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.”

Of Comedy, @Whaleoil @KimDotcom Freedom of Speech & Bounded Liberty.

Like nothing else, comedy - and for me, stand-up comedy - can light a fire that warms the coldest, darkest nights of the mind – but should there be boundaries placed on it?

Kim Dotcom, of whom I'm no acolyte, because I support IP, tweeted Saturday night to the effect of 'what would his political enemies try next, perhaps besmirching him with a rape claim?’ (I’m assuming, referencing Assange). In truth, it wasn't funny, and I'm not even sure he meant it as a joke: but that's beside the point, being the reaction to that tweet which has overtaken it.

On this Saturday night, all I wanted to do was watch a movie, not lose my play-time, and a good bottle of wine, to defending Kim Dotcom, but as he doesn't follow anyone else on Twitter, other than Obama, and he probably doesn’t know he’s upset anyone until the MSM, or his lawyer, tell him so - I've stopped following people (self-styled celebrities) that do this, for all they must want to do is shout at me: I’m interested in dialogue – and despite, when the PC brigade, of all people led by Whaleoil, instantly fell upon his pate, I originally held out by saying:

Stopped myself making a tweet that would've brought on me unjustified grief owing to how context-less stupid people can be. #BeProudOfMeMum

I was within fourteen minutes, of course, stupidly embroiled in it anyway.

Whaleoil’s tweets were of the following oeuvre:

Not cool making rape jokes Kim...very poor taste...what next gas bill jokes?

Yeah; really funny subject rape, eh Kim. Not! Sometimes it's just better to keep your mouth shut..

Bullshit...there is no parallel and jokes about rape NEVER have context

What next jokes about gas bills and ovens? He is already making Jewish jokes too #toofar

Intuitively - that is, without thinking - he’s right isn’t he? It is bad taste, and perhaps something else … well, for us decent folk. Regardless, I really wanted to stop my mind for a night so I ignored it; ignored it; ignored it: then couldn’t. My following three insomniac tweets in the early hours of Sunday morning give my thinking on this (some clarified now I’m not restricted to Twitter’s 140 characters):

Actually, I'm getting fidgety on this. Would I make a rape joke: no! But ...

Whale says no Jewish jokes (so there goes Seinfeld’s stock in trade); so what of disabled jokes (there goes Ricky Gervais's routine); is there a list someone would like to give of forbidden topics for comedy?

Jimmy Carr says there can be no topic outside comedy, that is the point of it ... Give me a reasoned argument against?

And I mean it: give me an argument against?

Because where do we stop nannying other people’s judgement for them? Regarding jokes about the disabled, I remember a Gervais DVD that starts with him sparring lines with a man in a wheelchair that had me in stitches, and then there’s poor Frankie Boyle who, due to the preciousness surrounding the Paralympics, is, I suspect, guilty only of bad comedic timing, but could lose his job anyway, though he's holding his ground bravely.Who is willing to show me the line at which we stop other’s offending us, or not? Irish jokes in Christchurch are apparently wearing a bit thin, so do we pronounce all who do Irish jokes as bad blokes? Are blond jokes okay, Whaleoil? Baby jokes: I don't think I've seen one of those that doesn't offend me. What about cartoons about God, which I know would deeply, deeply offend all of my family, other than just two of us who somehow fell out of the familial mind and became atheists. And for the record, enjoining my last tweet to his, I've heard Jimmy Carr do a Holocaust joke, deliberately, to test this very point, and his audience laughed, as I did, because it was funny. Didn’t mean he, or I, ever thought the Holocaust wasn’t anything other than pure, inhuman evil: indeed, that was the point of his joke (and much of the point of this blog against statism, for that matter).

Perhaps I’ve lost my judgement, of a sudden. Though what I know for certain is I'd rather live in a world where there was freewheeling, albeit risqué, anarchic, comedy, and people weren't scared to write their minds, or out their prejudices, rather than a dour Old Testament world where good taste is shouted down at me from on high, by decree, tweet, or blog, by the self-anointed, whether that be God or Whaleoil, with the concomitant threat always implied in that (by which I mean the tone of Whaleoil’s tweets). Especially when these decrees are judged against the man, or the other Big Guy - see, testing comedic limits again - and might thereby be seen as sanctimonious hypocrisy. And respectful of what Whaleoil has done with his blog, trying as much to play the issue, here, as the man, as is this blog's raison d'être, just a question for you Whale; when you tweeted up this storm of outrage last night - and I know part of your problem is you just don't like Dotcom; got it - but when tweeting, were you wearing your y-fronts or, a term you use often on your own blog, your panty-waisters on this one?

