2008 media frenzy - the race for the presidency is on.

The media circus is already in top gear, as soon as the Iowa caucus was over and the votes were counted, the headlines ran declaring Obama and Huckabee the winners (and Hilary the loser).

This week is the New Hampshire caucus, and it is expected to be an entirely different electorate to Iowa. And over the weekend were a couple of televised presidential debates, one by ABC which believe it or not, arranged a massive group hug between the Republican and Democrat candidates !

I've been following the news cycle for a few weeks, and most of the candidates are just repeating their past positions. The major developments seem to be that on the Democrats side, the minor candidates (Biden, Dodd) are about to drop out of the race and endorse Obama.

On the Republican side, you've had McCain, who defended the status quo of American bases that have been in South Korea, Japan, Germany for several decades, and then continue to boast that he would be happy to keep US soldiers in Iraq for another 100 years if that meant keeping Americans safe. You've had Giuliani start off with appalling results, only 4% of the vote in Iowa, and watching him speak and stutter, I wouldn't rate his chances of survival too highly.

Several conservative blogs have gone into an anti-Ron Paul hysteria lately, as they observe him making steady progress and securing some major media attention. He scored 10% in the Iowa caucus and is expected to do much better in New Hampshire. Some of these blogs have been attacking him ever since he articulated his anti-war stance, and many are unhappy to see somebody in the Republican party advocate limited and humble foreign policy - even though George W Bush ran on the same platform in 2000.

Even some of the warbloggers that I have enjoyed reading in the past, especially LGF, have tried in vain to establish Ron Paul as a fringe candidate and tried to draw weak links between him and 9-11 truthers, radical anti-war groups, anti-semitic figures, muslim activist groups, and even white nationalist groups. LGF has been posting every day trying to show that some of these fringe groups support Ron Paul and they are calling him "crazy uncle" and mocking his voice, but the problem is that Ron Paul has not endorsed the views of any of these groups, he doesn't believe in 9-11 truther nonsense, and certainly does not support these white nationalist groups, even though they support him and make donations to him.

I can understand that LGF would oppose any anti-war candidate, and no candidate on either side of politics is more anti-war than Ron Paul, who plans to bring American soldiers home immediately. But his policy does not stem from some progressive activist viewpoint, or some internationalist philosophy that believes America needs to improve its image in the world. The reason I still support his candidacy is that everything, every single policy, fits under the philosophy of a limited and sovereign constitutional republic, and to limit the role of the US government in all areas.

Besides, how is America helping its interests or its security by having bases in Germany, South Korea and Japan ? The thing I am starting to notice is that people who still support the Iraq War, and the efforts at nation-building over there, are becoming increasingly narrow minded and obsessed with their one primary issue.

Just like the Democrat candidates are obsessed with universal socialised medicine and education.

If the US economy can no longer support the expenditures and the burden of such massive expenditures, shouldn't this be acknowledged, and shouldn't the spending and control be ended ? Only Ron Paul even realises the destruction of wealth caused by the US government, the accumulation of decades of debt, the fall in living standards and the hazards created when liberty is diminished.

After so many decades of growing government, it has become the biggest problem of all. Rather than addressing global warming, terrorism, the health crisis or education, the size and power of the state needs to be addressed immediately. And the mechanisms of free markets and entrepeneurship ensure that all of the above issues will end up being addressed as soon as liberty and property rights are restored. If you don't understand this, then you cannot understand where Ron Paul is coming from, so go read up on Hayek, Rand, Mises, Rothbard a.s.a.p.

So even if some crazed fools end up supporting Ron Paul, they still totally misunderstand his message, and I say he should keep the money for the cause of liberty and capitalism. If Obama has tens of millions of supporters, surely there are more than a handful of idiots amongst them.

Happy New Year !

I'd just like to wish my readers a very Happy New Years, and hope that you all live long and prosper.

The news cycle has been a bit slow lately, and I will speed up my blogging activities in the new year. As long as we have arrogant leftists trying to impose their will on the rest of us proles, I will have plenty of material.

And once I finish reading Rothbard's Mystery of Banking, I will post a review. It looks like the coming years are going to be a painful illustration of how the absence of sound banking creates bubbles. The one we are witnessing is much more than a sub-prime bubble bursting, but the entire property market collapsing and creating a credit crunch, with an economic downturn inevitable.

Is this part of a free society ??

I saw this poster above a urinal in the bathrooms at Telstra Dome. Somebody ought to vandalise it and show them that we the people will not lie down like sheep to be slaughtered, and that every human has the right to defend themselves.


A disarmed populace are easy prey. These kind of laws where you aren't even allowed to own weapons for the strict purpose of self defence are outrageous and belittling. We are all children now, told never to defend ourselves and take measures to look after our families and our property.

This is not such a free country after all.

