Blogging on liberty, capitalism, reason, international affairs and foreign policy, from a distinctly libertarian and objectivist perspective
11 May 2008
Gordon Brown fights to keep the Union
The Waitangi gravy train - who will end it
Labour, National and Jim Anderton - well done
What will get YOU angry about governments?
Meanwhile, if you need a reminder of what evil looks like, BBC TV has shown scenes of Burmese citizens being marched by soldiers to vote in the constitutional referendum which will secure the rule of these thugs. Yes, the army is bullying people suffering under the cyclone to vote.
Below is Aj Jazeera's coverage of what Myanmar TV is telling its population. Liars through and through. The West is somehow scared of pushing these bastards around. Still think governments are competent?
UPDATE: Oh and CNN now reports that the junta is using aid as an enticement to vote in its filthy referendum.
10 May 2008
Labour erodes mobile phone operators' property rights
Compulsory Maori music
Murderous scum in Burma, whilst China appeases
"Chairman of the National Disaster Preparedness Central Committee Prime Minister General Thein Sein who is supervising relief tasks for storm victims in a speedy and effective way in Ayeyawady Division presented 20 sets of TV, 10 DVD players and 10 satellite receivers to Chairman of Ayeyawady Division Peace and Development Council Commander of South-West Command Brig-Gen Kyaw Swe for the storm victims at various camps enabling them to enjoy the programmes at Mya E-ya Hall of the South-West Command this morning"
Yes, it was a priority to get TVs to storm victims. The Burmese military thugocracy has demanded that all aid simply be dropped off at airports and it will then ensure that
Boris cans taxpayer support for commie rag
09 May 2008
Gordon Ramsay - the fascist chef
Pardon the expletives but it is important you understand.
You’re a fucking good chef, of course you are, there are few bastards in the world half as good as you, so shit, you can talk with authority about food and running restaurants. I can't doubt that for a moment
However, you know fuck all about economics you dozy prick. You want restaurants to be fined for using out of season food. Besides the obvious of how the fuck you’ll enforce this shitty idea (imagine people furtively saying "shhh there is a restaurant that's selling strawberries out of season, don't tell anyone"), what the fuck is it your business? Unless you want protectionism, but you're not the sort of loser twat who would I am sure.
You talk as if it is about carbon emissions – what bullshit! Tomatoes grown in Spain and shipped to the UK have a lower carbon footprint that ones grown in heated hothouse farms in Britain. Not so fucking simple now is it brainbox? Ever noted how butter and lamb from New Zealand shipped to the UK has a lower carbon footprint after all that than British produced butter and lamb? You fucking tosser being taken in by this food miles malarky, and I bet you still drive too.
You say “There should be stringent laws, licensing laws, to make sure produce is only used in season and season only," … "If we don't restrict our movements within this industry of seasonal-produce only, then the whole thing will spiral out of control."
Oh you fucking fascist prick. You want a bunch of bureaucrats poking their nose into restaurants checking where the fuck the produce has come from, making sure a strawberry, apple or yam is not in the wrong place. Oh and what is “out of control” mean? You mean people actually just choosing what they want, paying for what they want, and farmers who work fucking hard who don’t happen to be in Europe (because you can’t implement this bullshit against the EU you cock, unless you want to pull out, which is another argument) and don’t suck off of the great tit of Brussels can just fuck off? Well fuck you!
Ok so how about this, let’s restrict all you fucking do to Britain. Ban your TV programmes, books and you even opening up restaurants elsewhere in the world. Who wants some foul mouthed English chef when they can have their own, in fact why trade at all? Don’t get kitchen appliances from Italy, France, USA or Japan, get British ones – get British cars too (good luck), after all if you want to fuck the rest of the trading world with your economic nationalism, then you can’t expect the world to want to buy or sell you anything.
So while you sit playing with yourself thinking how great it would be for a restaurant to be fined for selling an apple pie in June, or tomato sauce from the USA, you could be doing something more useful – run your restaurants and shut the fuck up. You want better quality food, then keep doing what you are doing, but accept that a lot of people in Britain like the bland mass produced crud that is found as ready meals, or is called sandwiches. They do because it is cheap and convenient and they have the taste buds of a goat, but it is THEIR fucking choice.
Fuck off.
Mike Moore on why many poor countries are poor
"In the past 60 years, more wealth has been created than in all of history. The number of people living on less than a dollar a day has dropped from 40 per cent in 1981 to 18 per cent in 2004. During the same period, the numbers living on less than $2 a day have dropped from 67 per cent to 48 per cent."
