The best way to improve the world is to improve your *self*

"All individuals are faced with the problem of whom to improve, themselves or others. Their aim, it seems to me, should be to affect their own unfolding, the upgrading of their own consciousness, in short, self-perfection. Those who don’t even try or, when trying, find self-perfection too difficult, usually seek to expend their energy on others. Their energy has to find some target. Those who succeed in directing their energy inward—particularly if they be blessed with great energy, like Goethe, for instance—become moral leaders. Those who fail to direct their energy inward and let it manifest itself externally—particularly if they be of great energy, like Napoleon, for instance—become immoral leaders. Those who refuse to rule themselves are usually bent on ruling others. Those who can rule themselves usually have no interest in ruling others."

~ Leonard Read, from his 1962 book Elements of Libertarian Leadership [hat tip Jon Miltmore's post 'The Roman Philosopher Who Taught Jerry Seinfeld the Key to Success and Happiness']

"If you have a set of views that you can’t question, and a group of friends who’ll disown you if you do, you’re not a political activist – you’re in a cult."

Pic from The Spectator

"I have in the past admired twentysomethings for their interest in politics at an age when I was mostly clueless. I still do. But if you have a set of views that you can’t question, and a group of friends who’ll disown you if you do, you’re not a political activist – you’re in a cult."

~ Mary Wakefield, from her post 'No one will change their mind about Hamas'

"It is fear that drives them to seek the warmth, the protection, the 'safety' of a herd.
    "When they speak of merging their selves into a 'greater whole,' it is their fear that they hope to drown in the undemanding waves of unfastidious human bodies. And what they hope to fish out of that pool is the momentary illusion of an unearned personal significance."

~ Ayn Rand, from her essay 'Apollo and Dionysus' [hat tip Hilton H.]

"A lot of young people who feel lost would respond positively if they were exposed to how remarkable the journey of human civilisation has been. There’s a lot to fight for."

"Ever since the 1970s, there’s been a cumulative process whereby Western society – particularly in the Anglo-American world – has become more and more distant from its own past. ...
    "Now even the elites are increasingly disenchanted and estranged from history. What we have is this very one-sided war against the past with very little pushback.
    "It began as a quite specific, targeted attack on things like slavery in America or how the British Empire behaved in the 19th or early 20th century. Then suddenly every dimension of the Western experience was rendered toxic. It’s almost as if activists are trying to quarantine that legacy of the past – to suggest that there is no redeeming feature, that this is a story of shame. ...
    "There is a struggle for historical memory here. In the course of erasing important achievements of the past, what you’re doing is encouraging people to forget what the past was really all about. There’s that famous quote from George Orwell’s 'Nineteen Eighty-Four,' in which a man from the Ministry of Truth makes the point that, by 2050, people will no longer remember who Shakespeare was. They will no longer remember who all the important philosophers were. People will simply not know the writings and the arguments of all these great figures from the past.
    "We’re actually running ahead of that schedule by a good 20 or 25 years. Already we have a situation in which people no longer remember who the real Aristotle is, because we’re told that he was this founder of white supremacy. Kids going to school today might be told that Churchill was a war criminal. When you have such a warped vision of one of the greatest icons of 20th-century British history, then you can’t remember very much about where you’ve come from. ...
    "You’re certainly not providing people with ideals that can inspire them, particularly the younger generation. ...
    "A lot of young people who feel lost would respond positively if they were exposed to how remarkable the journey of human civilisation has been. There’s a lot to fight for."

~ Frank Furedi from an interview about his new book The War Against the Past: Why the West Must Fight For Its History 

 

"Rejecting industrial agriculture would be a grave mistake."

"In 2014, 'Scientific American' published a short but ominous article titled 'Only 60 Years Left of Farming if Soil Degradation Continues.' Similar claims popped up in the 'Guardian' in 2019 and in the BBC in 2024.
    "The BBC article ... proclaims that the world’s poorest areas already 'have zero harvests left. ... But the claim that earth has a small number of agricultural harvests remaining is unfounded. In 2021, the data scientist Hannah Ritchie busted the myth for 'Our World in Data.' Not only could Ritchie find no existing scientific citation for the claim, she found that such a claim could not possibly be defended. ...
    "The claims about soil degradation would not be the first time the media has bombarded the general public with excessively bleak depictions of our agricultural future with little evidence. ... The problem is that this narrative isn’t just wrong; it is dangerous. The practices these food systems critique elevate will have worse impacts on climate, global food security, and the environment writ large.
    "Although climate change may reduce agricultural productivity compared to a world without climate change, there is no reason to believe that its impact can’t be completely negated through technological progress. ...

"Most studies ... tend to find that, on a global level, climate and CO2 changes are detrimental to yields. Even so, climate change’s detrimental effects pale in comparison to the overall productivity growth caused by technological and practical advances in agricultural production. ...

 

"[T]he past half-century has seen about 1 degree Celsius in global warming. And yet, global agricultural output has increased almost four-fold over the same period. This increase in agricultural output is responsible for the prevention of g more than 3 billion hectares of land being converted to agricultural land—about a quarter of the world’s total arable land.
    "These yield gains saved lives. We’ve seen a steady decline in hunger over the past five decades, despite an uptick in the past few years due to conflict, the COVID-19 pandemic, and, to be sure, extreme weather impacts. For example, the amount of calories produced per person globally has increased by a quarter since 1970, despite the world population more than doubling.
    "Increased agricultural yields, which came despite a changing climate, were due to technological advances. These include synthetic fertilizers, modern pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides; fossil-powered mechanical equipment; expansive irrigation systems; advanced breeding, including genetic modification; confined animal feeding; and many other technologies, drove the incredible yield growth in both staple and specialty crops, and the massive leaps forward in livestock production. And there is no reason to believe, as BTI’s Patrick Brown, Emma Kovak, and I argued in 2023, that technological and socioeconomic factors will suddenly stop impacting agricultural yields. ....
    

"There is a deep irony [then] to how critics of the world’s food systems use the supposed impacts of climate change on agricultural yields to advocate for their preferred alternatives—alternatives that are proven to have negative impacts on crop and livestock yields ... [A] global switch to organic or regenerative agriculture by 2050 would have a worse impact on food security, the farm economy, and political stability than climate change, especially when modellers account for technological change. ...

"In practice, we already have examples of what might happen if the organic advocates won the agricultural transformation they dream of. In 2022, Sri Lanka decided to ban the sale and use of synthetic fertilisers at the behest of advocates such as Vandana Shiva. The ensuing months saw failing crop yields, skyrocketing food prices, and ultimately, a public coup that forced out President Gotabaya Rajapaksa.
    "To be sure, climate change will likely impact our food systems. Some prices will go up, some will go down. But, technological breakthroughs and the adoption of existing technologies will also impact our food systems for the better. Rejecting industrial agriculture would be a grave mistake."

