Japonisme print

 

I love dramatic illustrations.

I love graphic prints.

I really like this highly stylised piece.

But all I can tell you about it is it appeared in a recent post at the Japonisme blog, without any attribution.

And that it’s pretty damn neat.

Not another Paul Henry post! [updated]

I’m astonished that people are still--still!—talking about Paul Henry. About a breakfast host most of them don’t even watch (and why would you when there’s much better things to do over breakfast), but whose bad-taste quips they’ve gone out of their way to be offended by.

But at least people are now talking about free speech. Albeit wrongly.

The principle of free speech require that speakers be free from government censorship. It does not require that the taxpayer provide anyone with a microphone.

It’s a guarantee that you can say what you want on your own dime or your employer’s dime (if they’ll back you up). It’s not a guarantee of freedom from criticism or consequences.

You should be as free to air your views as I am to ignore them.  If I don’t like it, I can always turn it off.

You should be as free to air your views as your advertisers are to withdraw from them. If they don’t like it, they’re free to try to turn you off.

There is a right to free speech.  There is no right not to be offended.

People say stupid things.  They say things that are wrong. But parading around wearing an "I'm offended" sign is not an argument. It's just a whine.

Music reviewer Simon Sweetman reminded his readers the other day that lots of people in his field said stupid things. Sometimes people cared. Sometimes people didn’t.

Elvis Costello told fellow musicians Ray Charles was a "blind, dumb nigger."

John Lennon told Americans the Beatles were bigger than Jesus.

Bryan Ferry told German journalists he was a fan of the work-ethic, architecture and artistic flair of the Nazi.

Eric Clapton told his audiences he supported hardnut anti-immigration Tory Enoch Powell, called England “overcrowded,” that it was becoming “a black colony and suggested England “get the foreigners out, get the wogs out, get the coons out.” All at the time he was enjoying fame and fortune for covering a Bob Marley song.

Donna Summer told journalists that Aids was punishment from God for homosexuality.

And South Park made fun of Catholics and showed Mary menstruating on screen.

Some of them took a hit to their careers. Some of them didn’t. For some of them it was a calculated career move.  For some of them, it wasn’t. But win or lose, the issue was between their fans and themselves--an issue only for those who bought and produced their records and shows to decide, not for anyone else.

Because speech is speech, it’s not violent destruction.

Ridicule is better than bans.

Moral persuasion is better than force.

Laughter is better than “multi-cultural legislation” to stop people saying things other people don’t like.

When tyranny occurs, it can be challenged from a thousand presses -- but not if speech has been silenced and the presses have been closed down for being “offensive.”

Free speech has always been more valued in the abstract than in reality. "Freedom but..." is not freedom. “Freedom to … ” is.

Forcing ideas underground does not eradicate them, it incubates them. Bad ideas are anaerobic -- the oxygen of free inquiry kills them.

Bad ideas can only be fought with better ones.

So if you don't like Paul Henry, turn him off.  Maybe you could find something better to do over breakfast.  Like, maybe, talk to your family about why free speech is important.

RELATED POST: Some propositions on free speech

UPDATE: Lindsay Perigo has “just now” seen Paul Henry making his Governor-General comment to John Key, and finds something far more offensive therein than anything Paul Henry said.

“Capitalism Without Guilt” in Sydney

Thanks to a kind reader, I’m heading over to Sydney this weekend to see Yaron Brook from the Ayn Rand Institute speak on Monday night about Capitalism Without Guilt.  Why don’t you join me?

This is the sort of hard-hitting commentary you might expect. Here he is on Pajamas TV discussing what rising gold prices tell us about the global economy.  [Click the pic to go to the video.]

And here he is at the Q&A of a recent talk, answering the common question about welfare, entitlements, and what does capitalism do for the poor.  [See the whole talk linked here.]

So join me in Sydney. It’s going to be a great event!

GUEST POST: More on the Myth that Patents are Monopolies

Guest post by patent specialist Dale Halling

David Kline, author of Rembrandts in the Attic, has added the following insights from history on the idea that patents are monopolies.

The condemnation of monopolies ought not to extend to patents, by which the originator of a new process is permitted to enjoy, for a limited period, the exclusive privilege of using his own improvement. This is not making the commodity dearer for his benefit, but merely postponing a part of the increased cheapness (or excellence) which the public owe to the inventor, in order to compensate and reward him for his service.
     - John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, 1848

The dawn of the right of inventors has been actually [contemporaneous] with the destruction of monopolies odious to the common justice of men; and the common sense of mankind has marked a distinction between such monopolies and the exclusive rights conceded to inventors. Their rights, under patents, are called ‘monopolies’ only from the poverty of language, which has failed to express in words a distinction which no less clearly exists.
     - Louis Wolowski, Chair of Industrial Economics, Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers, 1864

How can the exclusive right of an invention be compared with a monopoly in trade? How can the exclusive privilege to sell salt in Elizabeth’s time, which added not one bushel to the production, but which enriched the monopolist and robbed the community, and the exclusive right of Whitney to his cotton gin, which has added hundreds of millions to the products and exports of the country, be both branded, with equal justice, with the odious name of monopoly?
      - George H. Knight, 1891 :

A patent is a property right, it is not a monopoly.  For more information see  my post The Myth That Patents are Monopoly.

* * * * *

Dale Halling is an American patent attorney and entrepreneur, and the author of the book The Decline and Fall of the American Entrepreneur: How Little Known Laws are Killing Innovation.
Read his regular thoughts at his State of Innovation blog.

“The law of common bloody sense” is the winner!

Drum roll please. 

A nationwide Australian survey (well, they asked 1003 people) has discovered that the film character who most represents Australians and the way they see themselves is … wait for it … Darryl Kerrigan from The Castle.

