Q: So, what's an 'Obleftivist'?
A: "It’s a term used by people who are upset that many Objectivists dislike Trump, aren’t racists, and not paranoid about immigration by Muslims, or non-white people, etc."
~ Facebooker Tom Burroughes
Suzuki Samurai has a few questions for those of you with all your dumb answers …
What would have been the conversation had the gay hating Islamo-fascist blown up the building with a fertiliser bomb? - Crop dusting?
What would it have been if he'd detonated a petrol truck upon crashing through the front door? - Trucks? Petrol? Driving?
And do the anti-gun folk seriously want to disarm themselves in the face of the real prospect of Trump becoming the president? - a man they claim, and I agree, is a fascist?
Lots of simple answers this week, but hardly a decent question being asked.
.
.
Guest post by Suzuki Samurai
There are those who run the world (or try to), and others who make it run.
The latter – the truckies, the mechanics, the farmers, the builders, the creators, the second-job-mum, and the small business owners – these are all the dwindling majority; a majority of middle-class grafters trying to make a better life for themselves. These folk are angry that they see their hard work made harder by the imposition of taxes, and ever-increasing rules getting in their way of their daily lives.
They're angry because they see their hard-earned money given to bludgers of both the high and low orders.
They're angry at the politicians for their lying and cheating; living on the hog with gold-plated pension schemes, business-class travel, top hotels, and large expense accounts.
They are pissed off with special favours for big business; special privilege for specific racial groups; the light sentencing of thieves, rapists and murders. They swear and curse at their T.V. when it shows some privileged lefties holding up work on a new mine for the sake of a rare frog or spotted gnat.
If they realised that every dollar they've earned from every single hour they've worked from January 1st to somewhere in mid-May has been siphoned off by the tax man, they would (hopefully) go stratospheric. But they don’t yet realise that.
Instead, in the USA, these folk have been voting for more of the same old dreary republicans. The GOP (once Grand, now just Old) has been wheeling out these all-suit-and-teeth hollow men for years, peddling them as some kind of kindred spirit to this constituency. These safe but hollly types have all given lip service to upholding the constitution; to reducing taxes & the size of government; but they’ve never meant a word of it. The reality is always same – more and more of the same.
So it is hardly surprising then that this orange cock of a man Trump has been getting the support he has. It’s different enough having a man with cotton candy hair that’s made out of piss (to steal a quip from Penn Jillette). That he is abrasive too makes him seem like the regular guy that they see in themselves. That he's built (and destroyed) businesses makes him seem like an example of their own aspirations.
Alas, that his bat-shit ignorant zero-sum economics are akin to two seven-year-olds in a school yard arguing over who ate more lollies doesn't seem to have an effect on their weird worship of the wanker. Nor that his moronic and flat-out wrong attitudes to international trade are just flat wrong, and would see Americans losing jobs and wealth by even bigger margins than those he claims; neither that the filth he spews on immigration –on poor huddled masses yearning to breathe free -- reveals him as something much, much worse than just an ignoramus.
The GOP has profoundly misread the electorate – completely missed the anger & fear.
Maybe next time it might find someone equally brash, but this time economically literate, and constitutionally aware. Next time it might think to find a straight talker who can appeal to the productive voters: by unapologetically giving it good and hard to the establishment, but this time without also being a fake wanker. If the republic is still around lets all hope the GOP find someone who is actually down to earth – but not so far down they actually are rolling around in the dirt.
Perhaps next time they'll find one among them that doesn't just promise to uphold the constitution, but has also read it, and likes it. I'll not hold my breath.
If Trump, by some catastrophic happening becomes the next president of the United States -- that is, that he becomes 'Commander & Chief' for Christ's sake, and even what was once able to be called The Leader of the Free World – then he'll not have to demand the Mexicans pay for his ''great big beautiful wall.” I reckon the Mexicans will chip in voluntarily and build it themselves before Trump is inaugurated.
God bless America?
God help it I say.
The wires vibrated, the tumblers turned, and out dropped this irregular despatch from our regular correspondent Suzuki Samurai
Has there ever been a more ghastly bunch of presidential candidates for Americans to choose from? Ever? Ever at any time at all?!
