And it goes for us too.

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

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

"Politicians talk about 'green jobs' as if they are a good thing..."

 

"[Politicians] talk about 'green jobs' as if they are a good thing. As Tim Worstall often points out, all jobs are a cost not a benefit. Perhaps a necessary cost, but a cost. And the purest, costliest, unbeneficialliest jobs of all are jobs that are created solely to comply with government regulations. Not unexpectedly, the people who get these make-work jobs like having them, because they get paid. But the money to pay their wages has to come from somewhere. It comes from (a) taxes, i.e. making everyone a little bit poorer, and (b) companies diverting money that could have been truly invested in making or doing things that people actually wanted made or done (which would have created genuine new jobs) into the hamster-wheel of fulfilling green regulations, filling in government forms to say that they have done so, paying to be trained to fill out the forms, paying protection money to Green organisations to get a little green smiley logo saying they comply, and so on and on and on."

~ Natalie Solent, from her post 'A racist “race” any rational person wants to lose'

The Political Hocus-Pocus They Call Modern Monetary Theory

 

Modern Monetary Theory claims to be both new and a theory of economics -- one that claims you really can get something for nothing as long as the bill is always sent to the government. But as Per Bylund explains inthius guest post, it is not a theory of how the economy works at all, and so does not concern itself with worldly things like production, innovation, entrepreneurship, scarcity (other than as potentially causing inflation), or time. It is instead a pseudoreligious conviction that anything is possible and that the one and only solution is always Glorious Government.

The Political Alchemy Called Modern Monetary Theory

by Per Bylund

The new kid on the economics block is something called modern monetary theory (MMT). The name is modern, but the "theory" is not. It comes from a time when folk still considered a perpetual-motion machine a scientific possibility. Like MMT however, it never was, or will be.

Proponents adamantly claim that it is both new and a theory of economics. To make it appear this way, they dress the ideas in unusual-sounding jargon and use rhetorical tricks. For example, instead of presenting actual arguments or responding to direct questions, they present a circular flow of deepities. To top it off, they, at least in my humble experience, usually lack fundamental economic literacy. This can make rebutting their nonsensical claims a challenge and, as a result, debates with this crowd typically go nowhere.

In order to figure out what exactly they are claiming—beyond the deepities—I decided to acquaint myself with the prominent proponents. I read "founder" Warren Mosler’s so-called white paper on MMT, but it’s not very helpful: there is little by way of theoretical explanation, other than redefining if not obscuring the meaning of common concepts in economics. Mosler also seems overly eager to move from explanation to instead argue for his preferred policies.

I hoped for (and got) more from listening to a TED Talk by Dr. Stephanie Kelton, an economist and professor at Stony Brook University who was the senior economic advisor to Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign and author of The Deficit Myth (reviewed by Bob Murphy here). TED Talks are only fifteen minutes long, but it turned out to be a very painful experience.

It’s All about Spending

Judging from Kelton’s presentation, MMT simply boils down to a description of how the fiat currency system works under a central bank, while ignoring many of the effects of that creation. Kelton explains:

MMT provides an accurate description of how a fiat currency like the US dollar or the British pound actually works. It reminds us that we are no longer on a gold standard, so finding the money to pay for the things we need is never an issue for countries like the US or the UK.

The implication of having a monetary monopoly is that the “[t]he federal government can never run out of money” (all quotes are from Kelton’s talk unless otherwise stated). This is obviously true, but only because Kelton (and MMT) does not distinguish between money in the real sense (the valued medium of exchange, i.e., purchasing power) and the currency issued by government and banks (the dollars or pounds, whether physical or digital). But that’s not always true. For example, the government of Venezuela was not running out of bolívars, but from this it did not follow that the currency would retain its purchasing power (as, obviously, it didn’t) or even retain its status as money (which it also didn’t). Venezuela is one recent example, but the claim is universal. (For more examples, see Zimbabwe/Zimbabwean dollar or the Weimar Republic/papiermark.)

So, in a strict sense, it is certainly true that the federal government “can afford to buy whatever is available or for sale in its own currency.” However, while proponents of MMT often emphasize and extrapolate from the word “afford” to make it appear as if there were no end to government spending, it is really “for sale in its own currency” that is key. This means there is indeed a limitation. Kelton realizes this but fails to mention it until the very end. Her point here is to delink government spending and taxation:

If you got a $1,400 check from the federal government earlier this year, or if your company received money to help cover payroll and other expenses, then you received some of the newly minted digital dollars that were created to support our economy. No taxpayers were involved in that process. It was all done using nothing more than a computer keyboard.

This too is not false; however it only tells one side of the story. It ignores what is unseen. Kelton simply observes that government need not worry about deficits, because they are paid in the government’s own currency. And the government can make as much of this counterfeit capital as it likes. Yes, we have heard this before; it is nothing new. The problem is that it is based on a fundamental mistake: confusing the unit for its meaning to users; or, if you will, thinking that a currency is money. By talking about one, and the creation of more of it, yet referring to the other, thus assuming it remains largely unaffected, Kelton can state the following about deficits:

Here's what I see. I see what's happening on the other side of the government's ledger. When the government spends more than it taxes away from us, it makes a financial contribution to some other part of the economy. Their red ink is our black ink.

Yes, you read it correctly: when government runs a deficit it is (somehow) a contribution to society. It literally creates something (prosperity) out of nothing (its IOU). Government creates new money for its IOU, out of which it purchases infrastructure, teacher salaries, electric vehicles, etc. Thus, private businesses get the new money as revenue—they (presumably) earn a profit—while the government provides society with "needed services." The result is, if we believe Kelton, more jobs and income for people while they get more services from government. We get something for nothing. 

No wonder apostles of big government love it.

What about Price Inflation?

With deficits being a nonissue, being waved away by this hocus-pocus, the political problem then is not to balance budgets. After all, according to MMT logic, a balanced budget would deprive society of the benefits that the deficits offer. Instead, policymakers have a moral duty to maximise the “contribution” to society as long as doing so does not have negative consequences for society. As Kelton puts it,

Congress should be focused on keeping inflation in check. That's the real limit on spending, and it's the thing to watch out for if you're thinking of spending trillions on things like infrastructure, healthcare, and free college.

Observe that this is basically the same scheme as monetarists argue for, that the money supply should be increased to lubricate and support the growing economy—but not so much that it affects the price level. MMT takes this idea and greatly inflates it (pun intended) by adding that government deficits are not harmful—they are instead, if used wisely, a double benefit. As long as the price level remains largely unchanged (or, I presume, price inflation is kept at a “low” level, such as “only” 2 percent per annum), more can be squeezed out of the economy.

Government can and should do this to the extent possible, but the deficits also offer a means for reform, if not restructuring of whole economy, that should not be wasted.

[E]very deficit is good for someone. The question is, for whom? And what are those deficits used to accomplish? It matters how the money is spent and who ends up with the resulting surplus.

Indeed, money is not neutral, so it benefits whoever happens to receive it first, before prices go up. This is another MMT twist that they use to their advantage. The argument does not rely on increasing the money supply helicopter-money style, so they need not assume it has no effect on the structure of the economy. On the contrary, MMT argues that the money should be used first by government on specific investments—typically infrastructure, healthcare, schools. Because the money is spent on those things, businesses (they assume) will be incentivised to create supply that facilitates those investments. As a result, the economy is forced nudged to do the “right” things. (We are at this point deep into normative territory, i.e., ideology; there is no semblance of positive theory left.)

What about the Economy?

So far, the MMT story does not seem to relate at all to the real economy. It is pure magic: more currency means more jobs, greater government services, a higher standard of living. Abracadabra! Does this mean MMT simply ignores the fact that the actual economy is a matter of allocating scarce resources toward valuable ends? Of creating real production out of real capital? Not quite. It simply downplays this by ignoring the many implications.