Over one third of people (37 per cent) believe The Castle - the 1997 film about a working class Melbourne family's fight to save their home - best represents the real Australia, according to a nationwide survey released on Wednesday.
    Darryl Kerrigan, the movie's working class patriarch played by Michael Caton, was the favourite Aussie film character for 23 per cent of the 1003 people surveyed.
    Crocodile Dundee, played by Paul Hogan, won 21 per cent of the vote while Muriel (Toni Collette) from Muriel's Wedding came third with 17 per cent.

Result!

For those who’ve never met Darryl or his film, Darryl is the little Aussie battler who takes on all comers when his family’s home at 3 Highview Crescent, Cooloroo is “compulsorily acquired” by the government to give to some pirates in neckties.

It’s a film full of life, humour and property rights. And Dennis Denuto.

Buy a copy now. And make sure it goes straight to your pool room.

Honest, and a lawyer?

As legal aid lawyers in New Zealand are starting to be found out for their rorts—three down, eight-hundred to go—a story is just coming out of the States about a lawyer who sued a client for non-payment of fees — and ended up owing the client money. An amount in the six figures. [Hat tip Overlawyered]

Turned out the client he was suing was another lawyer, so he knew how lawyers’ bills get padded. Turned out that the bill included charges for working 31, 40, 39, and even 71 hour days.  And even in the working day of a hard-working lawyer, and I’m sure there must be some, there are only ever 24 hours.

Meanwhile, in response to the exposure of the first of Auckland’s lying sharks, the three of whom sucked around $2 million from the taxpayer in the last four years, the lawyers’ union has leapt into action. 

Its representative Jonathan Temm was on radio this morning calling for legal aid fees to increase.

Bloggers drinks tonight

All bloggers and their readers are invited to join us tonight at Galbraith’s in Mt Eden Rd for the regular first-Thursday-of-the-month Bloggers Drinks.  Join us for a drink, a chat, and a chance to make plans to fix the problems of the world—or at least to buy your favourite blogger(s) a drink.

Come one, come all—and discover whether or not bloggers talk as much nonsense good sense in person as they do online.

What: Auckland Bloggers Drinks
When: Tonight, 7 October from 6.30pm
Where: Galbraiths, 2 Mt Eden Road, Mt Eden, Auckland
Who for: Bloggers, blog readers, blog trolls.
What for: The talking of nonsense and telling of lies.

Matakana House – Organon Architecture

Here’s an interesting house just coming off the Organon drawing board.  A house for a quiet Matakana valley, overlooking a stream. Private. Open. Sunlit. A small spot of paradise, really.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: On voting …

Social movements usually follow the line of least resistance. While the direct production of economic goods is often very hard, taking possession of those goods produced by others is very easy.  This facility has greatly increased from the moment when deprivation became possible through the law… 
    To save, a man must have certain control over himself.  Tilling a field to produce grain is hard work.  Waiting in the corner of a wood to rob a passer-by is dangerous.  On the other hand, going to vote is much easier and if it means that all those who are unadaptable, incapable and idle will be able to obtain board and lodging by it, they will hurry to do so.
            - Vilfredo Pareto, Les Systèmes Socialistes

DOWN TO THE DOCTOR’S: Free speech, free whales, free wombs … and Paul Henry

Libertarianz leader Dr Richard McGrath ransacks the newspapers for stories and headlines on issues affecting our freedom.

This week: Free speech, free whales, free wombs … and Paul Henry

• (NZ HERALD) “Henry Apology Rejected” – TVNZ presenter Paul Henry apologises to the Queen’s representative for any offence caused to the latter by a question he asked John Key about the choice of the next Governor General. Race Commissar and eminent Marxist Joris de Bres says Paul Henry’s apology “should be aimed at all New Zealanders.”

My diagnosis: Not in my name Joris. If one takes the time to examine exactly what was said, Paul Henry did not suggest that the next Governor-General should look and sound like a New Zealander; he did not suggest that the current holder of that office did not look and sound like a New Zealander; he was merely asking John Key’s opinion on what could be one of many selection criteria.

Further, Joris de Brezhnev’s comments reflect a politically correct oversensitivity –- should Paul Henry really apologise to all New Zealanders: maybe a national tour in sackcloth and ashes to all corners of the country to make penance even to infants, toddlers, those with dementia, and others incapable of understanding what is essentially a non-issue? Of course not. Should he apologise to anyone at all? No. If you think you might be offended by something on television, for goodness sake turn it off and read a book instead. (And surely you could find something better to do at breakfast time than watch the box; something like, I don’t know, maybe talk to the family?)

If you are offended by something on state TV, then demand a refund on the taxes you are forced to pay to fund it. But no-one has a right to sail through life without being ‘offended’. Life would be so much duller, were that the case.

I find myself offended by Paul Henry’s apology. Perhaps I should stamp my foot and demand that he retract it and apologise afresh. 

• (DOMPOST) “Abortion Rally Outside Court” – Fifty people who support easier access to safe legal abortion on demand for NZ women protest outside the Court of Appeal in which the anti-abortion group that ironically calls itself Right to Life is battling the Abortion Supervisory Committee. 

My diagnosis: First, a small point – the Action for Abortion Rights protestors chanted “Hey Mister, keep your laws off my sister,” possibly unaware that there are at least two women judges sitting on the Court of Appeal.

Second, libertarians –- in stark distinction to conservatives -- support access to privately-provided abortion on demand for women. Abortion is a health service for which a free market would improve safety and quality. The service should be user-pays, so that Catholics, SPUCsters and others opposed to abortion are not forced to fund abortion clinics as they are under a state-run health system.

