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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Monday, November 11, 2013

Centre Politics: The Economics of Destruction. (Conservative Party V. Libertarianz)



Actually, over time it's always the economics of slavery, but if I use that word in the title, centre voters turn off, thinking me a writer of extremes which don’t concern their lives. Warning, there are extremes in this post, but they don’t come from me: they come from the debt figures produced by centre left and centre right governments, which hold complete power in New Zealand. The numbers are in my below comment to a thread on Whaleoil: my comment first, with context to follow:


I suspect some few of the Whale Army vote National. When National came in 2008 government debt was $10,258 billion. As of September just gone, that debt stands at $60,015 billion.

With the Christchurch earthquake costed in this government continues to borrow $27 million per day. That's per day; to fund government operations that make up over 44% of the entire economic activity in the country. And National is the party of small government ... yeah right.

Look at this fact from a different perspective. The government is borrowing $27 million a day for a country with only just over 4 million population, which we have to repay, with interest ... how's that going to work out?

Worse, a good fact from @RedBaiternz on Twitter, we have only just over 2 million taxpayers having to fund future annual budgets of $70 billion ... how's that going to work out?

Let's burrow - not borrow - down deeper. We know that the top 12% of taxpayers fund over 75% of the net tax take. Ignoring for now company, trustee income tax and indirect taxation that means about 250,000 people only are having to fund into the future some large part of $70 billion annual budgets, including debt servicing, so far, on $60 billion and growing.

Whale would call reasoned classical liberals such as Libertarianz the 'extreme fringe': no, the extremities are in the above numbers. The only way you fund that debt long term is increasing taxation -  I suggest markedly - and forcibly enforcing the continuing destruction of property rights, and personal civil rights, given the first thing the tax surveillance state must do to ensure the tax-take, is take away your privacy, while granting itself access to your property, starting with your income.

In fact, the only sane option 2014 is a vote for Libertarianz. Ironic most of the Whale army will be voting for the bigger and bigger nanny state, which is quickly become mathematically impossible, as the US and many countries in Europe are finding.


The context of this thread is interesting. It was Whale’s analysis of Rodney Hide’s NBR piece about how Colin Craig, leader of New Zealand’s fledgling Conservative Party, in an interview given some weeks before where he had stated his party would forcibly purchase (take) developers’ land from them if they didn’t build on it within a short time-frame suiting the politicians, thus destroyed the central premise of Conservatism, namely, sacrosanct property rights.

One of the first comments to that thread reasonably asked:


Wow i missed him saying that. So there is still no party in New Zealand that believes in Private Property Rights.


I replied that Libertarianz Party was founded wholly and unalterably on property rights. Of course Whale responded with his predictable scorn of the pragmatist, the type of pragmatist voting that has produced the figures in my final comment above:


Yeah, the libertarians...too pure to achieve anything, the happy hand clappers of nz politics


My reply to that stands on its own:


That's a meaningless response, Whale. Libertarianz are the only party left representing Western classical liberal values: the free society. If we changed any of the tenets of belief, as you suggest, then we become just another party representing nothing.

If people want to vote for a party that wholly respects property rights, there is only the one. I was simply answering a question.


In next year’s election, that truly is the voter choice: if you believe in property rights, then Libertarianz is your only option, if not, then vote for any other party, and help grow, at varying speeds, the mathematical impossibility of centre opportunistic fiat moneyed politics - read future tax indentured slavery of your children and grandchildren. And there’s a logical reason for how such politick destroys us; my most oft used quotation from Daniel Horowitz:


“We must understand that there is an imbalance of power in the political system of any democracy in that the forces of statism have an innate advantage over the defenders of freedom. It takes but one legislative or administrative victory for statism to succeed in guiding society on an indelible path towards dependency. We cannot perpetuate the free-market, but we can perpetuate statism by creating inveterate dependency constituencies. Statism enjoys the inherent advantage of self-perpetuation through its own pernicious activities that engender a continued need for the government programs.”



