.   The seeds are quantitative easing, which has been a resounding success in keeping the Japanese economy stagnant for 15 years.

The anti-capitalists seen in leftwing parties and the Occupy movement had a point.  The model that failed four years ago was a massive transfer from all of us to the owners and employees of banks that undertook malinvestments.  

Yet it isn't capitalism that failed, and those who oppose it don't have an alternative, just anger and a desire for more government.

We do have an alternative.  

Libertarianz and a new liberal party?

Unfortunately I can't attend the Libertarianz conference this weekend, not the least because I left NZ seven years ago and haven't looked back.  Unfortunately because it promises to be the best ever, largely because the political environment for a political party that explicitly believes in less government and a smaller state has changed, dramatically.

You see the primary political debate today, as it has been throughout the last century, is the role of the state.  Leaders of major parties try to evade this, because politics has become, to a large part, an exercise in show business, slogans, imagery and trivia.  Rare is there in depth discussion about policy, philosophy or principles, but often is then commentary about politicians' backgrounds, their empathy, how they speak, look and whether they care.

With the rise of television, a medium primarily of entertainment, politics has become the dark science of the sound bite, of imagery.

However, it isn't just about that.  The internet has opened up the opportunity for anyone to comment on politics, to write or talk about it.  That has started to change political discourse, so that what people see and read is not just what the mainstream media wants them to see.

For those of us who seek to advance a consistent stand for less government, both in economics and in people's private lives, politics in NZ is at a turning point.

ACT has shrunk to a rump that is unlikely to be sustainable, and is led by John Banks, a man from the past, with a past that is simply not credible in advancing smaller government on both economic and social matters.  As Peter Cresswell said, its principles are sound, but its policies and strategies have failed to come close to sustaining a party that builds a core support of those who do not want the automatic answer of a politician to any issue of the day to be "I'll pass a new law" "I'll spend some more of other people's money".

Libertarianz has never managed to pass an electoral threshold to make it more than a dedicated club of people who simply couldn't stomach compromising their principles.  Both the presence of ACT, and the very low probability of electoral success, saw Libertarianz largely ignored, perpetuating that lack of success.  Indeed, the two most successful outlets for libertarian ideas and policies have not been the party, but the radio shows hosted by Lindsay Perigo in the 1990s and most recently Peter Cresswell's excellent blog.

So what now?

Maybe this is what I would say if I had a chance to talk to the conference this weekend...

NZ politics is dominated by political parties that share one philosophy - statism - the belief that the state should intervene, should spend other people's money, should borrow on their behalf, should pass new laws and regulations, and that there is no principled reason why it shouldn't do so.

The mainstream media echoes this.  All too often journalists ask politicians what they would "do", not "do you think the government should do something about this" or "should the government get out of the way"?  The education system is dominated by statists, nurtured by leftwing unions and academics, who all sign up to a carbon copy set of beliefs.  At best capitalism is seen as a necessary evil, but along with that are the post-modernist identity politics, the neo-Marxist belief that people are defined by their race and sex, and most recently even religion and body size.  

The legitimate concerns over pollution have been transformed into an all-encompassing religion of environmentalism, where evidence is skewed to suit a particular monologue - that man is a disease, pollution is ever increasing, that key words like "nuclear" "genetic engineering" "fossil fuels" are all placed in a basket of horror.  Where legitimate concerns are exaggerated, where evidence contrary to the monologue is ignored and the message is given that without massive state intervention in the economy and people's private lives, the environment will be destroyed and so will humanity.   

Have no doubt, environmentalism is the hijacking of universal opposition to pollution and appreciation of nature, to embrace an almost misanthropic desire to control, to attack capitalism, to grow a paternalistic, regulated state that tells people what to do, what not to do and takes their money to penalise what they don't like (e.g. flying) and support what they do like (windfarms and railways).

The Greens, of course, the ones carrying the banner for this.

Never is there a problem that doesn't demand a new law, or for more money to be spent on it. 

Behind the smiling faces of bright eyed bushy tailed people who claim to be speaking for what is clean, what is good, what is right and to help the poor, are people who sometimes tout xenophobia (if you doubt me, see how they talk about foreign investors, and how that parallels communist parodies of capitalists), who claim to use science and evidence, but peddle scaremongering.  I remember in 1999 Jeanette Fitzsimons said it was the last Christmas when we could trust a potato.  The genetic engineering armageddon hasn't happened, more than a couple are only wishing the global warming one does.   Most recently has been scaremongering about mobile phone transmitters, purely on perception. 

 

They believe in big government, with the small exceptions of scepticism about unlimited state surveillance powers and drugs, it is a party that thinks the state is people.  It sees children as not the parents' responsibility, but everyone's.  It sees people not as individuals, but as races, as sexes, as sexualities, as classes, as labels.  A party of Marxists, nationalists and even misanthropes.  People who believe the way to help people is to give them more of money taken from other people.  People whose contradictions are endless.   

I'll take one favourite of mine.  CO2 emissions should be cut, they say, but foreign ships carrying freight to and from NZ, that visit several ports along the NZ coast, shouldn't be allowed to carry freight between NZ ports.   Even though a ship that is travelling anyway emits hardly any more pollution carrying some freight from say Lyttelton to Auckland, it shouldn't be allowed.  Why?  Because the Greens sympathise with the workers on board those ships, as they aren't paid as much as NZ seafarers.  So the Greens, who say they believe in the environment, and believe in jobs and say they aren't racist, would rather have more pollution to shift freight, would rather deny Filipino seafarers jobs that are, rationally, better than others they have, all to protect their well above average salary (i.e. rich by their measure) union mates.

It doesn't take long to get down to what they really believe.  The Greens want more and more laws, more and more of your money and to spend more and more of it on their pet projects.  Precious little of it is about freedom, and for them the state is your friend, even when it is telling you what to do, spending your money on what you don't want and frightening your children with talk of Armageddon. 

Of course Labour has done a lot of that as well, for much longer.  Between the Greens and Labour it's purely a matter of degree, but I recall when Helen Clark said "the state is sovereign".  She didn't think there was anything that should stop government and politicians from doing as they think is best.  It simply made me realise what drives Labour politicians today - the desire to tell people what to do, to change society by passing laws, by spending other people's money, but most of all the cold, humourless, finger pointing oppression of the suppression of free speech.  The willingness to call anyone racist, who dares question special treatment on the basis of race, or sexist, anyone who doesn't want to introduce quotas for women on boards, has infiltrated our universities, our media and the state sector, and has been a method to deny debate and to debase argument, whilst smearing those who question in like a Red Guard from Maoist China.  Phrases like "cultural safety" have spread a climate of fear in some institutions.   A belief that people should never be offended, never be upset and that the state should police this has been one of the more insidious developments in the last twenty or so years.  It parallels the demand for faux respect of young thugs who gleefully lash out violently at those who look at them the wrong way, as if everyone should be ultra-vigilant about their behaviour and language to not offend these empty esteem-less flowers.