Third, the Abortion Supervisory Committee should be disbanded once an open competitive market in termination of pregnancies is up and running.

Action for Abortion Rights should know that the Libertarianz Party wholeheartedly supports the complete legalisation of abortion on demand in New Zealand, on the basis that a person has ownership over their body and all that’s in it (and, in fact, is their body). Those who oppose a woman’s right to control a blob of protoplasm in her uterus are advocating the subjugation of women, and of sex, in the same way that many religions do.

• (DOMPOST) “Flag-burning case could reshape freedom of expression” – Valerie Morse has taken an appeal against burning the New Zealand flag in 2007 all the way to the Supreme Court.

My diagnosis: Once again, as per the comments above on Paul Henry, no-one has the right to sail through life and never be offended. I personally would not have supported Valerie Morse’s immolation of the national flag on Anzac Day, but the issue should be: did her actions breach anyone else’s fundamental rights? Answer: no, unless they violated any implicit contract with the owners of the land on which she stood while doing so. In this case, it is reported that she was standing in the grounds of Victoria University’s law school. So, the question should be: what sayeth the university on this matter? If the Chancellor says she has the right to burn flags on law school property –- presumably harming no-one in the process, cleaning up afterward and leaving the area as she found it –- then she’s off scot free, with her fine refunded, court costs paid and compensation awarded. If, however, the Chancellor says she broke the rules by torching the Union Jack/Southern Cross, then she’s toast as far as I’m concerned.

• (SUNDAY STAR TIMES) “Why Beached Whales Should Be Left To Die” – Michael Laws argues that members of the Voluntary Whale Extinction Movement should be left to sun themselves on our beaches undisturbed.

My diagnosis: Initially, I tended to agree with Laws on this one. But then I thought the issue through.

In a sense, he’s right –- in a Darwinian sense these whales are big-time losers, repeatedly trying to traverse terra firma. They should learn not to run before they can walk. And not to walk before they grow legs.

But aren’t the whale-huggers doing just what capitalism encourages: merging their labour with unclaimed natural resources for profit? Perhaps the profit angle is missing at the moment, but if punters were willing to shell out Pacific pesos for an opportunity to help keep alive and refloat these kamikaze sea mammals, wouldn’t that warm the heart of every greenie? Those that died could be carved up, with the meat and bones sold off for meat and carvings. Those that didn’t could be tagged and kept around for whale tours. A win-win situation for all. Now, I just need to work out how to broadcast a recording of the pilot whale mating call from the nearest beach…

When the people fear the government, there is tyranny – when
the government fear the people, there is liberty.
- attributed to Thomas Jefferson

Name suppression: Protest works

Make no mistake, Simon Power-Lust’s decision to make it harder for those before the courts to get name suppression is a victory for  protest action.  We might now expect, even if justice is not done (these are the New Zealand courts we’re talking about), that at least we’ll know who it’s being done to.

Being famous or well-connected is not a reason to be granted name suppression, and let us hope the “weasel clauses” in the announced measures (when naming might “create extreme hardship”) don’t allow well-connected lawyers too many loopholes through which to slip their well-heeled clients.

Let us hope too that New Zealand’s media now act with the maturity we deserve—realising that those before the courts are innocent unless or until proven guilty, and are reported that way. Because, while justice in New Zealand has been made marginally more open, it still grinds exceedingly slowly—so, hope all we will, it’s still going to take months if not years for anyone before the courts to actually receive justice.

But did you notice the sting in Simon Power-Lust’s tail?  He didn’t want to do this, so he’s put some payback in the pot — breach name suppression now, and bloggers, newspapers, radio and TV will face six months jail!  And while newspapers, radio and TV will get access to a bureaucratically managed “national register” of names that must not be named to assist them in dispensing judicially-enforced silence, bloggers will instead have to scan court reports, comments and media stories to ensure they are not naming anyone that will see the doors of prison open before them.

If you think that’s not payback, you don’t know how politicians think.

“ Muscular” Tower for Downtown Los Angeles - Yang Wang and Stephen Silva

 

An interesting idea has produced a very interesting structure to help revitalise downtown L.A..

The idea is to have a “multi-zoned” tower that’s open all hours (just like all downtowns should be), and it’s been injected organically into a tower to produce a very promising looking structure.

Keep an eye on this.  It could be very interesting.

 

KRIS SAYCE: Overt and Covert Counterfeiting – A Lesson in Central Banking

Guest post by Kris Sayce

More dark and dastardly goings-on by the world’s central bankers.

And I’m not just referring to the corrupt money-printing taking place at the Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) money printing agency Securency.

You may have read the odd story or two about what Securency has been up to. Accusations have been made that it has bribed foreign officials in order to win contracts for its polymer bank note business – such as the plastic Australian notes you use each day.

Even RBA officials have been drawn into the fire with accusations that current RBA chief, Glenn Stevens, “helped lobby Indonesia’s central bank for a bank note printing contract”.

Mr. Stevens was deputy governor of the RBA at the time.

In today’s The Age, the paper runs with the headline, “RBA counterfeiting claim”. The paper says:

“The Reserve Bank of Australia’s currency firm, Securency, produced millions of partly made foreign banknotes without authorisation from overseas central banks, in a practice described by former staff as effective counterfeiting.”

We’ll make a point here. It’s not “effective counterfeiting”, it is counterfeiting.

Isn’t it a shame that the mainstream press still can’t make the connection between unauthorised printing of paper money and authorised printing of paper money.

Because if they put their ant-sized brains to the task they’d soon figure out that not only is unauthorised printing of paper money a counterfeit job, but even the authorised printing of money is fraudulent.