~ Alex Smith from his post 'Will Climate Change Starve Us All? No, But Bad Science Communication and Fear Mongering Might'

"It has sometimes been mentioned that the Chiefs did not have sovereignty to cede ... "

"A debate has recently begun between the Government and the Maoris regarding sovereignty ... That debate is incoherent and unnecessary and I will explain why. ...
    "Cede means 'give up (power or territory)' ('Oxford Concise Dictionary'), which entails that they must first have it. The Treaty itself says, the chiefs 'give absolutely to the Queen of England for ever the complete government [kawanatanga] over their land' (trans. I.H. Kawharu). That does not require that they give up their chiefly power or territory. The problem with the debate is that it does not allow for an arrangement whereby both the Queen's power of sovereignty and the chiefs’ power of rangatiratanga could exist together.

    "It has sometimes been mentioned that the Chiefs did not have sovereignty to cede. ... '[N]ational sovereignty ... was absent from the Maori communities in the country,' [explains Paul Moon in his 2002 book The Path to the Treaty of Waitangi] 'so the British were essentially asking for permission to acquire a type of sovereign rule which Maori would not have to sacrifice, as they did not possess it. This is distinct from the superficial interpretation ... in which Maori arbitrarily surrendered all their sovereign rights and powers to the Crown.'

    "So, by Article 1 of the Treaty, the chiefs did not cede sovereignty but instead accepted sovereignty; that is, they agreed that they would be subject to the Crown. That does not necessarily mean that they relinquished their chieftainship (tino rangatiratanga). That suggests an arrangement similar to the Magna Carta in which the Barons are subject to King John. The Barons were still barons with the dignity and estate of a barony, but as such they are subject to the Crown. ...

"Maori chieftainship was not like British sovereignty. The sovereignty (kawanatanga) referred to in Article 1 is with respect of all of New Zealand whereas chieftainship is with respect of an individual tribe. There were about 100,000 Maori at the time of the Treaty which about 500 chiefs signed and others did not, so the tribes were quite small and on average each comprised around only 200 people at most. Chieftainship therefore entailed much less authority over a much simpler social structure than the government (kawanatanga) of the entire country that was proposed and subsequently implemented by the British. It is not just a matter of degree; they are categorically different and provide very different outcomes of evolutionary significance."

~ Barrie Davis from his article 'Seeding Sovereignty in the Spring'

The Myth of Finite Resources

"Intellectuals, politicians, and journalists treat the idea that capitalism inevitably leads to ecological disaster as an unquestionable truth — ... that free markets cause the destruction of Mother Earth and that we must enact socialist policies to prevent an ecological doomsday scenario. But, what if I told you that economic facts do not buttress this hypothesis at all? And what if I added that an ingenious economist already proved the compatibility of capitalism and environmentalism as early as 1981? ...
    "One of the charges most frequently levelled against capitalism is that this social system must necessarily lead to ecological disaster. After all, the earth’s resources, the eco-socialist argument goes, are finite. Evil capitalists and greedy businessmen will gradually exploit non-renewables until we are doomed because we are out of natural resources. Karl Marx proposed this hypothesis as early as 1867 ...

"Inspired by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Marx believed that the cause for ecological disaster is to be found in the introduction of private property rights. ... Rousseau and Marx’s solution to this alleged problem was the abolition of capitalism and property rights, a solution which has presently been voiced as vociferously as never before by the eco-socialists. ... While reading fairy tales and fables can certainly be an entertaining pastime activity, it is by now about time to return to reality ...

"In a free-market economy, the price of a resource is determined by its scarcity. If a resource becomes more abundant due to an increase in supply and/or a decrease in demand, its price will typically drop. If a given resource, vice versa, becomes more scarce due to a decrease in supply and/or an increase in demand, its price will usually rise. This change in scarcity and price, in turn, affects the behaviour of any rational market participant with an entrepreneurial mindset, producer and consumer alike. In his groundbreaking monograph, 'The Ultimate Resource,' American economist Julian L. Simon observes, 'Heightened scarcity causes prices to rise. The higher prices present opportunity and prompt inventors and entrepreneurs to search for solutions.' In a capitalist society, the depletion of a nonrenewable resource is prevented by three emerging patterns of behaviour, all of them caused by the increase in the resource’s price.
    "[Between them, rising prices and] the profit motive offer an incentive to the rational businessman to obtain and store more units of the nonrenewable resource in question. ... and to start developing substitutes for the nonrenewable resource in question ... [Meanwhile] the desire to economise motivates rational buyers to become less dependent on the nonrenewable resource in question. ...

"Ultimately, there is only one resource which is necessary to replenish all others, namely the human mind. It is for this reason that Julian Simon chose to name his groundbreaking study 'The Ultimate Resource.' 'The main fuel to speed the world’s progress,' he explains, 'is our stock of knowledge, and the brake is our lack of imagination. The ultimate resource is people—skilled, spirited, hopeful people—who will exert their wills and imaginations for their own benefit.' ...

"The eco-socialists are undoubtedly right in pointing out that the earth contains only a certain amount of nonrenewable resources in a fixed quantity. ...  More importantly, though, the eco-socialist errs in concluding that natural resources must be finite because the earth contains them in a limited quantity. Rather, in a free-market economy, as the resource becomes more scarce the price of the natural resource increases. Changes in producer and consumer patterns, in turn, prevent its depletion. In Simon’s words, 'Population growth and increase of income expand demand, forcing up prices of natural resources. The increased prices trigger the search for new supplies [or substitutes, and provides more human capital for the search and investigation.] Eventually new sources and substitutes are found.' ...

"The key economic problem of a socialist economy [however] is that the price of a resource will not rise if it becomes more scarce. Price ceilings effectively prevent an increase in price, thereby demotivating businessmen from increasing their production of non-renewables, and/or developing substitutes for them. The result, as can be witnessed in socialist countries all over the globe, are shortages and famines.
    "Thus, if people are truly concerned with the potential depletion of finite resources, they should start questioning their political convictions. The solution to preventing the exhaustion of the earth’s resources are not government controls but free markets and free minds. To paraphrase Ayn Rand, 'If concern with [the environment] and human suffering were the [eco-socialists]’ motive, they would have become champions of capitalism long ago; they would have discovered that it is the only political system capable of producing abundance'.”

~ Martin Hooss from his post 'The Myth of Nonrenewable Resources'

RELATED POSTS

• Why We Need Private Property to Deal with Scarce Resources - Patrick Barron, NOT PC
• Environmentalism Refuted - George Reisman, MISES DAILY 
• Some propositions on property rights – and IP - NOT PC

And it goes for us too.

"Australia’s federal treasurer Jim Chalmers has criticised the Reserve Bank for raising interest rates, instead of taking responsibility for the green inflation he and his fellow incompetents unleashed. ...
    "'[A]s the government braces for more weak economic figures due this week ... Chalmers said the government was focused on walking the tightrope of bringing down inflation without further pressuring people “already being hammered by higher interest rates”. ... '
    "The failure of Chalmers and his fellow incompetents to address grid instability, plummeting dispatchable capacity, and unpredictable price spikes is particularly reprehensible, given that all they need to do to fix this problem is ditch all their green energy mandates, and encourage the construction of enough new coal plants to stabilise the grid.
    "In my opinion Australia is now all but un-investable. With an uncertain electricity grid, spiralling prices, crumbling wage restraint, rampant inflation and soaring interest rates, and an incompetent government which is more focussed on shooting the messenger than addressing the underlying economic problems, who in their right mind would risk investing in Australia?"

