'How to Lose $35 Billion with Philosophy'

"What are the odds that the clueless young bro who created the
biggest financial fiasco of the year is connected to the clueless
young bro who created the biggest financial fiasco of the decade?"

"In the last few days, you may have heard about Leopold Aschenbrenner—the wonder kid hedge fund manager who lost tens of billions over the course of a few days. It’s the biggest financial fiasco of the year.

"If you didn’t read about it in the news, don’t worry. Hollywood will certainly make it into a movie. This 25-year-old hot shot’s financial empire was literally collapsing while guests were showing up for his blowout wedding at a fake Tuscan villa in Carmel, California. The screenplay practically writes itself....

"This tyro’s investing strategy looks more like gambling addiction than high finance. Aschenbrenner borrowed to the hilt, using four time leverage to buy AI stocks by the truckload. Then he added to his risk by shorting companies he was sure AI would replace. In other words, instead of hedging his AI position—which is standard practice (and why they call them hedge funds), he doubled down, setting himself up for a failure of Biblical proportions.

"When you take chances like this, even a small downturn in AI stocks will wipe out your entire capital. That’s pretty much what happened last week.

"I wanted to learn more about the young man behind this collapse—so I went to his Wikipedia page. There I discovered his connection to fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried and the latter’s Effective Altruism philosophy.

"What are the odds that the clueless young bro who created the biggest financial fiasco of the year is connected to the clueless young bro who created the biggest financial fiasco of the decade?

"But there it is.

And—another coincidence!—the woman who assisted Bankman-Fried, and served 14 months in prison for fraud and money laundering, also helped run her college’s Effective Altruism club.

This is getting to be a trend.

"But, of course, none of this is coincidence...."

~ Ted Gioia from his post 'How to Lose $35 Billion with Philosophy'

"If Effective Altruism was a movement that simply called on charities to more rigorously measure their impact, they would be an unequivocal force for good in the world. But that is not all that it argues for. Effective Altruism is a crusading movement that argues you have a moral obligation to 'do the most good' in the world, and it defines 'the most good' in strictly utilitarian terms.

"'The most good' means promoting humanity’s well-being. Morally, you are to be indifferent between your own life and the lives of others. Since those others vastly outnumber you, this means in practice a demand for radical self-sacrifice.

"No, Effective Altruists don’t take this to its ultimate, consistent conclusion. You don’t have to literally turn yourself into a meal for others to feast on. But the closer you can strive to lower your own standard of living in order to raise the standard of living of those worse off than you, the better. (See “Peter Singer is Truly Awful.”)

"And it’s not just your wealth that you’re supposed to sacrifice. You’re supposed to sacrifice the irreplaceable moments of your life: instead of choosing a career that you love, Effective Altruists urge you to choose a career that will maximize your earnings so you’ll have more wealth to give away. You’re even supposed to give away your internal organs to strangers. (See “How Many Kidneys Does Sam Harris Have?”)

"In short, the basic moral premise Effective Altruists crusades for is that you don’t have a right to exist for the sake of your own happiness—you exist as a tool to serve others.

"But that raises a troubling question: why bother saving lives in the first place? So that there are more servants to serve servants to serve servants? If more people exist, but exist in the soul-crushing state of living death Rand describes in [her early novel] 'We the Living,' is that really a victory? If the happiness of a single individual is not sacrosanct, if we are all to throw away our lives to maximise some 'general good' that is good for no one in particular, then what the hell is the point?

"Effective Altruists may be reducing deaths—but they are enemies of life. And, actually, it’s not even clear they are reducing deaths...."

~ Don Watkins from his 2023 post 'Has Effective Altruism done anything good for the world?' [emphases in the original]

Crypto scammer Sam Bankman-Fried in his proper place

"Sam Bankman-Fried [CEO of the fraudulent FTX cryptocurrency exchange], was a leading advocate for and financial sponsor of the 'effective altruist' movement. ...

