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“Anarchy” really is a viable system of social order
Nearly everyone I talk to has no idea (or more precisely doesn’t care) what anarchy means, what an “anarchist” supports. Most associate anarchism with the Sex Pistols song. Bad move.
Anarchy simply means the absence of monopoly government.
Government is defined (even by Statists) as a monopoly provider of law and order services in a given geographic region. There is no appeal process beyond the State. It is defined as the “last appeal entity” in any jurisdiction when a dispute arises.
Anarchists believe in the power of voluntarism, spontaneous order and competition.
Societies can order themselves through co-operation, not coercion. Religions, social groups, charities – they all organise themselves cooperatively. The govt organises society through compulsorily acquired property (theft through taxes) and through the use of monopoly force (via the police).
Spontaneous (not consciously designed) order can occur through the price mechanism. Governments do not use the price mechanism to allocate resources; they use the political process and their own decision-making criteria, divorced from the price mechanism. If a service is already being delivered by the private sector (such as coin production) the govt has to crush that industry in order to control that market.
Competition simply means a number of entities competing to provide the consumer the same product or service. Govts should “compete” to provide law and order. If a citizen doesn’t like a particular brand of “law and order” he should be able to sell up and move freely to a neighbouring state providing better law and order. Hence, states should be as numerous and as small as possible.
My first introduction to anarcho-libertarian ideas was through this book by Robert Ellickson entitled Order Without Law: How Neighbours Settle Disputes. After reading this brilliant book, I (naturally) asked myself “If neighbours can settle disputes efficiently themselves, why can’t all of us – society at large – do the same thing? We are all essentially neighbours, and when we get into disputes all conflicts are essentially analogous to neighbourly disputes. So why are there monopoly providers of so-called ‘law and order’ when we could probably (in the vast majority of disputes) do a much better job ourselves through voluntary arbitration/mediation services, appointed by disputants themselves (and through private insurance and security service providers in the case of protection of property and person)?”
I then went on to read Murray Rothbard, and found that he had posed the same questions. Then I read Hans Hermann Hoppe and the Sun came out, shining brightly. Hulsmann and de Soto simply added to the brilliant sunshine.
I now divide up the world into those ignorant fools who haven’t read these works and those Chosen Few who have.
Murray Rothbard begged for anarchists to be given a country, a region, to try out these ideas, to see whether they would work.
Well, as it happens, an area of the world is trying out these ideas, by default. A “lawless” region of Africa has “fallen” into a state of true anarchy. That region is a secessionist area within the Ivory Coast.
And you know what’s happening?
It is flourishing! Check out what’s happening here.
And, ironically, when the central bank of Zimbabwe completely abandoned its attempts to control the monetary system and allowed “anarchy” to reign, with any currency (foreign or domestic) lawfully being permitted to be used for trade, guess what happened? Trade flourished! See what happened in 2009 here.
If we know for a fact that these ideas work, why don’t governments break up, why don’t they shrink, why don’t they abandon their “plans” for the benefit of the people?
Because they don’t exist for the benefit of the people. They exist for themselves, to suck the lifeblood out of an economy. They exist to expropriate property on behalf of their benefactors.
Remove the thief and the people flourish, just like you’d expect in any safe, civilized area of the city.
Allow the rapists of the State to flourish and what you get is not anarchy, but chaos.
Who can deny that the biggest, most expensive State operations today are occurring in Iraq and Afghanistan? Have you visited these “strong state” regions? Do you know the “benefits” the internationalized State is providing the people in these regions? Note: the Taliban are long gone from govt in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein was hanged years ago now. These “enterprises” are now run exclusively by Western govts and by the UN.
I ask you: Would you prefer to live as an ordinary person in the secessionist area of the Ivory Coast mentioned above or in Kabul? Both are extreme cases at either ends of the spectrum: one with the complete absence of govt, and one with the greatest concentration of govt agencies (both “domestic” and international) on the planet.
Please think about it. And please never associate anarchy with the Sex Pistols song ever again.
What the Hell happened to “Swine Flu”?
Remember the ads? The govt’s warnings about this being potentially catastrophic “pandemic” (the formal UN classification)? The millions wasted on contingency plans?
Should we just ignore similar UN-issued warnings in the future if this one was such a joke, such a non-event, such a complete waste of time?
I suspect it’s a dry run, but who knows what the world’s governments are up to?
The motivating madness of government fascism
People don’t see crises coming because they believe in the rationality of government. They don’t see the dynamic inherent in a coercive rent seeking entity that necessarily compels governments worldwide towards madness again and again and again.
WWI was madness. The Great Depression was madness. WWII was madness. Hiroshima was madness. The Cold War was madness. Chernobyl was madness. The deliberate death of the Aral Sea was madness. The destruction of arable land worldwide to convert this precious fertile land into low-density residential development is complete madness. Deliberate and govt-supported over-fishing worldwide is unsustainable madness. The GFC was predictable madness. The continued presence of the West in Afghanistan is madness.
Why do governments the world over act with such apparent suicidal, manic-depressive blind stupidity, such venal short-termism, such environmental destruction, such barbarity?
Because very simple incentive structures built up over time around the coercive activities of government compel it towards destructive barbaric madness. Simple.
Those contractors supplying government make money out of what government does. Government (originally) was developed to provide a limited range of essential services – law and order and defence. Suppliers to government have a natural incentive to try to convince government to spend more, to make government bigger. It’s an easy gig because governments can print to finance their own spending habits (unlike the private sector).
Governments then get bigger doing things they shouldn’t do. And because there is no appeal process beyond government (all you can do is appeal to another agent of government), government has a natural tendency to get bigger because nothing can stop it short of complete anarchy. So it keeps growing until chaos really does ensue.
This happens again and again throughout history and every time people are “shocked” by the chaos, by the suddenness of the social breakdown. The Soviet Union, Iran, the US in the ’60s, Cambodia, the former Yugoslavia, Europe after WWI… all these regions experienced government-induced chaos, government supported madness.