~ Eric Worrall from his post 'Aussie Green Economy Blame Storm Gathers Momentum'

"...in exchange for such protection, Māori agreed to being governed by an authority - maybe not necessarily 'sovereign' - but at least one promoting a common law and order? Isn't that identical to John Locke's idea...?"

"On the Treaty, isn't the argument, even of Te Pāti Māori and its supporters, that it was framed to protect and guarantee the private property rights of Māori? That, in exchange for such protection, Māori agreed to being governed by an authority - maybe not necessarily 'sovereign' - but at least one promoting a common law and order? Isn't that identical to John Locke's idea that 'humans, though free, equal, and independent, are obliged under the law of nature to respect each other’s rights to life, liberty, and property.' That we should 'agree to form a government in order to institute an impartial power capable of arbitrating disputes and redressing injuries.' Locke held that the obligation to obey civil government under the social contract was conditional upon the protection of our natural rights, including the right to private property. Whether it was John Locke and the US Constitution, or the Treaty of Waitangi, aren't we all talking similar ideas with similar aims in mind?"

~ Robert MacCulloch. from his post 'Why does Professor Anne Salmond Defend the Treaty by Attacking Liberty? Don't we all, Māori and non-Māori, want to be free & our property rights protected?'

"The Hamilton-Jefferson Debate on the Moral Obligations of Treaties"

The French Revolution caused a fundamental schism among Americans whom a decade before fomented their own Revolution: throwing off British rule with the help of the French Crown, who had now been toppled.

Without that help, the American Revolution would have been stillborn. "The French had no no doubt acted in their own self-interest in supporting the United States during the American Revolution," points out intellectual historian C. Bradley Thompson, 

not to mention their centuries-old hatred of Great Britain, but it is likewise true that the Americans almost certainly could not have won their war with Great Britain without the aid of France. In other words, the Americans’ debt of obligation to France was real.

But that royal regime who'd helped had now been swept away by the Parisian mob, and America's Founding Fathers were unsure whether to support the mob's revolutionary cause. Whether the obligation still applied. These were honourable men in a time in which honour mattered, and they wanted to keep their promises. There was one specific point that made answering the question crucial. And that was the question of treaties.

These honourable men began to debate the nature of treaties, and what moral obligations they imposed.

That's what makes their debate — a debate most publicly between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson — so relevant to us today in New Zealand.

The specific issue that came to divide America [says Thompson*] concerned its two 1778 treaties with France [particularly once Revolutionary France declared war on Great Britain]. During some of the darkest days of the Americans’ war for independence against Great Britain, the infant nation signed a “Treaty of Alliance” and a “Treaty of Amity and Commerce” with France that were important factors in its eventual victory. Sentimentally, morally, and legally, the Americans owed a debt to France. ...
    The two immediate political questions under discussion in 1793 related to the treaties were: 1) were the Gallo-American treaties of 1778 still in effect in 1793, and 2) if they were still actionable, how or in what way did they apply to the current situation?
    What was most remarkable about the ensuing debate in America was that it quickly and automatically turned from a political-diplomatic debate into a moral-political-diplomatic debate about the moral nature and obligations of treaties. Specifically, the fundamental issue was reduced to this question: is the United States morally obliged to fulfill its treaty obligations with France?

That was the question America's first president, George Washington, asked Hamilton and Jefferson to answer. From that question "arose one of the most interesting and complex debates in American political history."

To answer this question, we must step back and ask a series of related or corollary questions. What is a treaty? Are treaties between nations contracts (we’ve already defined what a contract is in “Contracts and the Birth of a Free Society”), and, if so, what kind of contracts are they? If treaties are contracts, must they have identical constituent parts as do other contracts (e.g., property or commercial contracts), or are they a special kind of contract with different conditions and requirements? Who arbitrates treaties when they’re broken? And what were the precise terms of the two treaties signed by France and the United States in 1778 (see above)?
    To understand what a treaty is, we must define its essential characteristics and applications. Samuel Johnson’s 1773 'Dictionary of the English Language' defined a treaty as a “Negotiation; act of treating” and as “A compact of accommodation relating to public affairs.” Noah Webster’s 1828 'American Dictionary of the English Language' defined a treaty as “An agreement, league or contract between two or more nations or sovereigns, formally signed by commissioners properly authorised, and solemnly ratified by the several sovereigns or the supreme power of each state. Treaties are of various kinds, such as treaties for regulating commercial intercourse, treaties of alliance, offensive and defensive, treaties for hiring troops, treaties of peace, etc.”

These definitions encapsulate how treaties were understood in this age.

    By Webster’s definition, we see that treaties are contracts between sovereign nations. Treaties, like contracts, involve an exchange of promises between two or more parties to do or not do certain actions. The promise to do or not do something is a binding moral obligation, and to default on what one has promised is a dereliction of moral responsibility that causes a harm to the other contracting party.
    One major difference between treaties and contracts (at least up until the twentieth century) is that treaties, at least in the context of the eighteenth century, could not be enforced by a neutral third party. There was no international court system in the eighteenth century to adjudicate the violation of treaties. Hence treaties involved honour as the enforcement mechanism, but honour is a weak thread in questions of war and peace.
    Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson both viewed treaties as contracts, or at least a certain kind of contract. The main question for Hamilton and Jefferson came down to this: how could the United States remain neutral in the conflict between France and England and still fulfil its treaty obligations to France? More specifically, did the two Gallo-American treaties of 1778 require the United States to defend France’s West Indian possessions? ...

Both Jefferson and Hamilton supported American neutrality. Both Hamilton and Jefferson wanted the new United States to do the honourable thing, to discharge their agreed obligations. And both Jefferson and Hamilton understood that — beyond "the discussion of treaties, alliances, diplomacy, foreign affairs, war, and international law (i.e., the law of nations)" — what their debate was about was "a philosophic contest over the nature of moral obligation," and what those obligations amounted to in this context. In short:

What is America’s moral obligations to uphold it treaties with France? In other words, what is the debt owed by the United States to France?

At bottom, and most relevant to us in New Zealand in the here and now, the question is: what is the nature of a treaty, and what long-lasting obligations does it impose?

Hamilton viewed "contracts with special moral obligations, but he did think treaties between nations were a special kind of contract with their own unique qualities and characteristics and thus with their own unique moral obligations that were somewhat different from those of regular contracts." Jefferson largely agreed. Like Hamilton he 

1) believed that treaties are a species of contract with traits like and unlike contracts between individuals; 

2) viewed treaties as defined by, and grounded in, the sanctity of moral obligations; 

3) supported American neutrality; and 

4) thought that only dire necessity could justify suspending or even renouncing treaties.

By "dire necessity" was meant that only if inevitable destruction would be the outcome. Given the nature the French Revolution, whose violence was only grown and whose outcome was still uncertain, they both came to the conclusion (for differing reasons) that alliance with the revolutionary regime posed too many dangers at present to be prudent.

That said, Jefferson saw the treaties with France as being agreements with the French people, not with the king — "that treaties are made between nations, not between their governments. This meant that nations may change their government or even their form of government without impairing their treaty obligations."

