• 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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• Why does Obama want to eliminate private health insurance via Single Payer/Universal Health Care

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Barack Obama wants to eliminate private health insurance via his Single Payer/Universal Health Care system. In his own words:

This begs two questions:

1. What does a Single Payer/Universal Health Care system mean for Americans?
2. Why does Barack Obama want to eliminate private health insurance?

1-> What does a Single Payer/Universal Health Care system mean for Americans?

It means death and misery because the government will decide what treatment people will be allowed to have. It will mean having government staff viewing your private medical records. It will mean a reduction in the quality of health care you receive, because the government wants to keep costs down and paltry payments from the government will mean that hospitals will be unable to afford new equipment, new treatments, good staffing levels, and so on (private health care encourages these things because competition encourages hospitals to provide the best possible care, and in a free market system hospitals will supply what patients demand and are willing to pay for). I live in a country where all but a few medical services are “provided” by the state, so I know what universal health means. Also, have a look at this from Bloomberg:

The bill’s health rules will affect “every individual in the United States” (445, 454, 479). Your medical treatments will be tracked electronically by a federal system. Having electronic medical records at your fingertips, easily transferred to a hospital, is beneficial. It will help avoid duplicate tests and errors.

But the bill goes further. One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and “guide” your doctor’s decisions (442, 446). These provisions in the stimulus bill are virtually identical to what [Tom] Daschle prescribed in his 2008 book, “Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis.” According to Daschle, doctors have to give up autonomy and “learn to operate less like solo practitioners.”

Keeping doctors informed of the newest medical findings is important, but enforcing uniformity goes too far.

New Penalties

Hospitals and doctors that are not “meaningful users” of the new system will face penalties. “Meaningful user” isn’t defined in the bill. That will be left to the HHS secretary, who will be empowered to impose “more stringent measures of meaningful use over time” (511, 518, 540-541)

What penalties will deter your doctor from going beyond the electronically delivered protocols when your condition is atypical or you need an experimental treatment? The vagueness is intentional. In his book, Daschle proposed an appointed body with vast powers to make the “tough” decisions elected politicians won’t make.

The stimulus bill does that, and calls it the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research (190-192). The goal, Daschle’s book explained, is to slow the development and use of new medications and technologies because they are driving up costs. He praises Europeans for being more willing to accept “hopeless diagnoses” and “forgo experimental treatments,” and he chastises Americans for expecting too much from the health-care system.

Daschle’s arrogance is breathtaking: he wants to slow life-saving human creativity and wealth generation in order to reduce costs (something that will be impossible when the government is running the health care system). Imagine if the UK government had done the same thing in 1959, and slowed down car development at a time when cars looked like this:

This is a Ford Prefect 100E from 1959. The heater was an optional extra, the vacuum wipers got slower as you went faster, and 0-60mph took 32 seconds: in my experience these were pretty awful cars. Why would anyone want to slow down human creativity and innovation?

Presumably Daschle is wealthy enough to avoid the effect of his own policies. Presumably he would not like being forced to forgo experimental treatments if he had terminal cancer. Heaven forbid that he should descend from his ivory tower and share a four-bed hospital room with the hoi polloi.

2-> Why does Barack Obama want to eliminate private health insurance?

I believe that Obama is a fundamentalist Marxist, and that eliminating private health insurance is part of his Marxist plan to give the state/himself more power and wealth. In the Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels described the steps for a transition from socialism to communism:

We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.

The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie [that’s Obama’s desire to tax the wealthy], to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State [Single Payer/Universal Health Care is a step towards this, as are the bailouts where the state ends up owning part of the company], i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.

Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear [are] economically insufficient and untenable [e.g. Single Payer/Universal Health Care, TARP – Toxic Asset Recovery Program, cash for clunkers, bailouts of bankrupt companies, etc.], but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.

These measures will, of course, be different in different countries.

Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax [Obama’s plan to make the wealthy pay more tax].

3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.