Being able to be open, honest and unafraid of offending people is the hallmark of a liberal society.  Labour has cultivated a culture that has eroded that.  Dare criticise Islam without being labelled an Islamophobe.  Dare criticise Maori organisations or Maori specific initiatives without being labelled as racist.  Dare criticise calls for laws to enforce quotas for women on corporate boards, or to challenge the DPB, and be called sexist.   It's not just intellectually lazy, it's aggressive, confrontational and authoritarian.  Name calling is not an argument.  The left do it all the time, we must resist doing so, unless the facts speak for themselves.

Labour's saving grace is to have courage of its convictions, meaning that almost every Labour government makes changes that endure.   It is a point those of us who want to advance freedom should grasp.   However, for the good that Labour has achieved - and most of us may look back at some of the dramatic changes pushed through in the 1980s - it has also given birth to a welfare state that has promoted and sustained intergenerational dependency, it took the just cause of redress against historic state racism and property theft to create a new taxpayer funded Maori elite, to which it is blasphemy to challenge or to hold accountable.

Labour is driven by the desire for state intervention, by the desire to change people through government, and has been responsible for so much corrosion of individual responsibility, of pride in individual success, of promotion of moral relativism and envy, that it is simply the Greens diluted.

How about National then?  What a relief so many of us felt when it was 2008 and finally we said farewell to Helen Clark, as she was about to embark on a new job, in New York, ending world poverty, on a US$500,000 a year tax free salary, travelling first class and staying in five star hotels.

However, the euphoria didn't take long to end.

The National Party, like ACT, has founding principles that I can largely agree with, but in reality it is a party with one single purpose - to be in power.  With the exception of three years when Ruth Richardson saved the country from bankruptcy, National's legacy has been at best to slow Labour, at worst to preside over a mammoth growth in the state that would make any socialist blush in the form of Think Big.  Right now it is, once again, the party of fiscal incontinence, with a new Think Big focused on building roads and a state broadband network.  National brought us the Resource Management Act, and sees reform of it largely to allow it to embark on its Think Big programme.  National sees the criminal justice system as going only one way, with new laws to allow stop and search of anyone, to allow search of property without a warrant.   National can sometimes throw us a tax cut, can sometimes ever so courageously try to sell a minority stake in a power company, it might even reverse the powers given to local government.

However, for all that, there is little sign National will advance real reforms to liberate planning laws by supporting private property rights, luke warm interest in opening up education to choice and liberating it from centralised command, control and rent seeking from teaching unions.  National is building, once again, the corporatist state, with fervent state intervention and investment in telecommunications.  It wont dare touch the Maori corporatist state or the race based electorates.   Beyond all that National offers absolutely nothing on personal freedom.   It wont even contemplate questioning the war on drugs, despite such radical forces as The Economist calling for an end to it.   It's behaviour on law and order says all you need to know - little respect for the presumption of innocence, little respect for due process.   To National, the people the police question or arrest are not "their" people, they are probably guilty anyway, so aren't really deserving of sympathy.

For a party that's meant to be about aspiration, individual achievement and respect of freedom and private property, this is contemptible.

Beyond all that, we have two race based parties, born from the belief that Maori, as a people, must have parties that mean the state specifically looks after them.   Parties that embrace the corporatist Maori elite, parties that believe that it is racist to have a colourblind state, that it is racist for an election to mean one person one vote, that it isn't possible for Maori to be individuals, and to not want Maori statist politicians to represent them.

No other party offers anything that consistently supports less government, less tax, more freedom, and a presumption that the answer to policy issues is not for government to do more.  

That's why we should.

ACT failed because it sold out principles for populism, for bending as the wind blew and so being a party like every other, slippery, slimy and more interested in power than principle and policies.  It is as good as finished.

Libertarianz failed because it has been unable to gather momentum for ideas, for principles and sell a convincing message about less government.   Quite simply not enough NZers believe in a future without the welfare state, without universal basic education and healthcare, and they aren't convinced that capitalism, free markets and most of all, individual initiative, can be an effective as well as a moral substitute for government.

There are good people in the National Party, people who do believe in less government.   They may mean that, in the long term, there is some hope.   However, they are in a party that exists to straddle the mainstream.  They face opponents who embrace the state, who talk of "investing" other people's money and passing new laws, and of being modern and "reinventing" politics, when virtually all of them are just rehashing statism, again and again.

Those good people in National are our allies, but National will not and cannot be a sufficient platform in itself for disseminating liberalism.   

So what do I mean by liberalism?

It isn't the leftwing definition, whereby it means being liberal with other people's money or being a moral relativist about crime.  It doesn't mean letting murderers and rapists out of prison in a handful of years because it wasn't really "their" fault.  I am using it as a synonym of libertarianism, classical liberalism or whatever you want to call it.  

I mean belief in less government.  The belief that government can't and shouldn't pick winners in the economy.  The belief that the state sector's role in the economy exists primarily to protect law and order, enforce contracts and protect property rights.  The belief that state welfare should not incentivise its usage as a choice, rather as a last resort and that those who wish to help those less fortunate should be encouraged to do so, with their own money.  The belief that the state shouldn't dominate the education system, but allow it to flourish with diversity, variety and choice, so parents choose and their choices are reflected in where the money goes in the system.  The belief that healthcare policy is not a choice between a paternalistic centralised state system or the broken US corporatist/state system.   Finally, the belief that pensions and retirement cannot be guaranteed by a ponzi like state scheme.   I do not fear foreign investment, but embrace the idea that state owned enterprises should be privatised, perhaps by handing out shares to taxpayers as well as sales to cornerstone investors.

I also think that the basis for a free, secure society is rule of law, which means reviewing all criminal laws, to decriminalise or abolish victimless crimes, including reviewing drugs policy.  A point that needs to work with welfare, education, health and even ACC policies.   The Libertarianz policy of legalising drugs needs to answer real concerns from parents that it will mean schools are awash with brain damaging substances - one of the answers is to look at Portugal.

It means that the rule based RMA, driven by local planners who just think they know best how your property should "fit in" to their grand ideas, is replaced by a property rights based framework, so that what you do and don't do with your property is based on how it affects the rights of others to do the same with theirs.

I also think that monetary policy's role in the recent financial crisis needs to be investigated and the fundamentals of monetary policy reviewed.

A new party needs to come up with some clear messages.  It needs to defend capitalism without shame, it needs to take on every attempt to create a new law, a new regulation and a new tax, with arguments based on principle, experience and reason.   It needs to harness the natural scepticism most people have of politicians and bureaucracy.  

After all, would people really expect their MPs to buy their groceries, their clothes, their holidays?  Why should they trust them to buy them homes, their healthcare, their pensions and their kids' education?

Why should the future of Maori be defined not by what they themselves achieve as individuals, as employees, employers, entrepreneurs, parents, as people - but by what the government gives them in money, jobs or "rights"?

The new party will not have the policies of Libertarianz, not because they are wrong, but because they are unrealistic in a Parliamentary term for a small party.  What we need is a clear statement that the new party will vote consistently for steps to reduce the size of the state in its non-core functions, that it will support fiscal responsibility, so that a tax cut means a spending cut, that it will support property rights and enforcement of real crimes, but not creating new crimes just on the whim of the latest outrage.  It means rejecting Think Big whether it be roads or railways, broadband or solar energy.  It means supporting steps towards individuals having more choice in health and education, and weaning people off of welfare, by making it easier to start up and sustain business without the state wanting its share from day one.