Bad history repeating itself

Samizdata has the following news item posted:

"Party boss Ed "bulging eyes" Balls told a respectful yet cheerful gathering of tractor workers in Omsk that the 10-year plan to increase tractor production by 1000% between now and 2018 was achievable. "Men," he said, his voice quavering slightly as the chill Siberian wind blasted through, "we can and will produce more tractors, of higher quality, over the next 10 years. Britain needs tractors. Tractors need Britain. It is true that despite our heroic efforts, and the massive, Soviet resources spent by Comrade Gordon, that tractor production continues to lag. But let us not be downhearted. We know that tractor production in the past has been held up by the capitalist sympathisers, wreckers and revisionists working for the late traitor, A. Blair. We can and will do better over the next 10 years."

Well not quite. The story above is not quite a parody, unfortunately every detail in it is spot on correct, except for one - it refers to Soviet education, not the tractor industry.


Economics, history and politics is actually quite simple to understand in 3 steps:

1/ Early 20th century: The Russian Revolution, the communist manifesto by Karl Marx came about calling for the end of private property, the establishment of big government and no more free trade.

2/ Ludwig von Mises and other free market economists had the wisest and the most accurate forecasts when predicting not only the failure of communism and socialised industries, BUT precisely how and why they would fail the societies they were foisted upon.

3/ Throughout the 20th century, Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Castro and Kim Jong Il kept trying. They socialised every industry and killed tens of millions. Socialised education and medicine is a common feature of even Western "capitalist" economies such as the US, Canada, Britain, Australia and New Zealand.

We keep on repeating our mistakes, with no chance to build upon our successes.

Environmental double-think

Here's a quick-recap of environmental news stories:

* Al Gore and his wife Tipper arrive in Oslo Airport and do the right thing by catching a train to their hotel, making sure the press is all too aware of their eco-friendly choice.

Their luggage however, travelled by Mercedes van, leaving a nasty carbon footprint behind.

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* Tim Blair analyses Gaza's performance towards meeting its Kyoto obligations. But in a hypocritical statement, a U.N spokesperson is actually denouncing these brave efforts to reducing their carbon emissions:

"Israel reduced the supply of diesel by 49 per cent on October 28, and petrol by 40 per cent and industrial diesel for the power plant by 14 per cent,” said Mahmoud Daher, the Gaza head of the United Nations-affiliated World Health Organisation.

"This is in a situation where electricity is already in short supply and there are frequent power cuts. We know that some health facilities have zero stocks of fuel and that in several hospitals the situation is critical. The main pediatric hospital is critically low in fuel for its generators. All transport vehicles and most ambulance travel have also come to a halt."

Gaza is leading the world by example, and the international community is all too eager for Australia, Europe and America to follow in their footsteps. But is the U.N for or against more C02 emissions ? Make up your mind folks !

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* A climate scientist lashes out at the U.N's IPCC, and notes that "For example, Antarctic sea ice reached a record maximum coverage in 2007, and the globally averaged lower atmosphere has not warmed in the last nine years":

EcoWorld: What is your criticism of the IPCC?

Pielke: Mainly the fact that the same individuals who are doing primary research into humans' impact on the climate system are being permitted to lead the assessment of that research. Suppose a group of scientists introduced a drug they claimed could save many lives: There were side effects, of course, but the scientists claimed the drug's benefits far outweighed its risks. If the government then asked these same scientists to form an assessment committee to evaluate their claim (and the committee consisted of colleagues of the scientists who made the original claim as well as the drug's developers), an uproar would occur, and there would be protests. It would represent a clear conflict of interest. Yet this is what has happened with the IPCC process. To date, either few people recognize this conflict, or those that do choose to ignore it because the recommendations of the IPCC fit their policy and political agenda. In either case, scientific rigor has been sacrificed, and poor policy and political decisions will inevitably follow.

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* Greenie Watch looks back at the UK Met Office's catastrophically gloomy predictions for 2007 being a hot and dry year, with a very poor score-card.

The flip side of big government

"Big government" is sometimes referred to as social engineering, involves telling the masses what they should do.

In the end, it involves creating hundreds of news laws and regulations, which in turn turns many possible human actions and decisions into crimes and offences.

Driving without a seat belt, smoking, riding a bike without a helmet are now crimes. Driving over 40 km/hr near schools is a crime, no matter how cautious or skilled the driver.

But also the way we conduct business and commerce is now extremely tricky. Even if you and a customer agree on the terms of contract (which includes the price), you may be breaking the law - even more so now that there are newer tougher price fixing laws:

JAIL sentences of up to five years and hefty financial penalties could be imposed on anyone found guilty of price fixing and collusion under planned federal laws.

The draft laws, which will amend the Trade Practices Act, will cover petrol, food, clothing and a range of other consumer goods.