I thought that Mitt the Git Romney or Obamamessiah was a bad enough choice.
But Trump? Seriously?
Cruz? What?!?
Hairy Clit-on? Yuk!
Where’s the choice?
Where’s there something to choose from?
The death-by-a-thousand-cuts course that the US has been on for years is painful to watch – even more painful to be part of it, I imagine.
The hope that America once represented is now hopeless. The liberty lost. The choices nugatory; the candidates negligible at best.
So listen up: All you folk who vote for the “least-bad” of the very bad candidates, it’s time to admit it. You're just stalling.
Hoping that in some small way your awful choice for president is going to save you...at least a little bit.
Hoping that there will be at least a bit of a roll-back.
Hoping they will at least slow the growth of the Fed beast down.
Hoping America won't go further down the toilet – evern further down.
Well hope away kids. You know where hope for change got you all.
So on the other hand, you could abstain from votingaltogther. You could join the don't-vote-it-only-encourages the bastards abstentionists so you can claim you weren't part of sullying your own integrity. Hmm, tempting. But all it really does is encourage the bastards to get away with screwing you regardless.
So what to do?
Here’s my answer: to all the the fed-up, the knocked, the American libertarians, the Objectivists and the abstentions, I say to all of you get out and vote like all hell. Get out and vote like hell for one Bernie Ilyich Sanders and just get it all over with.
Do it! Bring the curtain down. And then get away as far as possible cause it'll get ugly. Real ugly.
But while you're away get organised. Get other liberty minded people educated; raise funds; and be ready to fill the vacuum before the black fascists fill the void left over from the red ones.
It's like keeping alive a horse with a broken leg – shoot the fucking thing, and go out and get a new one.
Oh, and best of luck.
Suzuki !
US Secretary of State John Kerry visited Cambodia last week to … well, no-one really knows what he was there for, including John Kerry. Our intrepid reporter Suzuki Samurai was there to watch his arrival, and the local reaction to it.
The pre-arrival had all the delicacy of a local and more hysterical version of CHiPs.
Five hundred taller-than-usual Khmer goons spread across every intersection with Kevlar vests, Chinese assault rifles and mirrored Ray-Bans¹. Check!
White-tunicced motorbike cops² with screaming circa-1950's sirens and mirrored Ray-Bans out there removing parked cars. Check!
Beige uniformed cops (Ray-Bans again) blocking side-streets of traffic. Check!
An eerie two minutes silence—followed by thirty noisy seconds of drag-racing Chevy Suburban-flanked Cadillac³ motorcade-racket. Check!
It’s all on here in Phnom Penh: it’s all on because cos’ nobody’s hero John Kerry is right here in town!
Mind you this spectacle isn't reserved just for one of Kerry's eminence. Every tin-pot politician and gangster gets this treatment here.
Still, as I sip my twenty-leventh margarita watching all this silliness I start to imagine the conversation going on in the Cadillac: -
Kerry [looking out to see a sea of mirrored Ray Bans looking back at him; turns to Advisor for help]: “So, same score as Laos then?”
Advisor: “Kinda. Except of course this place is a democracy.”
Kerry: “Really!? I thought that was Laos?”
Advisor: “Nope. That place is a communist dictatorship.”
Kerry: “But my notes say that they are both in the same shape: corruption; political assassination; human rights abuses...”
Advisor: “Ahh, sure.”
Kerry: “Hmmm. So, what I'm saying to this [checks notes] um, Hun Sen fella?”
Advisor opens his folder and hands Kerry a briefing paper.
Kerry: “This again? All you've done is scribble out the names of the guys of all the last ten places we've been to.”
Advisor: “Yes sir, but we're trying to keep these guys onside; so don’t say anything off script….
Kerry: But you’ve given me no script.
Advisor: ..ahem, the Chinese give them billions every year without any pesky questions.''
Kerry: “Pesky questions?”
Advisor: “Yes Mr Secretary. Questions like the ones we used to ask, such as 'where's all our tax-payers money go'?
Kerry: “So. I've got this memorised now...one short meeting, yada yada yada, human rights, growth amazing, friendship...blah blah blah, and then we’re off. What time do we leave for Beijing?”
