Why are the free enslaving the poor? Again?

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Did anyone pick up on this gross contradiction? Its a paradox isn't it. Pakistan has the most economic rights in the world, and they are being told by the 'free world' to increase taxes. It begs belief. Yep, go get the rich. I guess it can be argued that they probably didn't get rich through production. Probably extorted their wealth like our government extorts our taxes. But a worthy recipient of our military dollars and 'our freedom'. I'm too tired of the contradictions to complain.

I'll leave you to read about Hillary Clinton's tax-paid efforts to bring Pakistan under the 'Western Imperial model'. Go the empire!

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Author

Andrew Sheldon

Resource Rent Tax

Applied Critical Thinking | www.SheldonThinks.com

Stupid conviction against Google

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Here is a stupid conviction against Google and its CEO. A French court has ruled that Google was guilty of defamation because a boy who typed his name into the search engine was offered the word 'rapist' as a suggested search option. Google has vowed to appeal the conviction.

Clearly in order to be a defamatory comment the comment must be shared with others so that there is some impact; there must be some plausibility of causation; and there must be some discernible impact on the child. Any parent who came to know the child was exposed to the word has the power to manage how the child uses the site, and of course whether they are able to know the meaning of the word.

I ought to be confident that the conviction will be overturned....but there is no knowing in this world. Might this be a case of a judge or jury using the legal system to achieve what it purports to be desirable outcomes.

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Author

Andrew Sheldon

Resource Rent Tax

Applied Critical Thinking | www.SheldonThinks.com

Cancelling Third World Debt: Bad idea

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The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank are considering the merits of forgiving billions of dollars in Third World debt. Cancellation of the $70 billion debt would wipe out obligations resulting from poorly run governments. But that is not all it would do. It would bury forever a legacy of failure by multilateral government agencies to raise prosperity in the Third World. Consider that many Third World nations are enjoying an economic revival now; not because of government funding, but because of capitalism. Yes, markets rather than government intervention. Of course there will always be government intervention, but there are several types:

1. Facilitator government - which allows markets to function efficiently. It generally involves protection of rights, laws which aid disclosure, facilitate government decision making.

2. Distortive government - the type of government intervention which are politically motivated. They allow governments or political parties to retain power or influence, accumulate kickbacks for personal gain, or to fund their political campaigns, to mount civil wars. It includes the debt creation process by which governments fund all their largesse, the way they prop up sectors of the economy for the sake of political allies.

3. Oppressive and coercive government - the type of government which restricts the 'effective' capacity of people to enjoy the benefits of freedom, as well as demanding unconditional submission to public policy, whether the slavery of taxation (i.e. breaches of economic rights) or political persecution (i.e. breaches of civil rights). You really can't isolate these. You are not just an idea. An idea is a value because it manifests in the material. Freedom to work is meaningless unless you have the right to collect income. A 25% tax rate makes you just a part-time slave, and your government a part-time thief. Their incompetency arises from their lack of efficacy, lack of accountability and the unconditional servitude to which you have committed your life.

So before you consider whether you support Third World debt relief....consider this:

1. The money squandered by these multilateral government agencies was your money. It was dulled out with as much accountability as the process by which it was stolen from you, or you unthinkingly surrendered it.

2. The debt is being relieved by the agencies which incompetently and gratuitously gave it away. It came easy to them, as all money derived from coercion does, and they squandered it.

3. The debt cancellation will conceal the last vestiges of government incompetency on a grand scale, embodying multiple project management teams. Why? Might the concept have been flawed from the start?

4. The cancellation of the debt will not spell the end of these institutions. They will not be wound up. In fact, the debt cancellation will in all probability allow the IMF and other such agencies to start afresh. It will allow them to start anew....to make the same mistakes. You might ask? Have they learned their lesson? The answer is clearly no. No, because they have just bailed out Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Iceland and more countries will follow.

5. The process does not effect you because you don't see it. You don't see where you tax dollars go. You don't want to see, because you are not in control of your life, as you might wish to be. You do not see the debasement of your currency, you sparingly what to see the waste. Like many other people, you would probably prefer to just any memory of such travesties of justice, and hope for the best. People have been hoping for a long time now. Some people see progress. We have more human rights now right. We have political rights. We need to worry less about political persecution. True enough, but that is because you have no political voice. You have been silenced by democracy. Drowned out. There might have been a time when your voice mattered because it was the voice of reason....no longer. Now you are a number. Others have rights too right? Rights to impose on your rights. This is the basis of rights today - not protections but impositions. The carrot of course is that they are also entitlements....which you hope you can get because others are getting them. Or maybe you are too proud? But you will lose that quality when you realise that the burden placed upon you is too much. Prosperity is increasing right? Yet the age of retirement is being delayed. Governments are debasing your money faster than can make it. It would be criminal if it was not performed by governments which make the rules.