The US will experience exactly the same social breakdown, the same insane bankruptcy, the same comic-tragic stupidity. Why? Because the dynamics of government compel the country towards this inevitable denouement.
Let me explain by providing a quote from Bill Bonner of Daily Reckoning:
Bethesda is one of America’s wealthiest suburbs. Money from all over the nation rolls this way. The playing field is tilted in Bethesda’s direction.
“I was sitting in the Starbucks, having a cup of coffee,” Elizabeth reported. “One man next to me was on the phone. He was talking about some deal he had done with the US Army in Afghanistan. It sounded as though he was very happy with it. The man next to me on the other side was on the phone too. He was a jollier fellow, talking loudly about how much money he had made. I thought he was a stockbroker or something like that. Then, I realized he was talking about a contract with the government.”
While the rest of the nation has suffered a setback over the last ten years…the Washington metropolitan area has boomed more than ever. Real estate prices are down…but less than other areas.
And when we looked for a house to rent, we expected to be able to name our price. We thought it would be a buyer’s market. Not so. Nice houses in Bethesda are still being sought after. How so?
Wars…bailouts…boondoggles – this area loves them. Federal employees’ earnings keep going up…and a higher portion of the US national income goes to Washington.
People make money out of the government’s fascist madness. So the fascist madness increases.
Simple.
What’s hard to understand about rent-seeking?
Who should take a bullet over the GFC?
According to Edmund Conway of the UK Telegraph, the blame should be spread around.
That’s BS.
The blame clearly and undeniably lies at the door of the Pricks of Threadneedle Street.
Here’s Conway’s attempt to channel the bankers’ mea culpa:
Who is really to blame for the financial and economic crisis? The answer is as frustrating as it is obvious: everyone and no one. In some sense all the members of both the public and City practitioners must take some responsibility for the worst slump since the Great Depression. Whether it is the bankers, the finance ministers, the hedge fund managers, the regulators or the members of the public who borrowed too much, we are all to a greater or lesser degree culpable for the crisis. In the broadest sense of all, human nature is to blame – whether it is the irrationality that tends to cause and magnify business cycles or our inability to challenge the status quo.
But without doubt some are more guilty than others. As far as some are concerned, the fault lies most specifically with the financial system and the bankers who created the toxic debt instruments, and, furthermore, lined their own pockets with the proceeds.
However, in what may in time be judged as a seminal contribution to the debate, the Institute of Economic Affairs has now published one of the most detailed analyses on the causes of the crunch, and their powerful conclusion is the opposite: that it was governments and regulators who erred. Moreover, that the people most often berated for their part in the crisis – the hedge fund managers and those who run tax havens – are among the least guilty. Meanwhile, the regulators have secured a massive reward for failure, in the form of more funding and new responsibilities.
A letter to The Daily Telegraph, signed by some of the country’s most renowned economists, outlines precisely what went wrong and spells out the need for a radical overhaul to ensure it never happens again:
“Perhaps the most important point: central banks should have done more to ensure both prices and debt did not balloon out of control. In the early years of this millennium, following the dotcom bubble, central bankers ought to have kept interest rates higher. Likewise, those in surplus nations should have tried to encourage their public to save slightly less. Instead, the cabal of central bankers, led intellectually by Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan, ignored the massive imbalances that built up between nations and the asset bubbles inflating closer to home, judging that they could easily mop up after their explosion.
“The Bank of England and Financial Services Authority are to blame here: there are a whole variety of counter-cyclical policies they could have used – for instance compelling banks to keep more liquid cash or to build up more capital – but they refused to do so. Whatever they claim now about overhauling the system, the fact is that they had powers to do so before, but simply did not act.
“The IEA argument is that the shadow institutions – the hedge funds, private equity and tax havens – are becoming the scapegoats for the crisis. But in fact the real problems were to be found in the big banks and insurers, which were tightly overseen by national authorities. Much as we may disapprove of these other cogs in the financial system, it is unfair to blame them for the crisis.
“This proposal, together with the second, that banks should be allowed to fail, are among the more controversial propounded by the IEA. Their idea is to call for a more free banking system, in which customers are aware that banks are not always supported, and that in the event of a bank’s failure depositors will become creditors whose cash is not guaranteed.”
“One lesson from the crisis is that central banks must make sure they do not focus on one thing. Had the Bank of England paid more attention to the growth of money, it might have done more to prevent the debt bubble expanding. That said, the European Central Bank, which has a more explicit monetary focus than the Bank, has also been found lacking in its approach to monetary policy.”
Why do the Brits go to water when they try to point out the venality of mafioso bankers, or the idiocy of government, or the brainlessness of those who happen to be in power for no other reason other than their surname or their kindergarten education? What is it about the “born to rule” class structure that strangles commentators when they need to identify those who were to blame for the biggest catastrophe the Brits have seen since the Great Depression?
I would prefer it if the economists would say: “One lesson from the crisis is that central banks have proven themselves to be the very definition of a moral hazard. Central banks should be simultaneously killed off in a mass orgy of public humiliation and ridicule (preferably in the middle of a town square, like the old days). Banks should then be broken up and allowed to fail like any other business. For depositors, the warning should be ‘caveat emptor’. And for bankers, the warning should be ‘Jail for Fraud, like any other common crook.'”
Milton Friedman was an idiot
Friedman had some reasonable insights into the inefficiencies of government.
However he made a number of unforgivable errors, which ironically endeared him to the Establishment and enhanced his reputation.
First, he trashed Austrian Business Cycle Theory.
Second, he was a fiat money guy, supporting fiat money over gold (up until the end, when he started having doubts – too late in my view).
Third, he supported central banking. How he could be a “free market guy” and support monopoly fiat and monopoly price fixing of interest rates is beyond me.
Fourth, he destroyed Chile by implementing policies which systematically removed social investment and safety nets that (arguably) govts should provide, whilst keeping monopoly fiat in place. He should have advocated the elimination of monopoly fiat and allowed the continuation of social safety nets. He was clearly a tool of the major US banks in Latin America.
Fifth, his policies destroyed New Zealand, partially destroyed Australia, and partially destroyed many other countries including the UK and the US.