Kelton refers to the problem of Congress's directing the “contribution” of deficits as resourcing. Here comes the real economy:

Congress should be asking, how will we resource it? To answer that question, think of people, factories, equipment, and raw materials like wood and iron. If we're going to build high-speed rail, fix crumbling infrastructure, and green our economy, then we’ll need concrete, steel, and lumber; we’ll need construction workers, architects, and engineers; we’ll need companies that can fill thousands of orders for solar panels, EV charging stations, and electric school busses. If our economy has the productive capacity to quickly supply all of those things, then we can easily resource it. Or take healthcare or free college. Paying the bills to expand Medicare to include dental, vision, and hearing is easy. The challenge is making sure we have enough dentists, optometrists, and audiologists to treat everyone who needs care. And if you want to resource free college, then you need the faculty, the classrooms, the dormitories to teach and house more students. In a full employment economy, all of the resources you need are, well, fully employed. There is no spare capacity anywhere in the system.

So, finally, we get to the real issue and the reason why proponents of MMT believe they can get something for nothing: in a full economy, those resource are already being used and you'd need to bid them away (which means they would no longer be able to be available for those previous uses, and their price would rise); but all the MMTers see are are idle resources, assets that are not currently used in production processes. Because those resources are not productive, at the moment, government’s deficit investments will (they think) incentivise those sitting on the resources, whether individuals or businesses (or government agencies?), to surrender them to the productive efforts so that society can make productive use of them.

But this poses several problems that those arguing for MMT seem unaware of. 

First, that idle resources are not actually just sitting there, but are idle for a reason. They are idle because this is what their owners consider to be their highest-valued use. All capital is part of a production plan. It is a mistake to assume that an asset that is not right at this moment used in some production process is not part of a greater production plan. In fact, most production includes some degree of waiting, maturing, or search for the proper timing.

Consider a newly distilled whiskey that sits “idle” in a cask for a decade. This is not waste, but part of the production process of ten-year-old whiskey, which is a different good with much greater expected value to consumers. Production takes time, which means we cannot at any specific moment determine what would be the best use of resources. This includes resources that do not appear to be used at all but are in fact owned and therefore directed toward some end. Timing is an important aspect of production that proponents of MMT, in their urgency to maximize only the present, fail to realize. Much entrepreneurship fails not because there is no value in what they offer but because the timing is not right—they are either too early or too late.

It is also true that we want resources to be held in reserve for future uses. If we use everything to 100 percent in the present, there is no possibility of attempting new and more valuable productions. After all, government investments in infrastructure (or anything on the MMT wish list, for that matter) are not an effective way to generate innovations. Valuable innovations are created by entrepreneurs seeking new ways to satisfy consumers and thereby earn profits. MMT’s shifting of resources toward public works means we may not get the solutions to those grand challenges that we have no solutions for today. The quest to maximise the present, whether or not it turns out successful (and it likely will not), sacrifices both the near and distant future.

Joseph Schumpeter put this clearly in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (p. 83):

[W]e are dealing with a process whose every element takes considerable time in revealing its true features and ultimate effects, [so] there is no point in appraising the performance of that process ex visu of a given point of time; we must judge its performance over time, as it unfolds through decades or centuries. A system—any system, economic or other—that at every given point of time fully utilises its possibilities to the best advantage may yet in the long run be inferior to a system that does so at no given point of time, because the latter’s failure to do so may be a condition for the level or speed of long-run performance.

I doubt Schumpeter’s genius will sway any proponent of MMT, however. To them, nobody is alive beyond the immediate present.

It Is Not about the Economy, but about Glorious Government

Kelton’s argument also, inevitably comes down to believing that whatever government does is right. Yes, she argues that it is important that the deficits end up in the "right" hands, but simply notes that this is the real task for Congress. Okay, but what if politicians do not invest in the “right” things? Or what if those things are right for some but wrong for others? Kelton doesn’t say, but I suppose she would refer to some vague notion of public good or what society “needs.” But this question cannot be avoided, because it strikes at the core of MMT’s failure.

The whole argument, as Kelton presents it, asserts that government needs to get idle resources into production. Whatever the reason they currently appear idle to Kelton and others is of no concern: government, they assume, will put those resources to better use. True to form, proponents of MMT tend to focus on only idle resources, which makes a cleaner point. But they overlook that changing the incentives will also shift resources from already productive uses to those productions that are on the MMT wish list. Which are things that, economically speaking, without the backing of this tidal wave of government largesse, are currently money-losing dogs. (Green jobs, green new deals, red and blue welfare projects...)

What they are really saying here, when you boil it right down, is that entrepreneurs, investing their own property for the chance of earning profits, but at the risk of losing everything if consumers dislike their offering, overall do a worse job allocating productive resources than politicians investing deficits that need not be paid off. This is a very problematic assumption. Just noting the different incentives for entrepreneurs and politicians is enough to fundamentally question what MMT proposes.

Add to this that government’s track record in creating public goods that are of actual value to people and that do not waste resources is nothing short of dismal. Then add the public choice aspect to the whole thing, that politicians have their own interests and therefore may not pursue the public good even if they know it. The assumption that government will fix the economy and increase our standard of living beyond what entrepreneurs can do is unbearably naïve.

I do not think these problems matter much to proponents of MMT, however. Because [like the proposed creation of a trillion-dollar coin] MMT is not actually a theory of how the economy works all, and so does not concern itself with worldly things like production, innovation, entrepreneurship, scarcity (other than as potentially causing inflation), or time. It is a pseudoreligious conviction that anything is possible and that the one and only solution is always Glorious Government.

* * * * 

Per Bylund is associate professor of entrepreneurship & Records-Johnston Professor of Free Enterprise in the School of Entrepreneurship at Oklahoma State University. His website is PerBylund.com. His post first appeared at the Mises Wire.

No, don't #EndOil : Because hipster energy is no replacement for reliable energy [UPDATED]

“Suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels ... is
almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.”
~ former NASA scientist and current uber-climate-alarmist James Hansen
(quoted in ‘James Hansen Smacks Renewable Energy’)

"The world is changing, and it's time to face the facts" said the Prime Minister's minister who drove to Taranaki yesterday to tell people this Government is putting 'virtue signalling' above energy reliability.

Times are changing, emphasised the show pony in the Prime Minister's office, declaring this announcement to be the beginning of "our transition to renewables" -- citing as "essential parts" of her "transition plan" the Government's Provincial Growth Fund and Green Investment Fund: her "plan" to replace reliable energy thereby being revealed as resting upon the twin pillars of the Green Party's "green jobs" fantasies and Shane Jones's billion-dollar slush fund. Hipster energy backed by welfare cheques to depleted regions.

South Australia has recently completed that transition to renewables. It celebrated with blackouts that closed schools, hospitals and most of its industry -- closed down by a once in a 50-year storm that was enough to shut down the renewables-packed grid, shut down all supply and send the state reeling straight back (quite literally) into the dark ages. Urgently, it reconnected its state's grid to Victoria's fossil-fuel supplied energy.

It was said that South Australia's experimental energy arrangements were a "textbook case" of how not to transition to renewable energy. In fact, it was a textbook case of why not to transition to renewable energy at all.

As South Australians discovered, a working definition of renewable energy is unreliable energy. It might also be characterised as unprofitable energy, relying upon subsidies to survive and on reliable fossil-fuel energy as backup. The fact is, it is not a reliable energy source at all - it is imply parasitical upon energy that is. It is an entire alleged industry on the mooch.

Times might be changing -- but it's not because reliables are being replaced by renewables. It's because those talking about all this hipster energy are simply denying away the facts they find inconvenient. Like the fact that New Zealand could shut down tomorrow and become a nature reserve with no humans at all (which some in Green Party would cheer if they were still here), and we would still have virtually no impact on global warming;

... like the proportion of so-called renewables in use around the world, which is risible ...

... like the fact that the fossil-fuel share of world energy is around 80% of all energy produced, with nuclear and hydro providing most of what remains;

... like the fact Germany's much-hyped sun-worshipping energy sources delivers near-zero power whenever it's most needed;

... like the fact abundant energy keeps us warm, keeps us cool, and gives leverage to puny human effort. It quite literally keeps us alive, and thriving;

... like the thousands upon thousands of everyday products we all rely upon that are made reliably and inexpensively with fossil fuels;

... like the millions of people in northern Europe and Canada who rely every year upon reliable heating to save them from certain death in the face of bone-killing cold;

... like the fact that the relative costs of weather catastrophes are not rising but declining -- declining because reliable world energy production is not;

... that the key to climate safety is not a degree or two of temperature, but the climate protection provided by industrial civilisation (e.g., air conditioning).

These are very relevant facts to face right there.