Price fixing is a "crime" that is very badly defined. It generally means "charging a customer more than you ought to, or normally would". Even if it were possible to perfectly identify cases where price fixing has occurred, why should it be a crime anyway if both seller and buyer have agreed on the price and want to carry out the transaction ?

Now .. the flip side of making everything into a crime in our society is that existing crimes.. the real ones that actually involve the use of violence and coercion..are not treated as seriously. Case in point:

NINE males who pleaded guilty last month to gang-raping a 10-year-old girl at the Aurukun Aboriginal community on Cape York have escaped a prison term, with the sentencing judge saying the child victim "probably agreed" to have sex with them.

Cairns-based District Court judge Sarah Bradley ordered that the six teenage juveniles not even have a conviction recorded for the 2005 offence, and that they be placed on a 12-month probation order.

I know I sometimes sound like a naive fool when I say the bleeding obvious - that we should have a small government that can be focussed on law and order, police and defence, and fighting serious crime like murder, rape, violence, assault and theft.

People here assume that our current big government does a great job already, because those things have been crimes for a long time.

But we live in an age of post-modernism and moral relativism as they say. We have a lot of activist judges and academics and regulators who seek to instill multi-culturalism on us by treating different groups in different ways. Our native Australians are treated as victims who cannot be blamed for their actions and should not be held to the same standards as the rest of us. And where social engineering is all the rage, we shouldn't seek to punish the victims, the poor and the downtrodden in society.

But those who smoke or engage in trade or seek to medicate themselves with drugs or sell concert tickets for a higher price, where there are no victims and no rights violations, are treated as criminals.

Our priorities are screwed.

Subprime rates frozen for 5 years

President Bush has enacted one of the stupidest, yet most popular, pieces of legislation ever. In recent months, foreclosures and defaults on home loans have skyrocketed as the subprime credit problems continue to emerge.

Rather than allow the free market to correct these mistakes and interest rates to rise, the US government is hampering the market in 2 ways. Firstly the Federal Reserve continue to push the interest rates down to "help out" borrowers and prevent massive foreclosures. And now the President is forcing lenders themselves to lock in these rates for 5 years, even though billions of dollars of loans were meant to be reset in the coming months.

This isn't a social welfare issue of helping out the poor and overstretched borrowers. This is a massive economic blow that doesn't allow the bad debts to be liquidated and written off, and drags the problem on for years rather than allowing the free market to solve it quickly and sharply. It also punishes responsible people who managed to save and not push themselves into massive levels of unmaintainable debt.

Darren McKinney, 48, a renter in the District, said he has been waiting for housing prices to fall so he can buy a condo without resorting to a dubious loan. He turned down an opportunity to buy his 600-square-foot apartment for $310,000 in late 2004 because he thought it was “absurdly overpriced.”

Now the government is rewarding people who made irresponsible decisions and bought homes beyond their means, he said.

“There are those of us who purposely sat on the sidelines during the course of the last three years while the senseless frenzy was going on, and we presumed the free market would be allowed to correct itself,” McKinney said. “The government is now meddling in the market and looking to prop up lenders and borrowers alike, and those of us who wisely bided our time get screwed.”

(hat tip: The Liberty Papers)

War on drugs claims another scalp

The media are applauding the Australian government's identifying a "drug dealer to the stars" who was apprehended in Amsterdam airport and is going to be extradited back home.

The 40-year-old man cannot be identified because his name has been suppressed by court order.

Victoria Police Drug Taskforce Detective Inspector Steve Smith said the arrest was the result of a joint effort between the AFP and Victoria Police, with help from Interpol.

He said the man had absconded while on bail in 2003.

I'm going to come straight out and say that the war on drugs is a massive waste of effort and police resources. This guy didn't do anything wrong, other than trade voluntarily with people who were willing to buy his goods.

Whether you support or oppose people taking drugs, and despite the fact that they can be harmful, you have to ask yourself about why the police should be spending half their resources chasing drug dealers when there are serious crimes that actually do infringe on the rights of individuals - theft, assault, rape, murder and vandalism.

Put it this way.. if your neighbours are smoking marijuana or taking ecstacy pills, do you agree with the idea of using your taxes to make their behaviour a punishable crime ?

I don't.. its their own problem, its their own lives. Whether it be medicinal marijuana or hard drugs, I really don't see why the police have to get involved and meddle in their lives. In the US, millions of individuals are clogging up the prison system because of drug related crimes. Prisons are not cheap, and can cost more than some 5 star hotels apparently. So I don't feel the need to pay taxes to criminalise drugs, nor do I feel the need to pay more taxes to pay for prison facilities.

This is not about good behaviour and bad behaviour, or morals. It is about priorities and decisions, like everything else in life. I don't want people taking drugs and getting out of control.
But would you spend your own hard earned money on such a grand project to enforce your preferences on society, or would you live your own life ?