Antal E. Fekete does a wonderful job of destroying Friedman’s theories here, in a speech he delivered in late 2006, just after Friedman’s death. He also wrote a brilliant piece critiquing both Keynesianism and monetarism here, entitled (tellingly) Götterdämmerung.
If you are shocked by the title of my post, please read these two pieces immediately.
I will never forget Friedman sitting on the edge of Victoria Harbour in the late 1970s openly admiring the “free market” of Hong Kong. Hong Kong has the highest number of billionaires in Asia but 18% of the population live below the poverty line. Pollution problems are very serious. If you ask the average Hong Konger are they happy I guarantee they’ll say no. Housing is hideously expensive and is a huge tax on the working people (despite the supposedly low rates of tax there). Social services for the aged are extremely poor. Worst of all no one can buy and sell in gold – the monopoly HK dollar is pegged to the US dollar. So the economy is subject to the same mad monetary swings as the US.
It is not so much a “Free Market” as one “Trapped in a Monopoly Money Hell”. If they could be allowed to trade in any currency they liked, I’d be more sanguine about HK. Until that fundamental issue is addressed, the Hong Kong people will never be free.
ETS as “rent seeking”
According to Wikipedia:
In economics, rent seeking occurs when an individual, organization or firm seeks to earn income by capturing economic rent through manipulation or exploitation of the economic environment, rather than by earning profits through economic transactions and the production of added wealth.
In other words, rent seeking activity occurs when businesses try to use corrupt governments to change compulsory laws in their favour and feed off government revenue rather than try to serve individuals in the market through voluntary trade.
Banks are the biggest rent-seekers in the Western world, spend the most on lobbying governments and have the closest connections with central banks and governments. Oil companies probably come a close second. Third, probably the military-industrial complex. Fourth, probably aged services and medical services providers. Fifth, probably telcos.
The ETS is a massive rent seeking exercise with billions at stake.
You create a honey pot of billions of dollars collected coercively by governments worldwide and concentrated in the form of an ETS, you set up a venue for around 15,000 people to discuss how to collect and dole out these billions, and then you invite 45,000 people into the venue…
And you are surprised by chaos?
This is government at work.
We are doomed.
“Anarchy” (decentralised local voluntary self-government and a voluntary gold standard) is way, way, better than this.
Oz govt tries to outdo Iran and China in net censorship
They may well succeed given our non-existent libertarian movement.
“Sheeple, stay in line and watch what we want you to watch! Fleecing you is good for your health! Shut up and keep quite! That’s not an iceberg, we’re headed for global warming, so it can’t be an iceberg. The govt models don’t predict an iceberg, so it doesn’t exist. Do NOT move towards the lifeboats. Govt employees to the lifeboats first! The Captain is also entitled to be the first to leave, because he’s the most important brain on this ship! Die sheeple…you deserve it because you let me run your life! Ha Ha Ha!”
Bankrupt venal govts look to ETS as saviour
It is so obvious that the push for an ETS is all about new sources of govt revenue, it is not funny.
What is funny is that AT THE SAME TIME as govt bureaucrats are “promising” (hand on heart, promise!) to reduce carbon emissions some of the biggest govts in the world are neck high in debt, facing multiple financial crises and can no longer hide their embarrassing fiscal and managerial incompetence – incompetence that would make a compulsive gambler or drug addict blush with shame!
The NYTimes reports that the State of New York faces a massive financial crisis (again).
Greece is in big trouble, with a €300 billion debt black hole.
Central Europe is in big trouble.
The UK is in big trouble.
The US is in big trouble.
Heck, even Queensland may default on its massive debt.
And you think these SAME incompetent, blind, short-sighted govts, these same govts that have caused such unprecedented, massive environmental, financial and human suffering over the past recent decades are genuinely concerned about the environment, are genuinely concerned about our children, are genuinely interested in saving the planet and are not just desperately grabbing for another tax buck to save their own stupid short-sighted venal little skins?!
Ha. Ha. Ha.
Taxing the air we breathe
Copenhagen isn’t going so well.
India has labelled Australia’s delegation as an “ayatollah” for their zealotry on the one-track approach, which will eventually force all countries on to a single treaty.
It’s always best when there are only two wings on the govt bird of prey.
According to the SMH, there are 3000 journalists, 22,000 observers (including lobby groups and activists), and 8000 delegates representing 192 countries.
8000 wings on the same bird of prey.
That’s a lot of flapping around, but it’s unlikely to get off the ground.
This is NOT a natural disaster!
The tragic loss of farmland and livelihoods in central NSW is NOT a natural disaster.
The NSW government has stemmed the flow of the Lachlan River, so farmers around Lake Cargelligo are dying just as much as the Lake is dying.
This is too important to treat lightly. My heart is heavy seeing these pictures in my own State:
To quote directly from SMH:
Lake Cargelligo, a settlement of 1300 in the geographical heart of NSW, was once a holiday haven for swimmers and waterskiers. Now empty shops line the street and even the post office is for sale.
On Tuesday hundreds of those who are still here gathered to listen to a travelling roadshow of water bureaucrats about what was going to be done with the little bit of water that remains in the dam upstream.
The Lachlan River, muse of Banjo Paterson and lifeblood to tens of thousands in the region, is being cut off at Condoblin, with only small flows being released below. Towns further south-west will go without.
If they did not do this, State Water staff told the meeting, the dam would be sapped by February.
The plan was met with uproar.
”Why are we expected to take the pain for the whole valley?” one man yelled. ”You’ve forgotten a whole section of the river,” a woman said through tears.
In splitting the river, the State Government has split the people of this region. It is not the first time water has been held back to conserve what is left. A similar plan involving controlled releases is in place for the Namoi River.
But since the Water Minister, Phil Costa, made a decision to restrict the river earlier this month, tempers have flared among those downstream.
Farmers with thirsty cattle want to know why people upstream in Forbes are still allowed to put sprinklers on their lawns, and why fruit farms still receive water, albeit at reduced rates.