Furthermore, they’d figure out that a central bank doesn’t even need to print actual bank notes in order to counterfeit money. It can just add it to the bottom line with a click of a mouse.

And even better for the central bankers is that they can get the retail banks to do the dirty work for them, thanks to fractional reserve banking. That’s where banks entice people to deposit money and then then it lends out to other customers using the savers’ money as collateral.

It’s counterfeiting because even though the savers’ cash has supposedly been loaned out for to a borrower, the saver still has the ability to withdraw their deposit without any need for the borrower to repay the loan.

How’s that possible unless new money is created from thin air?

But given how Securency seems to operate its business, we’re surprised The Age didn’t print what it really thinks rather than skirting around the edges. To us it seems clear. Why else would a money printer print counterfeit foreign currency unless it planned to use that currency in it’s [ahem] business dealings…

In other words, backhanded payments, bribes or the new term that everyone likes to use, graft. It all means the same thing, political corruption.

I mean, after all, why bribe someone by exchanging Aussie dollars for the foreign currency when you can just print as much of the foreign currency as you like? It’s pretty easy when you control the printing presses…

But of course, counterfeiting currencies isn’t unique to Australia. The US Federal Reserve is all over it at the moment. Today’s Australian Financial Review reports that:

“One of the US Federal Reserve’s most influential officials has publicly thrown his weight behind another round of asset purchases, warning the current economic situation facing the US is ‘wholly unacceptable.’”

What is it that New York Fed president William Dudley – the successor to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner – finds so “wholly unacceptable”? He explains:

“I conclude further [monetary] action is likely to be warranted unless the economic outlook evolves in a way that makes me more confident that we will see better outcomes for both employment and inflation before too long.”

It won’t surprise you to learn that the better outcome for inflation is higher inflation.

In the world of central banking, inflation is good. You know that, we’ve told you a hundred times before that’s how the central bankers, retail bankers and the mainstream view inflation.

But Dudley isn’t the only one to complain about low inflation. Boston Fed president Eric Rosengren told The Forecasters Club of New York last week that:

“While it’s clear to everyone why a high unemployment rate is a problem, one of the reasons we worry about a too-low rate of inflation is that the closer to zero the inflation rate gets, the greater the risk it could fall into a harmful deflation.”

We won’t cover old ground by pointing out the fallacy about the fears of deflation. We’ve written about this several times over the past couple of years.

But the fact is, deflation is only bad if you’re hocked up to the eyeballs, or if you’re the one doing the lending.

And seeing as the Fed – and every other central bank – is supposed to be the lender of last resort, the last thing the Fed wants is for it to actually have to be the lender of last resort. Doing so would expose to the world that it doesn’t have the capital to meet that obligation.

Not without printing more money that is.

Hence why the Fed is so keen to induce inflation. That way the retail banks can counterfeit their way out of the debt bubble rather than facing the prospect of overtly going bankrupt.

The reverse side of this of course is that while it saves the bankers, it destroys everyone else – people are encouraged to keep spending 50% and 60% of their salaries to pay off a debt when they would have been better off defaulting.

And at the same time they don’t realise their wealth and wages are being eroded over time as inflation takes its dastardly toll. That means you have to work harder and longer in order to receive the same wage.

Yes friend, we’re sure a valid case can be made that it wasn’t the women’s lib movement that helped draw more women into the workforce, but rather it was the inflationary policies of central bankers that forced women to enter the workforce because families were finding it increasingly hard to live on just one income.

Who’d have thunk it? Men in pinstriped suits doing more for feminism than the Suffragettes! What d’ya think of that, sister?

Anyhoo, it’s worth noting a chart Mr. Rosengren used in his speech. It was this one:

The red line shows where the US Fed Funds rate would be if it wasn’t for what’s known as the zero bound.

The zero bound simply means that a central bank can’t have an official negative interest rate policy. Doing so would mean the bank would charge customers to deposit money.

Think about it this way. It would be the equivalent of Commonwealth Bank charging you, for instance, 5% per year for you to deposit your savings in an account with them.

Now, that’s not to say that it doesn’t cost you money to deposit money with a bank. Once you add on monthly fees we’re sure plenty of people do pay to store their money in a bank – we won’t get on to the subject of whether paying for storage is a good thing or not, that’s for another day.

But can you imagine seeing an ad from the CBA telling you it will only cost you 5% a year to deposit your cash? It would hardly have savers busting the doors down to give them their money.

That’s why the central bankers have to go about it in an underhanded and deceitful way.

What it ultimately means is that a negative interest rate is a tax on savers. It penalises savers for having money.
But it’s not a tax in that you’re only taxed on the income produced from the savings. A negative interest rate involves deducting from the principal. It means a saver depositing $100, but only getting $95 back a year later.

What this chart does is give away the game. It reveals to one and all what the Fed’s real policy position is.
The Fed knows it can’t overtly tax savers by giving them back less than they paid in. So that’s why the Fed – and other central banks – choose to go about it fraudulently, by not telling people what they’re really doing.
Because of this, as Mr. Rosengren notes:

“Constrained by the zero bound, the Federal Reserve utilized less conventional policies…”

He then showed another chart, showing the extent of the unconventional policies:

This chart shows how the Fed had to pump liquidity into the economy by buying up a whole bunch of worthless assets.

You can see how the chart jumps from somewhere around USD$50 billion in early October 2008 to over USD$1 trillion just a month or so later.

The reality is that it didn’t really matter what the Fed was buying. That was just the beard, the cover, the disguise. All the Fed really wanted to do was push more new money into the economy to make sure most banks didn’t fail and so that its inability to fulfil its promise of being the lender of last resort wasn’t exposed.

