• Property rights are a part of human nature

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Yesterday I witnessed an 18 month old child squawk when her big brother tried to take a piece of her food. Clearly she has a basic understanding of property rights, i.e. “That food is mine”. You don’t have to teach children the concept of property rights, and from this I conclude that property rights are a part of human nature, i.e. it’s a “built in feature” added by our designer.

The bedrock of libertarianism is property rights¹, and I believe that libertarianism is consistent with human nature. This belief is supported by the fact that sociopolitical systems that try to remove all personal property rights do not flourish and last, whether they be involuntary (e.g. Socialism/Communism/Marxism), or voluntary (e.g. hippie-type communes). These systems fail because they are contrary to and hostile to the way we are made.

The girl that I witnessed defending her property rights is living in a Socialist country and as soon as she starts earning money the state will begin to violate those property rights on a daily basis². The sad thing is that so many adults accept this situation without so much as a squawk, despite the fact that even a toddler recognises theft when she sees it.

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Related posts:

There is no such thing as “human rights”: a classical liberal perspective on the Electoral Finance Act

What is a “social contract”?

1. Property rights are summed up by the non-aggression axiom, which says “It is illicit to initiate or threaten invasive violence against a man or his legitimately owned property”.

2. The only things certain in life are death and taxes, but at least death doesn’t get any worse

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• Budget 2009

I’m not going to attempt an in-depth analysis, but here’s three points for you to consider:

1) Stopping the planned tax cuts. This move can be described in three words: stupid, stupid, and stupid. The Socialists/Marxists in Wellington have the idea that your money is better off in their hands and they say that they will use the money to “lead the country to recovery”. It’s more like leading it to ruin, because giving money to the state is like giving money to an alcoholic: it just gets pissed away.

In 2009/10 the government will take more than 30% of GDP in taxes. Studies have shown that a tax take of 15-23% of GDP leads to economic growth and anything more kills the economy; 23% of GDP can be had from an income tax rate of about 10% plus the miscellaneous taxes that plaque our lives*. Naturally I favour a simpler (cheaper) tax regime plus low taxes that will foster growth as has been shown overseas; with a flat income tax rate of 5-10% and no other taxes the economy would take off like a cat does when a child tries to give it a bath (it would also address the chronic shortage of medical professionals because the government could afford to pay a competitive wage and the tax regime would be attractive).

History clearly shows that reducing tax rates increases the tax take, but all the Wombles of Wellington can think of is keeping their sticky mitts on your money. The present taxation levels are simply parasitic and it’s no wonder that the patient is sick.

2) Stopping the contributions to the Cullen Fund (for future superannuation costs) was sensible. However, if the government adopted the tax regime described above they’d have more than enough money to pay for the superannuation that they shouldn’t be providing.

3) If you’re in the financial dung the first thing to do is trim discretionary spending. Here’s some of what this government should, in my humble opinion, cut:

• $50m cycleway. The idiocy of this beggars belief.
• $323.3 million over four years for home insulation and “clean heating devices”. Why should you pay for the insulation and heating in someone else’s house?
• $34m for broadband internet in schools, when schools can’t even get the three R’s right.
• $10.5m extra over four years for arts, including $3.4m for ballet. Presumably you’re happy to be paying for ballet so a few people can watch it. All arts spending should stop immediately because there is no rational reason for state funding of the arts.
• $290m for high speed broadband in 2009/10, out of a total commitment of $1.5b. Let the private sector sort it out, and make it easy for them to do so.
• $52m for defence. Our defence forces are a joke, and they’ll still be a joke after spending another $52m on them.
• $11.7m over four years for the “financial adviser watchdog”. “The implementation of the Financial Advisers Act and the Financial Service Providers Act will help restore confidence in the financial markets by introducing a minimum standard of competence for financial advisers,” Commerce Minister Simon Power says. “It will also place the supervision of financial advisers with a central regulatory body, the Securities Commission.” How wonderful, more regulations and more compliance costs. Anyone who trusts a financial adviser just because they’re “government approved” is an idiot, therefore this scheme has nothing to recommend it. Caveat emptor.
• $1.2m to “strengthen local networks and give a voice to community groups that are often not heard in government processes”. Apparently this is necessary “because local organisations often did not have the opportunity to engage in the policy processes of central government”. What’s the point in talking to a government that just nods politely and does what it intended to do in the first place?

(source)

Admittedly cutting those expenses would like jettisoning the Titanic’s silverware, and I’m not pretending that removing these things will stop the ship sinking, but I do want to show you that there’s plenty of frivolous government spending.

We have the same problem that the people on the Titanic did: the master has steered us into dangerous waters and we’re sunk. We need a new ship  – a new fiscal regime – and a new master.

What are your thoughts regarding the budget?