It means changing the terms of the debate. 

It means arguing for less state, not more, for the state to do what it is meant to do well, and to leave everything else to businesses, voluntary groups and individuals.

and to do so proudly.

Hobsbawm - influential yes, deserving veneration? Hardly

The death of Eric Hobsbawm at 95 has provoked outpourings of paeans to his legacy, glorifying his undoubted significant contribution to the scholarship of history and in being influential, especially to Labour politicians in the UK. He has many fans, it includes Labour leader Ed Miliband, former NZ leftwing Prime Minister Helen Clark and a virtual who's who of leftwing activists in the UK today.

It is right for those who knew him personally to commemorate him on that level, as a friend or family member.  However, he is also presented as being more than that, as a great historian, but also with a moral fibre that was impeccable. 

Almost universally he was described as gentle, Tony Blair said "He wrote history that was intellectually of the highest order but combined with a profound sense of compassion and justice. And he was a tireless agitator for a better world".

Really?

I am not going to dismiss claims he was a nice man in person, nor will I criticise his works, because I am not a scholar of history and I have not read them.  However, Hobsbawm has his own history, that lasted to his final years, of being an apologist for the most blood thirsty regimes of the 20th century.

He wasn't just a Marxist historian, he was a member of the British Communist Party until its dissolution and he turned his back on the mass murders, starvation and atrocities his comrades committed for the cause, even recently effectively claiming that the ends would justify the means.  

Take this review of his works from historian Michael Burleigh. He describes his four "great" books on history as:

A synthetic quartet, from Age of Revolution to Age of Extremes, dazzles readers with the author’s apparent fluency as he zigzags from First to Third World contexts – unless you happen to be an expert on Cuba, Mexico or Venezuela.Throughout, there was a dogmatic refusal to accept that the Bolshevik Revolution had been a murderous failure. Asked by the Canadian academic and politician Michael Ignatieff on television whether the deaths of 20 million people in the USSR – not to mention the 55 to 65 million victims of Mao’s Great Leap Forward – might have been justified if this Red utopia had been realised, Hobsbawm muttered in the affirmative.

Why is it that people who would, to a man or woman, claim they believe in compassion, even free speech and human rights, choose to have an enormous blind spot about a man who gave succour to those who created rivers of blood for the communist utopia?  

Imagine, for example, if he had embraced National Socialism, and had grudgingly accepted that the Holocaust would have been justified if a greater Europa run by Germany had been a happy, healthy, strong, fully employed economy of aryan people with order, wealth, equality and peace?  I can barely bring myself to write such nonsense, but he would have been vilified and ignored.  However, he embraced Stalin, he stuck with the Communist Party ever after the USSR crushed the revolutions in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.  The various genuine claims about his compassion and character seem awfully cold when there is a calculated lack of passion about those crushed under the machine of "actually existing socialism".

Journalist Bryan Appleyard describes this peculiar blind spot:

I came across this when I asked Ben Pimlott if he regarded the atrocities of Soviets somehow less vile than those of the Nazis. He said he did but could not or would not offer an explanation. The explanation probably would have been something like: the Soviets were well-meaning, attempting to build a better world and the Nazis were simply evil. This is barely worthy of consideration. Both Stalin and Hitler appealed to better world ideologies built on absurd theories of history and both thought they were justified in killing millions and imposing suffering on a scale never before seen. Even if we give some moral credibility to communism, the character of Stalin is enough to detonate any notion that he was pursuing some great cause.

Cobden Centre fellow John Phelan says that he is no more worthy of acclaim than the pseudo-intellectual David Irving, which seems rather unfair, as Irving has spent his life denying reality explicitly, whereas Hobsbawm simply chose to be wilfully blind:

Time and again Eric Hobsbawm was faced with the full scale of the horror visited by the regime he supported and time and again he remained loyal. As he wrote in 2002“The Party . . . had the first, or more precisely the only real claim on our lives. Its demands had absolute priority. We accepted its discipline and hierarchy. We accepted the absolute obligation to follow 'the lines' it proposed to us, even when we disagreed with it . . . We did what it ordered us to do . . . Whatever it had ordered, we would have obeyed . . . If the Party ordered you to abandon your lover or spouse, you did so”Hobsbawm pleaded for “historical understanding”; he isn’t hard to understand. He was a man who failed to see that the choice of one murderous regime over another was no choice at all, who lacked the humility to admit it, and who was possessed of an incredible ability to blind himself to realities, no matter how bloody, which didn’t fit his view of the world.

Observer columnist Nick Cohen says of his work:

If you need convincing, look at Hobsbawm’s Age of Extremes The most brilliant analysis of the 20th century sits alongside the most abject apologias for tyranny. For all his contradictions, I’ll miss the better side of his intellect.

He notes about how Hobsbawm defended Stalin's Pact with Hitler:

I expect we will hear one excuse tomorrow that ought to have been buried with the Soviet Union: “communists excused Stalin because they were consumed by the laudable desire to fight fascism”. It is a half truth at best. The far left of the 1930s did indeed fight fascism. But in 1939 Stalin stood on his head and signed a pact with Hitler. For two years, until Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, western communists and their sympathisers stood on their heads too and became the Nazis’ de factoallies. I have always been fascinated by ‘the midnight of the century’, when far left and right united against the middle, because it echoes our own time when liberal leftists excuse and indulge the radical Islamist right. 

Quite.  Right now we see again and again, the willingness to gloss over someone who had a blindspot, if not quite a denier for the atrocities his comrades committed.

Hobsbawm seemed like an old man who could never face up to the fact that he backed the wrong horse, it saw men and women murder, starve and torture on a scale unheard of in history.   That lack of contrition, lack of strength of character to admit he was wrong, means his memory will forever be darkened.

He was one of those academics that universities, and the politicians and bureaucrats who they spawned, forgave, glossing over these inconvenient black spots in his beliefs, to embrace his thoughts and writings.

Like the umpteen leftwing writers, especially feminists, today who treat Islam and Islamists with kit gloves, because, to them, it represents an attack on capitalism, sexualisation of women and conservative Christianity, those who today praise him - who did not actually know the man - are guilty of the same moral blind spot.

It isn't being nasty or mean to question the legacy of a man who happily sat on the side of murderers, indeed it is morally vacuous to do anything but that.

Douglas Murray writes as if a Nazi sympathising equivalent had died.

