"In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of."~ Confucius, Analects
[Hat tip Tony Morley]
. . . promoting capitalist acts between consenting adults.
"In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of."~ Confucius, Analects
[Hat tip Tony Morley]
"Poetry and fiction should, in my view, remain completely exempt from State patronage – except for the recording function provided by the State Literary Fund. They are of value only when they are the work of independent artists. Put a novelist on the payroll, and sooner or later you turn him into a tomcat ... that comes to the kitchen door for its milk and in return begs prettily or catches mice." ['The Culture Industry,' 1956]
'Note on the State Literary Fund' [1947]
Here is a piece of wisdom
I learnt at my mother's knee:
The mushroom grows in the open,
The toadstool under the tree.
~ NZ poet A.R.D. Fairburn, opposing the Fraser Government's extension of the state into art funding
"If there is a philosophical Atlas who carries the whole of Western civilisation on his shoulders, it is Aristotle."~ Ayn Rand
"The philosophers he influenced set the stage for the technological revolution that remade our world."~ Chris Dixon, The Atlantic
[Hat tip Louis Le Marquand. Image from The Atlantic]
Once beliefs are unconstrained by the object world … the possibility for assuming a pretense of infallibility becomes almost irresistible, especially when the requisite power is available to support such beliefs. In fact, given its willy-nilly determination of truth and reality on the basis of [subjective] beliefs alone, philosophical and social idealism necessarily becomes dogmatic, authoritarian, anti-rational, and effectively religious.When coupled with the premium that Michel Foucault, Jean François Lyotard, and others place on power, when everything is a power struggle, as they maintain, then the lack of objective constraints, the lack of belief in “truth,” -- or in any criteria at all for the judgment of facts! -- opens us up to the arbitrary imposition of beliefs, i.e., to authoritarianism. When “my truth” becomes as good or better than any objective truth, or to any attempts to approach truth -- when “lived experience” trumps facts -- then, when one has the requisite power, one can impose one’s own "truth claims" with apparent impunity. There is nothing to push back against belief. When objective criteria are eliminated, there is no court of appeal—other than authority. The ideal of objectivity, always asymptotically approached, should be the court of appeal, but it is thrown out in advance by postmodernism.
Postmodernism is the academic far Left’s epistemological strategy for responding to the crisis caused by the failures of socialism in theory and in practice.
"Black Codes mean a lot of things. Anything that reduces potential, that pushes your taste down to an obvious, animal level. Anything that makes you think less significance is more enjoyable. Anything that keeps you on the surface.
"The way they depict women in rock videos -- Black Codes. People gobbling up junk food when they can afford something better -- Black Codes. The argument that illiteracy is valid in a technological world -- Black Codes. People who equate ignorance with soulfulness -- definitely Black Codes.
"The overall quality of every true artist's work is a rebellion against Black Codes. That's the line I want to be in ..."
... a rebellion against self-limitation. That's a line we should all be in.
Enjoy the tune.
"When philosophers or intellectuals claim that we cannot know reality because our sensory apparatuses distort the data before it reaches consciousness, they may sound profound or impressive. . .
"But, then, along comes Ayn Rand, who points out that such claims amount to the view that 'man is blind, because he has eyes—deaf, because he has ears—deluded, because he has a mind—and the things he perceives do not exist, because he perceives them.'
"As you might imagine, such straightforward clarifications, which abound in Rand’s works, can make skeptics feel as ignorant as they claim to be.
"So that’s another problem with Rand’s philosophy."~ Craig Biddle, from his article 'Here's What's Wrong With Ayn Rand's Philosophy'
"What is striking is that no matter what the economic failures, true socialists rarely give it up. Why not. Because it has a moral base.... 'The power of morality is the strongest of all intellectual powers…men will not act, in major issues, without a sense of being morally right.'*
"Morality trumps economic facts if there is a conflict. This is true even if one’s accepted code of morality is objectively wrong."~ Edwin Locke, from his post 'Let Us Be Clear: Socialism Is Not, at Root, About Economics!'