That hasn't been because of charity. Moore points out that:
"Private ownership works. Open economies always do better, competition and trade drive up better results and drive out corruption, as well as allocate resources more efficiently. A free market without solid, trusted institutions, property rights, independent courts, a professional public service and democracy is not a free market but a black market."
Yes yes, though we may argue about how much of a public service is needed, he's got it! However it is more than just having corrupt free institutions it is about getting the hell out of the way of doing business:.
"in Egypt it can take 500 days, 29 visits and 29 agencies, compliance with 315 laws, and costs 27 times the monthly minimum wage to open a bakery."
Funny how so many on the left think that somehow the world is impoverishing countries that actually are badly governed and overgoverned in many respects. He concludes that property rights are what is needed, so that the poor can leverage off what they own, have access to courts when their rights are infringed upon and can protect what they produce.
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"We can establish property rights which will encourage people into the formal economy. It's not that radical, it simply suggests that poor people in poor countries should have the rights that rich countries have. Perhaps that's why they are rich."
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Now can someone tell the Labour, Green and National Parties?
Nick Smith spits on property rights... again
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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"?
Are your kids on Adultfriendfinder?
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"Davidson initiated contact with the girls through internet websites AdultFriend Finder and Bebo, and by using MSN, email, and text messaging after the initial contact."
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Now the risks of Bebo as a social networking site for young girls are well known, but Adultfriendfinder? What's that then? Well it is a website for adults that want to meet to have a sexual relationship "The World's Largest Sex & Swinger Personals Community" it claims. It asks that all members declare their birthday as it requires that all of its members be 18 or over. Now Adultfriendfinder is free, but as with many such sites you can't do much without having paid membership. For starters you can't see anyone's photos, and you can only send messages to other members if you are very popular or if a paid member has paid to allow standard members to contact them.
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Hmmm, so presumably at least one of these girls of 14, pretended to be 18 on her profile and while posting her picture online couldn't view others. What's that about? Not so innocent? Adultfriendfinder is a blocked site listed with several well known parental control software suppliers, presumably the girl's parents didn't care where she went online.
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Does it justify his foolishness? No, although unless she confessed early on about age, he could well have believed she was 18 as, after all, her profile would have to say that. Adultfriendfinder vets profiles before they are posted too, to avoid the "claim 18 but say I'm younger in the profile" problem, so she must have told him at some point after he started contact.
So when a 57 year old man find a girl who says she is 18 on an adult contact site, and she's your daughter 14 - you might ask yourself what you did to prevent her going where she shouldn't go, and don't blame the state.
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UPDATE: It is notable that the NZ Herald never mentioned Adultfriendfinder, but did mention the girls pretended to be 18 and 16 online. However, it is an offence to sexually groom those underage even if you don't know they are (which he did when he met them), interesting thought crime that one is.
Burma's bullies let their subjects die
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The BBC reports UN World Food Programme regional director Anthony Banbury saying "We will not just bring our supplies to an airport, dump it and take off".
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The BBC reporter Paul Danahar notes ...Normally after a natural disaster, he says, roads are choked by the relief effort, but those into the Irrawaddy delta are empty.
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Charming really. CNN reports China is urging Burma to open up to aid supplies.
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So what to do? Well it wouldn't be immoral for armed forces from several countries to just enter, provide protection for aid workers, and tell the Burmese authorities that it will use force if necessary if anyone gets in the way of saving lives. The cowardly generals have already been seen on Myanmar state TV in posed shots of them delivering humanitarian assistance. Armed support for aid supplies is possibly the only sensible way forward, and if the regime cries that its sovereignty has been interfered with (and I am sure the so-called peace movement would decry any such action, preferring people to die in peace whilst their government ignores them), then its illegitimacy can be pointed to. The thugs in charge deserve no respect.
08 May 2008
The funny old USA - United Sexual Abhorrents
NZ taxpayers effectively help pay for Tonga's lavish coronation
Burmese junta letting its people die
China's censorship easing off?
It's his money not yours
07 May 2008
Disaster aid for dictatorships
Dr Cullen's logic impeccable
Tame Iti gets to be a thespian
Wellington transport plan reasonable
06 May 2008
NZ Herald hits rail issue on the head
So what IS happening with fuel tax?
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Helen Clark says on the 6th that the new regional fuel taxes to subsidise public transport (and fund more roads) wont happen.