So, returning to my question. I'm prepared to keep a slightly open, if sceptical, mind; at least until it closes in on the truth again. Notwithstanding at this stage my mind warms only to a sodality of comedians, whom I hope never feel forced to 'shut their mouths', as some would have them, rather than the morose, piously preached sanctions of those who would seek to capture me mid-laugh, and tear my tongue out. The fires of freedom must not be extinguished to the darkness, again: no to the humourless, humour Taliban.

Reflections on One Month of Blogging - For the Bloggers

At the risk of sounding like an American management guru, that is, over-reaching and annoying, if not cloying, I’m a man who tends to get a bit OCD on benchmarking and goal setting. Despite I started this blog at the end of May, while on holiday, I’ve only really been posting content over June, plus I put sitemeter up on June 2^nd so I could make it onto Ken Perrott’s monthly blog rankings at Open Parachute to see where I could get my blog to after just one month. Being new, I’ve posted more this month than I will have time to from now on, given work commitments, however, I did set this month to try and get a readership. I apologise to those I’ve been self-promoting myself on, though note, I’ve always been on topic, you’ve always had the ability to delete any such post of mine (no hard feelings), but I’ve done it because I’m not spending half an hour, or three quarters of an hour, writing a post, for only three people to read it: I’m here to change some minds.

I’m also here because I’m writing a novel. I have some grave doubts about that project at the moment: my first degree was a BA in English lit, that's my passion, but while I can pick up anybody else’s book and tell whether the writing is good or not (ie, professionally edited, or self-published), for some reason, I have absolutely no judgement when it comes to my own writing – none at all. I re-read what I have written and swing from euphoria to reaching for a wine bottle. So, work in progress in the meantime, no promises …

My blog byline pretty much gives the direction of this blog, though note the name itself comes from the fact that the protagonist in my novel runs a blog called ‘Life Behind the Iron Drape’. And yes, that sounds all very self-referential and post-modern, though don’t get carried away with that: the post-modernists are, of course, evil incarnate.

I believe that there is a lot of content here for one month, as measured by ideas: I’ve set the frame-work for what I think is important in the free society, namely, that I think there should be a free society – truly, a revolutionary thought these days - which is not the one we have now. I’ve not had time to post my magnum opus on the problems with democracy, though I’ve covered why our tax legislation is the litmus test of how it’s all gone wrong for the freedom lovers, how privacy is so important to this, and how that has been voted from us, and, of course, the importance of free markets (read every other post). Though the most personal paragraph I have written about myself was:

Unfortunately my advocacy of laissez-faire capitalism - noting the crony capitalism we have is to capitalism what sea horses are to horses - has never been about money; it's only ever been about that wonderful, evolutionary thing that capitalism, and only capitalism, is based on - the voluntary transaction. I'm a freedom freak: peace baby, the true sixties legacy, not those suited communists in the Greens Party whose every policy is the advocacy of force. Only on the voluntary transaction can there be a voluntary, free society. I said unfortunately because this has meant that while I'm comfortable, I'm not rich enough to build a space station. That's what I would do if I had money in real quantity. I'd build a space station and remove myself from the ugly, brute society we've created for ourselves, yet again. As generation text say, 'I'd be outa here'.

I like this paragraph because it is set to dispel that myth whereby the Left and the State Crony Capitalists seem to think they have some sort of moral mandate on compassion: they don’t, in fact, the opposite. I have no truck with either the Left or the Conservative State-Worshipping Right. Over time both groups create the cruellest, most cannibalistic societies possible, and always, of course, police states where you have no privacy, or freedom from the Humphrey Applebys’.