The fact is, nature is not naturally benevolent. We have to work to make it so, for us. The very point of human production – the reason we get up in the morning and go to work, if we can – is to make our lives better. If human life is our standard, then making human lives better and the natural environment more humane is a good thing. A Very Good Thing.

So when you see dozens killed by Europe's coldest weather in years you may realise for example that cold weather kills – kills vastly more than warmer weather does – and that human production that makes the human environment warmer may not be a totally bad thing. And, therefore, that the fossil fuels people burn to stay warm are not a bad thing.

As Alex Epstein of the Center for Industrial Progress summarises: “Fossil Fuels don’t take a safe climate and make it dangerous, they take a dangerous climate and make it safe.”

Why are fossil fuels still so overwhelmingly important? "If you rely on wind and hydro, if it does't rain, you have to have something else to turn on,” explained Meridian's then chief executive Mark Binns last year. “And at this stage, that is fossil fuel; either coal or gas.” Fossil fuels are still New Zealand’s reliable backstop. Just one reason he’s reluctant to encourage Genesis turning off New Zealand’s largest reliable energy producer, at Huntly.

New Zealand was "a long way away" from generating all its electricity from renewables [said Binns], questioning whether that might ever be possible.

These are facts the Prime Minister and her messengers refuse to face.

Much of the opposition to the Prime Minister's announcement however has ignored most of these facts as well, focussing only upon the loss of jobs as investment pulls out as investors see little future in the industry. The fact is however that we should be against the loss of these jobs not because they are jobs, but because fossil fuels are a life-enhancing product that is being legislated out of existence (not competed out) without even a real reliable expectation of any viable alternative to replace them.

The fact is, we need good reliable energy to survive. We need it to flourish. In a week in which Aucklanders have discovering again just what it's like to struggle without power, you'd think at least some of those tens of thousands might at least appreciate some part of that fact.

UPDATE: A good comment below by MarkT:

[It is said that] the critics are contradictory by claiming it's both an empty gesture and also wholesale destructive to the regional economy.
It’s an empty gesture in terms of any supposed climate benefits, wholesale destructive (or at least damaging) in terms of the effect on the regional economy. Fossil fuels will only be on their way out when better practical and economic alternatives to the internal combustion engine are found, and we’re a long way from that. If and when it is found, it will naturally out-compete oil in the market without government intervention. In the meantime this move won’t make one iota of difference to how much oil is consumed, just more of it will need to be imported.

Sun sets on solar

 

Renewable energy is generally unaffordable energy. It’s unreliable energy. [It's not renewable, and it's barely energy.] For years, this so called “sustainable” energy has instead been heavily-subsidised energy – the alleged energy warmists would point to in arguing that conventional fossil-fuel energy should either be banned or taxed into extinction. Sustainable only by virtue of the subsidies, and utterly unsustainable without.

A whole alleged industry on the mooch.

But the sun is now setting internationally on solar power, and all those “green jobs” Russel Norman and his cronies talked about for years are revealed as nothing more than moonshine.

It’s been an interesting time of late. Within the last few weeks, Solar Trust of America (STA), owner of the world’s largest solar plant, filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11, and nobody expects much of it, if anything, to emerge from it. STA joins a long list of companies in the solar energy sector, who’ve gone bankrupt, ducked into protection from their creditors, suspended production indefinitely or are simply circling the plughole.
    Across the world, a few of the more prominent and expensive casualties are Solyndra, Solar Millennium AG, Energy Conversion Devices Inc, Q-Cells, Solon, Solar Millenium, Solarhybrid, Ener1, Range Fuels, Beacon Power Corp and there’s a whole lot of others.

What else distinguished these companies other than the word ‘solar’ in their title?

Nearly all of these companies were the beneficiaries of huge government startup grants or loan guarantees.

Ah. They were all moochers. Cronies sucking off the state tit. A very green business model indeed.

The products they made were effectively sold to consumers with a subsidy, to make them more attractive. The customers also had the benefit of some generous feed-in tariff schemes. All that money that was sunk into them has now gone and the specific green industry sector it was expected to create, is pretty much moribund.

This is the very “green industry sector” Russel and the Greens have been touting. The cheerleading for mooching has continued under James Shaw – and would undoubtedly form part of any deal with whatever Government might partner up with them.

Yet even with the subsidies these green succubi were unsuccessful, consuming more resources than they ever produced. And the wreckage is not confined to the US.

In Germany, which gets the same amount of sunshine as the US state of Alaska and where inexplicably nearly half the solar power output of the world was installed, investment experts expect not a single solar cell company to be in business in five years time, since not one of them is currently showing an operating profit, nor is expected to do so in the foreseeable future. In Germany alone, the government have to date handed out about €100 billion in subsidies to renewable energy and even there, the most fervently green country in Europe, they’ve begun to have some serious doubts. It’s a money pit. The promised green jobs haven’t appeared and unemployment in the developed nations continues to rise. On a world-wide basis, the money wasted runs into the billions of dollars.
    Billions and billions and we’ve ended up with pretty much nothing. Actually, that’s not quite correct. What we will have, within a decade or two, is a clear up job that’ll make Chernobyl look like a training day. As the vast arrays of panels age, they’ll crack and contaminate the topsoil with poisonous chemical particles. Take a careful look at the picture below, because that’s what we’ll have to pay to detoxify, and make no mistake, we’ll be the ones paying, despite a few of the companies installing these panels having given undertakings to dispose of the panels at the end of their service life. The hard-nosed investor in me reckons they’ll be safely bankrupt by the time any such expensive undertakings have to be honoured.

I wonder where we will store all that contaminated topsoil? Perhaps wherever we’d planned to store nuclear waste, before we decided not to build any more nuclear plants.

So why are all these crony companies going bust? Simple: they were never profitable from day one, and were never going to be profitable thereafter. Their whole business case was based on subsidies.

[But[ subsidies …were never supposed to last forever. They were part of larger stimulus packages, which were only supposed to get those businesses up and running. If the business proposals and revenue projections were correct, all those companies should have been running profitably by now. They patently weren’t, so pretty much the same questions arise ….
    The business case for the whole industry was supported by numerous studies by scientists, academia, so-called industry experts and advocates of renewable energy, all of whom said it was the clean and profitable future of energy production. Obviously, all those studies were seriously wrong and ended up costing governments billions. Has anyone got back to these “experts” and asked why the studies and their financial models were all so bad? Given how shoddy their expert advice has proven to be, is anyone asking for the money back, which we paid for this supposed expertise? In the light of how bad expert advice in this area has been, is anyone reviewing advice for similar green sectors, such as wind power? Anyone? Anywhere?

Of course not. And you can double-damn guarantee that you’ll be hearing the same bullshit business case being made by the Greens again from here to the next election, lapped up and regurtitated without research by their lamestream media colleagues. Yet,

Never in the history of the world, has such an amount of money been wasted, without any trace of financial oversight or accountability. Not only has the money been squandered, but at a time of high unemployment, the fashionable rush to create illusory green jobs, has actually destroyed jobs in the real economy. A study in Spain concluded that for every green job created by their massive renewables investment, the real economy lost 2.2 real jobs and only one in ten of those green jobs created, will be permanent. The much touted transfer of jobs from the real economy to the green economy simply never occurred either. Similar studies in Britain, Canada and Scotland have come back with equally appalling numbers.

Do we need to repeat that here?

In the UK, they’re calling the rise in this fashionable non-energy and the rocketing energy prices it creates “fuel poverty” – poorer folk pushed into extremity by the rinsing price of energy under David Cameron’s subsidies of the fashionable and carbon taxes on the reliable.

The UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change’s (DECC) latest report in July 2011, which only gives figures up to 2009, estimated that 18% of UK households were then officially classified as being in fuel poverty. The UK Citizen’s Advice Bureau, again a guesstimate circa 2009, is concerned that 5.5 million people in UK face living in freezing conditions through Winter, because of self-rationing or disconnection. Given the steep jump in domestic power prices over the last three years, the figure must now be well over 25%.

Must we really repeat that here?

Governments wasting vast amounts of taxpayer’s money on financially absurd projects is always bad but if the net effect of doing so, is to impoverish and harm their own most vulnerable citizens, then it’s unforgivable.

It would be.

.