Gun massacre in Nebraska shopping mall

Terrible ! Horrific ! What can government do about it ?

Why is it that human beings always think of the 3rd question in response to something dangerous, shocking or frightening ?

Sometimes its the victims of road accidents and gun crimes (or their families) who are the most vocal and prominent campaigners when it comes to asking for new laws to be passed to prevent a repeat of such a tragedy.

And in such a climate, who would dare debate someone who lost a family member ? A victim has the moral high ground, even if the arguments he puts forward are stupid, thuggish, pointless and meddle in the lives of thousands of others.

Back to the story at hand - there was a horrific gun massacre in a shopping mall in Nebraska that killed 8 people. What should government do about this? My answer is short and simple. Make sure there are laws in place to protect the rights of individuals only as far as treating violence, murder and theft as the most serious of crimes.

Not only are these laws in place, but Nebraska already has strict gun laws banning people from carrying concealed handguns. And therein lies a clue - how did one person manage to wound at least 5 and kill 8 people before he could be stopped ? Its the same answer to the question "How did 19 males without guns manage to hijack 4 large aircraft on 9-11?".

Relying on police to get to the scene and do something is going to take some time. When you put security in the hands of the state, and don't take steps to protect yourself, this is what you get. If there were armed civilians and security guards, he may have been stopped sooner, as has been the case on a US college campus where an alert young trainee police officer with a firearm in his glove-box managed to stop and handcuff a crazed student about to begin a gun rampage.

So one direction could be "government should do less to stop people from protecting themselves and taking care of their own security". Then .. theres the other direction. The one that is so popular these days. The "WHAT ELSE can government do?" direction. Well, let's look at the details of this massacre:

A 20-YEAR-old high school dropout who walked into a suburban shopping mall in Nebraska and gunned down eight people before killing himself had just been fired from his job at McDonald's and broken up with his girlfriend, his landlord says.

Let me say in my most leftist voice - What else could we have done as a society to stop this ? Easy answer - ban girlfriends from breaking up with boyfriends.. and then ban employers from firing employees. Or at least introduce new laws that require anybody who suffers the termination of employment or a relationship to go to counselling. [/sarcasm]

Why don't we just accept that this is a tragedy, and that they do happen, and no system can stop tragedies thus we should not try to regulate everybodys life in some small effort to prevent the unexpected, but instead leave it up to individuals and give them as much freedom as possible to look after their own health and safety.

In Victoria, the government is about to pass new "safer booze laws" that give police new powers to patrol party-spots, and shut down nightclubs for 24 hours if there are fights or disorderly behaviour, and also to ban the offenders from entering these night spots again. And the key campaigners for these laws are relatives of victims of violent crime that happened near night spots:

Families of young men injured and killed in street attacks lashed out last night at the delay sparked by what they described as Liberal Party nuisance tactics.

Bill McCormack, whose son Shannon died after being struck outside a Melbourne nightclub, attacked MPs for sitting on their hands.

"Politicians are paralysed by their indecisions," Mr McCormack said.

The mother of a second victim said she was gobsmacked that politicians could quibble over such important laws.

Of course, the lobbying power of these relatives is extremely powerful, the lazy Herald Sun journalist simply reprints their quotes with no countering viewpoint:

Mr McCormack -- whose son Shannon, 22, died in June a week after being assaulted in Southbank -- said he was appalled at the delays.

"They don't have the courage and the guts to stand up for Victorians," he said.

"No one should have to stand by their son's hospital bed for 24 hours a day, seven days a week and watch him slowly die.

"I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy. I wouldn't even wish that upon the kid who hit my son, it's that awful."

Susan Hucker, whose son John was in a coma for weeks after an incident outside a Lorne hotel during schoolies week last year, was angry about the delay.

"The safety of people far outweighs the political rewards of stopping these laws from being introduced," she said.

"It's totally out of hand and it's very disappointing that other families may now have to go through something like we've been through before the laws are changed."

It looks like a fight or drunken behaviour at a club can ruin the night for everyone.. the police can waltz on in and declare the party over, no matter how much everybody else is enjoying themselves or how well behaved they are.

This is the opposite of liberty and destroys our freedom of association and freedom of movement. It doesn't make people more sober, less violent, and more responsible citizens. It doesn't even relate to the issue of drunk and violent mobs using violence and killing people.

We have courts and police to deal with homicide and assault, and the perpetrators are going to end up in prison for a long time to come. We don't need surveillance cameras and more police powers, and it hasn't worked in Britain. Less regulation, leave it up to the clubs to decide. After all, nightclubs do not want violence and drunken behaviour because over the long run, they lose females and other patrons, and their business loses revenue.

But whilst the relatives of the victims speak for more laws, common sense will get no microphone and no public hearing.