Advisor: “Zero six hundred.”
Kerry: “That's in the morning right? [Looks out longingly at Suzuki at a sidewalk cafe.] Can we possibly stop for a margarita?”
¹ The wearing of sunglasses during the day in is unusual. However, during the night Ponch & Baker glasses are mandatory.
² Any untrained, incompetent government crook with a walkie-talkie, often-dropped ageing Chinese service pistol, and a badge.
³ For the pedants among you: yes, it was a Cadillac rather than the usual Lincoln.
So it started with a debate on Twitter over supporting a bill on voluntary euthanasia, continued over here by Mark Hubbard.
It continued here at NOT PC, when I used the debate to get you to read John McCaskey’s fantastic piece about Rand Paul and “bleeding heart libertarians.”
David Seymour quickly followed up with a reply, which he used to get you to donate to the ACT Party.
And it continues here today with Suzuki Samurai saying but me no buts…
Act dead. Act accordingly
Guest post by Suzuki Samurai
Is voluntary euthanasia too much of a horse-frightener for Act? Or is it simply a litmus test.
Seymour claims there are “150,000-200,000 New Zealanders who are most in favour of a freer society...” Surely that would include the right to choose the time and manner of one’s own death? Wouldn't it?
Surely that would be a bottom line for any “freer” lover!
Fact is, law recognising the right of voluntary euthanasia law could possibly be one of the most widely-supported views even among the not-so-liberty-minded; in fact, I don't recall ever meeting anyone outside a church who doesn't support it. Christ, even some god peddlers have the decency to ignore the Book on this one. Surveys say so too.
Surely, the chicken-shit ACT board must be pragmatic enough to see votes in it, if not (hush the word) a principle?
If people can't expect ACT get behind this legislation for more liberty & and human dignity, what in the hell can they expect? Not even six months after the election and it's back to square one...sorry, I mean: one square.
In which Suzuki Samurai calls local liberty lovers to arms. Are you with him!?
With Russel Norman's now-imminent departure from the Green leadership, Peter Cresswell suggested some of what is admirable about the Ginger Whinger and his Green party.
It’s true that many folk fail to see the attraction. Parents, and the older 'sensible' population at large (dreary, dull, cynical), are aghast at 17-25 year olds’ tendency to vote Green. Most I guess would put this it down to naivety, to youthful exuberance, and/or to rebellion or educational indoctrination – ''they'll grow out of it'' they say, or hope, or pray.
Of course, this last must be the case as the Green Party have really gone nowhere electorally from what appears to be a top line of around 15% and holding. This after years of campaigning seems to demonstrate that indeed youth do grow up and come to the very real conclusion that the Greens' future is not one that many of them would survive.
But why is it that youth are ever captivated at all by these cloth heads?
Guest post by Suzuki Samurai
It's far easier to view NZ elections from afar: not quite so mind numbing -- not confronted with the constant media barrage, the hoardings, the endless chatter at the water cooler or pub.
My primary source of information has been this blog's analysis of the deep-meat; my other source being the endless shallow water of the NZ Herald. The Herald's obsession with the German elephant in the room isn't really surprising in that he makes great copy (to them) in an otherwise barren political landscape.
For them, he adds a Baron to the barren. As much as most folk were sick to their back teeth months ago having to see this goon everywhere they looked, what would the media have had in this election without him? What I'm left wondering is whether the media were just squeezing this for it's alleged juice, or trying to unsettle PM Key, or helping him out. Whether or not that was the plan and most likely not) the latter has been very effective.
So what of the rest of the cast in this pantomime?
Starting from the left:
The Greens showed that ageing hippies are still their mainstay. Despite their indoctrination from every teacher they’ve ever had, the youth vote only has a passing interest in dreadlocks, grow-your-own-bicycles, and drinking their own urine. Turns out, as they grow up, most want to enter the grown up world of capitalism 'cause it makes cool stuff.' Even if they don’t yet have a grip on what capitalism is, most seem to know what to avoid.
The Inter-Maori-Lala Party: Perhaps an idea can be drawn from what I imagine it was like being member of one of their caucus meetings:
Our regular Asian/Australian correspondent Suzuki Samurai wanted to tell you about three brilliant books about progress and economic development. So, naturally, I said yes. Here’s the first.