More below

A comment on the Daily Telegraph wrote of Hobsbawm and his utopianism and his abject refusal to see the evidence that the results of his philosophical beliefs were misery and horror. I thought it was worthy of repeating:

That Hobsbawm has learned nothing from living in England and that he has failed to grasp the fact that ideologies dedicated to remaking man and transforming him into some gruesome socialist robot have failed, and were doomed to fail, is demonstrated by his admiration of the Communist Manifesto. There are only two types of person that can admire such a hideous manifesto: those who want to exercise power over all other people; and those who are willing to submit to such power provided that their material needs are met, slaves in other words, people born for the whip (but at least they know they are slaves and they enjoy the kiss of the whip). I assume that Hobsbawm sees himself as some kind of Marxist Grand Inquisitor ruling over the dumb proletariat and wielding his whip for their benefit in between sequestering the assets of the hated middle classes and so reducing them to servitude and penury. It goes without saying that no serious Marxist could or would ever derive any envious pleasure from expropriating and defiling the hated expropriators. It is done out of a sense of duty to History (really). 

Some 36 minutes into an interview with Hobsbawm (Life in History, BBC Radio 4, repeated tonight) and I have still not picked up any mention of Lenin, Stalin, Pol Pot or any reference to the genocide carried out by communist regimes in the 20th century. Finally, in the 45th minute, we reach the question for which I had been waiting. Hobsbawm is asked why he stayed in the Communist Party. Ever solicitous and unctuous, Schama and the programme editor avoid posing any awkward questions by the expedient of citing part of an earlier interview with Sue Lawley on 5th March 1995 (I am sure it is pure coincidence but Stalin died on 5th March 1953). When asked about mass murder in the Soviet Union by Lawley, Hobsbawm says that he did not know; he says he did not believe the details, perhaps, he says, he did not want to believe them (so much for evidence then and the reliability of Marxist historians). 

He says: ‘We did not know the extent of it’ [communist mass murder]. Lawley then asks whether such was his dedication to the dream of communism that any kind of sacrifice was worth the price:

Hobsbawm: “Yes, I think so”

Lawley: “Even the sacrifice of millions of lives?”

Hobsbawm: “Well that’s what we felt we had fought WWII for, didn’t we?”

Lawley: “Is there a difference between killing someone in war and killing your own?”

Hobsbawm: “We didn’t know that”

.As Hobsbawm says ‘We didn’t know that’ you can detect the utter fear and panic in his voice. This is the question he has known would come and has dreaded. Hobsbawm clumsily dodges the question and Lawley lacks the killer instinct to press the point of the knife to his throat. No listener can be convinced by Hobsbawm’s repulsive denial. There is, of course, a universe of difference between killing the enemy in war for survival and butchering millions of kulaks, so-called class enemies in the 1930s (circa 11,000,000) in order to build socialism. The fact that Hobsbawm claims not to see any difference between communist class war and a national fight for survival denigrates the struggle that Britain waged against Nazi Germany. According to Hobsbawm’s perverted view there is no difference between British soldiers killing German soldiers and Communist Party activists murdering millions of unarmed and innocent peasants in Ukraine by shooting and mass starvation.When Hobsbawm says ‘We didn’t know that’, one has to ask when he did finally know THAT, that being the real nature of the totalitarian Soviet Union and its imitators. Why did Lenin create the most brutal and long-lasting system of censorship in the twentieth century? What was Hobsbawm’s reaction to the news of the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact (Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact)? What did he make of the publication of Doktor Zhivago? Why did the Red Army invade and rape Hungary (1956), Czechoslovakia (1968) and threaten to invade Poland in 1981? What did he make of Solzhenitsyn, the Truth Teller? Why did the Soviet state kill and imprison writers? Why did the KGB arrest the manuscript of Vasilii Grossman’s Life and Fate? Why did Stalin judicially murder some of his most talented army commanders at the moment when the threat posed by National-Socialist Germany was all too clear? How does Hobsbawm explain and justify Order № 00447? 

 When did he realise that the massacre of 21,857 Polish prisoners at Katyn and other sites in 1940 was a Soviet crime not a Nazi one? When did he finally accept that the full scale of the Ukrainian genocide, the Holodomor, with its 6,000,000 dead from genocide by starvation and another 5,000,000 dead from cold, disease and shooting? Does Hobsbawm even accept that the Holodomor took place? Hobsbawm says that his continuing membership of the Communist Party is a Cold War question and is irrelevant. This is a self-serving, cowardly evasion and Hobsbawm knows it. If a 95 year old former member of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party was asked about his continuing loyalty to National Socialism would Hobsbawm be satisfied with an answer along the lines that ‘this is a WWII question and is irrelevant’? Thousands of questions that historians ask about the Soviet regime are Cold War questions: are they irrelevant as well? Recall Hobsbawm’s views on chronology: ‘without chronology there can be no history’. That is true of an individual as well and in a BBC programme dedicated to a ‘life in history’, questions about Hobsbawm’s membership of the most genocidal political institution in man’s history are utterly relevant. 

There is another Cold War question that requires an answer: was Hobsbawm ever recruited by any Eastern European intelligence agency, say, the KGB or Stasi, with the aim of spying on academics and students known to be hostile to socialism? Hobsbawm could remove all doubt and speculation by stating unequivocally that he was not recruited by any Soviet bloc intelligence agency and that he never provided any information to any intelligence agency. Hobsbawm should also ask himself whether an academic, let us say the existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger, who remained a committed National Socialist until his death in 1976, would have found employment in a British university. Hobsbawm’s continuing belief in Marxism in 2012 reflects a state of mind that, despite all the earlier, reasonable talk about evidence and reason, is one that is demonstrably impervious to evidence and reason: the hallmark of the true revolutionary-believer slave.Hobsbawm’s position on Soviet genocide is nauseating and hypocritical even by the standards of British academics that played down Stalin’s crimes. 

Why does Schama not press the case about genocide committed in the name of communism to the point of destruction? In fact, a more aggressive and less easily deflected interviewer than Lawley could easily have brought about Hobsbawm’s psychological collapse on air. Hobsbawm sounded very close to breaking: he knows that Marxism is repulsive and he knows that for all his adopting the pose of the learned academic that his support of Marxism and his failure to acknowledge the full scope of communism’s hideous crimes against humanity, far worse than anything committed by the Nazis, is disgusting, cowardly and immoral. There is no difference between the person that denies National-Socialist crimes against Jews, the Holocaust, and communist propagandists like Hobsbawm who deny the Holodomor and other crimes committed by communist regimes. Schama’s role here is also disgraceful and shameful since by failing to ask and to press home the forensic questions that should have been pressed home he allows Hobsbawm’s prevarication and mendacity to pass unchallenged.

Why isn't the BBC covering a story - about itself?

One of the major news stories on TV news on ITV, Channel 4 and Sky News, and the major national newspapers are the allegations that the late childrens' TV star - Sir Jimmy Saville - was a recividist abuser of young girls.   It comes as a documentary is to be broadcast in two days time on ITV when women who claim they were abused, and a few who worked with him, will be telling stories about what he did.

The allegations are from the 1970s, involve girls ranging in age from 10 to 16, and one alleges rape.   Of course Saville's family is appalled these allegations are coming out now, given he died last year, but it has caused one high profile TV star, now a campaigner for children who are abused, to offer some contrition that people knew of rumours, that people had stories of catching him with girls, and chose to turn a blind eye.

He is dead, he can't defend himself.  He had no wife or children of his own, but he was one of the most popular TV personalities of the age.   