They also want to know if this is the future of water management in a state where almost 74 per cent of the land is in drought, and hotter and drier conditions are on the way.
”If this is the Government’s climate change policy,” said Patti Bartholomew, a cattle farmer, ”then God help NSW.”
The Lachlan River winds from Wyangala Dam, through Cowra, Forbes, Condoblin and almost to the Victorian border. It is a region heavy with grain, cattle and sheep that has endured three devastating droughts in the past century.
”Just now there is a howling drought. That pretty near has starved us out,” wrote Paterson more than 100 years ago of Boolilgal, a town at river’s end.
But this is a dry like no other.
Ten years ago Wyangala Dam was at 99 per cent, a wall of water 25 storeys high licked the top of its wall. Since then the inflows have been the lowest on record, less than half of what they were during the Federation drought. The dam is now less than 5 per cent full.
As water disappears, cracked creek beds and muddy embankments are left exposed. Animals searching for water are getting bogged up to their necks.
The Herald saw a farmer crawl out on logs and sink his hands deep into the thick mud to wrench out his neighbour’s sheep. Most of the people the Herald spoke to are sceptical about climate change, but according to CSIRO and other climate models, they are some of the hardest hit. ”Certainly the southern part of the Murray-Darling Basin, which includes the Lachlan, [is] looking at hotter and drier projections in the future,” a senior research fellow at the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of NSW, Dr Jason Evans, said.
Upstream, at a meeting in Forbes on Monday, scenes were very different. There were no interjections from the floor. People stayed for tea and sandwiches. One man, who asked not to be named, said he would be voting Labor for the first time at the next state election.
Ian Smith, a cattle farmer, has bores on his property that provide him with a secure water supply. ”I can’t really see they’ve mismanaged anything,” he said. ”There’s just been no rain.”
Bores are being sunk all along the Lachlan as towns such as Boolilgal and Oxley look to shore up their supply of water. But it is not an option for many Lake Cargelligo farmers. Some have invested heavily only to discover the water is salty and useless.
Rod Middleton and his wife Leanne live with their three sons on a cattle and grain farm.
The creek that has been their water source, a tributary of the Lachlan, is dry. The pump sits on the exposed creek bed. ”I think the worst thing about it is the mines and fruit trees still getting water and we’re not,” Mr Middleton said.
The young farmer, whose parents came to the area 30 years ago, said he would have preferred to see the river run its course, whatever the consequences. ”The fairest thing would’ve been to let it run till everyone’s out, rather than have the top end get themselves through till next year and us being out now.”
Let history record that this is not a natural disaster, that this was and is perfectly predictable, that this is one of the worst cases of government negligence in the long history of government stupidity and insane zoning and planning, that this is comparable to the loss of the Aral Sea in Central Asia due to EXACTLY the same idiotic short-term government planning!
First, maps showing average rainfall are now available for all of NSW (indeed for the whole country). We all know these areas are subject to drought. This is a once-in-a-hundred year drought – but these droughts should occur once in a hundred years, so they are going to happen. You have to plan for them.
What is the obvious solution?
The obvious solution was never to grant farming leases and farming rights on areas of NSW land that would be subject to sustained drought or over-farming.
Farming land should have been retained in areas of high rainfall, close to the population centres of NSW, so that food security for the NSW population was maximised. Areas in Dural, in Hornsby, in Penrith, in Southern Sydney… all these outer “suburbs” of Sydney should have had their zoning as farmland preserved. Farmers should be on this land – not on land in drought-striken central NSW!
Why are they way out there and not close to the cities? Zoning decisions of a NSW govt bureaucrat!
The “natural market” would have prevented this if there were no zoning laws arbitrarily imposed by govt. Farmers on marginal land (without drought assistance) would have given up on farming in central NSW decades ago and focused on farming in more productive high rainfall areas. Most farmers in these productive areas would never have sold their land to residential developers, because the returns from farming would have been strong.
You don’t believe me? Go to Europe. Before insane govt bureaucrats took over zoning, people “naturally” organised themselves. In old European cities you can still see farms within 20 kms of major metropolitan areas. There are farms within a 20 minute drive from Paris! A 15 minute drive from Amsterdam!
Why? Because these “plans” were not drawn up by a NSW govt bureaucrat, but by God. This could be considered “anarchic” – but it works! Farms are still close to cities. People can still buy farm-fresh produce produced locally.
In Australia, as a young, highly bureaucratised nation, local govts wanted to squeeze every last drop of money out of surrounding land so re-zoned ALL the land around cities as either residential, or industrial/commercial. There is no mix of residential and rural anywhere in Australia close to our major cities.
This is not natural. This is not the way it should be. Sydney has one of the highest rainfall yields of any area in NSW. People originally settled here because it was fertile land. Then govt came along and tried to squeeze every last drop of development rights from our highest yielding farmland. Millions of megalitres in Sydney gets flushed down stormwater drains, whilst farmers get pushed to the edge of the earth, pushed into marginal areas never meant to be farmed.
If I hear from one more idiotic govt spokesperson that this is a “tragic” natural disaster, I think I’m going to puke.
There is no hope for this State with idiots like this in charge of our future.
And just recently, adding to the pain, Kristina Keneally (possibly the dumbest person in politics – and that’s saying something!) took a photo opportunity beside a central NSW dam at 4% capacity, trying to show compassion to the local people for this “natural” disaster.
Errr…
(1) The dam is man-made, by govt (so is its location).
(2) Govt zoned the area fit for human settlement years ago.
(3) Govt gave excessive water rights to farmers that produced the disaster.
(4) Govt zoned other areas closer to major cities as exclusively residential, so that’s why farmers are pushed out to these unsustainable areas.
This is a classic example of criminally negligent, short-term govt planning, resulting in a predictable man-made disaster.
And now a govt idiot sits there beside the dam they built, looking on forlornly as though this is an act of God.
These are the same idiots who want to tackle climate change. When these govt disasters follow them in the Co2-laden jetstream to Copenhagen.
I really can’t stand this level of stupidity any more. I just can’t take it.