By the moral law of nature, according to Jefferson, the obligations of one man to another in a state of nature are carried forward to the state of society where the aggregate obligations of one society to another mirror those between individuals in and out of society. [Jefferson] argued that treaties between nations carry the same moral obligations via the moral law of nature as do contracts between individuals. But he then admited that some contracts, either between individuals or nations, can be broken when 1) “performance . . . becomes impossible,” and 2) “performance becomes self-destructive to the party.” Non-performance in the former “is not immoral,” according to Jefferson, and the “law of self-preservation overrules the laws of obligations” in the latter. ... nations can and should be judges in their own cause in international affairs

There was a "right to self-liberation" from a  treaty, said Jefferson, but it was limited to just three cases:

First, a nation that absolves itself from a treaty must face a “danger” that is “great, inevitable and imminent.” ...
    Second, the right of self-release was limited solely to those clauses in a treaty that would bring “great & inevitable danger on us” but not from the treaty as a whole. ...
    Finally, a nation’s right to self-liberation from a treaty or the relevant parts comes with a moral obligation “to make compensation where the nature of the case admits & does not dispense with it.” Jefferson does not explain what constitutes “compensation” or how or by whom it would be determined, but he does think that a non-fulfilling nation is morally bound to pay some kind of compensation for not fulfilling its treaty obligation.

Hamilton however saw the treaties as being with the banished Bourbon regime, and should be considered therefore "as 'temporarily and provisionally suspended,' particularly if such treaties proved to be “disadvantageous or dangerous.” That the French people had a right to change their government was unarguable; but that right imposed no "right to involve other nations," not even those "with whom it may have had connections, absolutely and unconditionally." 

In such cases, the contracting party had a moral right, according to Hamilton, to “renounce” such treaties as incompatible with and detrimental to their original purposes. In sum, Hamilton argued, “Contracts between nations as between individuals, must lose their force where the considerations fail.”

The two men came to similar conclusions as to what to do, but for different reasons. 

If Hamilton’s strategy were to anticipate future dangers by suspending the treaties or certain articles therein, then Jefferson’s strategy was to delay as much as possible how specific articles of the treaties were to be applied in the present. Here, then, is the core difference between Hamilton and Jefferson: the former wanted to temporarily suspend America’s obligations, whereas the latter wanted to temporarily postpone their obligations.

Importantly, however, neither wanted to repudiate their obligations altogether. They understood there was an agreement, and its terms must be honoured — once action was clear, and not at the cost of their own destruction. As Thompson sums up Hamilton's position: "a treaty is not a suicide pact."

What is most important about the Hamilton-Jefferson debate is not what it tells us about their views on international affairs, diplomacy, foreign policy, or even treaties, but what it tells us about the Founders’ views on the moral status of contracts in a free society. Contracts are the moral ligament that holds a free society together.

* * * * 

* All quotes hereafter from from Thompson's post 'American Schism: The Hamilton-Jefferson Debate on the Moral Obligations of Treaties'

'And then the climate pledges evaporated...'

"The Tech-Giants are backing away. Microsoft and Google have given up — they’re not bragging about their carbon neutrality anymore. Not now that their emissions have increased 29% and 50% respectively in the last four or five years. Over 500 companies pledged to get to net zero by 2040, but 96% of them are failing to stay on track. ...
    "The truth is that if net zero technologies were cheap and useful, and the CEO’s ever cared about the planet, they wouldn’t be abandoning them. But they are…
    "The truth is that if the Earth was in danger, smart CEO’s and billionaires, who have to live on the planet too, would be pushing nuclear power like their children’s lives depended on it.
    "Instead it was all an intellectual fashion contest and a quick subsidy buck, and maybe a few even believed wind and solar power did something useful, but they don’t anymore.."

~ Jo Nova, from her post 'And then the climate pledges evaporated'

"The art of not reading is a very important one."

"The art of not reading is a very important one. It consists in not taking an interest in whatever may be engaging the general public at any particular time. When some political or ecceliastical pamphlet, or novel, or pem, is making a great commotion, you should remember that he who writes for fools always finds a larger audience. A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short."

~ philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, from his Essays and Aphorisms

"Don't be amazed if you see my eyes always wandering.  In fact, this is my way of reading, and it is only in this way that reading proves fruitful for me. If a book truly interests me, I cannot follow it for more than a few lines before my mind, having seized on a thought that the text suggests to it, or a feeling, or a question, or an image, goes off on a tangent and springs from thought to thought, from image to image, in an itinerary of reasonings and fantasies that I feel the need to pursue to the end, moving away from the book until I have lost sight of it. The stimulus of reading is indispensable to me, and of meaty reading, even if, of every book, I manage to read no more than a few pages. But those few pages already enclose for me whole universes, which I can never exhaust."

~ author Italo Calvino from his novel If on a Winter's Night a Traveller

"My Conversion from Anti-Industrialist to Lover of Human Progress'"

"Sometimes when I talk and write about the importance of science, technology, and entrepreneurship to human opportunity and living standards, people ask me why I seem so obsessed with progress.
    "There is a simple reason: I did not use to believe in it.
    "When I was around fifteen, I shared many of the ideas of the people I now spend my time arguing against. I was very unhappy about modern, industrial civilisation. I looked upon highways, cars, trucks, and factories as blights on the landscape. I thought the hustle, bustle, and stress of consumerism and modernity were unnatural and unhealthy. ...

"I thought that there must have been a better time in the past, when we lived in harmony with one another and with nature. ... There, I thought, were the good old days. This view predisposed me to look at technology and construction and consumption only in terms of their negative impacts on traditional lifestyles, livelihoods, and the environment. ...

"I read the Existentialists, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Henry David Thoreau; I read Franz Kafka and plenty of other disturbing fiction, all of which reinforced my sense that something was seriously wrong with the world and humanity. It made me a pessimist, almost even a misanthrope. Such stupid people, to ruin their world like that!

"... I don’t think that I ever became clinically depressed, but as a friend of mine put it, I had made myself 'philosophically depressed.' The world and everything in it just seemed hopeless. And that became a self-fulfilling despair.
    "Two things began to lift me out of the intellectual hole that I had dug for myself: reading about history—boy, was that an eye-opener—and studying politics. ...

"Whatever period I read about, and whichever region I turned to, the 'good old days' were nowhere to be found. ... I found that the desperate struggle to find something, anything, to feed your family and stave off hunger for another few weeks was the defining experience of all previous eras. ... My ancestors in northern Sweden had not lived a good life; they had fought hard for food, shelter, and clothing, and when the weather was bad, the crop failed, and they starved. In bad times, they had to dry and grind tree bark into flour to prepare their daily bread. ...
    "Once I began to pull this thread, I found it hard to stop. I just had to find out what made the difference between their lives and ours. Why is it that for ten thousand years, people did not experience any lasting improvement in their material condition, and then suddenly, in the past five or six generations, we saw an explosion of wealth and technology?
    "For the first time, I started to actually think about the impact of railways, steamboats, international trade, corporations, financial markets, and so on. I had to ask myself: Where would I have been without them? Probably in the graveyard, or never born. ...

"This was the beginning of my obsession with human progress. I could no longer take modern civilisation as a given—or a curse.
    "Step by step, I realised that the modern world was not so bad after all. But my heart was not in it. ... Then some friends in [the freedom] community told me that I had to read Ayn Rand, whom I had never heard of. It happened at an important moment in my thought process. ... 