Yet if what the women say is true, and apparently the individual cases, coming from women from multiple parts of the country, have many common features, then it is far from surprising that young girls, with vulnerable backgrounds hardly felt able to complain (who to?) about a popular, famous, wealthy and well loved celebrity?

The 1970s were a period when it was remarkably difficult for children to be believed over abuse, particularly from otherwise well trusted figures.

However, what this story highlights is whether the BBC colluded in that culture, consciously or otherwise.

The BBC has made one sole statement, which is to say that it has gone through its files and found no record of allegations made.  It has also been reported that BBC decided against broadcasting a story about the allegations last year, because it couldn't substantiate the claims made by the women - which would only be possible if someone else was watching, or someone who the girls told could remember it (or was asked).

However, is that really a surprise?  Shouldn't the UK's leading broadcaster, a broadcaster that claims its right to demand with threat of prosecution £145.50 from every household, to compulsorily fund its nine TV channels, nine national and umpteen local radio stations, undertake some more scrutiny of its behaviour?

Is it not conceivable that if any of the girls made an issue of it, it would be dismissed, that the BBC was utterly unreachable in this age, for anyone seeking to complain, that anyone talking like that about such a popular ubiquitous star would be dismissed?  

How has the BBC changed in its treatment of TV hosts who spend time with children?  

Most of all, why isn't the BBC covering this and questioning its own (largely now retired) management of the time?

Doesn't it demonstrate that a state owned "public" broadcaster is incapable of being objective over its own behaviour, that it cannot be truly accountable and that if it cannot scrutinise its own staff, over 30 years after the event, that it can't possibly pretend to be some bastion of morality in the media?

In which case, how dare the BBC and its sycophantic supporters claim it has the moral authority to keep forcing people to pay for it - when it has taken a commercial, private broadcaster, to raise the taboo of a famous late TV star who may well have been a child abuser.

Allegations over major years (Guardian)
Saville interviewed under caution of allegations regarding girls' home (Telegraph)
Saville "Gary Glitter did nothing wrong" (Telegraph)
BBC newsroom assistant witnessed Saville snogging a young girl  (Telegraph)

Liberal Democrats deserve obliteration at next general election

I have a naive fondness for a few elements of the Liberal Democrats in the UK.  It solely comes from the era during which it actually did advocate for less government, less intrusion of the state in both economic and personal lives and it was - at the time the Liberal Party - a real choice compared to the comatose Stalinist-lite economics of Labour and the "slowing down the inevitable trip to socialism" of pre-Thatcher Conservatives.

However, those days are long gone.  The Liberal Party made a convenient alliance with the breakaway Social Democratic Party, which left Labour at a time when its policies included neutrality in the Cold War and economic planning that was, seriously, barely one step removed from that of the like of East Germany.  However, Labour abandoned that under Blair and the Liberal Democrats stayed still becoming a party to the left of Labour, opposing military action against Iraq and calling for higher taxes and at one point for Britain to join the Euro.

Few would doubt today that the party was wrong about that, and although Nick Clegg, to his credit, decided that a coalition with the Conservatives was a better move than trying to prop up the spendthrift remains of Gordon Brown, the party has continued to show itself to be little more than the electable version of the Green Party.  The one area where it could add real value, which is to reduce the surveillance state, the party has proven to be impotent and incompetent.  It has defended the extension of surveillance powers to now require all telcos and ISPs to keep records of every website everyone in the UK visits, every email address they send emails to, on the basis that they already are forced to keep records of every phone call and it is just about keeping up with technology.   So the British state now gets to require records kept of what you're reading, what you're looking at, what you're searching for, but don't worry - if you've done nothing wrong you've nothing to fear right?

That alone should disqualify this lot from being a party with any liberal credentials at all.

Its passionate love of the European Union, obsession over climate change and the "need" for unilateral British action regardless of cost and who pays that cost, and wet attitude to foreign policy and defence are little compared to the latest ramblings - which is that everyone earning over £50,000 should pay more tax because it is "fair".

The Liberal Democrat's main contribution to discussion over reducing the budget deficit is not liberal in that there is no interest at all in shrinking the state.  This party believes that the current 45% of GDP dedicated to state spending is about right, and the way to reduce the deficit is to increase taxes (whilst reducing taxes on the very poorest).  It is pure redistributionist socialism, and it is envy mongering.

Whilst early talk was of a "mansion tax" which would simply be an annual tax on the value of homes over a certain value, this has now become a tax on homes worth over £1 million.  In London there are tens of thousands of such properties, more than a few owned by families or retired people who wouldn't consider themselves wealthy per se.  

The latest talk of those earning over £50,000 paying more should be electoral suicide.  This comprises the top 10% of income earners in the UK, but notably in London it is worth saying that this is far from being wealthy.  A decent two bedroom flat in middle class parts of London can cost £1500 a month in rent.  Try feeling rich with £60,000 a year, after tax (which takes away 31% of that with a marginal rate of 42% on each additional pound).

The Liberal Democrats constantly tout the cliche "fairness", yet that 10% earns 30% of income and already pays 50% of income tax.  How fair is that?

The Liberal Democrats are social democrats, and are, as advocates of the status quo and more tax, simply socialists.  They are where Labour now is, under "red" Ed Miliband, the unions' choice, and given the party is keeping the Conservatives in power, deserves to be obliterated at the next general election.

The big debate in 21st century politics is, once again, the role of the state.  On economic policy, there is nothing liberal about the Liberal Democrats, with no interest in abolishing the absurd shop trading laws that keep London's Oxford Street closed before 11am and after 5pm on a Sunday, no interest in liberalising planning laws that mean planning permission is needed in most boroughs for the smallest of works on your own land, and a religious opposition to more airport capacity.  On social policy the Liberal Democrats are uninterested in talking about laws on drugs, laws on censorship and as we have seen, are incapable of understanding state surveillance.  Finally, their attempts at reform of the "constitution" consisted of trying to adopt a version of the Australian voting system and making most of the House of Lords elected with 15 year terms.

Pointless and counter-productive.

The socialists of the Liberal Democrats should go to the Labour Party where they will find the usual interfering busybodies keen to create new laws, spend more money, invent new taxes and be forever committed to thinking that they are uniquely placed to know better how to spend other people's money.   The liberals, wherever they may be, should go to the Conservative Party, and help it dry up and become, once again, the party of less government and more individual responsibility.   For the SDP part of the Liberal Democrats have no raison d'être given Labour is no longer the home of Erich Honecker like economics, and the Liberal part has largely evaporated, in part because the Conservatives are no longer out to bully homosexuals, scaremonger about dark skinned people and fear ambitious women.

Not that I have time for either of them, Labour set the scene for the current recession and for years kept a delusional paranoid megalomaniac in charge of the public finances (so deluded he boasted that he had abolished boom and bust), the Conservatives are now in the thrall of Whitehall and are led by an indecisive whim and poll worshipping pragmatist.  

However, the Liberal Democrats have no purpose anymore.  Voters, who once saw them as a protest vote whenever Labour disappointed them, know this.  In 2015 opponents of the government will mostly vote Labour, supporters will vote Conservative, there is no point in voting for a version of Labour that keeps the Conservatives in power.