"Whatever the role of Bankman-Fried’s philosophy in FTX’s collapse, effective altruism is increasingly influential and warrants scrutiny. In essence, effective altruism stresses the importance of using a [long-term] rational, scientific approach to calculate the most efficient way to help the most people, especially through charitable giving, as opposed to giving your money away for sentimental reasons. It attracts an audience of highly intelligent, scientifically oriented, secular people.

"But the more we learn about the causes the effective altruist leadership has embraced, the more we should question the moral foundation of the movement. As we’ll see, this is something that even the movement’s fiercest critics have been unwilling to do. ...

"[Some] critics of longtermist altruism claim that its obsession with sci-fi hypotheticals is inexcusable when there are real people suffering and dying in our world today. ... Still others claim the problem isn’t amoralism, but excessive idealism ... None of these critics seriously consider the intellectual content of the ideal of altruism itself ... [especially] longtermism’s call for all of us to sacrifice to the distant future. ...

"Remember, 'the future is big.' If altruism is to be understood in the popular utilitarian way, by looking to consequences of one’s actions for the largest number of people, why wouldn’t one look to the very long-term future where most of the other people will be? ... [after all] a utilitarian concerned with the impersonal consequences of our actions should regard distance in time as no more morally significant than distance in space.

"Although they’re criticised for reaching absurd conclusions, longtermists like MacAskill and Bankman-Fried are just following the logic of the path that’s been laid down by eminent moral philosophers. To simplify that path: morality is really about caring more about others than about yourself, since there are so many more others than you who need your equal attention. And the best way to be concerned with the most others who are far away from your rather insignificant, fragmented self is to concern yourself with the vast future beyond your interests.

"If longtermism is absurd, but the longtermists are just following the logic of the altruist moral ideal, we should take seriously that this ideal is the real source of longtermist absurdities. ...

"In the wake of the FTX scandal, [Bankman-Fried's teacher] William MacAskill himself weighed in on Twitter to condemn Bankman-Fried, arguing that serious effective altruists do not use naked 'end justifies the means' reasoning, and instead value integrity and honesty. Yet, as one philosopher responding to MacAskill noted, utilitarians who see some utility in “common sense morality” can be reliably counted on to say we can suspend it when there are big enough stakes.

"Any philosophy is subject to cynical use and manipulation by insincere advocates. But a philosophy that gives a pass to anyone who is not acting for his own sake but only for the sake of others is uniquely subject to abuse. A philosophy that says give up what you love and work for others is a tool in the hands of anyone who is willing to speak on behalf of others to gain power over those willing to give up what they love. It’s an especially dangerous tool when those who gain the power convince themselves that it is noble to use it, not for their own sake, but for the sake of a nameless, faceless future [for which they claim to speak].

"How, indeed, would one apply such a philosophy without abusing the lives of the people who practice it? Ayn Rand put her finger on the essence of the altruist morality long before advocates of altruism began to make their meaning as explicit as the effective altruists now have. In her novel 'Atlas Shrugged,' she puts these words in the mouth of one character whose workplace has adopted a similar philosophy: 'Do you care to imagine what it would be like, if you had to live and to work, when you’re tied to all the disasters and all the malingering of the globe? . . . To work — on a blank check held by every creature born, by men whom you’ll never see, whose needs you’ll never know, whose ability or laziness or sloppiness or fraud you have no way to learn and no right to question — just to work and work and work — and leave it up to the [altruists] of the world to decide whose stomach will consume the effort, the dreams and the days of your life. And this is the moral law to accept? This — a moral ideal?'"

~ Ben Bayer in his 2023 explanatory post 'Effective Altruism’s Faith-Based Sacrifice for the Future'

"It stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there's someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master."

~ Ayn Rand from her chapter '"The Soul of a Collectivist,' in her 1963 book For the New Intellectual

Universities do not exist to engage in social justice activism."