“The mature lifetime of the integral individual is a single act, spread over time by the condition of existence that a thing cannot present itself all at once. But in a profound sense, integrity hereby abolishes time by containing its past and its future in its present.”~ David L. Norton, Personal Destinies
The first step [explains Harry Binswanger] was to involve the government in 'public health'—a concept as invalid as 'public interest.'
Government's [legitimate] retaliatory force to quarantine a Typhoid Mary is not an action to promote 'public health' but to protect specific individuals against tortious contact with disease spreaders.
By analogy, the fact that the police would stop a vandal from smashing a statue is not something done to promote 'public aesthetics.'
After promoting 'public health' was accepted as a proper function for government [however], it followed that the government should take control of the whole country during a pandemic. Which is exactly what was done. No longer is the question: 'Should I take the risk of going to that store, restaurant, tennis court?' No longer would parents decide whether to risk sending the children to school. No longer would businesses decide on what terms they will deal with suppliers, employees, customers. Now all that is decided by government. [Without any due process.] Because it's a matter of 'public health,' you see....
Once the concept of enforced blanket lockdowns (without any due process) became accepted came the corollary that, if government is in total charge of 'public health,' then it must ipso facto also be in charge of vaccinations, both of their quality and their delivery...
Then the testing, treatment, and vaccine development had to be placed under the control of the government. And now, incredibly, the distribution of the products is to be done by government. And it must be doled out for free....
If government were in charge of distributing eggs, there would be lines for eggs.If eggs were to be given for free, there would be no lines. Because there would be no eggs.
Eggs are in fact produced and delivered for private gain—the profits of the egg producers, the profits of the distributors, the profits of the supermarkets, and the equivalent of profit for the egg buyers. The egg buyers prefer the eggs to the other things they could buy with the money to be spent on eggs. That is their gain from the trade.
Under this system, we witness what John Ridpath called "The Miracle of Breakfast." The supply of eggs is always matched to the demand for them. You never have to think about whether enough eggs (and bacon and bread and . . .) will be available for you to get some. Miraculously, there always is...
The only reason that the commentators are bewailing the "staggering difficulties" of getting everyone vaccinated is that they never dream of putting the vaccine on the free market....Things spring up overnight when there is big money to be made. How many homes bought Christmas trees last year? ... about 8% of the population ... in a couple of weeks....There's no practical problem with fast-delivery of the vaccine to eager buyers. There's only a political problem. Based on a moral problem: altruism.
Supplying, distributing, and inoculating the vaccine should be a for-profit, supply-and-demand-respecting private business operation. That would turbo-charge the whole process.
Adapting the line from 'Fields of Dreams': Charge for it, and they will come.
Below is my submission to the Parliamentary Select Committee on the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification (Urgent Interim Classification of Publications and Prevention of Online Harm) Amendment Bill. Tomorrow is the last day for submissions.----To whom it may concern,
I write in dismay about and in opposition to the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification (Urgent Interim Classification of Publications and Prevention of Online Harm) Amendment Bill, which if enacted is going to violate countless individuals’ right to freedom of expression and property rights. It is going to violate those rights by instituting privilege: the privilege of being able to force others not to say things that might possibly offend.
Many of us are offended by this assault on rights.
Authentic rights are not a Western idea, but an Enlightenment one; rights result from us reasoning about our nature, and may be arrived at and enjoyed by any human being who makes the mental effort to grasp and uphold them.
Why are rights so important? Because they are our only means to freedom. New Zealand’s national anthem proudly calls this country a “free land.” It won’t stay a free land for long if rights are forgotten about and replaced by privileges.
Let us turn to some basics about rights, because this submission is taking a principled stand.
What is an authentic right, as opposed to a privilege or a printing-press “right”? A right is a principle which defines and sanctions individual action in a social context. More specifically, a right is what the facts of reality determine reasoning minds need to function and flourish in a social context. The principle “right” is arrived at by making a proper identification of that need. Rights begin with, end with, and serve to protect the reasoning mind, our defining characteristic as an enlightened species.