When systems break down
Richard Cook labels Ron Paul’s proposal for currency competition (and a return to commodity currencies) unworkable, principally because Cook doesn’t believe gold and silver could support all the trade that “needs” to be conducted.
Unfortunately, there is not enough gold and silver in existence to fund the monetary requirements of modern economies. Trying to restore a metallic currency that never really existed in sufficient quantity since this nation was founded would only replace control of the economy by the banking system with control by gold and silver speculators.
Why wouldn’t there be “enough” gold and silver? All that would have to happen is that the gold and silver price would rise sufficiently to cover all trade in the economy. And we wouldn’t need to haul bags of gold around. A currency backed by gold would perform exactly like today’s currency except that it would be non-inflationary (or deflationary). We could measure prices in micrograms of gold if we had to.
The problem with any fiat currency solution (be it Ellen Brown’s or Richard Cook’s) is that it relies on the integrity of the central govt agency issuing the paper currency. It relies on you trusting govt (however small. however local that govt may seem to be).
But govt is the very corrupt, self-serving, monopolistic, unresponsive institution that got us into this mess in the first place!
Gold and silver are God’s money because they don’t require govt to enforce it. They are real money – the anarchist’s money. Money that can self-regulate, self-insure, self-monitor. Let the market decide what money it wants and it will return to gold.
Govt negligence and regulatory failure kill 173
To quote directly from ABC news:
Professor Graeme Hodge from the Monash University Centre for Regulatory Studies has told the Royal Commission, regulation of the electricity industry has failed to the extent that the inquiry’s heard evidence that several of the Black Saturday fires including the deadly Kilmore blaze were started by powerlines.
The lawyer for the Victorian Government, Kerri Judd SC, challenged Professor Hodge’s remarks, saying they were “bold accusations” he was in no position to make.
But Professor Hodge said the fact 173 people died meant it was self-evident there had been regulatory failure.
This is the final day of sittings for the Royal Commission this year.
If you think these same incompetent low IQ people who brought about these deaths can forward plan to avoid the upcoming food crisis, if you think these bureaucrats have any idea what they’re doing, if you think slow, fat monopoly government is the answer to any problem (be it climate change, food production, money production or any other service) then you are crazier than I am.
Order Without Law
As a committed, card-carrying Libertarian Taoist-Buddhist Anarchist, I believe in both the practical possibility and definite desirability of “Order Without Law.”
Robert Ellickson’s book of the same name was an eye opener for me, and I based my LL.M. thesis on his ideas regarding spontaneous order without law, which drew me into anarchist-libertarian thought. Which is where I live now, depressed, apocalyptic about the future, knowing how govt oppresses and destroys, confident in their ability to destroy our futures.
But as a practical man, I understand that the Mafia will always exist in any society. I respect Hans Hermann-Hoppe’s analysis of various forms of Mafia-Government, and agree that monarchical states produce fewer “bads” than democracies, where the two wings of the same bird of prey simply take turns in oppressing us.
Accordingly, I would much prefer to live in Bhutan, a monarchical Buddhist nation-state that is endowed with the best government in the world right now, and has the only truly sustainable environmental policies of any govt, but practical circumstances and the limitations of immigration laws condemn me to live in a quasi-fascist hell-hole “democracy” run by criminal embezzling international bankers-Freemasons-Illuminati-Reptilians called the land of Oz.
Given this reality, I try to nudge people around me (and the criminal govt) towards sustainable sanity. But given I cannot even get my neighbours to throw rubbish in the right garbage can, I despair at my pitiful efforts. As a failure, I often contemplate the only logical “out” for anyone seeing their society kill itself (suicide) but continue to live just to see whether I’m proven wrong. I doubt it, but hope springs eternal.
On this basis, I accept the oppression, the stupidity, the lies, the brutality, the corruption, the venality, the pompousness of coercive govt. However, I would like to educate govt on how to kill us more slowly. There’s no point engaging in the business of oppressing us so successfully that they kill us within a few decades, or a few years. Give us at least a century before completely cannibalising us. Sadly, given the current direction of Western Fabian-controlled criminal govts, there is the real prospect in the UK, the US and Australia that we will die in a few short years from a second GFC.
Sad.
Nevertheless, in the hope that my words cause a small ripple, let me share an insight with you: The most elegant, the most profound, the most brilliant piece of market regulation ever devised in the late 20th century was “accidently” passed by the Australian govt in 1974. It had an effect far beyond the drafter’s wildest expectations, has been the most successful piece of market-regulation ever introduced in Australia, is easy to understand by the layman, is intuitive and gave a property right in truth.
That piece of legislation is a simple one line section in the Trade Practices Act (Cth) 1974. Section 52 of the TPA states:
A corporation shall not, in trade or commerce, engage in conduct that is misleading or deceptive or is likely to mislead or deceive.
The inadvertent genius of this piece of legislation is that it was easy to understand and could be enforced by market participants (not only govt bureaucrats). Market participants suddenly were given a property right in truth! And as Murray Rothbard has forcefully argued, the market works best when people are given standing to sue on a property right.
This little unassuming section has revolutionised commercial litigation in Australia. It is the most-used, most-cited section in commercial law pleadings and cases. By creating a property right in truth it allowed self-regulation by market participants.
It was truly a work of genius – subtle, using the power of property rights and the market, aligning the community’s interest with the interest of individual market participants who were given standing to sue for commercial lies.
It has killed gross misrepresentations and overt lying in real estate, in banking, in insurance, in a whole host of industries that are subject to “sharp commercial” practice in virtually every other Western jurisdiction. No other major Western country has such a powerful legislative protection from commercial liars. The US has no such protection, and therefore lying is rife in commerce. No one is given a property right in truth in the US, and therefore it is an undervalued commodity.
Using the lessons learnt from this piece of legislative genius, I have a suggestion as an alternative to an ETS. How about we introduce this piece of legislation instead:
A person shall not engage in polluting activity that is likely to cause significant and sustained harm or damage to the property or health or livelihood of any other person.
“Person” in this context is intended to include “corporation” and “government agency”.