"Universities do not exist to promote 'marginalised voices.'

They do not exist to promulgate social engineering experiments.

"They do not exist to engage in social justice activism.

"A university exists to expand the boundaries of human knowledge, to defend truth, and to create an ecosystem for intellectual enrichment. Once a university optimises the wrong variables, we end up with the parasitised minds that we now see populating academia, business, politics, journalism, culture, etc.

"The West in general and the US in particular were founded on a set of key ideals that are unique to human history. Do not presume that these ideals are the default reality. There is always a tsunami of miscreants who are working day and night to end our liberties and freedoms, and destroy these ideals. Be vigilant. Fight for our civilisation. Activate your inner honey badger."

~ Gad Saad

"One wonders whether the point of the Harmful Digital Communications Act, in the view of some MPs, is to silence critics.”

“New Zealand MPs are so keen to be seen to be 'doing something' about cyber-bullying that they are about to pass a poor piece of law that will do something terrible. If the  Harmful Digital Communications Bill passes, MPs who feel sad because of a media story can have the publisher jailed.” 

~ composite quote from 2015 from No Right Turn and Tim Watkin 

“[Given] that defamation would [otherwise] have applied. One wonders whether the point of the [Harmful Digitical Communications] Bill, in the view of some MPs, was to silence critics.”

~ Eric Crampton from his 2015 post 'Harmful Digital Communications and chilling effects'

More on those envy taxes

"Those who claim our tax system is unfair and fosters inequality typically quote Scandinavian countries as operating superior tax systems. The interesting thing is the top 10% of taxpayers in New Zealand pay a bigger share of the tax burden than their equivalents in the Nordic countries, at over 45%. Our northern counterparts have their top 10% shouldering less than 40% - even as low as 35% - of all income taxes paid.

"The same shrill calls for a heavier tax burden on the wealthy rarely want to look at the “net” position of taxpayers. We know that the top 10% of taxpayers are contributing as much as 75% of the tax burden after transfers for Government outgoings are netted off.

"Of that 10%, the top couple of percent are [already] carrying an enormous load. ...

"The level is already in the danger zone when relocation is factored in. It is very easy for the wealthy to move out, taking their innovative, entrepreneurial, employment-creating skills, leaving the rest of us to pick up more of the tab.

"Here's something for promoters of a capital gains tax to consider. The CGT tax collected in Australia in the last couple of years has fluctuated wildly, with as much as 70% swings. Meanwhile the cost of raising a dollar of CGT in the poor years has exceeded 75% or $0.75 cents for every $1.00 raised. Avoidance levels are running over 30% against a pure model, with significant distortions emerging having a negative effect on investment decisions.

"Taxing capital may make the envious feel better, but it doesn't do much for the country."

~ Owen Jenning from his post 'Tax is a means to an end, not an end in itself'

'It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.'

"Adam Smith’s most famous sentence remains one of the clearest statements in all of social science: 

"'It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.'

 "The point is simple and profound. We do not rely on the kindness of strangers to put food on the table. We rely on their self-interest. 

"The butcher supplies meat because he profits by doing so. 

"The baker rises early because customers will pay for bread. 

"Their desire to improve their own condition leads them, without any central direction, to serve ours. This is the central mechanism of a market economy. Self-interest, channelled through voluntary exchange, produces cooperation on a vast scale. No one has to love their customers or share their political views. They only have to respond to incentives. The result is a system that regularly feeds, clothes, and houses millions of people who will never meet. 

"Many ... still struggle to accept this. ... Yet the historical record is clear: societies that suppress self-interest in the name of [allegedly] higher motives tend to produce shortages, stagnation, and coercion. [Whereas s]ocieties that allow people to benefit from serving others tend to produce abundance. ...

"That simple alignment of interests remains the most powerful engine of social cooperation ever discovered."

~ Creative Deduction

Who actually carries NZ’s tax burden?