It's just a matter of time.

Taking from the poor to give to the rich

Yes that's what Labour's David Cunliffe and the Green Party's resident vulgarian, Russel Norman are advocating.

Peter Cresswell gave some clear reasons why it is delusional as economic policy, I'd like to make it a lot simpler.

Devaluing the New Zealand dollar would be the government stealing from the poor to give to the rich.

How?  Because those who win are exporters and those who lose are people who save cash in the bank.

Those with modest savings, without stocks or shares, without the means or wherewithal to shift their money into foreign currencies, equities, gold or property, are the losers in any devaluation.

It debases the cash they hold, whether it be in banknotes or bank accounts.  It takes away from their ability to consume, to buy what they want if it comes from overseas or is dependent on imports as a major factor of production.

It means the poor will less be able to afford an overseas holiday.

It means the poor will less be able to buy a laptop or a games console or a new TV, or books that aren't printed in NZ.

It means the poor will have to drive less (not that the Greens give a damn about that)

The winners are farmers, vintners, hoteliers and moteliers, in essence those who own export oriented businesses (or in the tourism sector) who suddenly find they can undercut competitors in other countries (or in the case of tourism attract visitors).

That of course makes for another group of winners.  Foreign consumers of NZ goods and services.

Devaluation discounts the prices they pay, which of course is the opposite of what happens to the goods and services NZers buy from them.

So there you have it.  The Labour and Green Parties want to reward those who sell goods and services overseas and their foreign customers, by taking wealth directly from New Zealanders who import goods and services from overseas, and who undertake foreign travel.

If you have enough money, you can open foreign currency accounts, you can shift your depreciating NZ dollar into other assets or commodities, and protect yourself from this government endorsed theft by stealth.

However, if you're relatively poor, with savings largely sitting in a bank, you've had it.

That's from the parties who, like attention seeking poseurs, are pretending to live like poor people to highlight how tough poverty is. 

They want to take from the poor to give to the relatively well off. Why?  

Because their entire philosophy is to intervene, to do something, because they know better than the millions of people making individual decisions about what to buy and sell and at what prices, because they are uniquely blessed with greater knowledge, so they can debase the wealth of some to better others, so they look like they've done something good.

They're not.  They are ready to steal by stealth.  Don't let them.

Only white people can be racist

Labour, Greens, Maori Party and Mana all share this view of racism.

The post-modernist structuralist view of reality is that which carries the mainstream of academia in universities in the English speaking world.  It is what most of our leftwing politicians were raised on, and it is what causes them to believe that a fairly simple concept - racism - is not simple at all.

Racism is, from a classical liberal definition, the belief that another person is inferior (or superior) purely because of that person's racial heritage.  It is taking those physical characteristics to judge that person.

Racism is irrational and has been the source of countless bloodbaths in history, and remains a primal drive within humans that overrides the rational faculty with fear and loathing of "the other".  

Objectivists consider it antithetical to individualism, which judges people on their behaviour and ideas, not their heritage.  Ayn Rand said as much herself.

Yet why do some say that non-white people can't be racist?  Well it has been eloquently explained by the Socialist Worker - the British Marxist newspaper which demonstrates that once you have put everyone into silos - then you can label them any way you wish.  Consider for a moment the irony of those who claim to be against racism using the very same techniques as those they oppose to classify others and then to seek to initiate force against them on that basis.

" the idea that black and Asian people can be racist towards white people is wrong. It confuses a reaction to a racist society with racism itself.

It is true that black and Asian people sometimes respond to racial discrimination by saying that all white people are part of the problem. Some say all whites are inherently racist. They may even make crude jokes to this effect.

These ideas can impede the fight against racism. But they are not themselves racist.

Racism is more than simple prejudice, no matter how ugly or unpleasant. It is the combination of prejudice with power. It occurs when a group of people are discriminated against because they are seen as inferior."

There you understand it, you are not racist if you are black and treat someone who isn't black in a negative way purely because of that person's race.  Why?  Because the racism isn't expressed by individuals' reactions, but by those actions with power.   

Power from the Marxist structuralist perspective is purely binary and is extracted from the bourgeoisie-prolertariat dichotomy that Marx and Engels propounded, but adjusted to fit the post-colonial narrative invented by academics.

It goes like this and it is worth deconstructing to see what it really means:

"The vast majority of people, black or white, aren’t in positions of power. Yet most of those who hire and fire staff, and make and implement policies that affect the lives of millions are white.

This, in the British context, is deemed to be because of racism.  Not to deny that it didn't exist officially and unofficially on a considerable scale when most of those migrants' ancestors arrived, but it is taken as given that position that this is the sole reason.  

Many among them hold racist views and they are given a chance to put their prejudices into action. And it’s not just racist individuals who discriminate—the capitalist state does too.

So it is now asserted that "many" who hold power, who are managers in business hold racist views.  No need for proof, it is "fact" and recirculated as such.  Then the state does so too.  Again, who would deny there are always a number in the Police and other institutions who act this way, but then the "capitalist state" disproportionately hires people of minorities as well - yet if they acted in an objectively racist manner in hiring, that would be "ok".

It is for these reasons that darker-skinned people are more likely to be out of work, in poor housing and the victims of racist policing. They are at the bottom of a racial hierarchy.

Again, just a bold assertion.  If a manager doesn't hire the black candidate for a job it is racism, not because the candidate might not be the best candidate available.  Another assertion is this "racial hierarchy".  It isn't one created by the state, or even businesses, but one that is created to fit the post-modernist Marxist view of race.

If a white person argues that all black people are illegal immigrants they are using racist ideas to side with the powerful against the oppressed.

Really?  Which of the powerful argue that all black people are illegal immigrants?  Who outside the nutty fraternity of the National Front claim such nonsense?  It's just an inane racist comment.

Racism runs deep in capitalist society because it is such a crucial component of the system. That’s why black and Asian people can accept racist ideas about themselves and other oppressed people. 

Now we are really into the fantasyland thinking.  If you think racism is a critical component of capitalism, you'll hate capitalism, yet racism isn't only irrelevant to capitalism it is antithetical to it.  For racism is fundamentally irrational, and it involves treating individuals not on their talent, intelligence and abilities, but their backgrounds.  Businesses that write off people on that basis are losing opportunities for talented staff and management, but would also be incapable of developing and marketing products for people, because of racism. The most systematically racist states in the world have been fascist-socialist constructions that have had capitalism under their jackboots.  

What does this all mean?

Leftwing parties almost universally advocate the state undertaking activities based on the "affirmative action" model following the philosophical contortions expressed above.  

If you are Maori, Black, etc, you are deemed to automatically fall into the oppressed proletariat category, so state sponsored scholarships, loans, grants and programmes, including quotas for employment, are deemed to be "correcting" the racism you have endured.  Blank out if you are actually a high income professional or son/daughter of such a professional (the people typically most able to take advantage of such programmes).  

Statistics of poor economic, health or educational performance are deemed to be "because" of racism, for any other explanation is inconvenient (and it is racist to even search for alternative explanations).

