National’s Anti-Money Laundering & Countering Financing of Terrorism Monster - iPredict the State Gulag

This piece of Soviet legislation took down the brilliant iPredict today:

Prediction website iPredict is to be closed down, with the Government deciding it represents a money laundering risk.

The site, run by Victoria University of Wellington's commercialisation arm, VicLink, issued a statement to its website and on Twitter on Thursday.

According to the iPredict statement, Associate Justice Minister Simon Bridges refused to grant it an exemption from the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act, declaring that it was a "legitimate money laundering risk" because of the lack of customer due diligence.

The raison d’etat of the Act revolves around identifying all individuals to a financial or property transaction. The cost of that on the economy, however, is huge. I have a small client base, but the reach of the Act’s bureaucracy is too much for me:

What a bizarre and nutty decision by the Government.  https://t.co/D9KhSneTOr

— David Farrar (@dpfdpf) November 25, 2015

@dpfdpf This governments anti-money laundering legislation has reached the point of total idiocy. It's so draconian I'm shedding every 1/2

— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) November 25, 2015

@dpfdpf independent trusteeship I do. The cost on the economy must be enormous, so I'd love to see the supposed scale of crime is to ...

— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) November 25, 2015

@dpfdpf justify it. Just this last week I've charged a three hour trip to a client to have my signature verified by a lawyer who has

— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) November 25, 2015

@dpfdpf known me for 20 years, and over an asset I have no beneficial interest in. It's ludicrous .. above for @JudithCollinsMP

— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) November 25, 2015

Although, of course, my problem is chiefly philosophical. It’s always about philosophy. Put this Act together with the tax surveillance state, and the Soviet reference in my first sentence is no hyperbole (remember Twitter – don’t mind the typo):

I always hated our anti-money laundering legislation because of its (total) inconvenience, and cost to the economy, but the worst aspect 1/x

— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) November 26, 2015

@MarkHubbard33 of its central motif, identity, is also what makes it for the govt and integral part of the surveillance state.

— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) November 26, 2015

@MarkHubbard33 I don't get it why people don't understand that the surveillance states of the West go deeper than Orwell now. #EndOfLunch

— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) November 26, 2015

Yes, the Left getting in will finish off the economy and take us all to the Big State Gulag (also), but these National autocrats are way past their use-by date. If I could stand people in numbers – I can’t – I'd say go get your pitchforks and meet me in the foyer.

PS: hope everyone got their flag voting slips in (FFS). National, the party which put back the ‘us’ at the front of useful idiots.

Labour Electioneering On Economic Fascism: State Running Private Firms.

Last week I wrote how in New Zealand everything is tax avoidance now, and everything is illegal, hence every citizen is corralled and controlled by an all-knowing command state, even if it doesn’t ‘feel’ that that way because our shuffle into a caring totalitarianism has been so slow. This is why liberty is dead in the West, and Western command economies are failing, our living standards first stagnating, and in those high taxed countries like France, plummeting, as business leaves or shuts its doors.

 

I’ve not got time to go into the next piece until a blog at least next week, but enough to say that when everything is tax avoidance, then that logically justifies IRD officials, the state, to control and manage the financial plans, by veto, of private firms – noting that when you own a firm’s financial plans, you own its operations. If elected, New Zealand Labour leader, David Cunliffe, will turn this into policy:

 

Labour has previously indicated it wants to front-foot the thorny issue of tax minimisation on New Zealand revenue by internet-based businesses, rather than relying on international efforts led by the OECD group of developed economies, which is the preferred approach of the National Government.

 

[Snip]

 

Today's plan hinges on setting up a special commissioner for tax avoidance who would focus on multinational corporations.

 

Under that commissioner, a new corporate tax unit would "embed" Inland Revenue Department (IRD) auditors in corporations which have a history of tax avoidance either in New Zealand or abroad.

 

The embedded IRD officials would review multinationals' financial plans where they may affect their tax bills to prevent tax avoidance from occurring in the first place.