 

"[W]ho actually carries their share of New Zealand’s tax burden. [Let's see] how unfair and disproportionate New Zealand’s tax system is on higher earners.

"The top 20 percent [of income earners] pay nearly two-thirds of all personal income tax.
The top 10 percent pay more than the bottom 80 percent combined.
And the top 1 percent contribute more [tax] than the entire bottom half of [income earners].

"Taxpayers’ Union spokesperson Tory Relf said: 'Politicians like Chlöe Swarbrick push a myth that successful New Zealanders are not paying their fair share [sic]. The evidence tells the opposite story. The truth is that wealth taxes, capital gains taxes, inheritance taxes, and higher income tax rates are harder to justify if politicians were truthful about how the tax system works right now.' ”

~ Taxpayers' 'Union' [sic] from their post 'Tax Inequality: Who Really Pays Their Fair Share?'

"With this information in hand, you might ask the next person who says the rich do not pay their fair share of taxes: Exactly what percentage of total federal income taxes should the 1-percenters pay? I seriously doubt whether you will get any kind of coherent answer. 

    "By the way, since 1-percenter income [in NZ starts at around $225,000], it might be pointed out that [$225,000 or even $450,000] a year is not even yacht or Learjet money. Plus, if one has two [children at university], a big mortgage and car payments, I doubt he would declare himself rich."

~ Walter Williams from his column 'What Is The Fair Share Of Taxes?'

“Since this is an era when many people are concerned about 'fairness' and 'social justice,' what is your 'fair share' of what someone else has worked for?”

~ Thomas Sowell

"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys."

~ PJ O'Rourke

Q: Is there a recipe for success?

"Q: Sixty million American readers here fascinated by one thing—success. That is the aim of every American. Is there a recipe for it?

"A: ... I think it is a mixture of having a flair for the thing that you are doing; knowing that it is not enough, that you have got to have hard work and a certain sense of purpose.... 
    "[N]atural feelings are never enough. You have got to marry those natural feelings and tendencies—to marry them with really hard work—but the hard work comes more easily when you are doing things that you want to do ... You must be fundamentally attracted towards it."

~ Margaret Thatcher in a 1986 interview with Parade magazine

"The 'AGI-is-near' community keeps committing the same logical fallacy over and over. Every time there’s an advance, I see the same error."

"Astra, a new model that OpenAI is testing internally, is amazing. No denying that:

"But at the same time, a whole raft of people, some fairly prominent, are running around making a deeply flawed argument about the implications. ...

"[One] tweet went so far as to claim that “the species just crossed a one-way threshold”; Elon Musk took it as evidence that we had reached The Singularity.

"Each is making essentially the same error.

"The fallacy has a name; it’s called the fallacy of composition. ...

"What’s the manifestation of the fallacy in the current case? Thinking that a system that is great at a certain kind of maths problem is great at all maths, great at science or even quite possibly great at everything. The 'AGI-is-near' community keeps committing the same logical fallacy over and over. Every time there’s an advance, I see the same error.

"Here’s how the fallacy works.

1. Someone pretends that all cognition is created equally. (Totally untrue.)
2. Whenever AI achieves success on some form of (fancy) cognition, they want you to believe that success on all forms of AI is imminent. 

"You don’t have to be a cognitive psychologist to realize that this inference just doesn’t follow."

~ Gary Marcus from his post 'OpenAI’s amazing — but vastly oversold — new model Astra'

Even people *with* a sense of humour should be barred

 

"I don’t think people without much of a sense of humour should be allowed to determine what people with a sense of humour are allowed to laugh at....
    "If you don't like something, don't watch it."

~ John Cleese

"Universities are, today, the most dangerous institution in this country.”

 

“I feel that this country is being destroyed by its philosophy. Specifically, by its universities: the most dangerous thing in this country today are the universities, because they are teaching the kind of ideas that would necessarily have to lead to the destruction of this country.... 