The upshot is that by pumping the extra liquidity into the market, the Fed has achieved its negative interest rate goal. If negative interest rates involve charging savers on deposited money, then devaluing savers’ money by increasing the money supply does exactly the same thing.

Mr. Rosengren from the Boston Fed confirms this with his chart. He confirms that it’s central bank policy to devalue the currency in order to save the bankers.

And they’re doing it in cruel, dishonest and underhanded way.

Which, when you look at how the RBA and Securency have behaved, appears to be pretty much par for the course when it comes to the world’s central bankers.


Cheers.
Kris Sayce
For Money Morning Australia

Why the 10:10 Video Is a Distraction

Guest Post by Jeff Perren

You’ll have seen, or heard, about the 10:10 ads, complete with exploding children, intended by British warmists to “persuade” you to conform.  No pressure.

I invite you to head to Pajamas Media and read my new article on Why the 10:10 Video Is a Distraction.

In it, I argue that the real enemy is much more dangerous, because much more benign looking.

Here's how it begins...

A British group called 10:10.org recently released (then quickly pulled) a viro snuff film. In the video, teachers press a red button to explode schoolchildren reluctant to accept the Green dogma of AGW (anthropogenic global warming) and other environmentalist fairy tales.
    There's no question that the film is revolting and its producers are vicious, no matter how much they try to claim it was intended as humor. Still, the pundits up in arms over it are making a tactical error.

Your comments are invited.

Read the rest here.

Thanks,
Jeff

Art Nouveau – Brussels edition

The city of Brussels is now the home of the world’s biggest bureaucracy, but around the turn of century it played host to something more life-enhancing—with architects Victor Horta, Paul Cauchie, and Henry Van de Velde it was a pioneer is launching the organic style of Art Nouveau on the world, a style using the new materials of steel and glass to begin to liberate architecture from the past, and make the machine age more natural.

Here’s a trip around just a few of the many thousand beautiful Art Nouveau buildings built in Brussels around that time and since.

And here’s a few more stunning examples in this trip around European Art Nouveau.

Henry V

Here’s a few questions for all you literate types getting all your pants in a bunch about Paul Henry’s latest stupidity. (This must surely be about number five, at least?) So …

… you know what he’s like. So if you don’t like him, why do you watch?

… haven’t you got something better to do over breakfast than watch a grinning fool present braindead news?

… on a scale of one to very-frigging-offensive, surely a professionally-produced ad laughing at exploding children programmed to be played on all channels far outstrips a morning blowhard’s thoughts on a retiring Governor General?  So how come you’re all so quiet about that?

Just a few questions whose answers I wonder about.

ECONOMICS FOR REAL PEOPLE: The Origins of Money

Tomorrow the Auckland Uni Econ Group talks about money…

The news today is full of concerns over the state of the world's economies; in fact these concerns have not subsided for the last three years. This has resulted in many central banks around the world having increased their printing of money, especially so in the United States which has printed hundreds of billions (if not trillions) of US currency.
But what theory is advanced for doing this?
Can printing bits of paper actually solve an economy's problems?
And what are the long-term consequences of such a policy?
To help answer these questions we need to examine the often misunderstood economic concepts of inflation and deflation.
In this week's seminar we set out to better understand these concepts. To do so we must first look at the origins of money and ask some more fundamental questions as to what money actually is. Did the market for money develop naturally or spontaneously or did it require a central authority to mandate its use?

Date: Tuesday 5th October
Time: 6:30pm
Room: University of Auckland Business School, Owen G Glenn Building, Room 317 (Level 3)

All welcome!

Look forward to seeing you,
Fraser, Julian & Peter

CUE CARD ECONOMICS: Opportunity Cost

There are plenty of contemporary economic concepts that make no sense—or, worse, serve only to obscure legitimate concepts. “Externalities” is one, an illegitimate concept that serves only to delegitimize a necessary one, in this case: property rights. (Other  equally illegitimate cousins of this anti-concept include “stakeholder theory”—the idea that that a business owes its community, rather then the other way around, and whether anyone in the community has contributed to the business’s success or not—and the phony “free-rider problem” are other related examples of equally shoddy package deals.)

“Opportunity cost” is equally nonsensical.

One of the most common notions in economics, “opportunity cost” is [in Larry Sechrest’s formulation]

the idea that the cost one must bear when making choices is appropriately measured by the value to the actor of what he or she gives up. If A and B are ranked first and second, respectively, on one’s value scale, then the cost of choosing A is said to be B, the next best alternative.

But once one observes that this is a ‘B’ one hasn’t even got, one realises that this is a cost that hasn’t, and won’t, be paid—and we end up treating what is not even a potential loss as a real one. Which leads to the realisation that “opportunity costs” are an exercise in unreality.

To see how foolish this anti-concept is, just imagine I’m evaluating my year’s share trading. In January, let’s imagine I considered plunging heavily on two hypothetical stocks, one of which rose to $20 and one of which rose to $30. If I had bought the first and remained uninformed about “opportunity costs,” I would be under the “illusion” I had made a profit. Yet if I had read the latest textbooks, I would be made “aware” that instead I’d made a dreadful loss, and rather than uncorking champagne I should instead contemplate throwing myself off the nearest tall building!

The absurdity is real. The”loss” is not. Neither is the concept of “opportunity cost.” Says Reisman, those who insist that the doctrine of opportunity cost is valid

confuse the alternative opportunities whose competition in bidding gives rise to the money costs with the phenomenon of cost itself, and thereafter ignore the necessity of a money outlay actually being present. In other words, they....confuse the cause with the effect.

And the potential with the actual.

So stop worrying about a non-existent cost, or “you can wind up needlessly worrying about money that you never made.”

A map for Paul Henry

I don’t know how often Paul Henry leaves New Zealand, but when he does there are atlases and stuff to help him find his way around.

