Blog description.

Accentuating the Liberal in Classical Liberal: Advocating Ascendency of the Individual & a Politick & Literature to Fight the Rise & Rise of the Tax Surveillance State. 'Illigitum non carborundum'.

Liberty and freedom are two proud words that have been executed from the political lexicon: they were frog marched and stood before a wall of blank minds, then forcibly blindfolded, and shot, with the whimpering staccato of ‘equality’ and ‘fairness’ resounding over and over. And not only did this atrocity go unreported by journalists in the mainstream media, they were in the firing squad.

The premise of this blog is simple: the Soviets thought they had equality, and welfare from cradle to grave, until the illusory free lunch of redistribution took its inevitable course, and cost them everything they had. First to go was their privacy, after that their freedom, then on being ground down to an equality of poverty only, for many of them their lives as they tried to escape a life behind the Iron Curtain. In the state-enforced common good, was found only slavery to the prison of each other's mind; instead of the caring state, they had imposed the surveillance state to keep them in line. So why are we accumulating a national debt to build the slave state again in the West? Where is the contrarian, uncomfortable literature to put the state experiment finally to rest?

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Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Of Students and Olympics …


I see the Student Association is upset that IRD is about to use ‘heavy handed’ tactics to bankrupt students who have moved to Australia and are deliberately defaulting on their loans. They shouldn’t be surprised, as heavy handed is the natural consequence of giving any government department the full powers of the police state to take a person’s property from them. You have no liberty, nor privacy, from IRD, because you have been voted into a prison of the tyranny of each other, where you are not so much your brother’s keeper, as your brother’s slave: best you learn that lesson now. Although in this case I disagree with the students. While a government using heavy handed tactics on its subjects (I use that word advisedly) is always repugnant, and we should’ve learned from the twentieth century to be kinder to each other, nevertheless, students loaned that money from the tax payer and the repayment of those loans must be honoured, just as it should for any loan taken out. It’s called the grown up world, and this side of the issue is not a question of tax.

So, in reference to the following quotation from the article concerned:

The president of the New Zealand Union of Students Associations, Pete Hodkinson, said the "extreme measures about to be taken to chase down New Zealand graduates who are gaining overseas experience are symptomatic of a Government that is prepared to treat graduates as if they were in the same category as tax-evading criminals or worse".

I’d like to change the focus, just a little, to get to the truth of the matter:

the "extreme measures … taken to chase down New Zealand businesspeople who are going about their business peacefully via the voluntary transaction, are symptomatic of a Government that is prepared to treat free men, who have done no ill, as if they were in the same category as criminals or worse".

Prostrated in front of IRD you have fewer rights than an accused murderer or rapist, even the onus of proof is turned against the innocent taxpayer – stop and think how stunning that fact is - and from this brutal basis on which our society is founded, authorised and required by the Fortress of Legislation, there is little that is civilised about our social democracy. I mean it when I say we are closer to a Soviet styled semi-police state, than we are to a free and voluntary classical liberal society. You don’t have to stick your head up all that far to find this out, and don’t think you can weld your vote to free yourself: it means nothing.

And while on the free and voluntary classical liberal society, as much as I enjoyed watching the odd event in the Olympics, albeit the value to my life of the very odd event of grown men playing water polo was nil; does that justify a government extracting, by force, $90 million from the New Zealand taxpayer - many of them struggling - to fund ‘our’ Olympic effort? Of course not. Indeed, not even if we were just taxing the rich pricks for it. People should either fund their own sports activities or seek voluntarily given sponsorship, and if that means grown men might not be able to play water polo at the Olympics, then, that’s life, as it should be, in a free country. Such taxpayer funding is an abuse of the role of state: it’s always about the principle; this stuff is so easy. And as far as Olympic medals lifting the mood of a country, Paul Walker over at Anti-Dismal has a good little piece up on how the country’s mood might be better served by simply leaving the taxpayer their money.

6 comments:

  1. I saw the comment from the students association. I like the student loan model. The state says if you cannot afford to pay for your education the tax payer will cover you, but you must pay the money back. In truth, no interest means you only pay half of it back and student fees are only a third of the cost of tertiary education, so it is a token contribution, but the mentality of thestudent association is telling. Everything should be free!

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    1. Yes, per my blog byline, our Gulag of Forced Altruism has 'traded self responsibility and self reliance for the violent give-me-that-I'm-entitled-to-it society'.

      It took roughly seventy years to create such a toxic ethic, Rand only knows how long it would take to fix it, even if there was the political will to do so, which there isn't.

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  2. students loaned that money from the tax payer and the repayment of those loans must be honoured, just as it should for any loan taken out. It’s called the grown up world, and this side of the issue is not a question of tax.

    I have a student loan. I borrowed the money from the government. I didn't borrow the money from "the tax payer." I didn't borrow it from you. With all due respect, I don't owe you a cent.

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  3. No, with all due respect, that money the government loaned to you, they didn't earn it. They took it from me.

    And regardless, that's not my point. Take me out of it: you take a loan, you have to repay it. How are you going to work a free society without that?

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  4. If a woman hires a cab and the cab driver rapes her, does she owe him the fare?

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    1. Right, I see your point now. I will still stick to a loan, is a loan, is a loan :)

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