RELATED POSTS:

• “Dr Norman says ‘‘smart, green economics’ is the way to go because the international market for sustainable products and clean energy technology is growing rapidly.’ Really? Is that right?
      “Well, no.  It’s not. Like virtually everything else the Ginger Whinger says, it’s not right. Not right at all. The international market for “clean energy” is bankrupt.  Not just struggling. Not just a little bit bankrupt. It’s completely, wholly and abjectly bankrupt.”
  Russel: 'Don’t sell the power companies—throw money my way instead'
• “Russel Norman is still talking about “a smart, green economy” as if that were an actual thing. It’s not. So why does the media not challenge Russel Norman for continuing to pretend he owns the source to some economic magic bullet?”
  Smart green failure
• “Russel however continues to talk about "a smart, green economy.” But the fact is, no such thing exists—at least not in the terms he means, with bans on power producers and subsidies for so-called “green tech.” The failure of any “green stimulus to get off the ground—in Spain, in Germany, in the US—even with huge motivation and billions of dollars in subsidies is just another clue that Russel is talking nonsense…
      “If Russel really does want some lessons from economics for his environmentalism [as he claims he does], he might reflect that the whole of economic activity consists in creating new values and, new goods and new resources, and moving them and transforming them to the place(s) and the state in which they are most valued… But this fact continues to elude Russel and his followers, who continue to cry wolf while remaining blind to the incredible results all around him.”
  Re-designing Russel’s “green” economics
• “Renewable energy is economically unsustainable energy. Google thought they could change that. Google failed.”
  Renewable energy is still unsustainable energy

.

Greenpeace: so outraged they’re climbing the walls.

Greenpeace abseilers surfed parliament walls this morning to deliver this message to your tweetphone:

Which means, I guess, whatever they want it to mean.

They think that climbing walls changes climate?

That they want government action to stop private action?

That waving banners made of fossil fuels is a way to argue against fossil fuels?

Anyway, whatevers. (With postmodern protesting it’s all about the outrage, never the point.) So they then dropped a big picture of John Key and installed eight solar panels – just enough to charge their phones and make a point. That point being … no, I’m not clear on that one either.

That you need eight solar panels to charge four phones? 

That without government subsidies solar is uneconomic?

The message is unclear, really. (But that last one is certainly true. As it is also true that the burden of climate change regulation falls heaviest on the poor, who Greens like to think they speak for.) While hanging around out there one spokes-abseiler did pipe up to explain, “We have come to offer the Government a gift of solar panels, which are working - we are just about to start hooking up now, to charge our phones and stuff like that.” Which explains everything and nothing. He wants the government to charge their phones by solar? Eight panels for four phones, so to charge all of government would take … no, my cheap calculator can’t do that many numbers either.

“We also want to show that this is what real climate action looks like,” repeated the spokes-hanger, “and we hope that the Government takes action like us."

What, like climbing the walls?

I”m not sure they’ve really thought this one through.

Greenpeace: so outraged they’re climbing the walls. But at least they’ve started to wear red so we can see what their true colours are.

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• 100,000 green jobs from $2.5 billion of green pork? Who are they kidding.
• The international market for “clean energy” is bankrupt.
• Lima Climate Conference: It Takes a Village to Demonstrate the Failure
• Cue Card Libertarianism: Renewable Energy

Proof "Green Jobs" exist

From the U.S. this week comes proof that “green job” exist: Green jobs and global warming both in one picture.

Myth-maker Russel Norman will be pleased.

[Hat tip Climate Change LIES]

#SurveillanceState: An opposition leader has emerged [corrected]

Why is Russel Norman considered by so many the de facto leader of the opposition—despite Labour leader David Shearer having that titular role? And why is Labour considering having Norman in a senior role in any coalition they lead—despite his party’s loony economics, bankrupt proposals and misanthropic policy positions?

Perhaps he’s taken seriously, despite his frequent insanity, because when he gets it right he’s good—he’s very good.  And on his opposition to having the GCSB listen in to all of us whenever they feel like; to the government taking journalist’s phone records whenever they want to; to the monitoring of journalists’ communications by the defence forces,  he’s been virtually alone in integrating all of the attacks on privacy and a free media—and being very articulate in doing it. Listen here here, for example [from 3:30 1:50], to his succinct response this morning to these issues.

And David Shearer has been virtually silent, except when pushed.

CORRECTED: Audio link fixed.

Obama jumps the warmist shark [updated]

With most US businesses still struggling to make a profit, the US economy struggles to fire. So Obama has chosen to pour more cold water on the still weak and sporadic flames.

With the globe simply failing to do what the global warming models say it will, the global warming “science” has arrived at a failed dead end. So he’s declared the debate over the science “obsolete.” (That’ll do it.)

And so called “green jobs” have been costing the US taxpayer up to $2 million per job in subsidies. So he’s elected to “create” many more.

He calls it his Climate Action Plan of June 25 2013.  This can’t fail to end badly.

(Is he really this desperate to get Edward Snowden off the front pages?)

[Cartoon is Blunt, by Knutz]

A Party of All the Talents #LibzConf2012 [updated]

UPDATE 2: Welcome Herald readers, with this clarification: No, we didn’t discuss merging with Act. But we did talk about a home for their many and increasing ex-members…

UPDATE 1: Lindsay Perigo’s speech here.

Thanks to everyone from Libz, Act, True Liberals, ALCP, Pirate Party, C&R and Auckland Now for a great conference. Here's what I said to the #LibzConf2012 conference this morning.
 

Good morning everyone.

My name is Peter. And I am a Recovering Libertarian. 

It began for me around 30 years ago. It started small. Just me and a few grams of Ayn Rand. But pretty soon I found myself with fellow addicts, gathering together to drink in John Locke, imbibe Thomas Jefferson, and to snort FA Hayek. 

17 years ago we met in a small smoke-filled room to set about spreading our addiction.

We had big plans for Project Libertarianz. 

We met, and we plotted, and we set out to make a revolution in people’s heads. 

We were hard-arses! flag-flyers. Non compromisers. Not for us the timid wimperings of focus groups too scared to frighten the horses. We plotted and planned and produced policies forged from the sterling silver of sound principle. All policies all principle all the way down the line. 
 
We planned to get these ideas and our policies into parliament, we said. By any means necessary, we said  

With a radio show, a magazine, and a small army of foot soldiers, we did. We got rid of the TV tax from outside parliament, a thankless victory but a hard-earned one. We got parties talking about one law for all; we got some of them offering a tax-free threshold. We got right-wing politicians starting to talk about decriminalising cannabis. 

But this wasn’t enough. We wanted MPs in parliament. Oh, we said we didn’t, we always said we didn’t. But we were in denial about our addiction. We knew we had to have MPs. We just found it impossible to get enough votes to have them. Or, for some reason, enough money to promote them properly.

And we found it impossible to find anyone amongst us who really wanted to be an MP. 

Partly because none of us actually even likes politics. Or politicans. 

We know deep down, all of us addicted libertarians do, that what Thomas Jefferson said is true—that whenever a man has cast a longing eye on political offices rottenness begins in his conduct. 

The only reason we libertarians are truly interested in politics is because politics can’t resist being interested in us.

Project Libertarianz began however with the explicit goal of getting Libertarianz MPs into parliament. It was right there on our brochures. Still is, as far as I know. 

But I think everyone who’s suffered from this addiction now knows the truth. 

It’s never going to happen. 

If it isn’t already obvious to you, then please remain seated while I tell you truth: Project Libertarianz has been a failure.

I’ll say that again. Project Libertarianz has been a failure. 

I say that not with any glee, only with huge disappointment. 

What we began with such promise was weighed down by the difficulty of running a never-noticed political party and beset by the never-ending problem of never-enough money.

But let’s be clear here. Project Libertarianz has failed just at the time it is most urgently needed.

We meet here now at a time when a hole the size of the ACT Party has appeared in National’s coalition partners; at a time when there has never been a more urgent need to articulate the goals of economic and social freedom. And to get that voice into parliament by any means necessary.

And I guess that we’re all here today means we understand that. 

So let’s be blunt about the reasons you’re all here. It isn’t just Project Libertarianz that’s been a failure, has it. So too has Project ACT. 