The Mystery of Capital – Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else
by Hernando De Soto
Review by Suzuki Samurai
Unlike fiction, when reading a non-fiction book I have to create the voice of the narrator myself. I mean really, how many of you had a clear voice in mind when reading Adam Smiths' An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations? Was its voice that of a Scots Laurence Olivier? Sean Connery perhaps? - “Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality Miss Moneypenny”
It would have much more fun had you read it in the voice of Billy Connolly don't you think? - “Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition yee dopey fuckers.”
Did you have Stephen Hawking's Metal Mickey voice in mind when you read A Brief History of Time? I did, and it was awful.
So I recommend you go and have a listen to Hernando on 'youtube' before you start to read this book, as his South American Spanish accent really gave this book lyrical colour.
Okay, everyone back with us?
Now, the book’s title suggests a dry look at capital theory - lots of graphs and droning prose. One of those books that would ordinarily just go on the pile of “have to read someday, maybe never.” But if you’ve watched the video, you know already not to expect that.
And the subtitle is the kind where I can't help but say, “I think I know, but what does this guy reckon?” Well he reckons a lot. He tears open questions I'd never thought to have asked. It turns out what I thought I knew about the importance of property rights and legal institutions was just scraping the surface.
In a tight and sequential manner, Hernando De Soto sets out what is holding back the natural enterprise of millions, billions even, of people around the world. With painstaking research, he and his researchers have spent their lives traipsing about places like Haiti, Peru, Egypt, and the Philippines negotiating their way through, over and around the truly astounding legal hurdles the 'unconnected' have to go through to simply get the required paper work to open a business and/or get a formal title on land, thus enabling these mostly very poor folk to borrow money & release the capital in their property. And how much capital can be possibly be realised from a tin-shed sat on titled land on the outskirts of say, Port au Prince?
Well consider this revelation from Hernando:
In Haiti, untitled rural and urban real estate holdings are together worth some 5.2 billion. To put that sum in context, it is four times the total of all the assets of all the legally operating companies in Haiti, nine times the value of all assets owned by the government, and 158 times the value of all foreign direct investment in Haiti's recorded history to 1995.
Who needs aid with assets like these?
Added to this pearl of insight, and there are many, is a brief but detailed history of pioneering Americans and how they made up their own 'extra' legal arrangements before law courts were a viable option in remote regions – and, how the state & federal governments used a number of these arrangements as models & precedent-setting examples for formal law thereafter.
Oh, and before I forget, Hernando also takes us to Indonesia and talks about how domesticated dogs used to define property boundaries...who knew?
So, if you really want to know why capitalism triumphs in the west and fails everywhere else; and how your pooch can demarcate your section, buy this book.
Note: if you want to be able to actually read the graphs and see the photos, then buy the hardback.
From an undisclosed location overseas, expatriate NZer Suzuki Samurai muses on the embarrassment of being outed as a kiwi...
When living away from your place of birth, after being asked your name most people ask where you’re from. These days, I mumble the answer. I wish they'd guess a couple of alternatives so I can simply say “Yes.”
I'm often accused of being either English or Australian, not uncommon for a New Zealander I guess. (Oddly enough the only time someone has guessed right was when a turbaned shopkeeper in Manhattan asked me where in New Zealand I was from?!? True story. It turns out this delightful fellow's brother [which can mean cousin, neighbour or friend] owns – you guessed it – a dairy in South Auckland).
So why, I ask myself, is the very idea of proudly (or at least audibly) stating that I come from New Zealand such a struggle for me now?
We welcome our irregular roving Asian correspondent, Suzuki Samurai, who files this report from in hiding somewhere near Darwin, Australia…
Drive 1200km from Darwin along the northern right-hand coastal tip of the Northern Territory of Australia,1 and you will end up in the purpose-built mining town of Gove.
The general area (and sometimes the town) is also known as Nhulunbuy. It is still called that by the Aboriginals and the more historically minded—and Null-And-Void by cunning linguists. It is a surprisingly nice place to look at, blessed with a blue sea the colour of the Skype icon, and sandy beaches as clean and fine as Cate Blanchett's face.