Here, for instance, is a map of Europe he might find convenient. [Hat tip Geek Press]

The Case for Legalizing Capitalism

Guest Post by Jeff Perren

Someone called Kel Kelly, has written a book with the title of the post.

I haven't read it - and given the current length of my reading list it will be 10 years before I can even crack its cover - but I have to salute one of the best book titles I've ever seen.

From the review on Mises.org:

He considers every important topic: banking, education, taxation, labor, environment, trade, war and peace, safety, medicine, drugs, and far more. He presents the reader with a basic explanation of how capitalism is supposed to work and how society functions when commerce is free. He then turns to all the areas of life that are distorted and destroyed by the great "helping hand" of government.

Hmmm... maybe I'll bump this up my reading list.


P.S. Based on a single comment on the review, it sounds as if Mr. Kelly has the usual screwed up views about war and foreign policy. But, then, it is on Mises.org so that's what one would expect. Still, it sounds as if the book might be worthwhile otherwise, and you really can't beat that title.

A portrait of Dorian Gray as an environmentalist [update 7]

Just as people do, just as Dorian Gray’s portrait did, movements too sometime show their real face—they let it slip—and what they reveal sometimes looks nothing like you thought they would. Behind the mask is someone quite different.

Back in April, for example, Greenpeace took time off from cuddling dolphins and claiming polar bears are becoming extinct to berate their enemies on their website, saying “We need to hit them where it hurts most, by any means necessary: through the power of our votes, our taxes, our wallets, and more…”

The proper channels have failed. It’s time for mass civil disobedience to cut off the oxygen from denial and skepticism.
    If you’re one of those who believe that this is not just necessary but also possible, speak to us. Let’s talk about what that mass civil disobedience is going to look like.
    If you’re one of those who have spent their entire lives undermining progressive climate legislation, bankrolling junk science, fueling spurious debates around false solutions, and cattle-prodding democratically-elected governments into submission, then hear this:
     We know who you are. We know where you live. We know where you work.
    And we be many, but you be few.

The offending post was swiftly removed and quarantined, replaced with a bland acknowledgement that something had gone wrong, and soothing words about how easy it is to “misconstrue” this sort of thing—or perhaps even “take it out of context.” 

Yeah right.

Something had gone wrong, all right. For just one moment the mask had come off. That the piece had been written, published and promoted showed that no-one saw anything wrong with it at all—not until the phone calls and emails started coming in. This was how they felt.

Look, this really is how they feel. Remember this piece of fascist tripe they peddled a few years ago? A snotty kid warning his “enemies.” i.e., you and I.

Or this sick piece of inhuman gloating put out by the World Wildlife Fund.

Scratch so many environmentalists, and this really is how they feel.  This is what’s behind the mask. In their view, humans come a distant second to “a wild and healthy planet.” We are at best simply here to “provide stewardship for the environment”—to “sweep the rain forests and rake the beaches”—and if we’re not going to be obedient, we can go.

Fundamentally, according to so many environmentalists, “the extinction of the human species may not only be inevitable, but a good thing...”

That’s how they feel.

This week the mask slipped again.

A bunch of British environmentalists got behind the 10:10 climate campaign—an anti-industrial campaign sponsored by the UK Taxpayer, ActionAid, The Carbon Trust, and The Energy Saving Trust—to produce a celebrity video they thought was “extremely funny.” Written by New Zealander Richard Curtis (writer of Black Adder, Four Weddings & A Funeral, Notting Hill etc.) and starring every luvvie looking to advance their career, it shows precisely what’s going on behind the mask. It was lovingly put together, widely promoted, then sent out proudly onto the high seas of the world’s media to make its point.

It did. People saw it, and immediately understood: This is how these people really think. This is what’s behind the fury. No wonder everyone involved is now ducking for cover.

Watch it yourself, and see why.

Dorian Gray is getting old.

[Hat tip Jonathan V.]

UPDATE 1:  Turns out O2, Sony and Kyocera helped pay for this illustrative piece of man-hating, with The Guardian acting as a “media partner.” So if you want to express your disgust, those would be good places to start.

UPDATE 2:  Gareth Renowden at NZ’s warmist Hot Topic blog reckons 10:10’s sick misanthropy  is “on the button,” and that those who don’t laugh must have “a sense of humour failure.”  Yes, exploding children has always been funny.
Commenters have been deservedly telling him what a vile turd he’s revealed himself to be.

UPDATE 3: Updated the post with the WWF poster from a couple of years ago. Hat tip Whale Oil.

UPDATE 4: Richard Treadgold has posted contact addresses of the main sponsors, and an apology from o2—and anyone who supports Tottenham Hotspur might want to drop them a line.  And it turns out there are rather more 10:10 sponsors than first thought.

UPDATE 5: Cuddly old warmist Bill McKibben from 350.Org announces he is ‘Shocked! Shocked!’ that his friends at 10:10 could do such a thing. [Hat tip Watts Up With That]

The climate skeptics can crow.  It’s the kind of stupidity that hurts our side, reinforcing in people’s minds a series of preconceived notions, not the least of which is that we’re out-of-control and out of touch — not to mention off the wall, and also with completely misplaced sense of humor… There’s no question that crap like this will cast a shadow, for a time, over our efforts and everyone else who’s working on global warming.

Of course, McKibben certainly knows what crap looks like and how to keep it hidden, because he’s been keeping up his mask since his 1989 diatribe The End of Nature, in which he quoted approvingly this “benediction to alligators “by John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club.  "A good epigram" he called it:

Honorable representatives of the great saurians of older creation, may you long enjoy your lilies and rushes, and be blessed now and then with a mouthful of terror-stricken man by way of a dainty.