[Come on, how many recovering ACT members are there here? The first stage of any cure is accepting reality.] Project ACT has been a failure. If ACT’s lack of any real achievement hasn’t made it obvious—and I trust no-one here wants to defend the super-sized Auckland bureaucracy that ACT’s second-to-last leader delivered us-- If ACT’s lack of any real achievement hasn’t made it obvious; if the infighting and lack of direction in recent years hasn’t made it clear enough, then the size and quality of today’s ACT caucus surely has to. 

Is THAT what it was all for, all those years of effort? One super-powered mayoralty, and John Banks’s nose in the parliamentary trough again? 

Surely all those millions of dollars and all those years of effort should have delivered something much, much better.

And don’t fool yourself it will all change if you can just eject your current feral conservative from the leadership. The ACT brand is now so poisonous that instead of Don Brash dragging it up, the once well-respected man was dragged down himself by its toxic slick. 

So Project ACT and Project Libertarianz are both failures. 

And if success is measured by achieving measurable goals, then failure has unfortunately been the only thing about which the single-issue Legalise Cannabis Party has to boast.

And that’s despite virtually every MP in the New Zealand parliament happy to confess they’ve inhaled.

I think economic and social liberals from all parties—classical liberals, if you like—can learn from all our failures.

Project Act and Project Libertarianz are failures for opposite reasons.

ACT abandoned principle in favour of populism, and ended up losing both. Libz embraced principle over populism, and while we’ve succeeded in putting some of those principles on the public stage, it’s not as much as we’d hoped from 17 years of trying. 

For similar reasons, ALCP supporters have faced similar disappointment. And many convictions.  

Why the failures? 

Well, why did Project ACT fail? It’s principles are certainly sound, as they should be. they were written by the Libz founder. and I for one would have no difficulty embracing them as the foundation of a new party.

The principal object of the ACT Party is to promote an open, progressive and benevolent society in which individual New Zealanders are free to achieve their full potential.

To this end the ACT Party upholds the following principles:

that individuals are the rightful owners of their own lives and therefore have inherent rights and responsibilities; and
that the proper purpose of government is to protect such rights and not to assume such responsibilities. 

Nothing there to argue with.

But it wasn’t that ACT’s MPs ever argued with the principles. They seemed to just forgot they were there. And where they should have been waging a battle of ideas against the enemies of their principles, instead they waged a battle of personalities within their own ranks.

And why did Project Libertarianz fail? Not because of any lack of principle, or of talent. Nor because of any lack of intellectual grunt. I still smile when I remember one journalist gleefully recounting the tale of one MP who shall remain nameless making the mortal error, as the journalist described it, of publicly engaging two lanky libertarians in intellectual combat. 

That was our reputation.

But it won us no seats. 

Our ACT critics were right. Victories like this, however delicious, were no substitute for being an MP in parliament with the one single goal of increasing freedom and rolling back the state. (The lack of such a goal being our own criticism of virtually every single ACT MP.

Why did we not get any traction? I’m sure you all have your own answers. We’ve always seen Project Libertarianz very much as a vehicle to educate people. But perhaps it is too early for people to hear what we have been saying. Perhaps, in what Lindsay fondly calls this pathetic authoritarian backwater, we always were just pissing in the wind. Perhaps we did just frightened the horses a little more than we needed to. Perhaps we scared people off.

That’s what Richard McGrath told TV3 last weekend. That our policies were too scary for most people. That they scared people off.

We were told that again during the week by someone putting up her hand to be our in-house Agony Aunt.“In the past,” said Deborah Coddington, who was once our party’s deputy leader.

the Libz narrow dogma -- total free market, wholesale selling of state assets including having all schools and hospitals run by private enterprise, the right to carry guns, and complete freedom to take whatever drugs you like so long as you accept the consequences -- have scared the bejesus out of people.

She’s probably right. We probably did. But someone did have to say those things were right, and so we said them.

And it was fun.
 
But if if I may continue her Agony Aunt column, she offers this advice: [Ahem]

Cliches are usually true,” she says. “as in there's only one way to eat an elephant: one bite at a time. So when you say you want freedom, you can only achieve it one step at a time. Don't terrify people who've been enchained for 30 years. It's like stripping them naked, when you should be persuading them they can just remove their overcoat. It will take time for some to be convinced they don't need to hold Nanny's hand.

Right again. It does. And don’t we know it.

So “finally,” she continues,

tell us what you're for, as well as what you're against. When campaigning for Act, this was a common criticism, and today when I switch on the news or pick up a newspaper, all I see are killings, crashes, our youth are all drunk, the country's broke, we're going to hell in a handcart.
How refreshing it would be for a change, to be asked to give my vote to a party with a sense of life. 

Right once again. There is much in the present world about which to be honestly afraid. Hell, there’s enough just here at home about which to be terrified. But we need to explain simply how freedom makes things better.

If I may quote a libertarian litany from a fellow who essentially put up his hand last week to be our Agony Uncle, 

With all the this government is doing, said Matthew Hooton in last week’s NBR,

the classical liberal movement should be booming, especially with National’s support falling and the combined Labour/Green vote leading the polls. That ACT languishes on 0.5% underlines that party’s abject failure.

Government spending as a percentage of GDP has grown since 2008 and Finance Minister Bill English borrows hundreds of millions of dollars a month, mainly for welfare.

Prime Minister John Key broke his promise of further tax cuts, yet his pledges to keep Labour’s Working for Families, interest-free student loans and current superannuation entitlements remain inviolable.

Fiscal surplus is elusive. Even if New Zealand reaches balance for a year or two this decade, Treasury’s long-term fiscal outlook indicates that, without major policy change, public debt will surpass Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain well before mid-century.

A vast new bureaucracy has been established to hand out corporate welfare while other bureaucracies work on five-year plans.

The Ministry of Women’s Affairs, the Ministry of Maori Development, the Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs, the Ministry for Culture & Heritage, the Office of Ethnic Affairs, the Ministry for the Environment, NZ On Air and dozens of other unpopular agencies and quangos continue to exist.

Efforts to expand the private sector into health, education, welfare and ACC are half-hearted at best.

Nothing serious has been done to reform the Resource Management Act, which Steven Joyce rightly points out has already held up new job creation on the West Coast for seven years – with no end in sight.

There is no true freedom to contract under the Employment Relations Act.

While SOEs are not being privatised, management of Te Urewera National Park will be, as part of a Treaty of Waitangi deal with a tribe that didn’t sign it.

Rogue spy agencies are intercepting New Zealand residents’ communications and passing their business secrets to foreign powers.

The nanny state is re-emerging in welfare, including the requirement to enrol children in early childhood centres, seen by some as peddlers of socialist doctrine.

And now National is flirting brazenly with NZ First's Winston Peters…

  It is quite a list.

And, as he says, faced with that, the classical liberal movement should really be booming.

It should be a gift to parties like ours.

But they’re not booming, we’re dying.

And the faces of the alleged classical liberal parties today, if we don’t put something better out in the field ourselves, will be John Bank. And Colin Craig. And, if the United Future Party is successful in changing the name of his party to the Liberal Democrats, Peter Dunne-Nothing—the Minister of Internal Revenue.

Which is why Aunty Deborah and Uncle Matthew and many others like them in the media are just quietly beginning to realise that “Libertarianz representation on councils and parliament would undoubtedly be good for New Zealand.”Better especially than the much less liberal alternative of Colin Craig.

But like them, we must know that achieving that will not be easy.

THERE IS INDEED MUCH about which to be honestly afraid . Our job however is to tell people how more freedom can drive away the fears; how less government will makes their their petrol cheaper, their jobs more plentiful, their houses more affordable and their lives inside them better.

How refreshing it would be for a change, to ask people to give their vote to a party with a sense of life.

But there is opportunity from ACT’s collapse, from Libz realisation of failure, and from National’s desperation for new “partners.” Opportunity for a Party of All the Talents attracting like-minded adherents from all parts of the political spectrum. A party firmly based on sound principles, promoting a small suite of popular policies that get us there one principled step at a time.

Politics is the art of the possible. Does that mean compromise is necessary? Not a bit of it. Look again at that advice from our Agony Aunt. We’ve been trying to eat the whole elephant. But the best way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. 

Even though we’d been snorting Ayn Rand, we hadn’t realised that Ayn Rand would not even agree with our approach. 