Of course there is a down side. This is Australia, so everything wants to kill you: everything from buffalo, crocodiles, spiders, snakes, sharks, & jellyfish to things you’re bloody sure have still not even been named. So think Whangamata, stuck inside a zoo, and very much closer to the sun.
The bauxite mine & refinery are operated by Rio Tinto (a sister facility to Tiwai Point you could say), and have been in operation for near-to forty years. Rio leases the area from the local aboriginal clans in exchange for a quarterly royalty which appearances suggest they spend on beer and pizza.
Anyway, Gove has been in the news in the last week both here and in NZ due to the announcement that the refinery will start to shut down and 1500 jobs are to be lost. Added to ancillary losses this will likely reduce the town's population from 4000 down to 1500 or so, the folk remaining likely being a mixture of the retired and retarded; bureau(rats), cops and doctors, and a few (a very few) retailers.
The reason for winding things down is the same as it was in Invercargill: Rio has been losing money here for years – and lots of it.
The good folk here however are pissed off to say the least about the golden goose leaving town, bleating about “destroying our community,” “taking away our children's future...” “This is our town” blah blah blah. No doubt the Aboriginals felt the same way when these white fellas arrived forty years ago.
As you'd expect this is a heavily unionised town, so they are whining about things like a reincarnation of Arthur Scargill2. What’s unusual however is the aren't screeching at Rio Tinto. Instead, they’re laying all the blaming on the Northern Territory government, Chief Minister Adam Giles to be precise.
Why? Because Rio said they'd stay if they could get a cheaper form of fuel, but said they were in no position to pay themselves for the 600km pipeline necessary to deliver this cheaper fuel. (Stop me if you’ve head something like this before.) So they kindly suggested, in cahoots with some tame politicians, that if the government were to pay for the pipeline “then we might be able to stay.” (This should be sounding awfully familiar to Bill English about now.)
So, after more than a year of negotiating, a deal was finally reached. And then is wasn't. And then it was. And then wasn't again. Anyway, Rio has finally decided that they can no longer burn any more capital on this dead loss and they’re taking up their bed and walking away.
Why am I telling you all this?
Well, being a resident here (and in hiding after writing this post) I've watched first hand how moral hazards become expectations, how expectations become entitlements, and how when things go wrong for some folk everyone expects the government will fix whatever it is that's wrong—and go batshit crazy when they don’t3.
Moral Hazard, by by the way can be defined as
a situation in which a party will have a tendency to take risks because the costs that could result will not be felt by the party taking the risk.
In business terms you might say it’s the direct consequence of inviting businesses to privatise profits and socialise losses. In this sense, Australia is now built on moral hazard.
Holden can't make money from shit cars? Government will give them enough money so they can continue making shit cars to keep incompetents in work.
Banks are illiquid because they did stupid things? Government will bankroll their losses, fill them with cash, and demand they do the stupid things again.
Your arse is broken? Government will pay you to rest it.
You can't stop breeding? It's ok, the government will pay for you to have more.
Rio can't operate their mine? Hell, get the government to fund a nine hundred million dollar pipeline so they can keep operating (that’s a nine with eight taxpayer-funded zeroes behind it), just so that people who are comfortable in their lifestyle can remain so.
What started with the expectation of profits being privatised and losses being socialised ends with the creation of the sort of leisure class even John Kenneth Galbraith would be surprised to meet.
And it is this moral hazard of government trying to make everything risk-free that makes people believe they can stop thinking, stop planning their lives, and stop taking responsibility for their own decisions.
It becomes for them an automatic assumption that regardless of what happens, regardless of the morality involved, regardless of the size of the already gargantuan government debt4, government will always make everything better.
Well, on this occasion they can't. And the proletariat everywhere, both white- & blue-collared, had better start getting used to it—because governments everywhere are running out of Other People’s Money.
Having been summarily ejected from China for offending his hosts, Suzuki Samurai is now in hiding at an undisclosed but reportedly very hot and sweaty location in the Northern Territory. Keep up with his (ir)regular reports here at NOT PC.