    "I had yet to experience, in visceral form, the meaning of industrialisation and commerce, and so I was left with a hollow, less-than-inspired ideal. That began to change when I read Atlas Shrugged and Rand’s nonfiction books.

    "For the first time, I read someone who talked about man as a heroic being, with happiness as his moral purpose, and science, technology, and industry his noblest activities. I was appalled. And deeply fascinated!
    "Rand had this annoying ability to get to the bottom of every question and challenge my every belief. ...
    "If scientists and entrepreneurs provide us with the knowledge and wealth that make the world an amazing place, why weren’t they the heroes in my story? And why were the whiners and moaners good guys—just because they dressed in black like me and had the better tunes? Previously, I had identified government intervention as a bad thing and had been involved in libertarian activism against it, but I had not clearly identified or articulated the good that deserved protection against it. Thanks to Rand, I began to shift from fighting against what’s bad to fighting for what’s good—for progress, and not just against oppression.
    "Interestingly, and perhaps ironically, the biggest impact of reading Rand was on my emotional outlook—the part of my personality that had not kept up with my intellectual transformation. She helped me see the beauty in exploration and achievement and that technology and innovation can be romantic adventures. I credit her at least partly with my bright sense of life, my belief in mankind, in progress and the future. In Rand’s novel 'The Fountainhead,' the sight of one man’s achievement provides a young boy with “the courage to face a lifetime.” In time, that’s what Rand’s works provided me.
    "This intellectual journey of discovery is why I am obsessed with progress. It is fueled in part by my gratitude for the people who keep on working and thinking and producing, even when people like my old self denigrate them. I had always taken progress for granted. I did not recognise it, and I did not understand it, and now I am trying to make up for it.
    "As a convert to the cause, I hope you will forgive my missionary zeal. You see, I am trying to get a younger version of myself to see the error of his ways."

~ Johan Norberg from his article 'My Conversion from Anti-Industrialist to Lover of Human Progress'. His most recent book is The Capitalist Manifesto – Why the Global Free Market Will Save the World

NZ's govt health 'system': "delivering equally awful health-care to everyone"

"Enough is enough. Former PMs Helen Clark and Jacinda Ardern should come clean about how they were the Chief Architects of the omni-shambles that has become our health system. ... for the folks who suffer from long waiting lists and declining health-care quality, some of whom didn't make it. 

    "The person who wrote the report [that is] the inspiration behind the disaster that is Health NZ was Heather Simpson, Clark's Chief of Staff for 9 years ... reincarnated by Labour to advise Ardern and Hipkins on health-care. ... The report was the inspiration behind the [disastrous] centralisation of NZ's health system. ...
    "I read the report. No intellectual basis is built for its suggested re-design of health-care delivery. No wonder our system is failing. 

    "It keeps repeating the word 'equity,' seemingly in the hope that by writing that word on paper is enough to deliver it in practice. The report bizarrely repeats 'equity' 219 times (!?) By contrast, the word 'competition,' which is a requirement to ensure quality and efficiency in nearly every economic system, is not mentioned one time. The report thereby seeks to deliver equally awful health-care to everyone."

    "... [The report's] half-baked idea is that the monolithic super-structure it invents ... would create 'economies of scale.' It uses the jargon, 'scaling up.' Health NZ has succeeded only at being a large scale disaster."

~ Robert MacCulloch, from his post 'Former Labour PM's Clark and Ardern wrecked NZ's Health System: they should be held accountable for the lives that have been lost'

 

Luxon: "Holding power for the sake of holding power."

"I asked people of all political hues what they saw as the two biggest missteps of this government.
    "The responses were all quite similar - they didn't know why ... the Luxon-led ... Government would do A, but then also do B, when A and B seemed incongruous with one another.
    "People who were opposed to ACT's Treaty Principles Bill were annoyed it had been supported to its first reading - saying it had created a highly divisive national debate, only to avoid blame by abandoning it - and weren't later won back when Luxon's National decided to not support it beyond the first reading.
    "People who supported ACT's Treaty Principles Bill were annoyed it had only been supported to its first reading - saying it had started a productive national debate, only to abandon it before anything could be resolved - and felt betrayed when Luxon's National decided to not support it beyond the first reading.
    "Both sides saw it as cynical politics over a principled stance. ...

"Last Wednesday Prime Minister Luxon told councils they must stick to their knitting. No frivolous spending.] On Thursday afternoon Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee announced the government would stump up $750,000 from its major events fund to go towards the inaugural World Dance Crew Championship in Auckland next year. ...

"This is a government that thinks beneficiaries need scrutiny and suspicion, but poorly-run media enterprises deserve government support and favourable legislative changes. ... Can you stand in judgement of beneficiaries while also coddling an entitled media sector? ...

"[This all] speaks to a lack of philosophy or ideology.
    "When you combine this with recent concerns about a lack of clear vision for what New Zealand should be, this creates a picture of a man without non-negotiables.
    "Luxon is the ... type of politician ... [who] isn't ideologically driven, nor are they practical 'here's-what-we-want-the-country-to-be, but-we're-flexible-about-how-to-get-there' pragmatists.
    "They are something more base, someone just happy to be elected in the first place. Holding power for the sake of holding power."

~ Haimona Gray, from his post 'Christopher Luxon - A PM without conviction'

"People want reality—with all its energy and messiness. And that’s the one thing Silicon Valley cannot deliver."

"We are now a quarter of the way into the digitised 21st century, and screen interfaces no longer feel fresh or new or enlivening.
    "People want reality—with all its energy and messiness. And that’s the one thing Silicon Valley cannot deliver."

~ Ted Gioia, from his post 'Live Music Is Coming Back!'

Appalling news.

 

KIWIBLOG: 'Alcohol consumption plummeting'

• Since 1986, alcohol available for consumption per capita has dropped by a massive 29%
• Since 2008, it has dropped 18%
• In the last year it has dropped 12%

By detaining Pavel Durov, says Will Duffield in this guest post, France threatens both free speech and Telegram’s unique neutrality.

France Detains Telegram Founder Pavel Durov

Guest post by Will Duffield

On August 24, French police arrested Telegram founder Pavel Durov moments after his plane touched down at Le Bourget airport outside Paris. He remains detained on “an arrest warrant alleging his platform has been used for money laundering, drug trafficking and other offenses,” according to French television network TF1. Although Durov has not been officially charged, his unprecedented arrest threatens Telegram’s unique neutrality.

Telegram is an instant messaging platform particularly popular in post-Soviet states. It allows its 900 million users to communicate via one-to-one, optionally encrypted, chat, and in large public channels. Durov created Telegram in 2013 as his previous social media platform, a Russian Facebook analog called VKontakte, was being expropriated by Putin-friendly oligarchs. Then, recounting resistance to FSB demands for Euromaidan channel data, police intimidation, and a Douglas Adams-inspired “so long and thanks for all the fish” resignation from VK, he was celebrated in the West as a dissident.

A 2014 New York Times profile titled “Once Celebrated in Russia, the Programmer Pavel Durov Chooses Exile” quoted Durov saying, “me myself, I’m not a big fan of the idea of countries,” and characterized him as “Neo from the ‘Matrix’ movies … moving from country to country … One day he is in Paris, another in Singapore.”

Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and the attendant return of great power geopolitics has made stateless nomadship much more difficult. Everyone and everything—even social media platforms—have been expected to pick sides. Nevertheless, Telegram has remained uniquely neutral, and, until now, unmolested.

Since 2022, social media, and to an extent the entire internet, has been steadily separating into Russian and Western spheres. Both shifting user attitudes and state sanctions have played a role. The EU sanctioned the owners of VKontakte, prohibiting payments to the platform. At the same time, Russia banned Meta for “extremist activities” after Facebook and Instagram relaxed their hate speech rules to allow Ukrainian invective against Russian invaders. While WhatsApp has remained popular in both Russia and the West, its maximum group size, 1,024, is far smaller than Telegram’s 200,000 user limit, making Telegram the preferred platform for public conversation. Although there are a few prominent Russian state accounts on Twitter, and some Russians still lob insults at American volunteers on Instagram, division is the rule. Telegram is the exception.

Everyone on both sides of the war uses Telegram. They were already using it when Russia’s full invasion began and quickly pressed their favorite social media app into wartime service. Heads of state, government agencies, military units, and civilians all began to coordinate, troll, boast, and propagandize on Telegram. Ukraine’s security services set up chatbots to allow the reporting of Russian troop movements. Overnight, Telegram became simultaneously a digital Switzerland and a battlefield.

The unique circumstances of its birth had, until August 24, allowed the platform to remain awkwardly neutral throughout the two-and-a-half-year conflict. Although Russia tried to ban the platform in 2018, it didn’t stick, and by 2022 the Russian state itself had become too reliant on the platform—both for external and internal communication—to abandon it.

It didn’t have the same sort of moderation controversies as Meta when used by combatants because it did less to restrict violent speech to begin with and didn’t offer concessions to one side over the other. Indeed, Durov merely tried to assure Ukrainians that their data would be secure against wartime hacking. This isn’t to say Telegram isn’t unmoderated. But its combination of channel-based communication and largely reactive moderation—relying on user reports—creates a more laissez-faire moderation paradigm than more centralized, web-first platforms.

Because Durov had already left Russia and taken Telegram with him, it didn’t fall under the sanctions that affected the Russian-based internet and European services operating in Russia. Indeed, last year, I contrasted perceptions of the platform’s independence with perceptions of TikTok, writing “TikTok isn’t a small founder-run operation like Telegram, which while born in Russia, escaped its orbit and is now registered in the Cayman Islands and headquartered in Dubai.” However, Durov’s refusal to limit Russian use of Telegram and the platform’s commitment to light-touch moderation as other social media platforms have grown more restrictive, has gradually soured attitudes towards Telegram among many Western elites.

In the Second World War, Swiss neutrality was often disdained by the Allies, especially later in the war. Nevertheless, a neutral Switzerland had undeniable value, not only to journalists and spymasters but to many downed airmen as well. Likewise, even if a neutral Telegram offers Russia access on equal terms, it allows for the observation of Russian chatter and activity, the identification of captured soldiers, and the simple maintenance of pacific and familial ties between friends and family separated by the conflict. It is also the only place where ordinary Russians can get an uncensored view of their country’s awful military misadventure. These are all goods worth safeguarding.

Telegram’s neutrality might have become an annoyance, but this shift alone doesn’t explain Durov’s perplexing arrest. Telegram has long been more pugnacious in its relations with courts and regulators than most publicly traded platforms, but it is far from unique in offering encrypted messaging. In fact, end-to-end encrypted chat makes up a much smaller portion of its use than competing services. While Telegram’s “secret chats” are end-to-end encrypted, its massive public channels are not. If Telegram’s encryption is at issue, WhatsApp owner Mark Zuckerbeg and Signal founder Moxie Marlinspike and many other tech luminaries should avoid France.

More generally, it is hard to see how France has jurisdiction over Telegram. Telegram isn’t a French company. France might have personal jurisdiction over Durov as a French citizen, but operating a social media platform offering encryption isn’t a criminal act in France. To the extent that Durov’s arrest is related to Telegram’s platform policies rather than Durov’s private activity, France has just taken a hostage. France shouldn’t follow in the footsteps of Turkey and India.

Absent official clarity, speculation and likely misinformation abound. Some have claimed, without evidence, that Durov’s arrest is the roundabout work of the American State Department. Durov’s arrest is much more likely to have been prompted by French anxieties about Russian disinformation campaigns targeting Francophone Africa, where eight countries have experienced coups in the past four years. many of which brought them closer to Russia. Durov’s refusal to suppress such campaigns may have been the trigger for his arrest. It is also worth noting that while Telegram isn’t uniquely encrypted, it is simply the communications platform of choice—for everyone—in the parts of the world from which organised crime comes to Western Europe.

On August 26, Jean-Michel Bernigaud, Secretary General of Ofmin, a French child protection agency, muddied as much as he clarified in a Linkedin post saying, “At the heart of this issue is the lack of moderation and cooperation of the platform (which has nearly 1 billion users), particularly in the fight against pedophilia.” He, confusingly, attached a link to a documentary about pedophiles’ use of Instagram. French President Emmanuel Macron [already attached to Jacinda Ardern's anti-free speech attacks on social media] tweeted that he had “seen false information regarding France following the arrest of Pavel Durov,” and proclaimed France’s commitment to “freedom of expression,” “the spirit of entrepreneurship,” and “the rule of law,” but offered no greater clarity as to why his country had arrested Durov.

France owes Durov, Telegram users, and the internet as a whole, a rapid explanation. Its actions are already damaging its reputation as both a friend of liberty and a safe place to do business. More importantly, Durov’s opaque arrest threatens Telegram’s unique neutrality and potentially the safety of its users on both sides of the conflict. The appearance of capture can be just as damning as the real thing. If France is truly an ally committed to a free internet, it should free Pavel Durov.

* * * * 

Will Duffield is an adjunct scholar in the Cato Institute’s Center for Representative Government, where he studies speech and internet governance. His research focuses on the web of government regulation and private rules that govern Americans’ speech online.

His post first appeared at the Cato At Liberty blog.

"Rather than searching in Marx's texts for a condemnation in advance of the Gulag, it is a matter of asking what in those texts could have made the Gulag possible."

Cartoon by Etta Hulme

"The [destructive aftermaths of the] Soviet Union, Maoist China, Kim's North Korea, Pol Pot's Cambodia, Castro's Cuba, Mugabe's Zimbabwe, Chavez and Maduro's Venezuela, and countless other deadly authoritarian regimes and revolutions— all carried out in Marx's name, and celebrated by Marxists at their inception — are casually dismissed and dissociated from Marx's theories ... They are not 'true socialism' or 'true Marxism,' we are told, and it falls to the next socialist regime to implement Marx 'the right way.'
    "A succinct and representative example of this tendency among modern intellectuals may be seen in political theorist Matthew McManus's account of Marx's reputation over time

'But of course the most substantial objection came from Karl Marx, whose epochal critique of political economy remains in some respects the climax of the modernist project...Marxism became the chief theoretical outlook for most of the major socialist movements and parties by the end of the 19th century, with many achieving important reforms. But its reputation was seriously tarnished by the totalitarian movements in the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, and elsewhere, which appealed to Marx's legacy to advance tyranny while taking serious liberties with his thought. With the collapse of the Soviet Empire in 1989, many thought socialisms' days were numbered, though it has since enjoyed a resurgence in popularity as the inequalities and vulgarities of neoliberalism [sic] became increasingly scrutinised.'