"[T]oday, when all those institutions ... are preaching collectivism, mysticism, and above all altruism -- self-sacrifice of yourself ... the disgusting kind of ideas that the whole world has been nurturing for centuries, then when they do that this country cannot [long] survive....

"[W]ith all the faults in American intellectual equipment and there were a lot of holes, at least people were taught pride in their own country and in the good aspects, the great achievements of this country. Today you're supposed to apologise ... because you are ... prosperous. Because you've earned your money you have to feel guilty and apologise for it. That's what we're being told."

~Ayn Rand, from her interview with Tom Snyder [from 14:00]

"Next they will be open to an Army without guns!'

"The Post reports:

"The Labour Party is open to the idea of a frigate-less Defence Force, saying it’s yet to take a position on replacing the ageing Anzac-class fleet.

"Next they will be open to an Army without guns!

"O’Connor said Labour hadn’t completely ruled out upgrading the frigates, though it was worth considering the technological advancements – and steep cost.
    "'We will have to maintain marine capability – how that is structured is for future discussions when in government.'
    "'Money always plays a factor but the commitment to our [Cook Strait] ferries is probably more important than the commitment to the frigates at this point in time.'

"This is a staggering comment by Labour’s spokes[things]. He is saying that they regard the Cook Strait ferries as more important than our navy, There are private ferry operators such as Bluebridge. But it is a core responsibility of the state to defend the country."

~ David Farrar from his post 'Does Labour want a navy without combat ships?' [emphasis added in Farrar's original post]

Something for (almost) nothing?

"There is a very brief window in which mostly American hyperscale data centres could massively expand renewable energy generation in New Zealand, at their own expense, to the country’s much broader benefit.

"I worry, though, that the country will miss the opportunity. ...

"Right now, hyperscale datacentres are willing to pay a high premium for immediacy. Grid connections in the US can take years. Paying more for electricity via standalone generators off-grid makes sense when compute *now* is really valuable.

"If NZ could be the place delivering a rapid yes or no on new generation, with processes running a couple months rather than up-to-years, unbelievable amounts of money could drop here and build out generation capacity.

"That window will not be open forever. ...

"Hyperscalers are willing to pay a lot if they can get access to energy in a hurry, without large fishhooks along the way. ... Over the past two years, the scale of that opportunity has increased considerably. ... At the scale at which these investments are made internationally, the New Zealand Government’s current support for developing next-generation supercritical geothermal generation looks like spare change.

"The companies that would fund the energy and data centre buildout could very plausibly fund a hastening of current work on next-generation geothermal.

"If the work on supercritical geothermal pans out, the country would have near-limitless, low-cost electricity for generations to come. Some of it would power data centres; the rest of it could power everything else....

"All of it could be funded by the companies who *right now* are willing to pay a substantial premium for power that can be online quickly enough to matter in the current AI race. Whether or not they are right about the stakes in that race, more generation here would be valuable.

"The opportunity is real, but the largest part of it is time-limited."

~ Eric Cramptom from his op-ed 'The Americans are on the march! Will Wellington welcome them again?'

"None of us are greedy. It’s only the other fellow who’s greedy."

"Q: When you see the bad distribution of wealth, so few who have so much and so many who have nothing… did you ever have a moment of doubt about capitalism and whether Greed's a good idea to run on? 

"A: Well, first of all tell me: do you know of any society that does NOT run on greed? Do you think Russia doesn't run on greed? You think China doesn't run on greed? 

"And what is greed? None of us is greedy, of course. It's only the other fellow who's greedy.

"The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests. The great achievements of civilization did not come out of government offices. Einstein didn't build his theory on the order of a bureaucrat. Ford didn't revolutionise the automobile industry that way. The only cases in which the masses have escaped the kind of grinding poverty you're talking about -- the only cases in recorded history -- are those where they had capitalism and largely free trade. 