Our societies have become tyrannies all over again by replacing the tyranny of God with the all-knowing state channeling the envy and greed of the tyranny of the majority thinking they can have a free lunch with no risk: we’ve voted in secular theocracies. In previous centuries the simple minded believed they were not capable of running their own lives, God had to, and now enough of us have thought the State must run our lives, sacrificing everyone else to that bloodied altar of the common good, that it is the society we live in. This is why I know, with certainty, I will never be a free man: a nascent classical liberalism has been destroyed, utterly, where it mattered: the judiciary. It will end badly: our societies are morally bankrupt, on a path to increasing civil violence, and our planned economies are failing, as they were always going to. The welfare state was an illusion from the get-go. My favourite self-invented phrase this month was the ‘Keynesian hubris of debt’.

So, to the purpose of this post. Assessing how I'm going after one month. The blog rankings for June will be interesting, I assume I’ll get in on the bottom rung somewhere. By lunch time today I’ll have made 5,000 page views (not counting my own), which is an average of 167 per day – higher, of course, on days I put up fresh content. I’d love some input from fellow bloggers, either in comments or email (top left of screen): think back to when you started, where you are now; how is 167 page views per day for one month? To me, it sounds a bit pathetic. If I can’t get it to approaching 1,000 within six months, I will definitely being reassessing this whole venture, as much as I’ve enjoyed it, unless I’m getting far more comfortable with the novel.

Some interesting stuff and statistics;

I’ve made it onto three blog rolls; Lindsey Mitchell’s, Paul Walker’s at Anti-Dismal, and Richard Goode and Tim at the idiosyncratic Eternal Vigilance. Thank you all three of you – that’s heart felt. I probably get about ten or more daily links from Lindsey’s blog, and about three or four from Paul’s, plus looking through the logs, two or three every couple of days from Eternal Vigilance. All the rest of you, if my oeuvre is in your park, stick me on your blog-roll: I’ll certainly reciprocate on my own if you are missing presently. By the way, I’d love to have Lindsay Periogo’s SOLO on my blog-roll, but can’t seem to figure that out – if anyone has a solution, I’d love to hear it.

Of all my ‘tactical embeds’ to NBR and Interest.co.nz :) , again, always on topic, the latter site brings by far the most links back to this site, although, perhaps that’s unfair on NBR, because many of their embeds are made to paid content, so the audience is much thinner, and probably works during the day, compared to the socialists and statists that read Bernard’s statist offerings. As a one off, my embed in NBR’s Dotcom thread last night has been the single biggest source of links.

My most successful source of links, however, are my tweets, so Twitter certainly has a place, once you can get a body of followers. And the odd retweet from The Cactus, certainly hasn’t hurt – cheers Cactus.

Getting back to my benchmarking, when starting this endeavour, looking at Open Parachute’s monthly blog rankings, I was looking at Whaleoil’s 800,000 odd page views a month, and now realise what an achievement that is, so kudos to the Whale. Mind you, a lesson from it also: if Whale and I had exactly ten permanent readers, then the rankings would still kill me: Whale can put up to twenty posts a day, I’ve been doing one every two days: so with the same ten readers I would show an average of five page views per day, Whale would show twenty – it’s impossible for a hobbyist to beat a full time blogger, so I shall head somewhere for the middle ground, and as a three month target, say 500 views a day, albeit that sounds a bit, well … 500 views a day, okay perhaps in a country where 5,000 book sales are considered a best seller.

And that’s it, work time. Any input would be appreciated. Thank you for reading my blog.

... Hah, I'm just 18 page views off my first 300 page visit day. 

UPDATE:

Over lunch I've been looking at my sitemeter stats, which give quite a different rendering to Blogger's own stats: and nowhere near as good. On sitemeter I'm on, not counting my own, 2592 pages views for 26 days, so that means an average of roughly 100 page views per day. Mmmm.

I wonder why the variance? 

UPDATE 2:

I forgot to add a brickbat for Granny Herald. Trying to get a comment past the fossils who run that site is truly like trying to get an escapee over that other Berlin Wall. The Internet is one big open discussion place in the comments, but not to Granny Herald who ensure no outside link ever makes it through their censorship: in a demonstration of why the business model they still cling to is failing, they insist on running an Internet portal as if the Internet doesn't exist.