If you seek "one law for all" or to end racially determined institutions or programmes, you are "racist", because you don't understand that the state is racist and needs to be racist to counteract its own racism.

Yes, the racist state needs to be racist (which isn't racist unless it is expressed by the powerful, which the state is) to not be racist.

Of course in the 1930s in Germany, the state saw that there was vast racism in the management of business and government in the form of one race that ran everything and was seeking to dominate and enslave the race it saw as inferior.  That was swiftly addressed of course, and naturally few today would claim that the success of Jews in pre-war Germany was because of racism (indeed to some extent, in spite of it).

So is it not time to intelligently take on the post-modernist structuralist view of racism and the state in the developed world, and to do so by identifying exactly what are the sources of the disparities in outcomes that get labelled as racist by the baying mob of power hungry politicians on the left?

Could it be that cultural attitudes among communities regarding education, entrepreneurship, risk-taking, esteem, individualism, violence, the value of tight safe secure family structures, saving and aspiration are really what matters?

Minister willing to pay for contract killing

So let's imagine that a low ranking Cabinet Minister in the UK, or Australia, or Germany, or Japan, or a Secretary of the US Administration said he would pay a fortune to murder a civilian national of another country - even though that national had not committed a crime in his own country, nor had done anything other than to offend that Minister.

You see, the Pakistani Railways Minister can do it.   Although the Pakistani government has made it clear that he doesn't speak for the government, that doesn't mean a blind eye should be turned.  

The response to that should be clear and unequivocal, especially from those countries that use their taxpayers' money to spend on aid in this misogynist hate filled cauldron of vileness and sadness.

Ghulam Ahmad Bilour should be fired.  If he isn't aid will cease.  Regardless, this man should now be banned from entry into the United States, the European Union, Australia and New Zealand.  Politicians as much as anyone should not feel free to commission contract killings.

However, I fully expect there to be plenty of hand wringing because removing Bilour would risk collapse of the Pakistani coalition government because he belongs to the small Awami National Party, which is a socialist party with no strong Islamist credentials and only 2% of the votes at the last election meaning it is a small partner in a shaky coalition.

Pakistan officials will no doubt say that firing a Minister for such a comment will risk an Islamist backlash that could see the government folding and a new election resulting in an Islamist government being elected - a risk that isn't particularly likely given Pakistani politics are relatively Islamist as it is, and there is no strong Islamist party in the country (the largest coalition of such parties only gained 2.2% of the vote in 2008.

Still, it is surely an opportunity for the Obama Administration to make it clear that these sorts of threats will not be taken without consequences.

Economic Freedom Report shows how far the US has fallen

The Fraser Institute - a Canadian libertarian think tank - has produced a fairly comprehensive assessment of the ranking of about two-thirds of countries on the basis of economic freedom over a wide range of indicators.  It produces it every year.  This year the story it tells is of a world where economic freedom is still correlated to wealth, but also relief from poverty and, despite the scaremongering of the left, proportions of wealth owned by the poor relative to the rich.

Peter Cresswell pipped me to the post in writing about it,  describing why economic freedom means more than just wealth, but also wealth for the poor (who are many times better off in free economies) but I thought it deserved a longer review.

The report measures a wide range of indicators such as:

- Size of government:  This includes the extent of government consumption, levels of transfers/subsidies, the share of government presence in the market as an owner and investor in business and top tax rates.  No doubt socialists would regard this as being an invalid measure of success or failure, as they would see a large state participant in the economy as positive.

- Legal System and property rights:  Independence of the judiciary, impartiality of courts, protection of property rights, military interference in rule of law, integrity of the legal system, enforceability of contracts, restrictions on sale of land, reliability of the police and the business costs of crime are included here.  I'd have thought most of these would be seen by even those on the centre-left as being critical components of any good state.

- Sound money:  Measures here include growth in money supply, inflation and freedom to hold foreign currency accounts.  Of course those of us who believe that fiat currencies are fundamentally flawed wont be satisfied, but it is a good measure of the management of a key policy that can be so destructive to the wealth and savings of the vast bulk of the population of a state.

- Freedom to trade internationally: Tariffs, regulatory barriers to trade, the usage of black market exchange rates and controls on the movement of capital and people (including travel restrictions) are all considered here.  Again those on the left would be supportive of restrictions on many of those points. 

- Regulation:  Regulations on bank ownership, credit and interest rates.  Labour market regulations ranging from hours of work to conscription, and regulations on starting, licensing and tax for business are all included.  It also measures the need to pay bribes.  Once again, those on the left would be keen to have more of most of these.

The full report is here, and I'll leave it to others to do a more depth distillation of specific results, but for me there are some notable trends and statistics.

Key overall rankings

Hong Kong and Singapore are the top two, followed by New Zealand.  Yes NZ is number three, the freest "proper" liberal democracy.  It shows both how far NZ came in the 1980s and 1990s, but also how far others have not come.

Australia is fourth, but the UK is 12th and the USA 18th.  The last of those should be a clarion call warning to Americans who believe in capitalism that warnings about Obama making America like Europe are optimistic - for six European countries are more free, economically, than the USA.  It is noted the US was ranked 2nd in 2000, and fell to 8th in 2005.  No sign of Bush "neo-liberalism".

In Europe, Switzerland tops clearly, at 5th,  Finland at 9th, Ireland at 12th equal with the UK,  Estonia 14th and Denmark at 16th.   Of the other big European economies it is telling that Germany is 31st (below the likes of Sweden and Austria), Spain 34th,  France is 47th (barely above Poland but behind Albania - yes Albania), Greece is 81st,  Italy is 83rd, all beating Russia at 95th.  Ukraine is the worst in Europe at 122nd.

In the Americas, Canada is 5th equal with Switzerland.  Yes, more economic freedom north of the border.  Chile soars ahead of the rest of the Americas at 10th.  Mexico 91st, Brazil 105th, Ecuador 126th and Argentina 127th.  Venezuela naturally is 144th (bottom rated of those measured). 

In Asia, Taiwan gets 15th, Japan 20th and South Korea 37th. China 107th.  India and Pakistan both 111th.  Myanmar is bottom in Asia at 143rd (yes I know another would be worse). 

In Africa, the best performer is Mauritius at 8th, but then it is a long drop to Rwanda at 45th.  South Africa is 85th.  Most of the bottom rated countries are in Africa, still, with Zimbabwe at bottom on 142nd.

The Middle East has Bahrain topping at 7th, proving that economic freedom does not necessarily mean political freedom.  UAE is 11th and Qatar 17th.  Algeria is bottom of the Arab world at 137th, with Syria at 119th.  Israel is 52nd.

What of New Zealand's ranking?

NZ might be third overall, but it is 95th on size of government (95th smallest out of 144), which shows how highly ranked NZ is on most other measures. 