It’s too early for politics, she said fifty years ago. It still is. Too early to be standing at the goalposts demanding that everyone play towards us—which is what, with our all-or-nothing policies, we were doing.  

Ayn Rand talked instead about a “Party X” that wouldn’t just wave at everyone from the goalposts saying “up here,” but would dive into the ruck in the middle of the park and start moving the ball in the upward direction. 

Of course, Rand never used that metaphor. I doubt she ever saw a rugby game, But she did offer a brief prescription for her’ Party X,’ one that rolls back the state even from opposition : A party that uses its principles not as a set of handcuffs, or as something to be banished from its website. Rand’s Party X would use its principles as a weapon.

Party X [she said] would oppose statism and would advocate free enterprise. But it would know that one cannot win anybody’s support by repeating that slogan until it turns into a stale, hypocritical platitude—while simultaneously accepting and endorsing every step in the growth of government controls. 

Party X would know that opposition does not consist of declaring to the voters: “The Administration plans to tighten the leash around your throats until you choke—but we’re lovers of freedom and we’re opposed to it, so we’ll tighten it only a couple of inches.” 

Party X would not act as Exhibit A for its enemies, when they charge that it is passive, stagnant, “me-tooing” and has no solutions for the country’s problems. It would offer the voters concrete solutions and specific proposals, based on the principles of free enterprise. The opportunities to do so are countless, and Party X would not miss them.

No, it wouldn’t .

For example, every political bullfrog and his legrope is presently all afire about child poverty, about mothers being forced out to work, and children being forced into child care by an uncaring Paula Benefit. A Party X wouldn’t miss a challenge of that kind. It would proceed to demonstrate to everyone who would listen that early childhood centres survive on subsidies—which just barely covers the cost for the ever-increasing number of regulations they have to follow. It would point out to everyone that the salary of one parent in every couple is spent just paying their tax bill. That one partner in every couple is effectively going out to work just to pay their tax bill. 

Our Party X would demand to know why, say, the couple can’t even get a tax credit for any money spent on the education of their children, or for those children whose education they might choose to sponsor. And Party X would offer this proposal to voters: a tax exemption for the educational expenses of all citizens.

And Party X would also declare that if people really wanted to put other people first they might begin by taking their hand out of other people’s pockets.

For another example, every hand wringer and his box of tissues likes to wail about the problem of affordable housing. But they have no idea of how to make housing affordable. And they wail about it while doing all they can to make housing even more unaffordable. 

Now I rejoice in the fact there are now many more people already singing from our songsheet—about rolling back the planners’ power over land and building that makes our overregulated housing more than four times the build-cost of freer markets. 

But their proposed changes will take time. A Party X would want to know why councils couldn’t have small consents tribunals for projects under, say, $300,000. As former Federated Farmers president Charlie Pederson observed, "it's little, not large, that suffers most RMA pain." These tribunals, charged with using common sense and common law to make quick decisions, would fix that. 

And Party X would also declare the wider principle that when the productive have to ask permission from the unproductive in order to produce, then you may know that your culture is stuffed. 

I want us to be that Party X.  

And something more. 

We who understand the power of genuine freedom to deliver real prosperity might even realise we can spike the guns of our opponents, to silence those who are only too eager to put us in the ashcan of being “right wing”, by declaring that we are the party of affordability. Because only real economic freedom can make things that are genuinely affordable.

WE might even, if we were to stand for local govt in the likes of Auckland or Ashburton next next year, develop a sort of franchise, calling our loose franschise as necessary, Affordable Auckland, Affordable Ashburton and so on. 

Of course, our Party X would recognise the only way Wellington would ever be affordable would be the erasure of whole govt departments. 

And the only way Christchurch will ever be affordable again, or even a real city instead of a welfare project, will be if it can be made an enterprise zone.  

And we will say that. 

Face it, there are no shortage of opportunities.  

Our only choice should be which particular battles to fight. About which more later.

Let me tell you first what I mean by using our principles as a weapon. 

To start with, let’s realise that eating the elephant one bite at a time doesn’t mean compromise. Let’s realise that right now.  

We certainly have to recognise the realities of what’s politically possible, but that’s no reason at all to withdraw from a commitment to removing the leash from around our throats. Quite the opposite. 

What it does means is that we direct our work as far towards our final goals as possible, and wok fervently for every small gain we can get --- and we formulate our policies on principle to reflect that. Writer Robert Tracinski gives us the big tip:

In judging a measure, he says, one cannot hold it responsible for all aspects of a mixed economy - only for those aspects it changes.  

These changes can be evaluated by a straightforward application of the principle of individual rights: Does the reform remove some aspect of government control or does it add more control?...It is not a compromise to advocate reduced government control in one sphere even if controls in other spheres are left standing. It is a compromise, on the other hand, if one seeks to purchase increased freedom in one area at the price of increased control in another.

Clear enough: Start with what you find, and don’t take responsibility for it. Then design the means to work towards your goal one baby step at a time, without ever purchasing increased freedom at the expensed of increased coercion.  

This is what is meant by the phrase ‘ratchet for freedom.’ 

This approach gives us a real weapon if we can make it into parliament. It would be a game changer.  

We could spurn altogether any idea of coalition, which has killed every minor party who embraced it. Instead, we could give every party in the house the firm commitment that we would vote for every single measure just as long as it removed some government control, just as long as it advanced freedom, just as long as there were no new element of coercion. 

And how could anyone object to that? 

And just think. No need for made-to-be-broken coalition agreements, because any party who needed it would have our cast-iron commitment to vote with them on every measure removing some government control, as long as there were no new element of coercion—which means supporting every budget that removed spending, just as long as there was no new increased burden on anybody. 

Just imagine it. Every politician in the house will be hurrying to understand what the words more freedom and less government actually mean. 

Just think about it. Every journalist in the country who wants to talk up votes in the house will be doing our job for us, because to understand how our votes would be committee—if we get to parliament—would require them, too, to understand what the words more freedom and less government actually mean. 

A principled opposition of course – our putative 'Party X' -- would also promote such policies. An intelligent opposition would design such policies to be picked up and passed around. 

To be picked up and passed around (and to be worth passing around) every policy should pass The Test of the Three Ps: it should be Practical, it must be Principled, and it will have been designed to be arse-grabbingly Provocative.  

Provocative enough to be passed around; Practical enough to be work; Principled enough to move the game in the right direction. The principle with each policy must be clear: More freedom with no new coercion. 

Now I know there are policy wonks in this very room who if we let them would talk enough would all say which specific policies we should promote and why. 

But I’m going to say we shouldn’t sweat the specific policies now. Not yet. Not this afternoon. I say if we get broad agreement now on our general approach, we can put ACT's principles at the top of the page, and meet early next year to thrash out the main policy platform arising therefrom. 

One think I think we can agree on now is that we keep it simple, stupid. 

Here’s what I mean. At the last election, the Greens had great success from promoting just three basic policies. Sorry, three “priorities.” If you recall, the three “priorities” were green jobs, clean rivers and child poverty. It worked. 

Now without commenting on those priorities themselves, I think we’d all say it worked. They found a small number of areas on which there’s huge popular support, and articulated their positions with all the energy and taxpayers’ money they could command..

I think we can learn from that. I’d like to think however that our target voter is smarter than the Greens’s. I’d like to think that. So I think we can do better than three. I reckon we should promote five major policies, a “tight five” of priorities, promoted over and over again until we’re bored with talking about them—because only then will others start to notice. 

So which five do we promote?  

That’s the sixty-million dollar question, isn’t it.  

The populist way for a party to capture support is to find people’s itches and scratch them. Ours is a harder route, but with greater long-term payoff. 

Political parties must first of all capture support, so their policies do have to be popular. But they also have to continually expand the market for their ideas, (something ACT failed to do) so every policy also has to teach.  

Remember, if we’re going to be successful we need to attract the support of around 100,000 people. So I’d suggest the test for being in our “tight five” should be these five points:

1. Select those policies that clearly demonstrate our principles;
2. Select those policies for which we estimate there are already 100,000 people in the country who agree with us; and
3. Select those policies for which those 100,000 will vote for us instead of anyone else.
4. Reject policies too closely associated with past failure.
5. Accept those policies that promote the benevolence and sense of life of freedom.