What does a reasoning mind need to function and flourish in society? Is it not being offended? No! A reasoning mind can still function perfectly well even when it is offended. What a reasoning mind needs is freedom, which can only be achieved by the absence of coercion, the initiation of physical force. The existential requirement of any reasoning mind is the freedom to think, speak and act, limited only by the obligation not to infringe on another’s right to the same.
The proposed bill is itself an infringing act. Its purpose is to force people to stop speaking and acting in an offensive manner, according to some subjective standard. There is no such thing as a right not to be offended. Any such claim constitutes a privilege, not a right.
Property rights are perhaps the most important right missing in all this. Property rights implement the right to liberty, which in turn implements the right to live as a reasoning being, commonly called the right to life. In a free and just society, if you do not like what someone says on or with their legitimately acquired property, you are free to go about your way and avoid them and what they say. Conversely, if you want to say something on or with your own legitimately acquired property, no one has the right to stop you. Property rights enable people to live and let live by resolving conflicting claims to freedom of action in a compossible way. Upholding property rights does not lead to a utopia by any means, because people are free to do dumb things with or on their property, but it is nonetheless the best and most just system of rights-implementation there is.
It is down the path of upholding property rights that legitimate governments must go for authentic rights to be upheld. Enacting laws that aim to protect people’s feelings at the price of doing away with authentic rights is to travel down a civilisation off-ramp and onto a motorway of injustice against a large “WRONG WAY” sign.
If people abuse the freedoms given them by rights, for example by saying things that are irrational (including being unwarrantedly offensive), the disgruntled or disaffected may then exercise their right to freely boycott, protest, condemn, mock, retort, and/or take any other action within their rights to affect change. That is how a society remains free while progressing towards better outcomes. Without property rights as the arbiter of what can or cannot be said with or on one’s own property (such as on a website), a chaos of clashing claims ensues, whereby a culture of political pull and ultimately corruption becomes the arbiter. The latter is the direction this bill will take us if passed into law as presently worded.
I urge you to speak out against this misguided bill, both for the sake of our future as a free nation, and to honour all who have died to keep this country a free nation.
I have only one suggestion if this bill must pass, and that is to insert a provision to make it subject to the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990, and specifically sections 13 and 14, which should override it.
Terry Verhoeven
THINK HIGH RENTS ARE BAD for your city? Then wait until you see what happens under rent control. Since we're all of a sudden debating rent control as if it's a (possible) thing, it's worth reminding ourselves of Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck's observation that "in many cases rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city—except for bombing." Literally, as David Henderson reminds us in this short guest post ...
Rent Control Did to Vietnam What US Bombers Couldn't
by David R. Henderson
[Gunnar] Myrdal stated, "Rent control has in certain Western countries constituted, maybe, the worst example of poor planning by governments lacking courage and vision."
His fellow Swedish economist (and socialist) Assar Lindbeck asserted,In many cases rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city—except for bombing.Unfortunately, Lindbeck was wrong. Rent control is the most efficient. Case in point, South-East Asia, where rent control did to Vietnam what millions of tons of US explosives couldn't:NEW DELHI—A “romantic conception of socialism” … destroyed Vietnam’s economy in the years after the Vietnam war, Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach said Friday.
Addressing a crowded news conference in the Indian capital, Mr. Thach admitted that controls … had artificially encouraged demand and discouraged supply…. House rents had … been kept low … so all the houses in Hanoi had fallen into disrepair, said Mr. Thach.
“The Americans couldn’t destroy Hanoi, but we have destroyed our city by very low rents. We realised it was stupid and that we must change policy,” he said.—From a news report in the Journal of Commerce, quoted in Dan Seligman, “Keeping Up,” Fortune, February 27, 1989.
"The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas. Not, indeed, immediately, but after a certain interval; for in the field of economic and political philosophy there are not many who are influenced by new theories after they are twenty-five or thirty years of age, so that the ideas which civil servants and politicians and even agitators apply to current events are not likely to be the newest. But, soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.”