5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.

6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.

7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State [see above]; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.

8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.

10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c.

(Here I have only highlighted those points which pertain to Obama’s health care “reforms”, but in fact much of what is recommended in the Communist Manifesto has been accomplished in the USA and other countries: click here for details)

Remember the Marxist/Communist utopia was a fiction, false advertising to justify immoral acts like Obama’s and those described in the Manifesto.

Summary

• Barack Obama wants to eliminate private health insurance via his Single Payer/Universal Health Care system
• Single Payer/Universal Health Care will mean death, misery, loss of privacy, loss of choice, and all-round inferior health care for Americans
• Single Payer/Universal Health Care will control how doctors treat their patients
• Single Payer/Universal Health Care is intended to slow down human creativity and wealth generation, e.g. new medicines and medical technologies that can save lives
• Barack Obama is following the game plan laid out in the Communist Manifesto

What do you think about Obama’s plan for state-controlled health care and the points that I have raised here?

Hat tip: LRC

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• Zeitgeist, The Movie: what’s it all about?

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Nick posted a comment on my post titled Thinking About State Schools and mentioned Zeitgeist, The Movie. He said that it was a bit of “cult phenomenon” in the USA, so I wanted to find out who was behind this movie which is attracting so many people. What’s this movie all about? The short answer is that it’s about getting people to follow a plan that, if successful, would mean the death of millions and the end of life as we know it. The long answer follows.

Although I haven’t watched the movie, I have read the synopsis on Wikipedia and, if this is correct, the movie looks like a blend of antitheism (specifically, attacks on the God of the Bible), mysticism, historical fact, and historical fiction designed to make people unhappy with the present state of affairs and desire an alternative. Naturally the Zeitgeist Movement that made the movie is offering an alternative, so let’s have a look at what this alternative is and the beliefs behind it. What the movie says is, in a sense, irrelevant. What is really important is the belief system of those people that made the movie, because this movie is their attempt to make people adopt that belief system.

Here’s some quotes from the Zeitgeist Movement website:

This movement is about awareness, in avocation of a fluid evolutionary progress, both personal, social, technological and spiritual. It recognizes that the human species is on a natural path for unification [history shows this to be incorrect], derived from a communal acknowledgment of fundamental and near empirical understandings of how nature works and how we as humans fit into/are a part of this universal unfolding we call life [is there a translator in the house?].

We intend to restore the fundamental necessities and environmental awareness [they’re greenies] of the species through the advocation of the most current understandings of who and what we truly are, coupled with how science, nature and technology (rather than religion, politics and money) hold the keys to our personal growth, not only as individual human beings, but as a civilization, both structurally and spiritually. The central insights of this awareness is the recognition of the Emergent and Symbiotic elements of natural law and how aligning with these understandings as the bedrock of our personal and social institutions, life on earth can and will flourish into a system which will continuously grow in a positive way, where negative social consequences, such as social stratification, war, biases, elitism and criminal activity will be constantly reduced and, idealistically, eventually become nonexistent within the spectrum of human behavior itself [they’re promising an egalitarian {classless} utopia].
[…]
The reality is that we live in a society that produces Scarcity [no, we Westerners live in a society where governments produce scarcity, as do the Zimbabweans, North Koreans, et al].
[…]
It is also important to point out that there are no utopias or endings [so why are they offering an egalitarian utopia?]. All evidence points to perpetual change on all levels [“there are no endings” plus “perpetual change” sounds like Buddhist reincarnation to me].
[…]
In fact, the only true “government” that can possibly exist is the earth and its resources [the only true government is the earth? All hail Earth! How exactly are we supposed to appeal the decisions of a planet? How exactly do planets make decisions?]. From there, all possibilities can be assessed. This is why an intellectual unification of all countries is needed [one world government], for the most important information we as a species can have is a full, highly detailed assessment of what we have on this planet [a great excuse for the one world government, sorry, Earth, to pry into your private affairs and find out exactly what you have to ” voluntarily contribute” to the commune][emphasis added].