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*I’ve Been Writing by Richard Prebble, p102

• Tax cuts aren’t a lottery win

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Today the government is dishing out dry crackers in the form of bite-sized tax cuts. The NZ Herald is portraying this as “Big Wednesday”, which is the brand name of a lottery. This is utter bunkum. Tax cuts aren’t a windfall, rather they can be viewed in one of two ways:

1. The state is still stealing your money at gunpoint, but they’re now stealing a bit less
2. The beneficent state is allowing you to keep a little more of what you have earned by the sweat of your brow

The National Party describes these tax cuts as “injecting an extra $1 billion into the economy in the coming year”, which is propaganda intended to make them sound like they’re doing some sort of economic magic. In fact all they’re doing is draining a bit less blood from the patient; that’s good, but a long way from magic.

Related post:

• Graduated income tax, rates, and the Communist Manifesto (this explains why we have graduated taxes)

What do you think about the tax cuts and the portrayal of them as a lottery win and magic?

The National Party website has a plain-English summary of the tax cuts and their effects. The IRD has some more technical information.

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Barack Obama has been inaugurated: now the theft begins

Here I have modified an earlier post because people need to know about the theft that this evil man intends to carry out. Naturally Marxists such as Obama call it “income redistribution” to make the medicine go down. See also my posts here and here.

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I’ve been reading Obama’s energy policy, which was a thrill. Here’s two diaper gems from there:

1) Obama will enact a windfall profits tax on excessive oil company profits to give American families an immediate $1,000 emergency energy rebate to help families pay rising bills. This relief would be a down payment on Obama’s long-term plan to provide middle-class families with at least $1,000 per year in permanent tax relief.

I have two responses to this:

a) There is no such thing as excessive profits; that is a Socialist/Marxist fiction created to justify the theft of money from companies and the giving of it to the “poor”. In other words, this is Marxist “income redistribution” which attempts to take money from the rich and give it to the poor, so that everyone has the same income. It didn’t work in Russia and it won’t work in America; all it does is discourage the creation of wealth for many people by businesses.

In the long term this harms the “poor” that Obama claims to champion, therefore his supporters are voting for their own poverty.

Also, who defines what is “excessive”? Obama, presumably, and that is wide open to abuse. Is one dollar an excessive profit? One billion dollars?  Note the use of the emotive word “emergency” to make it sound like Obama is going to rescue the country from a clear and present danger. The only clear and present danger is Socialist politicians like Obama.

b) Obama will not provide middle class families with tax relief, rather he will steal money at gunpoint* from the oil companies and others then give the money to middle class families.

2) Deploy the Cheapest, Cleanest, Fastest Energy Source — Energy Efficiency.

Obama will set an aggressive energy efficiency goal — to reduce electricity demand 15 percent from projected levels by 2020.

Obama, energy efficiency isn’t an energy source, it’s just using less of what you have. What exactly are your qualifications for being the (supposed) Leader Of The Free World?

What do you think about Obama’s plan to additionally tax “excessive” profits?

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Click here for a biblical perspective on Obama.

* if you provide sufficient resistance to the paying of taxes the state will use lethal force against you, so effectively all taxation is done at gunpoint

Election 2008: choosing your slave master

New Zealand elections are a farcical process because we get to say who we want our slave master to be, but we do not get to express our opinion about the legitimacy of the governmental system. Nor are we allowed to say whether or not we want a government that has no legal constraints upon it and therefore has absolute power over us – power which is backed with guns and prisons.

No, we are only allowed to say which slave master we think will be the least cruel, so our country is only one step better than a one-party state that holds sham elections. We should be grateful that we have elections at all, because there is nothing that prevents the government from cancelling all elections: whatever “rights” we have in law exist solely because our beneficent masters keep them there as long as they find it convenient to do so¹.

Why do I refer to the government as a slave master? Because there is a body of opinion amongst constitutional lawyers which says that the government stole sovereignty (ultimate authority) from the citizens and rendered itself illegitimate when it passed the Constitution Act 1986².

I also refer to the government as a slave master because most New Zealanders have to work for four or five months each year just to earn enough to pay their taxes, so they are enslaved for those four or five months.

As Leo Tolstoy said:

The essence of all slavery consists in taking the produce of another’s labor by force. It is immaterial whether this force be founded on ownership of the slave or ownership of the money that he must get to live on.

Whichever way you vote you will still be enslaved, so this is not a “free land” as our national anthem says. The state is always your enemy, and as a classical libertarian I am opposed to that enemy and seeking freedom. The first step to freedom is realising that you are a slave.

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1. the fact that Helen Clark was able to breach the Bill of Rights with the Electoral Finance Act shows that the government is able to break laws with impunity: to put it another way, laws are only effective whilst the government chooses to make them effective because the government is truly above the law. It also shows that we cannot expect to receive any protection from the Queen or the Governor General, who is chosen from a list supplied by the Prime Minister.

Section 18 of the Bill of Rights codifies the right to vote: if the government can use the Electoral Fiance Act to take away the government-given right to freedom of expression in s14 of the BoR they can also take away our government-given right to vote.

Click here to view a long but very interesting article on the legalities of the EFA.

2. Update: I was remiss in not citing my source: click here, here, and here.