And in a glowing review of Bill’s diatribe, National Park Service biologist David Graber showed he “gets it” too.

We are not interested in the utility of a particular species, or free-flowing river, or ecosystem to mankind [said Davo]. They have intrinsic value, more value—to me—than another human body, or a billion of them.… It is cosmically unlikely that the developed world will choose to end its orgy of fossil-energy consumption, and the Third World its suicidal consumption of landscape. Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.

“McKibben is a biocentrist,” said Graber, “and so am I.”

If “wishing for the right virus to come along” is what it means to be a “biocentrist” – if wishing alligators “a mouthful of terror-stricken man” is what it means to “get it,” then what Bill and his comrades can go and get is to get fucked.

NB 1: More similar quotes from McKibben’s confreres here.

UPDATE 6: George Reisman comments on the Toxicity of Environmentalism here, which discusses McKibben while neatly putting this whole discussion into  context—making clear why none of these ads or statements are any accident.

Recently a popular imported mineral water was removed from the market because tests showed that samples of it contained thirty-five parts per billion of benzene. Although this was an amount so small that only fifteen years ago it would have been impossible even to detect, it was assumed that considerations of public health required withdrawal of the product.
    Such a case, of course, is not unusual nowadays. The presence of parts per billion of a toxic substance is routinely extrapolated into being regarded as a cause of human deaths. And whenever the number of projected deaths exceeds one in a million (or less), environmentalists demand that the government remove the offending pesticide, preservative, or other alleged bearer of toxic pollution from the market. They do so, even though a level of risk of one in a million is one-third as great as that of an airplane falling from the sky on one's home.
    While it is not necessary to question the good intentions and sincerity of the overwhelming majority of the members of the environmental or ecology movement, it is vital that the public realize that in this seemingly lofty and noble movement itself can be found more than a little evidence of the most profound toxicity. Consider, for example, the following quotation from David M. Graber, a research biologist with the National Park Service, in his prominently featured Los Angeles Times book review of Bill McKibben's The End of Nature:
    "This [man's "remaking the earth by degrees"] makes what is happening no less tragic for those of us who value wildness for its own sake, not for what value it confers upon mankind. I, for one, cannot wish upon either my children or the rest of Earth's biota a tame planet, be it monstrous or--however unlikely--benign. McKibben is a biocentrist, and so am I. We are not interested in the utility of a particular species or free-flowing river, or ecosystem, to mankind. They have intrinsic value, more value--to me--than another human body, or a billion of them.
    "Human happiness, and certainly human fecundity, are not as important as a wild and healthy planet. I know social scientists who remind me that people are part of nature, but it isn't true. Somewhere along the line--at about a billion years ago, maybe half that--we quit the contract and became a cancer. We have become a plague upon ourselves and upon the Earth.
    "It is cosmically unlikely that the developed world will choose to end its orgy of fossil-energy consumption, and the Third World its suicidal consumption of landscape. Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along."
    While Mr. Graber openly wishes for the death of a billion people, Mr. McKibben, the author he reviewed, quotes with approval John Muir's benediction to alligators, describing it as a "good epigram" for his own, "humble approach": "`Honorable representatives of the great saurians of older creation, may you long enjoy your lilies and rushes, and be blessed now and then with a mouthful of terror-stricken man by way of a dainty!'"
    Such statements represent pure, unadulterated poison. They express ideas and wishes which, if acted upon, would mean terror and death for enormous numbers of human beings.
    These statements, and others like them, are made by prominent members of the environmental movement. The significance of such statements cannot be diminished by ascribing them only to a small fringe of the environmental movement. Indeed, even if such views were indicative of the thinking only of 5 or 10 percent of the members of the environmental movement--the "deep ecology," Earth First! wing--they would represent toxicity in the environmental movement as a whole not at the level of parts per billion or even parts per million, but at the level of parts per hundred, which, of course, is an enormously higher level of toxicity than is deemed to constitute a danger to human life in virtually every other case in which deadly poison is present.
    But the toxicity level of the environmental movement as a whole is substantially greater even than parts per hundred…
    There is something much more important than [environmentalism’s toxicology], however--something which provides an explanation in terms of basic principle of why the mainstream of the ecology movement does not attack what might be thought to be merely its fringe

 Read on to discover that principle…

UPDATE 7: If that original run of 10:10 ads wasn’t “hard hitting enough” for you, or you want something ads more “on the button,” then don’t worry.  There are others.

These are the sort of people who might like to consider joining the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, before they do the rest of us further harm.

FRIDAY MORNING RAMBLE: The GST edition

Today everything  is more expensive.  Thank John Key.
In October 2008 John Key said “National’s not going to be raising GST.” Today they did. All through the election campaign they promised “significant personal tax cuts,” and in October 2008 they confirmed “the pledge to deliver about $50 a week to workers on the average wage remained on track.” Today instead of the promised fireworks, you got a damp squib, a tax hike and an increase in across-the-board welfare payments.  Cool, huh. Oh, and an extra seven cents a litre on petrol and diesel.
So much for responsible government.

Here’s some of what else is happening around the world.