NB: All five points are important.

Selecting those policies that demonstrate our principles keeps us honest, and it helps educate others. (Promoting affordable cities, for example, allows us to teach people that only by making people freer can our cities become more affordable.)

Without popular policies we’re wasting our time. (Promoting marijuana legalisation, for example, which we already know has large support—and tells anyone who needs to know that this is not a right-wing party, it’s one serious about freedom.)

Without policies for which we alone have a competitive advantage, we’re spending time promoting policies for which other parties receive the rewards. (there’s little point in us spending time promoting law and order, for example, because the Nats will lap up that support, not us.)

We have to learn from the sad career trajectory of Don Brash that anything publicly associated with ACT (and possibly everyone associted) is now poison for most people. So that means policies directly and publicly associated with them will be too (which means, unfortunately, that one law for all must be out.)

For too long we’ve rained on everyone’s parade by scaring them about Nanny State and telling them what we’d like to abolish, what we’d like to take away. And that’s scared them. How about we tell them all them instead all the benefits of freedom, like prosperity, like affordability, like choice. Yes, that will be much harder, but I think the sugar pill will prove more palatable to more people.

There is one policy however which by necessity violates this last guideline of being positive.

Let’s face it. Economically, the world is in a mess. I’m convinced that we need to promote balanced budgets and hard money. The payoff for this will be when the unfortunate GFC 2.0 crash happens, and (unlike the other parties) we will be seen to know what we're talking about, just as the likes of Peter Schiff, Detlev Schlicter, and John Allison had their reputations enhanced by warning of the coming of the last calamity.

There is yet another reason to keep our suite of policy themes to a minimum. 

And that’s because not all of us in this room agree on everything.

That’s both the strength and the weakness of a party of all the talents. 

I draw inspiration from the Ministry of All the Talents formed in Britain during the Napoleonic War, and again during the Second World War, that drew on talents from across the spectrum, coming together with the one aim of winning the war.

Our divisions are fewer than those between, say Nai Bevan and Winston Churchill. But with their aims limited to specific goals, they could find agreement.

So can we.

WE have a mission. We have a goal. We share an understanding, I think, of how to get there.

Now, to the extent that we are successful in attracting large numbers, we’ll all be running into people we’ve had run-ins with before. To that I say “suck it up.” That’s a good thing, it will be one early sign of our success—that we’re drawing in people who have left the lists for other things and have now returned to the battle. If it happens, as it should, embrace it. And as long as we’re honest with each other, and all our aims are the same, we can agree and get on with it.

OUR IMMEDIATE AIM must be to give a home to ACT's disenfranchised libertarians and social liberals, along with like-minded souls from Libz, ALCP, socially liberal Young Nats and elsewhere. 

AND OUR LONG-TERM AIM must be to produce by education and activism a “freedom bloc” in parliament of intelligent, articulate, knowledgeable advocates of freedom. A principled and powerful Party of All the Talents that regenerates itself by continual education of members and MPs.

(And for those who do read Matthew Hooton, let me assure you that doesn’t mean re-education in the art of romantic realism. Well, not necessarily.)

** AIM OF FREEDOM BLOC: The aim is obviously to be in Parliament within six years. 

Let’s not think that will be easy.It’s certainly possible. But it’s not going to be easy. 

If we’re going to do it, we have to be credible. We have to be financial. And we have to be active.

Outside parliament and struggling for attention, what we really need here is a constant campaign--a permanent revolution, if you will. Not just a three-week burst in some far-distant November, but an ongoing concerted campaign to capture attention for the party, and teach the ideas. 

Q: How many of you are really up for that? How many of you are willing to back that.

The opportunity exists for us to Take advantage. But how many of you value it enough to get behind it. Because this is where it all gets that much harder.

**FUNDING?

Campaigning costs money. Campaigning credibly costs big money.

We have a wealth of ideas. But do we have wealth and funders sufficient to bankroll us?

On that, I bow to those more qualified to answer. But I do know that being credible attracts big money. And I know that some of you know how, and from whom, to extract it.

And we are also going to need grassroots financial support.

I reckon no party with the goals that we have can be taken seriously, or can do the job we need to do, unless there’s regular and decent funding from the membership. Unless there is serous money not just at election time, but all through the electoral cycle. Unless the leader of the party, the man or woman who (like it or not) is going to be the party’s face, is at least getting an honorarium for all the time that doing the job properly will take.

Whatever we choose to call it, if we’re going to do it properly this new project will demand a lot of our time, and cost a lot of money.

So to those who are thinking of applauding me now I’ve finally concluded, just let me say this.

Don’t clap. Just throw money. 

Because if we’re not just pissing in the wind, we’re going to need it. 

* * * * * 

POSSIBLE TIGHT-FIVE POLICIES?

• Small Consents Tribunals – accept RMA but insist that Small Consents Tribunals are set up, something like Small Claims Tribunals, to deal with projects under $300,000 on the basis of a Codification of Common Law. At one very easy stroke you make more low-cost housing much more affordable for many more people.
• Iwi then Kiwi – accept ToW, insist only that all property involved (which, let’s face it, is the only way we’re going to see any real privatisation this decade) is individualised and transferrable. And call it what it is. Privatisation. At one simple stroke you have the biggest political power bloc in the country, the Browntable, behind privatisation.
• Balanced Budget
• Legalise cannabis
• Voluntary euthanasia
• Abolish Search & Surveillance Act, 2012
• Abolish Maori seats
• Enterprise Zone for Christchurch
• Affordable Cities
• 40/15 tax: $40k income tax free threshold, 15% GST
• A Very Special Carbon Tax: linked to temperature rise in troposphere at equator
• Eco UnTaxes
• Putting Property Rights in the Bill of Rights.
• Replace zoning with “Coming to the Nuisance”
• Tax credits for education

FRIDAY MORNING RAMBLE: “An Explosion of interest in Ayn Rand”

Yes, the nomination of Paul Ryan for US VP has caused an explosion of interest in Ayn Rand—if not an explosion of knowledge about what she actually stood for—an explosion such that even the BBC (the BBC!) the New York Times (the Times!!) and The Guardian (The Bloody Guardian FFS!!!!) are running stories sympathetic to her thinking.

Can’t be a bad thing. Especially when you see the New York Times in the position of defending Ayn Rand in order to burn Paul Ryan at the stake of inconsistency!

Even Paul Krugman has to have a go.

As Harry Binswanger told his email list, “The bad news is that I can no longer keep up with all the articles on Ayn Rand on the web and in the media. The good news is that I can longer keep up with all the articles on Ayn Rand on the web and in the media. Things are changing. “

Yes, they are.

Atlas Spurned – Jennifer Burns, NEW YORK TIMES
Randier Than Thou – James Taranto, WALL STREET JOURNAL [comments]
Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged: a paean to American liberty – Don Watkins, THE GUARDIAN [comments]
Does America Need Ayn Rand or Jesus? – Onkar Ghate, FOX NEWS
Ryan, Rand and rights – Don Watkins, DAILY CALLER
Ayn Rand: Why is she so popular? – BBC MAGAZINE
BBC’s Rand Misquote – Roberto Sarriondia
Woman's Hour: Ayn Rand, author & philosopher – BBC RADIO 4
Paul Ryan's Ayn Rand Reader: Lesson One – David Weigel, SLATE
Krugman Konfusion (Paul Ryan Edition) – Robert Wenzel, ECONOMIC POLICY JOURNAL
An Interview with Don Watkins: Where Do Ryan and Rand Agree and Disagree? – EDUCATION NEWS
Ayn Rand And The 2012 Presidential Campaign – NPR RADIO [Audio]
Why Paul Ryan is no Ayn Rand on Social Security – Don Watkins, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
Who Is Paul Ryan? – John Stossel, REAL CLEAR POLITICS
Ayn Rand's appeal – Onkar Ghate, FOX NEWS

Still, if the mainstream  media are getting her partially wrong, that’s nothing compared to what philosophy textbook writers think they know about her!
Carlin Romano’s 'America the Philosophical' – STEPHEN HICKS

“All Ayn Rand did was to give the OK for pricks all over the world to tell selfish assholes that it’s OK to be selfish.” Really?
Self-Lovers and Self-Loathers – Per Olof Samueslson, HOUSE AT POS CORNER