"If you want to know where the masses are worse off it's exactly in the kinds of societies that depart from that. So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear that there is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by free enterprise system.

"Q: But it seems to reward the ability to manipulate the system, not virtue. 

"A: And what does reward virtue? Do you think a communist commissar rewards virtue? You think a Hitler? Do you think American presidents reward virtue -- do they choose their appointees on the basis of the virtue of the people appointed, or on the basis of their political clout?

"Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest? 

"You know I think you're taking a lot of things for granted. And just tell me: where in the world are you going to find these angels who are going to organise society for us? I don't even trust you to do that, let alone myself."

~ Milton Friedman, in conversation with Phil Donahue

Chlöe cries crocodile tears

NEWS: 'Greens push for pause to big data centres consents, citing rising power prices.'

"Net Zero and the deployment of wind and solar generation put far more upward pressure on power prices than AI data centres do. The NZ public have never had a say on whether NZ should pursue Net Zero or not. How about we have a referendum on this?"

~ Zaphodd BB

"You'd think the Greens would want more data centres in NZ serving the world, given our electricity is 95% renewable and therefore better for the planet. Guess popularist derr brainery is more important than lowering carbon emissions eh..."

~ Lewis Holden

"The instinct is 'capitalists are doing something we don’t understand and didn’t think of, so it should stop until we think we understand it and can tie it up in rules so it looks like something we can tolerate grudgingly'.”

~ Liberty Scott

"Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick says massive power-hungry AI data centres risk driving up electricity prices for the impoverished. Yet, as she knows, her push for Net Zero makes rising electricity prices a 100% certainty. She cries crocodile tears."

~ Peter Cresswell 

You cannot, yet, be serious

"For three decades the Odysseus of New Zealand politics has navigated the turbulent seas of electoral fortune. ...

"The party has [lately] been on a recruitment drive. Is this time different; are we seeing a party in transition or the beginning of another operatic calamity? ...

"Movements like the New Zealand Party, Opportunities Party and United Future struggle once their leaders depart the stage. Building something enduring requires placing the interests of the organisation ahead of the self, and, well, people who start their own political entities are not team players. ...

"... [T]his is not a party with an ambition to form a government, merely to remain the party to decide who does. New Zealand First is important, but it is not, yet, serious."

~ Damien Grant from his column 'New Zealand First is important, but it is not, yet, serious'

Billionaires...

"The power which a [b]illionaire ... has over me is very much less than that which the smallest functionaire possesses who wields the coercive power of the state, and on whose discretion it depends whether and how I am to be allowed to live or to work."

~ Friedrich Hayek from his 1944 book The Road to Serfdom

The UK is apparently nostalgic … for the 1970s?

"If all that’s holding the United Kingdom back is the country’s mood, then the arrival of Andy Burnham as prime minister might improve its prospects. Briefly. If the remedy also requires some particle of coherence and clarity about what the government needs to do, the prognosis is grim. The contradictions and absurdities that he’s ventured so far are remarkable even by the standards of modern British politics.

"To start with the most bewildering, Burnham is apparently nostalgic … for the 1970s? He was alive in 1979, when Margaret Thatcher came to power — but nine years old at the time, perhaps not paying close attention. A slightly older cohort recalls the immediate pre-Thatcher years as an unparalleled disaster, which helps explain why her party won that election and the three that followed.

"The nadir was the 'winter of discontent': strikes in response to the Labour government’s efforts to curb inflation, shortages of food and fuel, trash piled 10 feet deep in London’s squares (Leicester Square was known as Fester Square; you could smell it from Downing Street), more strikes, pickets blockading hospitals, corpses stored here and there while gravediggers pressed for better terms, more strikes. Returning from a little downtime in Barbados, Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan sealed his party’s fate by saying he was puzzled by all the talk of crisis.

"This was apparently the golden time that preceded the unforced errors of the 1980s and the following decades, when a global plague of market fundamentalism brought the country low and destroyed the dreams of working families.