• On the one hand they want to talk to Peter Jackson. But when Peter Jackson wants to talk to them they say no.  The actors unions reasons are unreason.
  MEAA refuses to allow Jackson to attend meeting  - KIWIBLOG
• Did I say actors unions? I should say, unions for self-interested actors.
  Actors back union out of self-interest – TVHE
• Clayton Cosgrove is beginning to argue that the amount the Earthquake Commission covers needs to be rethought. Given that the government’s rules on the Earthquake Commission require it to hold the bulk of its assets in NZ govt stock--hostage to every earthquake—and its time period for payouts is months rather than days—delaying whatever rebuilding home-owners would like to do—it’s probably a good thing the amount insured has been inflated to virtually nothing. But a serious rethink would surely question the need for this bureaucracy at all?
  Labour urges EQC rethink – RADIO NZ
• The UK’s leading scientific body has decided to rewrite its own definitive guide on climate change, now admitting that it is “not known” how much warmer the planet will become… “The Royal Society’s new guide… concedes that there are now major ‘uncertainties’ regarding the once sacred ‘scientific consensus’ behind man-made global warming theory, admitting that not only is it impossible to know for sure how the Earth’s climate will change in the future but it cannot possibly know what the effects may be. The 19-page guide states clearly, ’It is not possible to determine exactly how much the Earth will warm or exactly how the climate will change in the future..
  The decision to revise and tone down its alarmist position on climate change demonstrates a clear u-turn on its previous 2007 climate pamphlet, one which is said to have caused an internal rebellion by the 43 fellows of the Society, triggering a review and subsequent revision. The 2007 publication, which parroted the IPCC’s popular, but misleading impression that the ‘science is settled’ – making way for the new guide which accepts that important questions remain open and uncertainties unresolved. “The Royal Society now also agrees(with us) that the warming trend of the 1980s and 90s has come to a halt in the last 10 years,” said Dr Benny Peiser, the Director of Britain’s Global Warming Policy Foundation.
  Another Domino Falls: UK’s Leading Scientific Body Retreats on Climate Change – MARKET ORACLE
  UK Becomes a Denier Nation – FINANCIAL POST (CANADA)
• With virtually every country’s government pressing the inflation button, it really is now a race to the bottom. The currency wars are on.
  Deep Economic And Debt Frictions Triggering Competing Currency Wars – MARKET ORACLE
• “It's an all-out attack on the greenback and everyone else is winning!”
  Squishy Ball Test for Banks – DAILY RECKONING
• And what’s the flipside of rapidly depreciating their currencies?
  Central Bank Drives Up Commodities – MISES ECONOMICS BLOG
• When he was in office, Australian PM John Howard demonised refugees for votes. Now he’s in retirement, he’s talking a different and better tune.
  Howard junks multiculturalism. But belatedly – ANDREW BOLT 
• Stephen Fry has a new award he’s very proud of.  He is hated by the Daily Mail.
  Hated By The Daily Mail – STEPHEN FRY
• The Broadcasting Standards Authority have done us the service once again of telling us which swear words are more useful than others.  Delicate flowers should avoid the link. [Hat tip Eric Crampton]
  The acceptability of words on TV and radio – BSA
• Google Instant has an issue with some of them.  Well, most of them. Like the link above, “this link is NOT suitable for children, ministers, senators, or the mass media.”
  Google Blacklist - Words That Google Instant Doesn't Like -
• Meanwhile, despite their nice language “for the fourth straight year, the majority of Americans say they have little or no trust in the mass media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly.” What do you think a survey of NZers might show?
  Distrust In US Media Hits Record High – ZERO HEDGE
• Coming to New Zealand (well, maybe, eventually) crowdsourcing the price of marijuana from the most accurate source possible: the consumer.
  Price of Weed
• Told by Michelle Obama to eat their vegetables, Americans order fries instead.
  Eat Your Vegetables — If You Want To  - CATO
• Here’s a guide for every journalist on hw to write a science story.  Hilarious.
  This is a news website article about a scientific paper - GUARDIAN
• Dr Shaun Holt is a skeptic medical researcher whose hobby is applying the blowtorch of reason to the soft parts of medical charlatanry. Here he is getting flak for calling homeopathy “witchcraft.” And here’s the first part of his recent talk on complementary therapies for people with cancer.

• Great news! “Private industries make their first probes into the final frontier.”
  A Small Step for Private Space Flight – THE UNDERCURRENT
• P. J. O’Rourke is touring the US to talk about his new book, Don’t Vote: It Just Encourages the Bastards.  Who knows, maybe he’ll get down here again?
  P. J. O’Rourke on Tour - CATO

• And if you’re able to get to Sydney Monday week, October 11, you can catch up with Yaron Brook talking on "Capitalism without Guilt: the Moral Case for Freedom" at the City Tattersalls Club in Sydney. For more details, and to register for the talk, go to

  www.aynrand.eventbrite.com.
• Painted faeces?  Outrage isn’t what it used to be.
  The shocking failure of shock art to shock – ANDREW BOLT
• How to deal with a crackpot theory… or not.
  

• Here’s an enjoyable article on a father and son reading Atlas Shrugged this summer. And as Amit Ghate says, “the comments are so much more interesting and literate than anything over at CNN.”
  A Shrugged Summer – Bruce Bialosky, TOWN HALL
• Hey, great news!  If you missed last weekend’s AFL Grand Final, there’s a replay on this weekend.  True! This weekend St Kilda and Collingwood go head to head again to see if one of them can come out the winner after two hours of footy.  And once again non-Saints fans are saying “G’arn the Saints” in the hope they can squash the Pies, and avoid the unthinkable.
  FINALS PREVIEW: The winds of change – Leigh Matthews
  INTERNATIONAL BROADCAST GUIDE - AFL

That’s all for now.
Have a great weekend!
PC

So he’s a “truther” as well

First he denied the holocaust.  Then he said Israel should be wiped off the map. Then he told everyone that Iran has no desire to build a nuclear bomb—despite clearly pursuing the nuclear option.  Now he tells the assembled notaries at the United Nations that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated by they United States.

Is he mad?  Or does he just think we are?

Click the pic to see Allen Barton, Terry Jones and Alex Epstein discuss the nut at PJTV.