~ John Maynard Keynes, from the 'Concluding Notes' to his General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money
"Benevolence [alone] is inadequate for the task of building cooperation in a large society, because we are irredeemably biased in our benevolence to relatives and close friends; a society built on benevolence would be riddled with nepotism. Between strangers, the invisible hand of the market, distributing selfish ambitions, is fair."
~ Adam Smith, from his Theory of Moral Sentiments (as summarised by Matt Ridley)
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"There is no such thing as 'price gouging.' There is only price discovery. 'Price gouging' is what people call it when they don't like the price that's been discovered."~ John Bejanaro.
I'm posting this video today of this landmark debate to mark the passing of John Ridpath, the professor of intellectual history who largely dominates it. [Bookamark it and come back to it again when you have time.] I know many New Zealanders have seen it, and enjoyed it -- and been persuaded by it to rethink many of their views -- so will join with me in mourning the passing of this articulate, passionate man with a deep well of well-integrated knowledge he was always eager (and very able) to share.
His lectures on his field of intellectual history were mind-expanding. I was lucky enough to enjoy one in person, to see his intellect up close: a series in London on "how Say's Law integrates all of economics" literally tied up the whole field of study with one bow -- and then integrated it with all of human endeavour. It was astounding.
Tie that to what became a near-annual tribute at Objectivist conferences to the founding of America -- the first nation of the Enlightenment -- at which he unfailingly came to tears when telling of the final victory at Yorktown, and you may understand how his broad intellect fired his passions: and that he understood that freedom, and its birth, to be so selfishly important. That he was Canadian, and not American, indicates simply that he knew it also to be universally important.
The Ayn Rand Institute has posted this brief tribute:
Dr. Ridpath was an emeritus associate professor of economics and intellectual history at York University in Toronto, Canada, and featured Rand’s ideas in his courses at the university. During his long career, he received numerous teaching awards and was much sought after throughout Europe and North America as an engaging and charismatic public speaker.
Dr. Ridpath was outspoken in defense of reason, individualism and capitalism. His writing appeared in, among others, The Objectivist Forum, The Intellectual Activist and The American Journal of Economics and Sociology; he also contributed chapters to Essays on Ayn Rand’s “We the Living” and Why Businessmen Need Philosophy.
In a powerful 1984 debate, “Capitalism vs. Socialism: Which Is the Moral System?,” Dr. Ridpath joined Dr. Leonard Peikoff to present the moral case for capitalism against two democratic socialists, Gerald Caplan and Jill Vickers. With the permission of the copyright holder, ARI will soon publish the video of that enlightening must-watch debate.
A topic of special interest to Dr. Ridpath was the impact of philosophic ideas on Western history, particularly America’s Founding era. His course on the philosophic origins of Marxism is available on the Ayn Rand University mobile app and on the ARI Campus website. Additional talks by Dr. Ridpath can be found here.The Institute plans to discuss in more depth the contributions Dr. Ridpath has made to the advancement of Ayn Rand’s ideas and the Objectivist movement.
"Much confusion comes from judging economic policies by the goals they proclaim rather than the incentives they create."~ Thomas Sowell, from his Basic Economics.
I came out of the Soviet Union no longer a communist, because I believed in personal freedom. Like all Americans, I took for granted the individual liberty to which I had been born. It seemed as necessary and as inevitable as the air I breathed; it seemed the natural element in which human beings lived. The thought that I might lose it had never remotely occurred to me.This essay set the tone for her influential 1943 book, The Discovery of Freedom, where she persuasively promotes individual liberty, limited government, and free markets. She explains how American freedom unleashes the full capacity of the human mind to discover and invent, thus leading to unprecedented progress and prosperity for all. Lane writes:
Human energy works to supply human needs and satisfy human desires, only when, and where, and precisely to the extent that men know they are free. It works effectively only to the extent that Government is weak, so that individuals are least prevented from acting freely, from using their energy of body and mind under their own individual control. All history shows this fact. Every detail of common experience today proves it. The electric light proves it; the car in the garage proves it. How did Edison create the electric light? How did Americans create the millions of American cars? They used free thought, free speech, free action and free-hold property. The unhindered use of natural human rights creates this whole modern world. Nothing else makes it possible for men to create new things, and improve them and keep on improving them.