Any person has standing to sue on the above section and any parent has standing to sue on the basis of the above section on behalf of a born or in utero child.
If two entities are polluting each other, then (obviously) the costs can be “netted out” and offset against each other, with the “greater” polluter compensating the other party for the net costs of the polluting activity.
“Livelihood” includes the right to natural habitat or access to fishing areas, hunting areas etc for indigenous peoples and sustainable self-sufficient farmers.
This would provide a property right in clean air, clean water – a property right in not being “injured” by pollution. It would be enforced by market participants. It would be for the courts to determine cause and effect – not a govt bureaucrat. It would allow evolution in jurisprudence. It would be self-regulating. It would be cheaper (far cheaper) than an ETS.
It would provide for order with minimal law.
What about it?
What’s w(r)ong with an ETS
What’s w(r)ong with an ETS is the following:
(1) Carbon accounting is a primitive “science” that has no verifiable basis in peer-reviewed science.
(2) This means that bureaucrats have unprecedented arbitrary power to influence economic activity by tweaking carbon accounting rules. For example, currently there is no way to “encourage” innovative new clean technologies through the ETS because there is no “accounting” for the carbon “savings” from innovation. So innovation is penalised and simple “back to the Stone Age” approaches are favoured.
(3) The exemptions and credits give back with one hand what they are supposed to penalise with the other. What is the point of a scheme that gives back in credits and exemptions what it’s supposed to tax? The point is greater centralisation and control of the economy, and to allow more chips to be used on the gambling tables of Satan’s Casino.
(4) No one has ever explained why the best, most efficient, most “market-based” solution is not a simple increase in real interest rates (say, an incremental increase in interest rates worldwide to 10%). This would (a) reward savers (b) encourage capital accumulation for new green technologies (c) discourage excessive and unnecessary consumption (d) definitely, unquestionably, with 100% certainty reduce carbon emissions by reducing consumption (which has yet to occur in Europe, which has already tried a failed emissions trading scheme which did nothing to reduce emissions) (e) is truly market based in the sense that no new bureaucracy is required to police it, unlike the ETS which will require thousands of parasitic bureaucrats to manage.
(4) I hate to raise this but, yes, the whole global warming thing is a joke on a number of levels.
First, no one has definitively proven human activity is THE cause of global warming. I personally believe we contribute but (a) have no idea what the proportionate contribution is (and have no idea how anyone could know) and (b) do not understand the complex mechanisms underlying climate change. NO ONE KNOWS. At least I admit my ignorance. Socialists never admit their ignorance in any area. Especially JQ.
Second, the whole University of East Anglia controversy suggests foul play in science, really putting whole “science” on climate change in grave doubt. Anyone who is honest and has read some of the emails coming out of this controversy cannot but be shocked by the political and cynical nature of the whole exercise. To think “academics” engage in these childish games is shocking in itself. To think they are doing it over something as important as climate science is even more shocking.
(5) There are so many more pressing. immediate PROVABLE environmental disasters that desperately need fixing, why are we focusing on the production of an invisible gas that is absorbed to an UNQUANTIFIABLE degree by mosses, oceans, trees, grasses, and hundreds of other organisms. To attempt to “account” for these dynamics is the height of bureaucratic folly.
Why not focus on dry land salinity? Or cleaning up toxic land fill sites that threaten our underwater aquifers? Or focusing on recycling toxic material from e-waste? Or cleaning up the oil spill off the NW WA Coast? Or stopping deforestation? Or stopping low-density residential housing development in uneconomic, outlying areas of the cities, which encroaches on arable land and puts huge burdens on infrastructure?
Do you know the environment costs of low-density housing compared to high density housing in the cities (such as New York)? New York has one of the lowest environmental footprints in America PER PERSON, because of the high density of the city. It’s hugely more efficient than L.A. for example, which has chosen a low-density route to economic and environmental catastrophe.
What is Australia choosing? The LOW-DENSITY path to DISASTER. Our houses are now the largest IN THE WORLD! Do you know the environmental costs of this extravagance? Do you care? If you don’t, why do you support an ETS?
Instead of an ETS, why not simply set up a research unit into clean technologies, run along the lines of the CSIRO, which is govt-funded and can allow commericalisation of new discoveries in the area and green technologies? Even if we spent $500 million on this new research unit it would be far cheaper than implementing an ETS.
The reason these arguments are ignored is simple. This is obviously not about the environment, about climate change, about our children. It’s about THEIR children. It’s about entrenching THEIR power. It’s about enriching THEIR banker-backers. It’s about THEIR back-pocket and THEIR power games.
That’s the reason any politician does anything. That’s why they are put there.
If you don’t play the game, you don’t get to be in the game. So the only ones who remain know the rules and play by them. And screw us for everything they can. That’s what politicians DO. That’s why they are there.
It’s not rocket science. It’s Murray Rothbard.
One final “radical” suggestion: If we raised interest rates and returned to God’s money (gold) I guarantee there would be greatly reduced carbon emissions, greatly increased savings, greatly reduced consumption and a much more efficient market. I guarantee it.
And for those who accuse me of being a climate change denier and someone who treats the environment with disdain, I wrote of my very grave concerns over our continued callous, mindless destruction of the environment over at the Ozrisk.net website. To quote my views directly from that blog:
Of course, the ultimate end-game in Australia is clear to me: Massive, unsolvable, environmental problems causing some communities to have to re-locate due to poisoning of the water table, drought, climate change, poisonous landfill (the amount of toxic e-waste is SHOCKING and govts are doing NOTHING about that, but JQ is screaming about imposing a carbon tax – talk about stuffed up priorities!) and poisoning of the sea in some specific areas (as well as erosion and other problems along the coastal fringes).
We’ll be lucky to be able to feed ourselves in 50 years.
So the end-game is clear – sudden environmental catastrophes resulting in population movement, disruption and social chaos. Especially when oil prices spike.
I’ve already seen the start of it, with some outlying suburbs in Melbourne being “condemned” because of flammable fumes and poisoning of landfill sites. Covered up by the media (of course). Property prices then collapse and ghost towns are the result. Property prices spike elsewhere – until another catastrophe occurs (e.g. Byron Bay beaches – erosion, Byron Bay sewage…under enormous stress now because of population issues – that will eventually destroy the town and people will then have to move again, to where?).