NOTES:
1. The Northern Territory? Well, ask an Australian to list all eight states, and it will be the one they forget about. The one where dentists go bankrupt, residents think health cover mean buying crocodile insurance—and pedants point out that technically it’s not a state at all. But who cares about pedants.
2. No, Arthur hasn’t actually died yet. But he is completely braindead.
3. Mind you, those Australians who could find Northern Territory on a map often define the place as “the place where batshit crazy people go to die.” So some/many/all (pick one) residents may have already been batshit crazy before moral hazard arrived.
4. At a public meeting here in Gove an unusually sane NT government minister told the crowd that the government is already “well into the billions” in debt. At which point a screeching harpy responded that “government debt doesn't matter.” For which she received a round of applause.
Guest post by our roving Asian correspondent Suzuki Samurai, who woke up this morning in Cambodia realising he worked for an NGO.
NGO is not a term I like. To call an organisation "non-government" suggests that government is the natural first point of call for those in dire need. I could look at it positively I suppose and say that NGO Non Governmental Organisation actually shows that people outside of government know the government will do a shit job – so we best do it ourselves. NGOs, such as the one I work for, face a number of difficulties that I’d not cared to think about before. The securing of funds through donation is pretty straight forward, as it turns out; it’s how to effectively make that money work that makes things much less so.
Take for example my NGO: one way they help is by giving $12 per child, per month directly to families considered the poorest, on the condition that the child attends their local government school (and can demonstrate that with an appropriately completed attendance record). Unfortunately, many parents like the money, but they keep their kids working in the fields instead of going to school. They play the system to keep getting the money.
Another factor is the cultural influence of continuing to breed. The NGO's German country manager and I were visiting a family the other day--the mother and her four children are living in what could only be described as a tree-house; she was all of 24 years old. Upon being asked if she intended having further children she said, “I hope not." Now in Cambodia there is a pretty good education program about contraceptives, including booklets about the pill, injections, condoms, and some other thingy-me-jig. Turns out her husband doesn't like condoms, especially when he’s pissed, and she keeps forgetting to get the other ‘free’ alternatives. I suspect she will be pregnant again in no time - a fifth mouth to feed.
The NGO is duty bound not to put ‘less breeding please’ as a condition of receiving payment, though in our culturally sensitive times I don’t think they’d say so even if they could.
Another example is that of the NGO funding a family of a working mum and her four kids (dad’s dead) to the tune of $48 per month + a bag of rice – next thing, mum quits work as that was near-on the money she was bringing in when she was working. (I remember Jake Heke making the same observation)
Then there are examples of other NGOs funding and managing sewing shops, craft manufactories etc to enable locals to make products for tourists. Once these things are up and running & successful the NGOs hand them over to local managers to continue the good work--only to find that six months later the factory has been embezzled, run into the ground and left to rot.
There are many more examples like this I’m sure among the other 1000 NGOs operating in Cambodia, just as I’m sure there many success stories. But it demonstrates to me what welfare does to people.
It is one thing to build a water treatment plant or a well, or a school house, or provide some teachers – but to simply dole out money is often a dead end, except for the opportunity to learn anew the Law of Unintended Consequences.
What’s required is for good people to demand an end to corruption, to bring about the rule of law, to institute property rights; by doing so it will encourage much needed foreign investment to bring about the work that will enable the locals to fix their own problems themselves.
Until such time as these things happen, not much in the lives of the ordinary folk will really change at all.
Sent through by our roving Asian correspondent Suzuki Samurai is this piece on Indonesia that appeared in The Diplomat:
Indonesia has made a remarkable comeback from being Southeast Asia’s economic basket case in 1998 to an emerging market whose economy has been growing annually at more than 5 percent for several years.
Yay!
Yet, Indonesia’s economic growth is neither sustainable nor inclusive.
Damn.
An inconvenient fact is that Indonesia’s economic growth is mainly driven by a commodity boom fuelled by China’s appetite for raw materials and global demand for biofuels [which bubble is soon to burst] …
The other main driver of Indonesia’s economic growth is domestic consumption. This is mostly driven by easy access to credit cards.
Sounds a little too much like a rather large island just the other side of the Tasman, doesn’t it.