"Note that McManus errs in assigning high status to Marx's intellectual following in the late nineteenth century, which, as we have seen, he did not possess at any point in his life or for many decades thereafter. Neither does McManus substantiate his efforts to differentiate the humanitarian abuses of Marx's twentieth century followers from Marx's own revolutionary theorising. 

    "One is reminded of the quip of French philosopher Michel Foucault, who stated in a rare moment of clarity: 'Rather than searching in [Marx's] texts for a condemnation in advance of the Gulag, it is a matter of asking what in those texts could have made the Gulag possible, what might even now continue to justify it, and what makes it intolerable truth still accepted today.' 'The Gulag question,' Foucault continued, 'must be posed not in terms of error (reduction of the problem to one of theory) but in terms of reality'."

~ Phil Magness, from recent writing

To AUKUS, or not to AUKUS?

"Economists think that the more interconnected countries are by trade and investment, the less likely warfare will occur between them. [See for instance the NOT PC posts 'Free Trade Is the Path to Peace & Prosperity' and 'The Horsemen of non-apocalypse']
    "On many occasions countries have consciously intensified those interconnections as an alternative to war.
    "Examples include the federation of the American states into the USA following a confederation after customs conflict between Maryland and Virginia; the European Coal and Steel Community (which evolved into the EU) tying up the French and Germany industries after three painful wars; ASEAN which was started after the Indonesian confrontation of Malaya ended; recently India has improved its physical and trade links with its neighbouring China and Pakistan.
    "Alas, economic relations between China and the US have deteriorated. That this occurred under both President Trump and President Biden suggests a structural tension arising from jostling over their places in the world. ...
     "One can explain the First World War and the follow-up Second World War as a consequence of Germany catching up in economic size to Britain and trying to find a comparable place in the world. (Neither noticed that the US was already bigger.) We may be grateful that moving from one global hegemon, Britain, to a second, the US, did not involve conflict between the two (although the two world wars accelerated the transfer from a weakened Britain). 
    "It is unlikely that China is going to be the next global hegemon. Rather, we are moving to a multipolar world where there is none. There is a plausible economic model which predicts that world economic output, and hence power, is moving to where the populations are – the situation before British industrialisation. It occurs because of the ease with which technology and capital can transfer between countries.
    "That does not mean that Chinese productivity will catch up to the American level – not in this century anyway. Factors like the resource base and social organisation mute the economics. ...
    "So behind today’s incipient economic warfare and military machinations we face a multipolar world whose shape is uncertain. ... The challenge for the world, then, is how to get from the current world order, in which the US acts the hegemon, to a multipolar world in which the US is but one of four or so big economies. Full multipolarity may be less than a quarter of a century away.
    "The US does not seem to see the issue this way. It is largely preoccupied with the short-term task of trying to maintain its current hegemony in a world whose order it sees as not too different from the immediate post-war one. ....
    "New Zealand may have little influence over the evolving world order. In so far as we have, we should be putting our effort in assisting it to move towards the reality of multipolarity. Ultimately New Zealand is having to balance its short-term interests against its long-term ones. I am not sure our friends always understand this."

~ Brian Easton from hist post 'Trading Towards A Multipolar World'

"Probably among the worst toxins you can inject into the democratic constitution of a trusting people ... "

 

Cartoon by Nick Kim

"'NEWSTALK ZB, Opinion: Constitutional law expert and former Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer takes a deep, concerned look at the risks this Government is taking with hasty law changes.'

"Pretty rich coming from the man [right] responsible for s9 of the State Owned Enterprises Act, with its stupid reliance on undefined ‘principles.' It launched the courts into inventing their partnership metaphor for the Treaty. Lange raged to me in 1994 that Sir Geoffrey had assured him s9 was just ‘comfort’ to settle down iwi leaders. ‘It doesn’t have real legal effect’. 

"I’m not aware of any apology from Sir Geoffrey for this grotesque error. Or even hindsight repudiation to limit the damage. 

"Probably among the worst toxins you can inject into the democratic constitution of a trusting people in a trust-based egalitarian law-abiding society, with an extraordinary level of intermarriage and other evidence of respectful race relations. 

"Setting lawyers free to make law instead of applying it. Enabling corrupt bullies to trash property rights (incidentally negating Article 2). And empowering courts and bureaucrats to exploit undefined (therefore unlimited) race privilege to trump equality before the law."

~ Stephen Franks on Twitter

Lange: "The treaty itself contains no principles which can usefully guide government or courts.”

 

“It is with no disrespect for Maori feeling for the treaty that I have to say it means nothing to me. It can mean nothing to me because it has nothing to say to me. When I was in office I understood that the government had succeeded to certain legal and moral obligations of the government which signed the treaty, and that in so far as those obligations had not been met it was our responsibility to honour them. But that is the extent of it.
    "The treaty cannot be any kind of founding document, as it is sometimes said to be. It does not resolve the question of sovereignty, if only because one version of it claims one form of sovereignty and the other version claims the opposite. The court of appeal once, absurdly, described it as a partnership between races, but it obviously is not. The signatories are, on one side, a distinctive group of people, and on the other, a government which established itself in New Zealand and whose successors represent all of us, whether we are descendants of the signatories or not. The treaty cannot even resolve the argument among Maori themselves in which one side maintains that you’re a Maori if you identify as such, and the other claims that it’s your links to traditional forms of association which define you as Maori.
    "As our increasingly dismal national day continues to show, the treaty is no basis for nationhood. It doesn’t express the fundamental rights and responsibilities of citizenship, and it doesn’t have any unifying concept. The importance it has for Maori people is a constant reminder that governments in a democracy should meet their legal and moral obligations, but for the country taken as a whole, that is, and must be, the limit of its significance.
    "Here I come to the dangers posed by the increasing entrenchment of the treaty in statute.
    "The treaty itself contains no principles which can usefully guide government or courts. It is a bald agreement, anchored in its time and place, and the public interest in it is the same as the public interest in enforcing any properly-made agreement. To go further than that is to acknowledge the existence of undemocratic forms of rights, entitlements, or sovereignty.
    "The treaty is a wonderful stick for activists to beat the rest of us with, but it could never have assumed the importance it has without the complicity of others. It came to prominence in liberal thought in the seventies, when many who were concerned about the abuse of the democratic process by the government of the day began to see the treaty as a potential source of alternative authority. It’s been the basis of a self-perpetuating industry in academic and legal circles. Many on the left of politics who sympathise with Maori aspiration have identified with the cause of the treaty, either not knowing or not caring that its implications are profoundly undemocratic." 

~ former Labour Prime Minister David Lange from his year 2000 Bruce Jesson Memorial Lecture. Quoted by Gary Judd in his post 'Treaty is a bald agreement, anchored in its time and place,' in which he concludes by reciting Lange's accurate observation that "The treaty itself contains no principles which can usefully guide government or courts.” 

