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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Friday, May 3, 2013

Asset Sales: Nationalisation Versus Privatisation – Anecdote in Process.



New Zealand businessman, Selwyn Pellet, is both an undoubtedly successful because innovative entrepreneur and businessman, and, on Twitter, a gentleman: respect to Selwyn on both counts. However, he is one of a type of businessmen who have made it via private enterprise, who then after the success, start preaching statism, and hence the destruction of a free market and so the free society, despite the evidence of their own lives. It confuses me, because it seems to beg both philosophy and economic theory, and I wonder what the wellspring of this phenomenon is. I suspect, or at least wonder if, it’s tied somehow to that hobby horse of mine regarding the growing propensity under the Left ethic brainwashed into us via the New Zealand School Curriculum document, chasing that bloodied altar of the common good, to emote on issues, rather than think rationally along the lines of cause and effect, so that Selwyn while extremely clever in his field of expertise, misses the big philosophic and economic picture.

Anyway, here’s an interesting little Twitter scenario, I’ll be interested to see Selwyn’s response. He is an implacable opponent of National’s upcoming partial privatisation of power generator, Mighty River Power (MRP), believing in a state monopoly for power generation; on the back of his tweeting a radio show host to this effect, I have put the below query to him:





Answer:

Even by the time of publishing this piece, Selwyn has provided the below answer. I will let it stand for now, and will come back to it again soon:



My further replies:




End Piece:

Labour and Greens have both stated that if they win next year’s election, then MRP, et al, will be renationalised in order to lower power bills for consumers. Unfortunately, and the reason for why power was partially privatised in the first instance, once you break any connection to market signals, a state which believes itself to have a limitless purse in the tax take for cross-subsidisation across government functions, ultimately leads to such endemic and then systemic distortions across the economy, that economies ultimately fail. Proof: history.

Labour and Greens for a short period of time will be able to regulate prices to the consumer lower, but they cannot regulate the cost of generation, and lack of new generation will be the first of the effects felt via brown outs.



5 comments:

  1. "Infrastructure that has monopolistic characteristics should be owned or regualted by the state."

    I assume he means "natural monopolistic characteristics" and in part he is right. The national grid is a natural monopoly but no other parts of the electricity market are.

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    1. nope, the grid isn't a "natural monopoly". there's no such thing.

      and even if it was - no reason not to be privately owned!

      Delete
  2. Hi Mark,

    Gareth Morgan (who I am sure is one businessman you admire...) once wrote an email reply to me that said, I quote '...Your main point is that governments will hoard proceeds from any new taxes rather than use them to lower tax rates in other areas. I have to say I agree with you on that as a real risk. It doesn't make my point about having an annual capital tax (not a capital gains tax) invalid but does highlight the weakness of politics to deliver better overall outcomes...'

    When some of our best 'businessmen' what to tax capital annually at 6% - when over the last 100 years or so we are looking at something like an average 4% growth... Time and percentage points - we might as well gift it all to the state asap..

    Matt McNeill

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    Replies
    1. I understand the rationale for a capital tax, but for exactly the reason you give, have no agreement with it, as well as the major theme of this blog: all taxation is theft. I advocate a constitutional republic in the form of a small state minarchy that is voluntarily funded.

      Regarding Gareth Morgan I have little agreement with him; the Big Kahuna is just more statism, and then, to cite a very old post of mine on Lindsay Perigo's blog, there's this:

      http://tinyurl.com/7dd45wa

      Like Selwyn, he has become a statist; unlike Selwyn, he's become somehow nasty with it.

      Cheers for reading, Matt.

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