You will here that the governments whose debts are to be forgiven are in a dire state, and these huge debts are likely to discourage them to rejoin the global economy. These are countries like Uganda, Myanmar and Mozambique. It is fair to say that the poor people of those countries had as much control over your 'gratuities' as you had over giving them. The difference between their flagrant consumption is the same as your flagrant gratuity. It was never yours, and yet they and you sanction these institutions.

Today many African indebted countries are able to restore their balance sheets, and otherwise prosper simply by governments butting out of people's lives. The process started with reform of Japan, which gave rise to the ascension of the Asian Tiger economies. These Asian tigers are resource poor, and they are demanding resources from these resource-rich African nations. This process is resulting in Third World governments accepting responsibility and accountability. It is a discipline imposed by the market. Its not perfect because the participants in the market are not perfect. They can only be as healthy as the mixed or ambivalent values which drive humanity. These issues will be resolved over time; but not until societies repudiate the institutional structures which entrench them, whether its multilateral agencies like the World Bank, public (or worse religious private) education, representative democracy (which legitimatises tyranny of the majority...sorry minority). Only when we repudiate these collectivist institutions will we have real freedom from coercion.

The debt canceling proposal has no strings demanding reform; thus, it's the same bureaucrats simply spending other people's money.

Don't allow the IMF and the World Bank to be erase their old mistakes so they can make new ones.

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Author

Andrew Sheldon

Resource Rent Tax

Applied Critical Thinking | www.SheldonThinks.com

Rule of law - or law of 'arbitrary' rules

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The argument is often made that 'No one is above the law'. Such arguments are often made in defense of civil peace. The problem is that this assertion is false. The 'rule of law' is a maxim that holds that no one is immune from judgement. This is true enough. We are all judged. The issue I am concerned about is not the capacity of people to be judged, whether by a court or anyone else, but the legitimacy of the person and system which judges. This raises a plethora of questions:

1. The philosophical basis for our legal system

2. The legitimacy of the institutions which enact and enforce the law

3. The consequences which we pay for what I would consider to be a very poor legal system.

So what exactly is my objection?

The problem with the law is that its not as it is supposed to be - an objective standard of justice. The original intention of the legal system was not achieved because the 'Founding Fathers' did not have sufficient integrity, such that they could not develop a system which resolved the problems they needed to resolve. They developed a 'flexible system' which developed in an incoherent way because the politicians who they empowered did not have moral standing. They merely had power to extort, and the pretense of legitimacy that comes from representing the people.

So why isn't the legal system objective?

The legal system was developed initially on the basis of common law. This tradition was not perfect, but it offered some basis for sound judgements, even if the premise of precedence is not entirely well-founded. Statutory law took the enactment of law in an entirely new philosophical direction. It made law arbitrary. Arbitrary in the sense that parliament did not convey a power to persuade because people did not have the power to think. If you cannot persuade people, then people tend to accept 'numbers' (i.e. the majority) as the basis for establishing truth. This is not a basis for objectivity, but a basis for extortion by middlemen and lobbyists. There is no integrity to such a system. It has resulted in the breakdown and marginalisation of sensible 'principled' law, and the ascension of arbitrary or 'specific' law. The problem with such law is that people do not know where they stand because it is not commonsensical. It weighs on a balance of contradictions, and the desire to make them practical by some wonderful feat of 'arbitrary' amendment. The parliament was never a tool for justice; but rather a tool for legitimatising the illegitimate power of politicians. It was conceived to be the only way to secure the freedom of people, but critical reflection would highlight the fact that a tyranny of the majority is no greater protection that the tyranny of a minority. In fact, if you observe how little representation you have, you might conclude that you are living with a 'tyranny of the minority'. The difference is that you accept a pretense of rights. You think the Senate protects you? You think human rights protect you? They do not because there is no requirement upon government to finance them, and government has the arbitrary right to revise them. Look at how sovereign governments give little consideration to international developments in human rights. Consider how little you care about such developments.

The justice system is the most rudimentary basis for a civilised society. Before you can have a legitimate justice system, society needs a system for recognising healthy, objective values explicitly. Reason has to be the standard of value. That is not the basis of our current society. Our judicial systems are bogged down in dogmatic tradition and 'procedural justice' divorced from its proper principles and context. It is an underfunded system, and it is overwhelmed because a bad political system actually penalises 'virtue', so we are destined to be left with more acts of illegitimacy. People are however not inclined to damn the system, but reflect poorly on their fellow man; never questioning the validity of their philosophical code which underpins all these mishaps.