The ideal website for journalists to check before they write.
www.aynrandmyths.com

And the $64 trillion question:
Can Paul Ryan Make the Moral Case for Capitalism? – Paul Hsieh, OBJECTIVE STANDARD

“Reason is man’s only means of grasping reality and of acquiring
knowledge—and, therefore, the rejection of reason means that men
should act regardless of and/or in contradiction to the facts of reality.”
       - Ayn Rand

Highly relevant argument to Maori claims to property rights in water.  “Property means autonomy. Authentic owners of private property are in it for the long run.”
Respect Indigenous Property Rights – Mike Reid, MISES DAILY

A High Court ruling last week means Australians, and probably us, will be guinea pigs for an illiberal policy based on junk science.
The plain lies of plain-packs advocates – Benjamin Lazarus, SPIKED

Canterbury Uni economist Eric Crampton has been fighting off both alcohol and tobacco wowsers.
Tobacco excise incidence – OFFSETTING BEHAVIOUR
A symposium, of sorts– OFFSETTING BEHAVIOUR

Turns out the NZ parliament has a fellow who believes the universe was created in six days 6,000 years ago by a lonely Goblin. That parliamentarian is John Banks.
Banks: I believe Bible's account of how life began – NZ HERALD
The Story of the Lonely Goblin – Lindsay Perigo, SOLO

I don’t know about you, but when leading Labour Party MPs like Trevor Mallard start posting things like this on their Facebook page, then I for one see it as progress.
Oh, Trevor – KEEPING STOCK

Obama’s gotta go, says Harvard historian Niall Ferguson in Newsweek’s latest controversy-provoking cover story.
Hit the road, Barack – Niall Ferguson, DAILY BEAST

“So abysmal is the president's job-creation record that, according to a new study, he'd have to create 280,000 every month just to get out of the cellar among modern presidents. Where are the jobs?”
Obama Is The Dr. Kevorkian Of Job Creation – INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY

This piece utterly destroys any notion of “green jobs” as being anything other than fatuous make-work schemes. “If the industry was fundamentally unproductive, so were my colleagues and I. We were wasting a tragic amount of time, talent--and other people's money--making a far inferior form of power when we could have been creating real advances in other, legitimate kinds of energy.
Just as disturbing was what these ‘jobs’ did to people’s spirits. Every high-ranking person in solar or wind must eventually figure out, as I did, that he cannot compete in the market, that his competitive advantages are government subsidies and forced limitations on competitors.”
I had a green job – Deborah Sloan, FOX NEWS

"We could use up all of the proven reserves of oil
in the entire world by the end of the next decade."
- Jimmy Carter, 1977

The Republican memo to candidates: Never say what you stand for. And never stand for anything.
GOP memo: ‘Don’t say entitlement reform’ – POLITICO

The gold standard has returned to mainstream U.S. politics for the first time in 30 years. Mind you, 30 years ago politicians brought it up only to damn it for shackling their spending.
Republicans Eye Return to Gold Standard – CNBC

It used to be an ugly trait to be envious. Now politicians encourage it.
The Era of Procrustes – Tibor Machan, TIBOR’S SPACE

The inequality myth.
The mismeasure of inequality – THE GRUMPY ECONOMIST

“The “trickle-down” theory is a ludicrous attempt to justify economic inequality on the grounds that the poor can live of the crumbs that are falling from the rich man’s table – and the richer the man, the more crumbs will fall to the poor.”
Is the Wealth of the Rich Merely Trickling Down to Us?? - Per Olof Samueslson, HOUSE AT POS CORNER

“2 years in prison for Pussy Riot? At worst they're guilty of minor trespassing. Shame on Russia.” – Ari Armstrong
Russian court imprisons Pussy Riot band members on hooliganism charges - CNN

It’s common to hear Marxism excused on the basis that the communist dictatorships that killed 100 million people “weren’t real Marxists.” Karl Marx however embraced the violence, portraying a horrifying but allegedly necessary stage of society immediately after the necessary violent world revolution of the proletariat.
Karl Marx portrayed a horrifying but allegedly necessary stage of society immediately after the necessary violent world revolution of the proletariat.
Raw Communism – Murray Rothbard, MISES DAILY

Is slow economic recovery ineevitable?
Inevitable slow recoveries? – John Cochrane, THE GRUMPY ECONOMIST

“Politicians are willing to do anything to restore
the economy... except give up power.”
- Cary Yates

Mind you, what if politicians were capable of honour?  I’ve recently been enjoying re-reading Allen Drury’s “Washington novels,” and I’d highly recommend them.
Allen Drury & the Washington novel – Roger Kaplan, HOOVER INSTITUTION

The importance of making a moral defence of those who have earned wealth honestly, not just an economic defence.
If You Want Human Progress To Stop, Institute A Maximum Income – Paul Hsieh, FORBES

Why do Britons like their die-while-you-wait health system so much, despite its documented failure?
Universal Mediocrity – Theodore Dalrymple, CITY JOURNAL

So here’s the relevant question:
Can Markets Work in Medicine? – Chris Conover, FORBES

Bad news for anti-nuclear advocates. Great news for everyone else.
Record haul of uranium harvested from seawater – NEW SCIENTIST

Ride down to the surface of Mars! No, really!!

Olympic medal success is prompting a few Americans to realise immigration is good.
Immigration and the Olympics – THRUTCH

Any writer who channels Frédéric Bastiat is my kind of writer.
How Yglesias Channels Bastiat – Bryan Caplan, ECON LOG

“The plans differ; the planners are all alike... “
- Frédéric Bastiat

Yes, there is a govt debt crisis coming up. So how come so few people are getting frightened?
Film-Maker Alfred Hitchcock Could Teach Politicians About Dangers of ‘Fiscal Cliff’ – REAL TIME ECONOMICS

The discovery of a winning strategy for Prisoner's Dilemma is forcing game theorists to rethink their discipline. Their conclusion? Winning isn't everything.
The Emerging Revolution in Game Theory – TECHNOLOGY REVIEW

Here, below, looks like a  great way to make money.  (I bet there’s a copy of this, or something like it, hanging on the wall up at Fletcher Building.)
Seems Like a Pretty Good Business Plan – Pete Suderman, HIT & RUN

It’s amazing who you meet at the local coffee shop!
An Unexpected Ass Kicking – Joel Runyon, A BLOG OF IMPOSSIBLE THINGS

How does your body react when it overheats? Here’s how.
Body Heat Infographic: What Happens When It's Hot Outside – HUFFPOST HEALTHY LIVING

This is very cool.
US government experiments on the best way to derail trains – LIVE LEAK

Now here’s a real Olympic champion.
U.S. Olympic Runner Runs 5-Minute Mile ... While Chugging Beers - TMZ

Now, this is a question some of us ask often.
Is There a Limit to How Tall Buildings Can Get? – Nate Berg, ATLANTIC CITIES

Wow! There are cameras now able to film the path of light … and to see around corners.

"The once-dignified portrait now resembles a crayon sketch of a very hairy monkey in an ill-fitting tunic."
What Happens When Grandma Tries to Restore Art – Daniel Wahl, THE NEARBY PEN

Crikey, these were places where I grew up!
Auckland Rock City – Jonathan Ganley, PUBLIC ADDRESS

Ignore feminists’ shrill attempts to demonise critics – we need an honest adult debate about the meaning of rape.
On rape, George Galloway has a point – SPIKED ONLINE

Woah! LA’s porn industry has a syphilis outbreak. Worse, there’s a consequent outbreak of nanny statism.  But a good opportunity to talk about art!
Syphilis Cases Lead to Outbreak of Nanny-Statism – BASTIAT INSTITUTE
Porn Industry Syphilis Scare A Good Opportunity To Talk About This STI – BLISSTREE

What are rights? Where do they come from? And how do we know it? Ayn Rand's answers to these questions form the indispensable foundation of a fully free, fully civilized society.

You can enjoy a whole evening with the 1962 Count Basie orchestra!

[Hat tips Riko S., Jazz on the Tube, Noodle Food, Don Watkins, Geek Press, Thrutch, Keep Food Legal, Boaz Arad, Adam Savage, Ari Armstrong, Yaron Brook]

Thanks for reading.
Have a great weekend.
PC