But how long this process of irreversible environmental destruction will take (50 or 100 years?), I don’t know.
Free market environmentalism
The free market and concern for the environment are compatible – indeed symbiotic. Farmers care about their land and are amongst those most concerned about mining causing problems in our food growing areas of QLD. The govt is the farmer’s enemy here, possibly siding with the mining companies.
Property rights give families a reason to preserve the environment because they are preserving their livelihoods . That is the most effective incentive because it is the most intimate.
Having govt control environment issues disperses responsibility through many ignorant distant hands – through power-hungry bureaucrats who believe they need to shape the world, through politicians looking to curry favour with the mining industry, through those who have no direct interest in the land itself.
Invariably those with the best knowledge and the greatest interest in local environmental issues are those with the most direct stake – the private owners of land affected by the pollution!
Tourism is concerned for the Great Barrier Reef. The boating and fishing industries are concerned about the quality of our waterways.
The govt and the mining companies are the very agents to be most feared, because they have the least direct stake in the long-term viability of the local ecosystem. Note that even though mining companies are nominally “private” corporations, they are actually in a sense govt agents, taking temporary leasing rights from the govt to mine. These concessions from the govt to mine are for a temporary period only and therefore it is more accurate to consider mining companies as quasi-govt authorities in many cases.
Libertarians have long been concerned for the environment. Please take the time to read this excellent piece from Murray Rothbard.
Please think carefully next time you hear a govt mouthpiece talking about “saving the environment”. What they are invariably saying is “Give me more power.”
Brilliance and courage from a government leader
Let it never be said I am irrationally negative about politicians and government employees.
Here is a courageous, correct and fundamentally sound statement from the Swedish Prime Minister, Fredrik Reinfeldt, as reported in today’s Daily Telegraph:
We have been very clear that we do not put taxpayer money intended for healthcare or education into owning car companies or covering losses in car companies. You cannot save jobs just by pushing in taxpayers’ money if you don’t have the competitiveness to survive in a tough industry with overcapacity.
Wow.
I am in awe.
He is resisting pleas from the unions and pressure from GM to pour public money into Saab to save it. He is right.
What the Australian govt did in comparison was shameful.
I note that St Vincent’s Hospital may have to reduce purchases of new equipment because of $24 million in investment losses, I note that millions of dollars have been wasted on shoddy insulation due to the govt meddling in the private market for insulation in Australia, I note that hospitals are (according to the Tele) at overcapacity dealing with the spike in new births taking place, I note that billions and billions have gone to save the local car industry and the banks. From themselves.
I’m off work because of illness right now. Losing money. It wasn’t my fault.
Where’s my handout?
Once it starts, where does it stop?
The answer is it doesn’t. Until the whole system collapses and anarchy reigns.
The Paranoid Mind of a Parasite
According to Austrian School economist and Libertarian thinker, Murray Rothbard, every government employee and government contractor is a parasite living off coercively acquired taxes that should never have been “stolen” from the people.
Leaving aside the accuracy of Murray Rothbard’s description of govt employees and assuming it to be true, what would the mind of these parasites look like?
Well, first and foremost, they would be paranoid about the inherently unnecessary, irrelevant and redundant role they play in society. They know they sit around doing nothing. They know they are a negative, parasitic drain on society’s precious resources. They see the money coming in from “stolen” taxes and they know they are shockingly unproductive and unresponsive when compared to the market. They fear and resent this fact, like mortals fear and resent death.
So, logically, they will obsess about their own “relevance”, constantly justifying their role in society by creating false “alarms” needing their “vital expertise”, constantly talking up the importance of their work, constantly looking for validation and publicity, constantly trying to deny the essentially irrelevant nature of their existence.
Now, think of the fact that Osama Bin Laden “conveniently” hasn’t been captured for 8 years and yet the US and UK govts scream that this is a vital task of govt for self-defence; think of the ridiculous misinformation regarding climate change and the screaming over the “need” for a govt enforced solution (such as an ETS); think of the SIMULTANEOUS and INCONSISTENT need for “stimulus” spending by govt, with the Treasurer and other govt hacks bleating on about how govt was essential to keep Australia spending money on stuff no one else would buy (if it was necessary it would have been bought without the govt having to step in); think of the countless ways in which govt employees assume they know what they are doing but simply do nothing other than confuse, obstruct, slow down and otherwise frustrate the workings of the market… and then consider the wisdom of Murray Rothbard’s analysis.
We will not see hyperinflation
That’s not how it will work here. That’s how it did work in Zimbabwe. I saw a tragic scene on cable TV (not on Oz TV) where a Zimbabwe woman was desperately sifting through sand by a river. The reporter asked her what she was doing. She said she needed a few tiny pieces of gold dust from this river or she and her two babies would starve to death. So in Zimbabwe producers really did want gold dust for bread.
Here, it is likely the currency will still be enforced (at the point of a govt gun) but that the gold price will (eventually) jump. How high, no one knows. When, no one knows.
So you put your “real” savings (cash you don’t need for 12 months) in one ounce pieces of gold. If it goes down (IT WILL!) don’t worry. Don’t look at the day-to-day fluctuations. Just know that in extremis, if the monetary system breaks down, societies have ALWAYS relied on gold when govts collapse. Zimbabwe is just a recent example.
I won’t produce and sell anything at the end of the day if I don’t get paid in gold and silver.
Then, when (not if) the US$ collapses or default occurs, you exchange SOME gold for the toilet paper of the day and continue on your merry way. The money you had in your pocket is worth less, but the gold is worth more. Simple. You keep selling your gold when the price jumps and you think the monetary system is back to stability. Right now, it’s a no-brainer – China is the buyer of last resort for gold so LT there is no risk for gold in US$. The only risk is gold in A$. That is something I can’t predict. However I know the stupidity of the RBA and the banks in Australia and know the models they use to price risk, so I’m fairly confident gold will go up even in A$ given the fairly uniform stupidity of our own financial institutions. They should all get out of residential property and set up branches to service sustainable farmers who will see incomes jump when China starts importing food – but they have no idea.