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Dr Cullen then says they will. However the government wont agree to a "full tax" immediately. He says that without a regional fuel tax in Auckland, rail electrification can't proceed. You might ask why those who would benefit from rail electrification - users and operators of the commuter rail service - can't pay for it themselves? You might ask by how much congestion will drop because of electrification? You wont get an answer.
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Now Helen Clark says it wont include transport in the emissions trading regime until 2011, so that the punitive 8c/l levy would be delayed. Note the word delayed. She also said the government wont approve a regional fuel tax as high as 5c/l, which means you might get one less than that.
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However, one thing you can be certain of - Labour will increase fuel taxes or levies. You might ask how good the "investments" are that it expects the taxes to be used on.
Reaction to rail nationalisation
05 May 2008
Food prices? Blame government
Did you want to buy a railway?
Wishart's all too obvious smear
Congrats Boris
Post 1000
So why do I bother? What has been the result?
There is some effort involved in having a daily rant. It started and still is about that, but I’ve noticed the hit rate rise and drop. I average about 100 users with about 130 page views a day. I've been linked to by numerous sites from time to time, and am grateful for that.
However, what I want to do most of all is make people think, beyond simply a rant. I blog primarily about NZ politics from afar, but also UK and US politics, international affairs, and occasionally trip reports and personal matters. Given I am a transport sector management consultant I have a lot to say about that, but know the audience is limited. Indeed transport almost highlights why I have a suspicion of government doing good, as in most cases it makes foolish decisions.
So I am a libertarian, objectivist and atheist. You figured out that easily enough. However why? What was my philosophical, political journey to take me to something that is, frankly, a highly minority opinion?
My first ever exposure to politics was my maternal grandfather who was a card carrying member of the Labour Party. I briefly remember the 1978 general election, and that “Mr Muldoon” was the Prime Minister. My grandfather told me why he supported Labour though I understood little, I listened to his criticisms of Muldoon. Sadly he died when I was 10, but from that I followed politics a little more. It seemed to be a contest between good and evil. I remember the 1981 election and more specifically the party political broadcasts that Labour, National and Social Credit put out on TVNZ, which then had a statutory monopoly. Labour argued that income tax was too high, but business tax too low. National argued Think Big “Jobs for our children and our childrens’ children that’s what this is all about” bellowed Muldoon. Social Credit was difficult to understand, but the idea of a third party automatically appealed.
The political environment of the time was full of conflict. The Springbok tour, protests against US nuclear powered/armed ships, and the economic malaise all caused concern and divided opinion. I remember inflation at 18%, and interest rates BELOW that for the bank, thinking I was getting a good deal on my paltry savings at the then Post Office, when in fact Muldoon was ripping me off, like he did hundreds of thousands of children. Those are the days Jim Anderton and Winston Peters remember fondly for some reason. I also recall learning from books how dictatorial East Germany was, with citizens prevented from leaving by big barbed wire fences. I wondered how bad a country can be that it needs to force its people to stay.
The 1984 election was an exciting one, not least because Bob Jones’s New Zealand Party made it amusing. I was loyal to Labour, not least because it was the party that could unseat Muldoon and National, which I thought was a party of economic madness. At school we were meant to do a project on the election, and I remember going to the Social Credit office in Wellington to ask for a manifesto, only to have a weird little bearded man mumble and hand me something. Bob Jones’s diatribes on Skoda driving grey zip-up shoe wearing bearded teachers made some sense at that point. Nevertheless, I was convinced David Lange was honest and would do what was right – in some respects had Labour embarked on a mad socialist programme I would have accepted that at the time, but no…. it was all going to be very different.
I was astounded by the reason behind pulling the plug on subsidies, the opening up of markets and the general willingness by the fourth Labour government to get out of the way of business. The sheer mind numbing ineptness of the Post Office, Railways, Petrocorp and the like was patently obvious. Why couldn’t these be businesses, why should businesses receive taxpayer funds at all? How possibly could politicians know better than consumers, producers and entrepreneurs?
I was convinced by Douglas, so supported Labour even up to voting Labour in 1990. Why? Because of the sheer audacity that politicians would do what is right rather than obtain short term political advantage. The fourth Labour government outraged farmers, manufacturers, unions (albeit somewhat muted) and many others, yet who could argue to retain the bloated state sector and its inane regulations of things such as international air fares! Who could argue that the government could keep overspending ad infinitum?