The Scott Guy Trial and Privacy: A Society on Trial

A society that puts the private affairs, and pain, of the Guy/Macdonald families on the six o’clock news every night for our prurient interest is a barbaric one. The mother’s evidence and grief two days ago recounting the death of her son should not have been public spectacle, nor should Anna Macdonald’s hellish position of giving evidence regarding her (weeping) husband, in the case of her brother’s murder, both men of whom she loved. None of this is any of our business. It’s justice meets reality TV with its sick lineage back to the gladiator pits of Rome. It’s the barbaric life and justice of the tribe lived in public. For the opening news item tonight, why doesn’t TVNZ just put Jerry Springer on in the place of Simon Dellow: that’ll be good for ratings.

A major theme that readers will soon pick up in this blog is that civilisation is a movement toward privacy, the police state the reverse: that if you have no privacy, then you have no liberty. And how we treat privacy in this instance, with cameras rolling in the courts, makes a mockery of innocent until proven guilty: if Ewen Macdonald is innocent, it’s too late already to save his reputation and future prospects, because there was always this second trial by the public who are not in court and don’t get all the facts. We’ve already heard from Lindy Chamberlain this week, what such bush justice is like. In respect of privacy issues I find the political Left and Right both equally repugnant.

To carry out their program of theft, sorry, redistribution, the Left from the get-go had to destroy the privacy of every individual: for IRD to be able to take my earnings and my property, my privacy before state officials first had to be disposed of; it was a given from the time the first Left dictatorian decided it was better that they, not I, should decide what was to be done with my money, just like in every police state from history. Albeit, let me put on record, the majority of IRD staffers I deal with daily are ‘good’ people, I have no complaint whatsoever on a personal/personable level; but this blog is about the principles involved. And don’t give me the Privacy Commission as a safeguard: a society only needs a Privacy Commission after it has first destroyed my privacy – it’s simply an admission of the crime already committed by the state, and the Commission is state run, so that’s no safeguard.

Although, as in the case of this trial, the (conservative) Right are worse, for they don’t even have the excuse of expediency (to my money): theirs appears to me to be simply the emoting of the vigilante delivering bush justice from the mob. It’s my major point of difference to the naming and shaming Whaleoil, wanting to deliver, I take it from his daily proverb, his Old Testament eye for an eye revenge. His advocacy of the ‘outing’ by naming, pre-verdict, as I believe is the position with NBR (?), shows that innocence or not doesn’t seem to play a part in their reasoning. And the argument that technology today makes privacy of the accused, but un-tried, impossible, is not an argument, it’s a cop out, because privacy is a moral issue, as is my freedom.

I believe there should be no cameras in court. I believe that we all are innocent until proven guilty, and that other than in the very rare case of public safety, to be decided by the police, all defendants before criminal trial should have name suppression unless, or until, proven guilty. That’s the civil and civilised society. Yes, we must have reporters in the court, as a check on corruption and to ensure the law is delivered without bias, but that need only be an embargoed print media, with proceedings  reported either only after a guilty verdict, or by withholding names in the case of innocence.

And as an aside, turning this issue back onto the themes of this blog, consider that as an alleged murderer, Ewen Macdonald still has more rights than a law abiding taxpayer before the IRD. The Crown must prove Macdonald murdered Scott Guy, the burden of proof is on the prosecutor, as it should be. If this were a tax case, it is reversed; the Crown would simply have sent him a statement saying guilty, with no reasons necessarily attached, and it would be up to him to prove his innocence. What sort of society does that to its law abiding citizens? (Answer: read my blog byline).

I hope through this blog I am starting to make my limited readership understand the nature of the brute-perfumed society we’ve voted in: it is the life forcibly lived in public; a police state, by most definitions, this scant regard for privacy being a major one of them. Take those damned cameras out of that court, and have the decency of a civil society for the Guys’ and Macdonalds’; their lives are hard enough, and angst nothing to do with us.


UPDATE:

Mind you, as bad as our privacy issues are, look at what they're doing in Britain. 

UPDATE II - 8th July, 2012:

Just for the record, following the privacy issues voiced in my above post, I note that the MSM have today hit a new low, by reporting messages left by Scott Guy's widow on his graveside. That's sheer tabloid. Shame on Granny Herald.