it was assumed by superficial minds, such as Marx, that capitalism tended to concentration of wealth and a ‘class’ division of interests. But the ‘interest’ of capitalism is distribution. All the inventions of man have individualism as their end, because they spring from the individual function of intelligence, which is the creative and productive source. Freedom being the natural condition of man, inventions making for greater mobility resolve into individual means of transport. So far as co-operative action is useful toward the development of the individual, capitalism is fully able to carry out by voluntary association vast and complex operations of which collectivism is utterly incapable, and which are self-liquidating at the limit of their usefulness, if they are allowed to complete the process. No collectivist society can even permit co-operation; it relies upon compulsion; hence it remains static.Rose Wilder Lane, who was friendly with former president Herbert Hoover, wrote to him in praise of Paterson’s book: “I try to restrain my enthusiasm, but it seems to me a book ranking with the best of Paine and Madison,” she said. Ayn Rand, the third of the “Libertarians of ‘43” also celebrated Paterson’s book. Rand wrote: "The God of the Machine is a document that could literally save the world ... The God of the Machine does for capitalism what Das Kapital does for the Reds and what the Bible did for Christianity.” Paterson, in turn, eagerly endorsed Rand’s 1943 novel, The Fountainhead, in her literary column.
Men have been taught that the highest virtue is not to achieve, but to give. Yet one cannot give that which has not been created. Creation comes before distribution—or there will be nothing to distribute. The need of the creator comes before the need of any possible beneficiary. Yet we are taught to admire the second-hander who dispenses gifts he has not produced above the man who made the gifts possible. We praise an act of charity. We shrug at an act of achievement.Rand became known as a “radical for capitalism,” explaining that capitalism is the only political and economic system that recognizes and respects individual rights. In her 1966 book, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, Rand writes:
Capitalism was the only system in history where wealth was not acquired by looting, but by production, not by force, but by trade, the only system that stood for man's right to his own mind, to his work, to his life, to his happiness, to himself.
"When you tell me something patently untrue -- that I'm a racist, say -- my response is not going to be to examine my heart or change my conduct. It will be to simply file you under 'people to ignore' for the future."
~ Iona Italia
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"The Market is the mass of voluntary exchanges that people choose to carry out. The State is an organisation claiming the monopoly on violence. Thus, to say the market must be regulated [by the State] is to say violence must be imposed upon people's voluntarily exchanges. Neither more nor less."
"As Adam Smith noted more than two centuries ago, a nation can gain from trade whenever a good can be acquired from foreigners more cheaply than it can be produced domestically. When foreign governments subsidise their exports to us, they are subsidising [New Zealand] consumers. Of course, the subsidies are costly to the taxpayers funding them. With time, they are likely to tire from the burden and bring the subsidies to a halt. If foreigners are subsidising their producers, some argue we should do the same. This makes no sense. Merely because foreigners are wasting their resources propping up inefficient suppliers is no reason for us to engage in the same folly. As with other trade restrictions, export subsidies will channel more of our resources toward production of things we do poorly and away from things we do well. A smaller output and lower level of income will result. Put simply, neither individuals nor nations can expect to get ahead by spending more time producing things they do poorly."~ from “12 Myths of International Trade,” a June 2000 Staff Report of the US Joint Economic Committee. This paragraph probably written by Jim Gwartney
"It is the maxim of every prudent master of a family, never to attempt to make at home what it will cost him more to make than to buy. The tailor does not attempt to make his own shoes, but buys them of the shoemaker. The shoemaker does not attempt to make his own clothes, but employs a tailor. The farmer attempts to make neither the one nor the other, but employs those different artificers.