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Author

Andrew Sheldon

Resource Rent Tax

Applied Critical Thinking | www.SheldonThinks.com

NZ - more stupidity under Western democracy

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You know Western politics is stupid right? But do you understand why? Its representative democracy. Majoritism is the standard of right. We no longer even ask if people think 'a certain decision is right' or a certain policy 'should' be taken. Instead we cynically resign ourselves to the question of 'will' a certain (stupid) outcome result. This was the outcome in NZ this week. A politician was dumped for the sake of a party's reputation. The minister was trashed by the leaders of the two main parties and the media alike. But was it reasonable?

Well, lets start by looking at what the public thought. According to a NZ Herald poll of 13200 readers, 86% said MP David Garrett "will" do lasting damage to the ACT Party. This is after a week of the media telling us he 'would damage' the party. There seems to be a twisted logic here because the TV presenters say he will (i.e. 'not should he'), then the readers are subjected to a survey where they are asked, 'will he'....as opposed to 'should he'. The implication is that the role of the reader or voter is to passively interpret the options of journalists, and then respond on the basis of their perceptions of what other people will do. This is very wrong for several reasons:

1. The media has totally neglected or downplayed the fact that the incident happened in 1984 - yes that was 27 years ago, when he was a very young adult. Does he have a track record of crime since then.

2. The media is reading some 'heinous' perspective of his crime - trying to steal the identity of a dead 2yo boy to illegally attain a passport. There is no reason to think the act was anything other than a prank. There is no purported crime arising from the issue. Maybe he was an anarchist who wanted another identity to avoid fascist government. We will never know because we will happy trample over the rights of people for the sake of 'public revulsion'. This has been a trial by media.

3. If the MP was reprimanded for the crime 27 years ago, no one would have questioned his later parliamentary committee. We might conclude, parliament is where he belongs, with the rest of the crooks.

4. The media has a conflict of interest. They are inflamed by the need to pursue any scandal.

The problem of course is that the media has too much power, and there is too little accountability. I will make a complaint to the NZ Press Council. My guess it will have little impact for David Garrett, as the damage has been done. The reality is representative democracy is always 'perceptions', not the facts. The NZ Herald asks 'will this damage the ACT Party' because it correctly realises that individuals have the power to shape perceptions in our political system, and it ultimately does not matter what one individual thinks 'should' happen to the ACT Party, because they control the unthinking mob who buy and uncritically review newspapers and watch the news with glazed eyes. There are too few critical thinkers to make a difference; protected by a NZ Press Council with a dubious set of liberal values.

The ACT Party is one of NZ's best changes of political freedom. Why? We already have a parliament dominated by two parties, so there is very little choice or competition as it standards. Destroying ACT by unfairly persecuting one man who did something wrong 27 years ago is wrong. Rodney Hide may have made the right call 'intellectually' by concealing the incident, because everyone lives in fear of a 'punitive' media who likes to see heads roll. I personally, if I was Rodney Hide, would like to seen more evidence that the guy has done anything wrong in the last 27 years, since Hide had a reason to question his integrity and values. i.e. A list of his 20 closest friends and a police record would have been sufficient, if only to protect his own reputation.

Beyond that - the problem is our democratic system which makes perceptions rather than facts the standard of value. One day people will wake up and realise we need a consensus based democracy or meritocracy rather than a 'mob' ruling the majority by some pretense of representation. I don't think much of the ACT Party as representatives of my 'libertarian' views, as I find them to be appeasers of the existing system. I repudiate the system which extorts wealth (i.e. taxation) and imposes all types of burdens upon me in the interests of the 'collective'. Those 'representatives' are only accountable to an unthinking mob. So much for human rights when one's membership to this awful tyranny is unconditional. It is not a fair system, it does not give me any real choice; but instead legitimatises the type of arbitrary rule we expect under tyrants. There are no politically inspired assassinations, other than the character assassinations by the media, and of course we still have tax-based slavery. Why would you want to kill someone when you can enslave them through an 'unconditional' tax system which 'intrinsically' values everyone...but as what? Slaves? We are all equally slaves. Why did we fight in Iraq again? Oh, that's right, to enslave them because good infrastructure is in their interests. Last time I looked I thought wealth creation came from protecting rights, not breaching them. Justice not perceptions. Facts not subjective assertions.

If you want to follow this story - see the following links:

1. NZ Herald - article 1

2. NZ Herald - article 2

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Author

Andrew Sheldon

Resource Rent Tax

Applied Critical Thinking | www.SheldonThinks.com

Google monitors government censorship

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Google has developed an online transparency report to allow people to monitor the level of government intervention in personal expression, i.e. censorship. The record does not strip out what might be construed as legitimate government intervention (i.e. say defamation or child pornography), however it does provide a guide. Read the details of the tool here.