"Admittedly, despising Thatcher and her works will always be an article of faith for the British left. Burnham is hardly unusual in this respect. What’s more surprising, especially for a leader who says he means to unite the country and overcome factionalism in his party, is to extend much the same contempt to the pragmatic centre-leftists led by Tony Blair, who resuscitated Labour after two decades of humiliating defeat and set the country on a more moderate, popular, social-democratic course. It isn’t just Thatcherism that Burnham aims to reverse, but 'four decades of neoliberalism.'

"Bring back council estates, cheap buses and organised labor. Nationalise a few industries. Maybe reopen some mines (though, obviously, people wouldn’t be allowed to burn the coal)."

~ Clive Crook from his column 'Andy Burnham’s ’70s Show Will Need a Little Work' [hat tip Samizdata]

"Since you [also] mentioned the 1980s, @andyburnham, here’s a reminder of what was achieved: 

• Top rate of income tax: 83% → 40% 

• Savings income taxed at up to 98% in 1979 — surcharge abolished 

• Basic rate: 33% → 25% 

• Inflation: 21.9% peak (1980) → 2.4% (1986) 

• Days lost to strikes: 29.5 million (1979) → 1.9 million (1990) 

• Real take-home pay for the average earner: up by a third 

• Right to Buy: over a million council tenants became homeowners 

• Home ownership: 55% → 67% 

• Individual shareholders: 3 million → 11 million — one in four adults 

• Foreign holidays: roughly doubled 

• Homes with a telephone: two-thirds → nearly nine in ten 

• Pensioners’ average incomes: up around 30% in real terms 

• Infant mortality: down almost 40% 

• Real GDP: up by almost a third 

• GDP per head outgrew France, Germany and Italy in the 1980s 

• Manufacturing productivity: slowest growth in the G7 in the 1970s → fastest in the 1980s 

• Self-employed: 1.9 million → 3.5 million 

• Nissan to Sunderland, Toyota to Derby, Honda to Swindon 

• Britain became a net oil exporter 

• London restored as the world’s financial capital in 1986 

• Budget surpluses three years running — Britain repaid debt, 1987–90 

• National debt: 47% of GDP → 28% 

• State spending: ~45% of GDP → ~39% 

• The civil service: 732,000 → 565,000 

• Corporation tax: 52% → 35%; the small firms’ rate: 42% → 25% 

• Personal tax allowances: up more than 25% in real terms 

• Higher rates of income tax: nine → one 

• Death duties: fourteen rates → one 

• Exchange controls scrapped after 40 years 

• 40+ nationalised businesses privatised — 600,000 employees moved to the private sector 

• The 33 big state industries: took ~£500m from taxpayers in 1980 → paid £8.4bn to the Exchequer by 1987 

• British Steel: world-record loss-maker (1980/81) → £733m profit (1989/90) 

• BT, 1984: the largest share offer the world had ever seen 

• “Tell Sid” broke the record again in 1986 

• British Airways: nationalised loss-maker → profitable, private, “the world’s favourite airline” 

• The Channel Tunnel launched and entirely privately financed.

"Over to you."

~ Eamonn Butler, Adam Smith Institute

"[L]iving standards stalled not because of neoliberalism but because Britain stopped being a free market economy, drifting into a more heavily controlled and interventionist system well before the pandemic accelerated the trend."

~ Is Britain Actually Neoliberal? The Spectator's Michael Simmons - INSTITUTE OF ECONOMIC AFFAIRS

RELATED: "... the worst year in modern British political history..."

... and ...

"The wealth of nations is the work of the people, not of their governments."

"The wealth of nations is the work of the people, not of their governments. If they had no other maker of their wealth than their governments, all nations would be in misery. 