 

Cunliffe probably thinks this a conciliatory move because it backs off from his Revenue spokesman's earlier threat to ban these multi-nationals operating in New Zealand in total. And I’ve already had one person on Twitter run the debate this is a fine idea, one they’ll obviously vote for.

 

I despair, and wonder how the hell, with twentieth century social, political and economic history to have learned from, we’ve got to this. For every reader who has not yet understood my point that the tax surveillance state is where the truncheon of the totalitarian state meets our backsides, understand this story.

 

Israel, Palestine and Fascism in Europe …McCully Not an ‘Arse’ on this one.

One of the blogs I follow is Carrie Stoddart’s Ellipsister on Whatever. I always find Carrie’s posts interesting, but we don’t agree on much, and certainly not her latest regarding the current conflagration between Israel and Palestine. I simply post below my comment to Carrie’s thread.

Every Israeli rocket has attempted as best they are able to target Hamas terrorists; every Hamas rocket has deliberately targeted Israeli civilians, and has deliberately been fired behind the shield of their own civilians so they can use a body count of their own in their politick. The below cartoon is accurate, and that's beyond cynical.

Israel is surrounded by nations that want to wipe it from the map: Israelis are entitled to defend themselves.

There's a concept known as methodological individualism: every act is ultimately carried out by individuals. Those who want peace are rational people, because peace is a-priori for civilised living: but on that count, how does a reasoned ethic negotiate with a parent who will honour-murder their daughter with acid because she looked at a boy? How does a nation reason with a hatred so strong as Hamas has, that they would use the tactics explained at the start of this comment?

When someone can reconcile those points for me, I'll start listening. Because, yes, Palestine deserves a nation-state, their people deserve peace: we all do. But those they elect must start thinking, rather than emoting with their rockets, because they won't have peace, until Israelis are given peace, and history has taught Israelis that in the margin for error there are sadly only the graves of Jews. And with a far right politician in Hungary standing up in the Hungarian parliament only this week, demanding a written register of Jews be made in that country, the Israelis are vindicated in the fears they have for their lives, always, because thanks to the new surveillance states born of Keynesian socialism, fascism marches again in the world.

Update One:

 Dear Israel, this is not helpful.

Also the discussion between Carrie and I on her thread, the first nine comments, contains information of note for either side of this debate, as well as some points on what constitutes racism. (Link first paragraph above).

Bernard Hickey’s Latest Outage, Sorry, Outrage.

Bernard, affectionately called Kim Jong on this blog because his every policy recommendation involves more state in my life, not less, quickly outs himself in the heading of his newly penned poison:

 How much freedom should individuals or companies have [I should just stop here, but …] to change their affairs in response to tax rules? Bernard Hickey calls on us to join a British boycott of companies that do this.

First, the economic issue: as with other forms of nationalistic protectionism you would force for our exporters, Bernard, income tax is a cost: when you advocate a boycott on firms not paying what ‘you’ think is enough tax - and we know for you there will never be enough tax - then what you’re telling consumers to do is boycott firms until they increase their costs, and so, necessarily the prices they charge for their goods and services sold to consumers. You’re asking consumers to protest against not being charged more for what they buy from private companies, and thus you’re advocating a harsher life for low income earners on strict budgets, not a better one. Shame on you for not seeing beyond the copy of your next statist Granny Herald fee.

 And on the more important philosophical issue, it’s bounded freedom all over again. If you won’t read economics, then please read the history of the twentieth century. Already thanks to the big brute surveillance state you advocate, and the social chaos that comes from your bounded humans, a null-minded, ugly fascism begins to bind Europe again, and even a graveyard in Auckland. My entire blog is about joining the dots for you from bounded liberty to societies of fist saluting hatred as self-reliant individuals are thrown into the merciless, gaping maw of state, pulled inexorably down, finger nails scraping along their IRD assessments, into the barbaric pit of dependence.

Postscript:

 And you’ve still not taken up my currency contract, Bernard.

Update:

Economist Paul Walker at Anti-Dismal has written a nice piece on this also.