Yet NZ was ranked far more highly on size of government recently.  In 2009, the year after the current National led government stopped the Helen Clark juggernaut, it was ranked 73rd on size of government.   So National has led the growth in the state, relative to others.  Of course Labour achieved a lot on that front, as NZ was ranked 47th freest in 2000 just after it was elected, but that's a far cry from 1995 when it was 18th.   You can thank Jim Bolger, Jenny Shipley and Winston Peters for that.   You can go further back and see Ruth Richardson saw NZ rise from 66th to 18th in five years and now drop to a ranking last seen in 1985 when Roger Douglas was only starting to unwind Muldoonism.

Beyond that measure, NZ's score on legal system and property rights has slipped a little from a high point in 1995, although it would be interesting to probe into the detail behind the scores here (and elsewhere).

On sound money it remains about as highly rated as it always has been.  However on freedom to trade internationally it is now scored the lowest since the 1980s, with compliance costs on trade, foreign investment limits and limits on capital flows reducing the score.

The overall regulatory score is the best it has been since it has been measured, but on labour market regulations NZ is ranked 9th, its lowest ranking besides size of government.

So what does this mean?  Simple.  Any claim this National-led government is implementing radical free market reforms falls flat on the evidence - it has grown the state.  In relative terms, NZ has been retreating from such reforms for around 17 years now.  The state grows faster under Labour, slower under National.

Yet despite slipping on some measures, especially size of government, NZ ranks well largely because others have slipped as well.   It becomes more apparent if one looks at key comparators like Australia, the US and the UK.

Australia

62nd in size of government, 66th on freedom to trade (a lot of protectionism), 29th on monetary policy, 11th on regulation overall, 13th on legal system and property rights.  Australia is 4th overall still, which is still the best position it has ever had.  However, under that Australia has slipped on size of government (had been 47th in 2009), slipped on legal system and property rights (was 3rd in 2000), slipped on monetary policy (10th in 2009), plummeted on freedom to trade (was 19th in 1990 and has slipped since, mainly because others have moved faster) and slipped a little on regulation (was 8th in 2009).  Disturbingly one area Australia has slipped back on is bribery.   Capital controls are also severely restricted.

In essence, Australia slipped back on protectionism some time ago, but the end of the Howard administration has been characterised by ongoing slippage in economic freedom.  Not entirely surprising, as this has been shrouded by the bubble of mineral prices that politicians have been riding on.

UK

117th in size of government, 41st on regulation, 19th on monetary policy, 15th on legal system and property rights and 5th on freedom to trade.   The UK has slipped badly in recent years as it was 5th overall as recently as 2005, being 12th today.  How has it dropped?  It was 58th on size of government in 1990, just after Thatcher had resigned.  It has fallen steadily since 2000. The legacy of the spending and regulatory measures taken after Blair won a second election is what is now apparent, with the Gordon Brown years particularly reducing economic freedom.  The hysteria over the barely apparent austerity (which is simply slowing the growth in spending) is just that, and the big emphasis now ought to be cutting the size of the state and regulation - but it's unlikely to happen under a Conservative coalition with a schizophrenic leftwing party.

USA

73rd on size of government.  Yes 73rd!  57th on freedom to trade.  31st on regulation.  28th on legal system and property rights and finally 7th on sound money (really??).  Where has the US come from?  It is 18th overall now, but was 2nd as recently as 2000.  By 2009 it was 15th (yes you can thank Bush for that) and the slide has continued under Obama.   On size of government it has dropped from 24th in 1990 to 73rd now, consistently.  That's through two Bushes, Clinton and Obama, and Congresses dominated by Democrats and Republicans.  On legal system and property rights it was 1st way back in 1980, yes before Reagan.  It slipped through to 1995, improved a little for 2000, and then kept slipping back, although is slightly better now than it has been since 2005.  In 2005 it was top for sound money, but it is no surprise that that has slipped with the printing presses.  Freedom to trade was once 7th in 1980, but has slipped back almost consistently since then - globalisation?  No, the US hasn't kept up with that.  The slide has been particularly intense since 2005, but Obama has never been a friend of free trade.  Finally, the US was once 2nd for regulation in 2000.  It has plummeted since then to 31st, notably it was 24th in 2009, showing once more that Bush was hardly a small government President.

Republicans in the US often talk about how they don't want to be like Europe because it is so socialist, but they need to look at themselves.  The US ranking on so many measures is worse than several European countries.  On size of government, Albania, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Moldova, Romania, Switzerland and Ukraine are all smaller than the US.  Yes, Albania, once the last bastion of true believers in Stalin.   This should blow any claims that the US is the bulwark of economic freedom of the world - it quite simply isn't.

Curious ratings

On size of government Madagascar gets the best rating, but given every other rating is 92nd or worse than 100th, it isn't really a fair indicator, much like Bangladesh at 3rd (which more shows an inept state rather than a good small one).  Hong Kong is 2nd though.  At the other end of that ranking, Algeria at 142nd sits near the Netherlands at 144th and Sweden at 143rd.  Big states that are offset by good legal systems, protection of property rights and lower levels of regulation.

Legal system and property rights ratings are more consistent.  Finland is 1st,  NZ 2nd and Denmark 3rd.  Every other top 10 country is either western European, Singapore or Hong Kong.  At the bottom are the likes of Venezuela, Haiti, DRC and CAR.  All other below 100 rated countries are developing countries in Africa and Asia, including the likes of Argentina.  

On monetary policy the leaders are the likes of Japan (yes really!), Portugal, Albania and the USA.  Bottom rated are Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Angola and DRC.  Still I've little confidence that monetary policy deserves a high rating anywhere nowadays.

On freedom to trade internationally, the best rated are the likes of Singapore and Hong Kong, UK, Uruguay, Guatemala, Ireland, Peru, Netherlands and NZ.  Not a consistent lot, but showing different levels of openness.  At worst it is Venezuela, Iran, Myanmar and DRC.  India is also ranked poorly at 114th, not great for a country seeking to emulate China (which itself is 104th).  Russia is 127th, but oddly Iceland is 118th!  A lot depends on what is protected and size of the domestic economy, obviously Singapore and Hong Kong would not thrive being closed economies.

Finally on regulation, the best rated are Hong Kong, but then Fiji, NZ and Singapore.  At bottom is Algeria, Brazil, Myanmar, Venezuela and Zimbabwe.  One wonders if Brazil can sustain growth with such a tightly regulated economy. 

Conclusion

The big picture is that for much of the world economies have been subject to more government regulation in recent years, as the automatic response to a financial crisis caused by central bank fueled credit bubbles and exacerbated by fiscal incontinence has been to regulate more, engage in more central bank incontinence and to do little to substantially shrink state spending.

So let's stop talking about austerity.  In Greece, the only dimension that has ranked well as of late has been monetary policy - the rest have been the measures of a state dominated and regulated economy.  The broad indicators of a sound economy come down to a robust legal system that protects property rights and reasonably sound monetary policy.  Beyond that, the more regulation and more trade restricted the economy, the less likely it is to grow or to deliver better results for the poor. 

There is a lot of further analysis that could be done of these figures, particularly trends in GDP growth, GDP per capita and changes in rankings over time.  Of course this is all based on scoring which is not particularly transparent.  Herein lies the difficulty in making more than broad based interpretations of the report.