"In the real world," Gary points out, "there are no principles of the Treaty. They exist only in a fantasy world created by the 1972-1975 Labour government’s Treaty of Waitangi Act. The magical possibilities of this fantasy world have expanded since then to the point where ordinary New Zealanders feel threatened by those who would claim on the basis solely of their identity, or who they identify with, that they have a superior place, and that democracy must be relegated to a subordinate position."

Still a fast-track to cronysim

"To deal with the proliferation of regulation & red-tape in NZ, which means you can barely go to the bathroom without getting permission, National's Chris Bishop & NZ First's Shane Jones told us they would 'fast track' a bunch of selected projects. ... So its a shame to see that on the fast-tracking issue, Bishop and Jones went and took a good idea and stuffed it up. They sadly politicised the whole thing by wanting to give Ministers the power to make decisions about which projects would be accepted. ...
    "They couldn't help themselves. They wanted to be big men, holding big power, deciding who got what. Now in an embarrassing back-down, they've reversed themselves. ... changing the Fast-track Approvals Bill so 'Final decisions on projects will not sit with Ministers but with an expert panel.' This is the same as the previous Labour government’s 'fast-track' process.
    "But they've got it wrong again. Why revert to yet another layer of bureaucracy ... staffed with the usual assortment of [cronies,] in-bred Wellington nobodies, or dubious Kiwi 'business leaders' with political connections? ...
    "What should they have done instead? [Ed: Well, obviously they should get rid of the proliferation of regulation & red-tape. But in the meantime ...] the 384 projects should simply be referred to the NZ Treasury / Infrastructure Commission for evaluation, & ranked highest to lowest in terms of benefit-to-cost ratios. Those institutions should send their ranking / recommendations to Cabinet for ultimate sign off. The rankings should be publicly available. Should Cabinet accept a project low on Treasury's rankings, then we'd know it was because they wanted their mates to get the job, unless some very good reason otherwise was presented.
    "For National to adopt Labour's same fast-track process with an expert panel of nobodies tells us one thing. Both National & Labour have failed to deliver for NZ and they still don't know how."

~ Robert MacCulloch, from his post 'Fast Track Approvals Bill: Chris Bishop & Shane Jones Took a Good Idea & Turned it into a Dog's Breakfast.' To which Labour's David Parker replied here.

TEN YEARS AGO: Putin's Libertarians

 

Since this blog has been going so long (nearly twenty years!), and so much is still so relevant, I'm going to start a regular series of posts and writing from ten and/or twenty years ago. 

From twenty years ago comes my interview with painter Michael Newberry, in which we get down and dirty on art, creativity and passion — and on his call for a Moral Revolution of Human Values in the Arts.

And from ten years ago this month comes this still timely post by Russian libertarian Mikhail Svetov  on the strange attraction felt by some so-called libertarians to the would-be destroyer of Ukraine. (Some of the pics have sadly been lost.)

(And if you want to search the archives here yourself, click down there on the right-hand side on the "Everything We've Ever Written" drop-down menu.)

Putin's Libertarians

Guest post by Mikhail Svetov

I DECIDED TO WRITE THIS after I noticed that western libertarians have unaccountably developed a soft spot for Russian president Vladimir Putin.

The consensus among them seems to be that Putin is in the right in Ukraine. Even Ron Paul, whom I normally admire, has fallen for his charms. But as a Russian libertarian myself, it leaves me disappointed and terribly sad.

The biggest complaint from libertarians about the Ukraine seems to be that the government in Kyiv is somehow “fascist,” which in their eyes warrants Russian military intervention. I would like to start by outlining some facts about Russia and Ukraine, and hopefully dispel some myths about the war in the Donbass region of Ukraine (also known as the Donetsk Basin).

The simplest way is to focus on some of the most notable characteristics of fascism. The defining characteristic of Fascism is that the good of the State comes before the good of the individual, identified by Laurence Britt as being commonly manifested in the following ways …

Helen Clark is now *against* corruption!

 

Helen Clark's eponymous foundation has come out against corruption in politics, which is a bit like coming out in favour of apple pie with cream.  

As I outline below, you'd think an organisation using Ms Clark's name might stay quiet on the subject of corruption. What her foundation's report calls corruption however included in one neat package deal the putrid practices of political lobbyists, and the act of people donating to their favourite political party.

These are two very different things.

One has the stench of cronyism. Of peddlers of political relationships forming a parasite class that Ayn Rand once called an "aristocracy of pull." The other is, well, for the most part it is just people donating to a political party because they like the party's policies and/or people.

Yes, cause and effect sometimes goes the other way. There are parties who do sell policies to donors. The ACT party's pathetic capitulations to Auckland council amalgamation and on abolishing the RMA has for years been predicated upon the many consultants who donate to and infest the party, and who never see a trough they don't like. The National Party's silence on China's many misdeeds may be connected to large donations from organisations like the Inner Mongolia Rider Horse group. The link between Winstons First's racing and fishing policies and his racing and fishing donors is oft ignored simply because major parties seek a sweetheart deal with him every three years,  but is tangible, not to mention the link between Labour's policies (education policies for example, favouring teachers unions) and trades union donations of time and money to Labour's campaign. And not to mention all the "green" projects subsidised with taxpayer money to help out the businesses and of Green donors.

But for the most part, donations are small beer. And are fairly transparent. It's the hole-and-corner parasites of political pull who are the biggest evil. And they're everywhere.

PJ O’Rourke used to delight in pointing out that this corruption, the buying and selling of political favour, is simply the price of Big Government — the sort of government that Clark herself has always favoured. Favours for cronies. Jobs for the boys (and girls). Big Government's power and money on sale to the highest bidders.

No one should be surprised. As O'Rourke used to remind us, when legislation proscribes what is bought and sold, the first things to be bought will be the legislators -- and the more legislation is written the higher the demand, and the higher the price.

The answer of course is a separation of state and economy, in the same way and for much the same reasons as the separation of church and state.

But that is not what Clark's foundation prescribes. 

It's not what Clark herself is after.

Helen Clark and her followers have long favoured direct payment of political parties by taxpayers. That's what this is about. Taxpayers forced to donate to parties whose views they may abhor. To political parties whose power would only become more entrenched by the regular involuntary AP from taxpayers' pockets. Clark favours this because her own Red Team suffers by comparison with donations to the Blue Team. (Not that money on its own can win elections, otherwise the ACT Party would have been in power for the last three decades.)

This was the impetus behind then-Prime Minister Clark's infamous user of illegal taxpayer money for her own election campaigns — "illegal" was the Auditor-General's word — passing retrospective legislation to legalise what commentator Chris Trotter called "acceptable corruption." ("Acceptable" because it was his own favoured political regime ransacking the public purse.) And for then-Prime Minister Clark's subsequent passing of the Electoral Finance Act to muzzle her opponents during election campaigns.

Corruption? If there's anyone in New Zealand politics who knows about corruption it's Helen Clark. When I read that Helen Clark's Foundation is "targeting corruption," I immediately searched here at NOT PC for "Helen Clark corruption." It's quite a trove. It runs for three pages. if you feel like diving in, start with the post near the top: ' Cancerous and corrosive and un-democratic and, and, and ...

Or of you want a fuller story, download this PDF copy of The Free Radical from 2006 explaining, as the cover story describes 'How Labour Stole the Election.'