KP does *not* look like this, thankfully.

If that’s not religious mumbo jumbo then I’m a red-arsed baboon. The movie opens with a speech by a well known Buddhist and I think that the beliefs of Jacque Fresco, the man behind all this, are clear.

The Zeitgeist Movement is the “official activist arm” of the Venus Project, the website of which prominently displays pictures of futuristic buildings as a promise of what things will be like in a Buddhist utopia, where there will be a “resource based economy”:

A Resource-Based Economy is a system in which all goods and services are available without the use of money, credits, barter or any other system of debt or servitude. All resources become the common heritage of all of the inhabitants, not just a select few. The premise upon which this system is based is that the Earth is abundant with plentiful resource; our practice of rationing resources through monetary methods is irrelevant and counter productive to our survival.

Here’s a message for Jacque Fresco: the commune idea has been tried and found to be a failure. When people do not own anything they do not care about anything. Every problem in the commune is everyone else’s problem – after all everyone else owns everything, including the problems – so no one wants to fix the problems. Additionally, people in a commune do not want to create anything like wealth, art, or practical inventions. Why not? Because they are not allowed to own and enjoy the fruits of their labours, and are forced to hand ownership of those fruits over to the collective.

What motivates people to care about things and create more resources? Personal reward does, and it is lacking in the commune system because everyone else gains from the personal effort of an individual (e.g., you do a wonderful repair to a raincoat and see someone else wearing it the next day when it’s pouring with rain. At the same time you’re getting wet because you got up late and were the last one to the communal wardrobe: it’s not exactly a strong motivation for fixing the next torn raincoat). What motivates people to care about things and create more resources? Personal reward motivates people, and personal reward is another name for profit, that wonderful thing so maligned by the Venus Project. As Lew Rockwell explains so well, everything you love you owe to capitalism (please do read the article, for your own benefit). Take away personal reward/profit motive, as Jacque Fresco wishes to, and what Lew describes will happen:

And yet, if socialism does mean anything at all today, it imagines that there can be some social improvement resulting from the political movement to take capital out of private hands and put it into the hands of the state…it could be as extreme as the desire to abolish all private property, money…[this is exactly what the Venus Project desires]

Whatever the specifics of the case in question, socialism always means overriding the free decisions of individuals and replacing that capacity for decision making with an overarching plan by the state. Taken far enough, this mode of thought won’t just spell an end to opulent lunches. It will mean the end of what we all know as civilization itself. It would plunge us back to a primitive state of existence, living off hunting and gathering in a world with little art, music, leisure, or charity. Nor is any form of socialism capable of providing for the needs of the world’s six billion people, so the population would shrink dramatically and quickly and in a manner that would make every human horror ever known seem mild by comparison. Nor is it possible to divorce socialism from totalitarianism, because if you are serious about ending private ownership of the means of production, you have to be serious about ending freedom and creativity too. You will have to make the whole of society, or what is left of it, into a prison.

In short, the wish for socialism is a wish for unparalleled human evil. If we really understood this, no one would express casual support for it in polite company. It would be like saying, you know, there is really something to be said for malaria and typhoid and dropping atom bombs on millions of innocents.

If you doubt my comment about one world government and Lew’s comment about a world-sized prison, have a look at this quote from the Venus Project website:

We must emphasize that this approach to global governance has nothing whatever in common with the present aims of an elite to form a world government with themselves and large corporations at the helm, and the vast majority of the world’s population subservient to them. Our vision of globalization…

Governance, globalisation. I told you so.

Zeitgeist, The Movie: what’s it all about? It’s all about getting you to join a group of people that desire to change the world. If Jacque Fresco and his followers get their wish they will make the world a prison and their plans “will mean the end of what we all know as civilization itself. It [will] plunge us back to a primitive state of existence, living off hunting and gathering in a world with little art, music, leisure, or charity.” Additionally, “the [world] population [will] shrink dramatically and quickly and in a manner that [will] make every human horror ever known seem mild by comparison“. Jacque and friends promise utopia but will deliver hell. These people are not your friends and I hope that you won’t join their movement.