"What is prudence in the conduct of every private family can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom. If a foreign country can supply us with a commodity cheaper than we ourselves can make it, better to buy it of them with some part of the produce of our own industry, employed in a way in which we have some advantage."~ Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations
“Hence it is not enough to establish the technological feasibility of a production plan; it is also necessary to determine its economic cost – that is, the value of opportunities forgone by this plan. The complexity of deliberately tracing out such cost implications of each plan necessitates that this be done unconsciously by relying on the information supplied by a price system.”~ Don Lavoie, Rivalry and Central Planning, Cambridge University Press, 1985, p. 148
"The solution is simple. Don't tinker with the procedures for acquiring a resource consent. Don't tinker with the Environment Court. Don't recraft the RMA. Don't streamline it; don't fix it or reform it. Instead, drive a stake through its heart. The RMA review team must reinstate the common law protection of property and environment - and then get out of our way." [Here's the larger piece from which that smaller one came.]Sadly, nothing has changed since then -- and nor will it this time, except perhaps for a change of form (three Acts instead of one), and a change of name. But the principles that always made it suck will still stay the same ...
"Every revolution was first a thought in one man's mind, and when the same thought occurs to another man, it is the key to that era. Every reform was once a private opinion...".
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, from his essay 'History'
Smith revolutionised our understanding of commerce. He explained how trade enriches our lives and his works laid the foundations of a whole new field of study: economics.
Today though, Adam Smith’s legacy is under threat from those that would rewrite history.
Smith’s grave and statue have been linked to “slavery and colonialism,” according to Edinburgh City Council.
The grave and statue are being reviewed by the SNP-Labour Coalition Council’s Slavery and Colonialism Legacy Review Group. Their claim rests upon a quote by Adam Smith that said “slavery was ubiquitous and inevitable but that it was not as profitable as free labour“.
This is an extraordinary mischaracterisation.
Smith not only argued that slavery was morally reprehensible, but also provided intellectual ammunition to the abolitionist movement. The link Adam Smith has to slavery was as one of the authors of that vile practice’s destruction.
Smith, writing in the 18th century, thought slavery would continue. He could not have foreseen humanity’s subsequent liberal turn.
But it is abundantly clear that Smith thought slavery was grotesque. Smith wrote, in no uncertain terms, that slave owners’ “brutality, and baseness, so justly expose them to the contempt of the vanquished.”
Smith also argued that slaves are inefficient workers, because they cannot keep the fruits of their labour. His arguments against slavery were used by abolitionists.
Smith was on the side of the angels, holding humanist views well ahead of his time.
"Why do they act this way?
"My pop psychologist view has always been the same.
"As a general proposition the Press Gallery personnel are reasonably bright people. Conversely, many politicians ain't too smart.
"By the time the journos reach say their late thirties, they’ve woken to the fact that what seemed a glamorous career back in their teens, is anything but. Poorly paid they find themselves mere reporters of other lesser mortals who are now prominent decision makers.
"The result is envy and thus the blood-lust to pull down the politicians they’d created a mythology of wonderfulness about....
"The criticisms now being levelled at the government and the Prime Minister in particular, could have and should have been made months ago.
"History shows once the media posture turns, eventually the public follows."~ Bob Jones, from his post 'The pack-hunting political media'.
From the Irish Times:
Having a monarchy next door is a little like having a neighbour who’s really into clowns and has daubed their house with clown murals, displays clown dolls in each window and has an insatiable desire to hear about and discuss clown-related news stories. More specifically, for the Irish, it’s like having a neighbour who’s really into clowns and, also, your grandfather was murdered by a clown.Thank the gods that all we've got to put up with next door is a bunch of boastful gobshites.
Beyond this, it’s the stuff of children’s stories. Having a queen as head of state is like having a pirate or a mermaid or Ewok as head of state. What’s the logic? Bees have queens, but the queen bee lays all of the eggs in the hive. The queen of the Britons has laid just four British eggs, and one of those is the sweatless creep Prince Andrew, so it’s hardly deserving of applause.
[Hat tip Ewen H.]
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