Investors used to save in gold so they could get money out of the banking system, realising that their deposits were not actually at the bank (they were already lent out under FRB). As I’ve argued before the central banks have proven themselves to be completely gutless and will print if there’s a bank run, so that reason to hold gold no longer really applies. It also means deposits ARE money today.
As long as you put your money in a TBTF institution the central bank can be guaranteed to keep bailing and bailing and bailing until we are drowning in liquidity. Like the US today.
You save LT in gold because when this happens, it is not that you can’t get your paper out of the bank; the paper becomes toilet paper at the end of the day. It is 100% certain. Only the timing is in question.
The whole of monetary history from 1694 on is a simple one: The bankers embezzle. There is a bank run exposing bank illiquidity/insolvency. The bankers friends in govt and at the central bank have to make a fateful decision: Defend the bank (print money/bail out the bank at the expense of savers and the general public) or Let the Bank Die and keep the money supply constant.
On every occasion I have studied (even in the 1930s) the central bank has tried to save their private banker friends first. Every time. I cannot think of an instance when the central bank has said – “No, I’m gong to let 5 big banks fail.” It just never happens. TBTF means “I’ve grown so big that I own you, the central bank, and the govt.”
The whole game is destroyed NOT by banks runs or insolvency BUT either by a currency crisis OR when malinvestments in the real economy become so obvious and the price mechanism is so distorted by the debasement of the means of exchange that there is true economic “anarchy”. In this case there isn’t hyperinflation so much as a freezing of all decision-making and investment because the price mechanism no longer works. This actually happened in Vic in 1991 – I was there. There should have been a “depreciation” of the Victorian currency, but because we had a national currency I got to see a deflationary economic crisis there. It was very close to economic anarchy in Victoria with Pyramid failing and terrible stories of savings lost, lives destroyed.
This will now happen on a global scale when the US has its own Victoria, 1991. It may not necessarily be a collapse of the dollar first. It may be that the US$ is supported – but like Victoria it experiences economic anarchy and massive unemployment. If the currency doesn’t “adjust” (die) then people do.
ETS = BS
The Emissions Trading Scheme looks likely to pass, with both wings of the coercive government “Bird of Prey” agreeing to foist this new “Mark of the Beast” tax on the unsuspecting Australian public.
Sad, in so many, many ways.
First, it comes just as news breaks of the scale of fraudulent scientific “research” into climate change. See here and here and here and here.
Second, there were allegations in the Senate today that Dr Clive Spash’s work on alternatives to a carbon tax had been censored by the CSIRO. The CSIRO just happens to report to “Red” Carr (noted left-wing zealot). See here and here and here.
Third, no one seems to have made the OBVIOUS alternative suggestion: If climate change threatens to kill our children, and human production/consumption is causing this supposedly deadly over-heating, surely the most efficient, immediate, effective and equitable solution would be to raise interest rates around the world to 10%.
This simple measure would (a) reward savers (b) encourage capital accumulation and allow for further research and investment in alternative energy production (c) with 100% certainty reduce consumption and therefore emissions (unlike the hare-brained ETS scheme which gives back with one hand what it “taxes” with the other) (d) be equitable in the sense that it would minimise the govt’s ability to selectively impose the tax on its enemies and provide carbon credits to its favourites.
Ahhh….but that’s the very reason why it couldn’t ever be considered!
Because this whole scam is about putting in place a “Mark of the Beast”-style universal tax that will have every industry running to the govt begging them for favours. Giving tribute to Satan’s Spawn is what it’s all about. Bow down slaves and beg for life. Or else.
Fourth, the only Parliamentary idiot who made sense today was Senator Barnaby Joyce. He correctly (a) accused Labor of Leninist-style censorship (it’s true!) (b) stated openly that the ETS is a scam to create more gambling chips for corrupt venal bankers and brokers (c) stated that this huge bureaucratic nightmare is simply a wealth-transfer scheme to suck $s from every ordinary Australian to Sydney and Melbourne “elites” (read: PARASITES). This is the real reason for this bizarre new tax. The bwankers desperately need another paper scam if the liquidity demands currently being considered by APRA do get imposed on the counterfeiting bwankers. The bankers are looking at fleecing another sheep if they can’t make more profits through excessive monetary embezzlement.
Yet, irony of ironies, Joyce was the “victim” of ABC employee and (apparently) govt-spokeswoman Virginia Trioli’s “crazy face” accusation, which effectively labelled him (and anyone else questioning the efficacy of the ETS) as insane. See here, here, here and here.
She’s still employed by the ABC, despite this massive insulting faux pas. If you or I did this when interviewing Senator Wong, daughter of Mao, I’m sure we’d never have a career in media EVER AGAIN.
So we have a left-wing zealot play-acting as a journalist, laughing at anyone genuinely questioning this bizarre new tax – and she’s still employed. We have this “crazy” Senator being the only one making any sense today in the Senate. We have a new “Mark of the Beast” tax that makes no sense, will not do anything other than create a massive new bureaucracy and trading chips for bwankers and brokers. We have not actually addressed pollution and “climate change” (remember: the big polluters have received massive tax credits for no reason other than politican influence). We still have massive depletion of the world’s resources through debt-created over-consumption.
We are run by madmen. And madwomen (most of whom appear zealots or lesbians – or both).
Finally, just on the very legitimate point that – perhaps – gays and lesbians should (generally) not be chosen to form long-term public policy, see this controversial research by Hans Hermann-Hoppe.
Then look at Wong, and half of the Labor Cabinet.
I rest my case.
We are run by a pack of sociopathic zealots intent on controlling every aspect of our lives, incapable of addressing our real (very real) environmental problems and who will undoubtedly feed off our children like cannibals.
Death, come swiftly…
Government is a parasite on the people
Less government is the answer, not more. Starting with the removal of legal tender laws and central banking…
Karma is King 