What do you think about the goals of Jacque Fresco/the Zeitgeist Movement/ the Venus Project?

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• Tiananmen Square: 20 years after the massacre nothing has changed

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I don’t know about you, but I find it hard to believe that 20 years have passed since the Chinese massacred hundreds or thousands of protesters in Tinananmen Square.

Calling it a “square” probably conjures up the wrong image: it’s the biggest city square in the world at 40.5 ha or 100 acres. It’s 880×500 metres or almost the area of 63 rugby fields and contains such delights as a brutalist mausoleum containing the embalmed body of Mao Zedong and the Monument to the People’s Heroes. It’s in the centre of Beijing, next to the Great Hall of the People (where China’s farcical version of a parliament meets) and is across the road from the former imperial palace, commonly known as the Forbidden City. So it’s a place loaded with history and symbolism that’s able to hold a great many people. It’s believed that a million people gathered there for the June Fourth Movement of 1989.

As we all know, the Communist Party of China didn’t like these protests so sent in troops, tanks and so forth to ensure that the people Party retained control. What has been interesting is how the Party has reacted on the twentieth anniversary. There’s a huge police and/or military prescence, they’re keeping journalists out, and dissidents have been effectively placed under house arrest. Below there’s a link to a tragicomic video where security staff are trying to block BBC cameras with umbrellas – and that’s outside the Square.

The events of 1989 do not appear in textbooks and children born around that time or afterward know little or nothing about it (see link below). I am reminded of the Memory Hole in Orwell’s 1984.

Twenty years after the massacre nothing has changed because truth, free speech and freedom of association clearly remain persona non grata in China. On the bright side, all these security measures indicate some trembling on the part of the Party, which rightly fears the people because only a government that is truly a servant of the people has no need to fear them.

Interesting links:

• State thugs using umbrellas to block TV cameras
• State thugs keeping journalists out and controlling public entry
• Slide show of images and audio from 1989
• BBC interactive map of Tiananmen Square with pictures and video, including man confronting tanks
• John Simpson’s memories of 1989 plus amazing video
• Young people of China share what they know about the massacre
• Tiananmen Square on Wikipedia
• 1989 massacre on Wikipedia
• Google map of central Beijing

What are your thoughts regarding the events of 1989 and today?

Related post:

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

(Click on the photo to enlarge) View from the Tiananmen Gate of the Imperial Palace (Forbidden City) looking south over Tiananmen Square. In the centre of the square is Mao Zedong's mausoleum (tomb) and the Monument to the People's Heroes. To the right is the Great Hall of the People. Photo from Wikipedia.

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• Maori seats are undemocratic

I know that the hikoi a few days ago is old news, but I forgot to write about it at the time so I’m writing about it now.

The Maori were demanding Maori seats on the new Super City council. Why on earth should Maori get special representation? Democracy gives them the opportunity to get Maori representation: e.g., if Maori comprise 20% of the population then, in theory at least, they can influence the composition of 20% of the council. There is every opportunity for candidates to stand on a Maori issues platform.

To give Maori special seats on the council is simply undemocratic and political correctness gone mad, and the same goes for Maori seats in parliament. This is Marxist ideology in action: the Marxists declare one group to be victims of oppression, so they try and right that supposed wrong by force, and in doing so oppress another group (click here for another example). According to Ian Wishart, there are plenty of Marxists among the radical Maori groups and like all Marxists they’re only interested in power and control, so they use the victim ideology while it’s convenient for them to do so.

In this free and enlightened age it’s not permissible to speak the truth but I don’t give a damn.

Post a comment and tell me what you think of special seats for Maori (and read my comments policy before you get abusive).

Related post:

I am Pakeha and I am oppressed