23 comments:

  1. Taxation is just other people enforcing their property rights. Why is OK for you to enforce your property rights but not for other people to enforce theirs?

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    1. Sorry? Who owns my income? How do complete strangers have a claim on that as 'their' property?

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    2. Why is it "your" income as opposed to the government's? All property is just perceptions of entitlement backed up by force. The burden is on you to explain why your perception of entitlement is more worthy than theirs. You can't just say "it's mine" because anybody can say that about anything.

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    3. In the unlikely instance you're not a troll, Google USSR and see how your slave world ends up.

      Wait a minute: are you a teacher?

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    4. Cute how you don't even attempt a rebuttal and instead resort to unoriginal strawman insults. Amazing that your entire philosophy is so weak and lightweight that it can be demolished with a couple of basic questions.

      You want to maximize your own privilege. That's fine, but just admit that, instead of pretending that you have actual principles.

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    5. Oh for Christ's sake you're not a troll. State schooling has come to you.

      Let's go back to basics. Say I have a greater need for your car because, say, I've got eight children and not enough income to provide for them: why shouldn't the state take your car and give it to me? You can afford to buy another one after all.

      (My privilege, which given I'm ethically bound to not harm you, is no concern of yours or mine. It is only a censor, anymore, to shut me up with. Answer my question above.)

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    6. Answer to your question: property rights law. Tis you, not me, who has a problem with the concept of property rights.

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    7. You're saying if my need to greater than yours, I can simply take your car?

      What about if you had sacrificed current consumption and lifestyle to buy the car, whereas I'd lived without a thought to the future, enjoying the present, not caring less about the fact I didn't have the income to bring up eight children?

      I suspect you are a troll, so keep posting. I can combine your posts into a future piece about the death of the free West, and how it was lost, totally.

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    8. Do you even read what I have written?

      You: why shouldn't the state take your car
      Me: property rights law

      You are the one arguing against property rights here!

      Now again: tell me why it's wrong for the government to withhold your property from you but fine for you to withhold the government's property from the government.

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    9. Now again: tell me why it's wrong for the government to withhold your property from you but fine for you to withhold the government's property from the government.

      You are certifiably insane: go away.

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    10. Insane is a guy who sets up an entire blog about his philosophy and can't even answer a couple of basic questions about his philosophy.

      I ask some really simple questions, I answered yours, but you have resorted to insult after insult instead of answering any.

      Anybody reading this will be under no illusions about who has won this debate.

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    11. Let's start again, you said:

      Why is it "your" income as opposed to the government's?

      Because I worked for it and it vests in me.

      You tell me why the government owns my effort, risk taking, and intellect?

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    12. OK that's better, at least you are giving a reason.

      What you are doing here is arguing a theory of justice or deserts or entitlements. You are entitled to A, B, C because reasons X, Y, Z.

      What you need to remember, is that all existing and theoretical systems of government do this too. They are all deciding who is entitled to what, and backing that up with force.

      You can argue that your theory of who deserves what is better. That is fine. What you *can't* say that your theory is better because it's "just enforcing property rights": Every system is "just enforcing property rights".

      Every theory has its flaws ("inheritance", "rent-seeking", "natural monopolies", and "unequal opportunity") are some of the flaws in yours. But whatever the merits, you need to argue your case on who deserves what, not just claim that it is self-evident and magically not force.

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    13. No!

      Your argument, if it can be called that, could only come from someone who's never earned an honest days income.

      Again. I've just spent 80 hours of hard work, and I've made x income out of my efforts. Quit all the bullshit and theory. By what right does another entity, including a government, have a claim on that income?

      But whatever the merits, you need to argue your case on who deserves what,...

      Okay, I deserve a million dollars. What's your argument for or against that?

      You are advocating the most barbaric type of society that ends up eating itself in an orgy of violence. Look a my latest post on Venezuela.