"Government represents an expense, a consumption of national wealth" 

~ Juan Bautista Alberdi in his seminal 1854 book, Sistema económico y rentístico de la Confederación Argentina según su Constitución de 1853 ('Economic and Revenue System of the Argentine Confederation According to its Constitution of 1853'), drafted while living in exile in Valparaíso, Chile [hat tip Libertario]

"Wealth inequality isn't proof that you're being robbed."

"Wealth inequality isn't proof that you're being robbed. It assumes successful people are partially your property and that their gains should have belonged to you. 

"Other people becoming productive doesn't make you poorer. It is precisely why ordinary people today live better than kings did centuries ago. 

"They don't owe you anything and aren't your property."

~ Rock Chartrand

Poverty...

"For most of human history, poverty was normal. Prosperity is the strange achievement. 

"Young people should learn what made that achievement possible before they vote to destroy it."

~ Magatte Wade

This is what a Luxon-led Government means by being "pro-business"

This Luxon-led Government is pro-business.

That is to say, it's pro particular businesses. Particularly one that begins with an 'F' and ends in 'letcher.' Have a city to rebuild, or a convention centre to build (and burn down), and that particular business will assuredly get the nod -- along with a large cheque paid for by you and I.

Ronald Reagan famously observed the principle of pro-business governments like this one: “If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidise it.” All three are in operation in the decision to shell out $60 million of your money (along with a new tariff) to subsidise Fletcher's to keep open a cement business. 

Why do Fletcher's need the subsidy? Because National's Emissions Tax Scam was going to stop the business moving. And a business that doesn't move, along with any associated businesses needing Fletcher's cement, don't pay any tax.

Does the Emissions Tax Scam make any sense? Nope, not unless you think shackling producers makes sense -- shackling and then subsidising to avoid the scam's implications. To quote a friend back in 2009, the scheme is "criminally absurd," and a decent government would by now already scrapped it (in favour, perhaps, of a subtle and sensible carbon tax).

“An ETS is the best tool to reduce emissions," says the Taxpayers 'Union' in response to the subsidy's announcement, before going on to pontificate that "it should not sacrifice industry at the altar of net zero, only for taxpayers to fund the rescue. ... It is a false economy," they say, "to make businesses unviable through carbon charges, then bail out those with the best lobbying teams in Wellington. The Government must review its industrial allocation settings [sic] across all trade-exposed sectors.”

In two sentences this illustrates everything wrong with this government, with the Taxpayers 'Union,' and with the so-called policy 'settings' about which they argue.

Yes, it's false economy. But it's worse than that. The whole Emissions Tax Scam is a gun pointed straight at producers' feet. To impose the tax, and then subsidise its payment, makes no sense on any level. It's simply insane. The argument isn't about tinkering with 'policy settings,' it should be about removing the insanity, and danger of the slippery slope back to the Muldoonist 'picking losers' policies we once escaped with so much pain. 

In reality, as RD points out below, it's a strong example of Luxon and Willis’ net-zero scheme being unworkable (not to mention immoral), then socialising the cost of the failure by picking favourites at taxpayers' expense.

Expect to see more of it in the very near future as its unworkability (and immorality) become more obvious even to those who espouse it.

" Stop saying 'free.' "

 

"Stop saying 'free.' 

"Start saying 'funded by taxpayers.'   

"Thank you."

~ The Moderate Case

A reminder

 

Suckers

"'We must never stop believing in a country called New Zealand' [says Winston Peters launching his campaign for another ministerial limousine]... 'Remember who you are New Zealand,' he blathers]...

"Classic Winston Peters nostalgia: 'Let's remember who we are' stuff wrapped up in patriotic packaging. 

"Those lines usually come out during speeches about immigration, Maori co-governance, 'wokeness,' or foreign influence. It's pure emotional rhetoric designed to stir up a sense of loss and cultural erosion while conveniently ignoring how his own policies have shifted with the wind over the years. 

"Personally I'm still waiting for the abolition of Maori seats that he promised was a bottom line in 2017. 

"Suckers."

~ Amy Jones