Author Andrew Sheldon Resource Rent Tax|Applied Critical Thinking | www.SheldonThinks.com

Independents to preside over Australia's Lower House

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Wow, this is big news. Independent MP Rob Oakshotte looks set to become the speaker of the Lower House in the Australian parliament. Now its apparent why Gillard was able to win two of the 3 Independents over to her side of politics. Of course very little policy is actually formulated in parliament, since it is really a circus rather than a forum for ideas....This is of course why they offered it to him. It will be interesting though.

Rob can insist they answer a question, but he can't really reprimand them for not disclosing the full truth; just some variant of it. i.e. Lying by omission will continue unbated.

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Author

Andrew Sheldon

Resource Rent Tax

Applied Critical Thinking | www.SheldonThinks.com

Farmers also under attack by government agencies

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The erosion of political freedoms under government. This ought to bother people, but I doubt anyone will see the implication. The problem is the way laws are 'negotiated' into law, and how governments impose those laws. Increasingly it is resulting in a very 'punitive' political system which makes the Nazis look 'right neighbourly'. This is just one case. This is not new. We saw a few weeks ago how the Australian Tax Office prevented Paul Hogan from leaving the country. It did not have to arrest him. It just immobilised him 'in a sense'. See my previous blogs about that case, but farmers might want to read this story from NZ. The same thing could happen in Australia to you, and it no doubt already is. Geez, its happening to you if you received an unreasonable speeding fine. Unreasonable might mean speeding in fine weather, whether by 10km, or maybe higher. But a less contentious example would be the fine I got for doing 120kmph in a 110kmph area on a 20 degree hill. I thought I was being a good environmentalist by preserving my momentum. But that context is not fully appreciated by the 'arbitrary law'.

Anyway, read about the punitive action taken against this dairy farmer in NZ.

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Author

Andrew Sheldon

Resource Rent Tax

Applied Critical Thinking | www.SheldonThinks.com

What is wrong with think tanks?

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The problem with think tanks is that they are simply lobbyists with a better rationalisation. They are not centres for collaboration of ideas, they are simply organisations with a shared agenda. What is missing from such institutions? A respect for facts, even if they claim to be evidence-based. Such organisations misuse evidence in the same way that statisticians distort numbers, by highlighting certain arguments whilst omitting others.

My target today is the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA). I have extracted an excerpt from their website in order to repudiate their views:

"The IPA supports the free market of ideas, the free flow of capital, a limited and efficient government, evidence-based public policy, the rule of law, and representative democracy. Throughout human history, these ideas have proven themselves to be the most dynamic, liberating and exciting. Our researchers apply these ideas to the public policy questions which matter today".

There are a number of problems with their political position, so I will deal with each one individually.

The first few items describe the basis for a laissez-faire government, which is good and proper. The intent of course is good, but good intentions will not protect a healthy society. Efficiency is not a standard of value, it is a consequence of good standards. Limited government? Limited by what? I presume by size? But that is hardly a compelling basis upon which to define values.

The rule of law? This is an entirely ridiculous criterion if the state has you in a state of slavery. You are perfectly entitled by a moral standard to repudiate your 'slave masters' in the same way that a person is able to defend himself from armed bandits.

This is more concerning. The IPA is a supporter of representative democracy. The problem with representative democracy is that it is compatible with slavery. Representative democracy imposes upon people the 'tyranny of the majority'. The root philosophy underlying this position is that the majority is right because they outnumber you. This is not freedom. This is extortion.

The IPA would probably qualify that by suggesting that they support a senate to protect the interests of the minority. The problem is - we have a senate now, and it does not work. Why? Because reason is not the standard of value. Representative democracy or 'majoritism' is incompatible with reason. Why does anyone need to reason if they can simply attain a majority. Achieving a consensus is so much harder than a majority, why would anyone both trying?

The implication is that the IPA are exponents of slavery. They are a beacon of light for unthinking people to hope for freedom. Their convictions will never be achieved through their efforts because they don't understand the fundamental principles which need to be defended. The worst time of cancer treatment is the one which does not achieve its purported objective. Those wasted efforts could have been invested in better efforts. The IPA is thus a waste of resources by philanthropists and other supporters of freedom.

You might ask - as a defender of freedom - why do I attack an organisation dedicated to freedom? The reason is that freedom is an principle that needs to be defended by principled people. If its exponents do not possess coherent ideas, they leave themselves exposed to the threat of attack by their collectivist opponents, who will use the same 'logical' standard to repudiate them. This makes both sides look like hypocrites, and reason pays the ultimate price. The implication is that society remains in a state of moral skepticism.

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Author

Andrew Sheldon

Resource Rent Tax

Applied Critical Thinking | www.SheldonThinks.com