However, it didn’t all please me. The Treaty of Waitangi became centre stage, and the cries of victimhood and claims that Maori committed crime, did badly at school and smoked, drank and ate themselves to early graves because of Treaty breaches sounded suspicious. The establishment of new Ministries such as Women’s Affairs seemed like an unnecessary increase in the size of the state. On top of that Labour had reintroduced compulsory unionism, and effectively severed military ties with the USA- the anti-nuclear rhetoric appeared largely emotive nonsense, and the anti-American insinuation was ridiculous. Few protested Soviet nuclear weapons.
However National did absolutely nothing to confront any of this, except voluntary unionism. National was totally unwilling to deal with the Maoist attitude to debate on some of these things that I encountered at university – all Maori were disadvantaged and I should be disadvantaged to give Maori a “hand up”. Funny how I noticed some who had such a “hand up” came from wealthier families than I did. I am the first from my family to go to university.
I also was far from enamoured at the conservatism of some in National. Graeme Lee had a strong influence on censorship law in the early 1990s, to the extent that it became an offence to possess “objectionable material” even if you didn’t know it was or reasonably should know, and that definition included depicting acts that are legal.
I believed in freedom and wanted less government, the only voice in the early 1990s appeared to be Roger Douglas and the newly formed Association of Consumers and Taxpayers. However while ACT promised radical reform of health and education, it never spoke about freedom – that was when I discovered the Free Radical.
The notion that adult interaction should be voluntary was so clearly obvious as to make it strange to think otherwise, yet that was what government was all about. I became a libertarian because I was tired of people demanding governments use force to make others do what they couldn’t convince them to choose to do. Those on the left are particularly keen to tell others what to do, but many on the right do too. However it is more than just freedom, it is about life.
That is how I discovered being a libertarian and the philosophical underpinning for it – objectivism. You see I value human life. I don’t seek purpose outside existence, I am alive and I may as well enjoy it. I want to be free to do this, whilst respecting the same in others. My body, my property and my life, and others have the same. I can’t conceive why others can have any right to tell me what to do with any of these, given I do not want it over anyone else. Government should exist to protect people from each other and from other governments, it should not exist to do anything else.
However objectivism goes beyond the role of the state, and is actually about why we live and how to live. A life of reason and passion, enjoying what time we have is what objectivism is about.
Contrary to this is so much in statist politics, whether it be socialism, fascism, conservatism or more recently environmentalism. All are an abandonment of reason. Environmentalism selectively uses science to spread fear of doom and death, whilst often advocating anti-science, in objecting to biotechnology, or anti-economics, in advocating protectionism, subsidies and higher taxes. Religion all too often, besides being explicitly an abandonment of reason for faith, is concerned about the after life, not life. At its worst it has been the banner for murder on a grand scale, at best it is a distraction and a private comfort for some.
My overwhelming mission in this blog is to question the role of the state in almost all aspects of human affairs. The state, after all, is simply a collective of human beings with only one difference from everyone else – the right to use force against them. The idea that in many instances politicians and bureaucrats know better than other people how to spend their money, use their bodies or their property is rather peculiar – yet it is the core belief of those who join the Labour Party or the Green Party, or dare I say it, National.
The liberty of the human individual is a beautiful thing. You can see this most clearly in a child, who unsubconsciously explores the world around her, who smiles, trusts and seeks to learn, and make the world into what she wants it to be. That is before being told not to be “too clever” or “how important it is to be liked”.
Today, thousands of young people grow up concerned most of all about being liked and “belonging”, when they should celebrate being themselves, pursuing their passions and respect others doing the same. Millions live today demanding the state take more money off of others because it is “fair”. Fair apparently that others should live for them, make a living that must be paid to others. The insipid socialism that there is something wrong with the “rich getting richer”, and the “poor” standing still –and that the rich should fix their lot, not the poor.
The violence of the state is every bit as abhorrent as the violence of individuals who mug, steal, attack and take from others as crimes. However it has the veneer of respectability – it is ok to vote for your neighbour to be robbed to pay for what you like. After all, taxation is theft, regardless of any justification one may make or other cliché claimed, taxes are taking money by force.
So I ask you, when you read this blog, or read others or the rants of politicians who want something from you, do politicians not have the powers granted to them by the people they are meant to represent? If politicians only have the powers granted to them by the public, why do they use powers that no member of the public could ever have? You have no right to steal, so how can you grant that to a politician? You have no right to stop your neighbour painting his house the colour he wants, so how can you grant that to a politician? You have no right to arrest someone because he ingests something you disapprove of, so how can you grant that right to a politician?
That is why I advocate freedom – I don’t think politicians and bureaucrats are better than me, or anyone else. What could be more egalitarian than that?