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    14. Answer the above, and this question.

      If I don't 'own' my income, because someone more deserving than me owns it (hence me), why the hell am I even going to bother working?

      Now, how do you think you're going to have a society work on this basis?

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    15. If you read my comments, I haven't advocated for anything, actually, except for you to use logic and not resort to arguments no better than "the bible is true because it says so in the bible".

      Meanwhile you sound like a raving Marxist with your view that hard work is what entitles people to things.

      > Okay, I deserve a million dollars. What's your argument for or against that?

      What's yours? Their daddy had a million dollars? I thought hard work was what entitled people to things? Defend that with your flawless theory of justice, this should be interesting.

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    16. Tell me why I'm going to bother working if I don't 'deserve' to keep my income; someone more 'deserving' than me has a prior claim on it?

      Tell me that. Why am I going to bother working?

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    17. Could you quote me where I've even advocated any taxation? All I have been doing is pointing out the gaping flaws in your logic, and that your logic is no better than the language of taxation advocates. Could you try address any points I've made instead of pretending I have opinions I don't have?

      Other systems (good or bad) are just defining property rights in different ways. Do you accept that? If not then you're clearly libertarianism is a religion rather than a philosophy for you.

      Stop with the name calling. It doesn't impress anybody except the infantile.

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    18. Could you quote me where I've even advocated any taxation?

      Your first post:

      Taxation is just other people enforcing their property rights. Why is OK for you to enforce your property rights but not for other people to enforce theirs?

      Quite apart from the fact that paragraph is a mish mash of contradiction, you then went on to say my income, the result of my effort and my mind, belongs to the party who can have it by force.

      You then said but whatever the merits, you need to argue your case on who deserves what, not just claim that it is self-evident and magically not force.

      That is, if the man next door who has not planned his life like I have, not sacrificed short term pleasure to long term goals, therefore has less than me, can then say he is disadvantaged by having less money, and thus deserves my income, fools like you would say yes, we must solve poverty and income inequality, thus my income vests in him.

      The society you have logically created is one where the entity with the biggest gun gets to take the effort and mind of others: to enslave them. You would have that entity must be the state, which is sanctioned by the people, the tyranny of a majority, to take the property of hard working people and redistribute to groups state officials deem arbitrarily as more deserving. You would base this on income inequality.

      At (your) logical conclusion, I would be foolish to expend my effort, as I can't own that effort. The only way I will work in such a society is by force. Thus, you need to create a full surveillance state to enforce and ensure I work for the state. To ensure the sacrifice of my life, my pursuit of happiness, to total strangers. Through history the policing of that surveillance and enforcement has been called various things, KGB, Stasi, et al, but the result is the same. A slave state and human misery, and poverty that you cannot imagine.

      In denying property rights and a morality of man qua man, you obliterate, utterly, the very existence of an individual human being. Understand me: you are an immoral monster.

      Seriously, go away.

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  2. Products of state schools shouldn't be entitled to vote, or frankly, to post on blogs.

    It really is that simple.

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    1. They're scary, I'll give you that :)

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    2. They are systematically inculcated into socialism. Look at the current PM: state house, state school, DPB kid. What's the result? more money for state housing, more money for state schools, more money for the DPB!


      It is absolutely no accident that the only politician in NZ who ever cut benefits - Ruth Richardson - was NOT state educated. Same in the UK, the only politicians who actually cut benefits generally went to Eton.

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    3. True. One of my main themes here is Antonio Gramsci and the school curriculum ... Gramsci was founder of Italian Communist Party who said socialism would not beat the free West with the gun, but by taking the minds of the young. With secondary teachers 95% unionised in PPTA (and similar with primary teachers), he was right. I've more than one post in here somewhere on need to take the state out of education.

      But the one above thinks he/she is talking logic, yet his/her very first post contradicts itself to point of not being intelligible.

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