Friday 31 May 2013

FRIDAY MORNING RAMBLE: The “It’s a Cartoon” Edition

A former cartoonist wonders whether we’ve lost the art of robust debate.
Is This Racist, Susan Devoy?- CoNZervative

Her office shouldn’t exist. And as for this: “Well unfortunately we have a right to the freedom of expression and freedom of speech.”  “Unfortunately”?
Cartoon prompts call for racism threshold change - TVNZ

Free speech for me, but not for you, say Minto, Henare, Flavell…
AUDIO: Former editor and Minto debate role of cartoons – RADIO NZ
Press Council won't act over cartoons yet – 3 NEWS
Some propositions on free speech – NOT PC, 2011

Message from George Carlin to John Minto et al: “I believe you can joke about anything… It all depends on the exaggeration…”

Fail to offend, and this is the sort of political humour you’re left with.
Party leaders on the wintry blast – KIWIBLOG

Start banning political satire, and this is where you’re headed.
Tajikistan Blocks YouTube After Video Of Dancing President Goes Viral – CONSUMER AFFAIRS

While folk are still up in arms about the government’s plans and programme for half-arsed, half-privatisation of its state-owned power companies,* they’ve failed to spot or even oppose two “full and final” privatisations happening right in front of their eyes.
By which I mean the “full and final” privatisations of the Whanganui River and the Urewera National Park—which, when you strip away the mumbo jumbo about how (for example) the river will “own itself,” is what is happening. Sadly, however, without any opportunity for on-selling.
* Call that a proper privatisation? Pfffft. Come on, they’re only selling 49%!
90 year claim process nears resolution – WANGANUI CHRONICLE
Tuhoe win control over national park – STUFF
Q: What would 'Party X' do about the environment?– A: They’d use it to push privatisation. 
– NOT PC, 2011
'Recognise rights in river' says PC – NOT PC, 2006

“One of the motivating forces for politicians and economists rethinking their position on state-owned enterprises was a history of under performance by these firms worldwide. Some of the more extreme cases of poor SOE performance that have been publicised include…”
How not to run a business: examples of poor SOE performance – Paul Walker, ANTI DISMAL

The PM is looking for advice on Doug Graham’s knighthood? Here’s mine: He should never have been awarded one.
PM seeks advice on Sir Doug's knighthood – STUFF
Schadenfreude, thy name is Graham – NOT PC, 2010

You know, I appreciate the link, Bryce Edwards, but surely a qualified political scientist should know that libertarians are not “far right.”
Political round-up: Food in Schools - victory and defeat – NZ HERALD
Left? Right? A plague on you both – NOT PC, 2005
Cue Card Libertarianism: Political Spectrum – NOT PC, 2007
NZ's Political Spectrum – NOT PC, 2005
Right Plus Left = Wrong – Lindsay Perigo, CRACCUM
Left and right and other nonsense – PC, SOLO, 2006

Looks to me like a new political party has just launched … “Our objective is colour-blind law and colour-blind government. We insist that all New Zealanders be treated equally before the law with neither fear nor favour, regardless of race.”

1law4all

Given several recent experiences when going for consent, this theory rings true: that Auckland Council’s push for intensification may be about more than just so-called “Smart Growth”—it could be they know Auckland’s underground infrastructure is screwed. And they’ve just found more saps to pay for it.
Auckland's Intensification Ponzi Scheme, Funded With Your Rates Bill - Policy Parrot, WHALE OIL

Yes, it’s true:
Misinformation about the Unitary Plan continues – AUCKLAND TRANSPORT BLOG

However…
Getting the housing equation wrong – Phil McDermott, BREAKING VIEWS

My own three cents worth:
“Sprawl” versus “intensification” – NOT PC, 2012
Decentralisation, and those who oppose it – NOT PC, 2005

Economic blunders have consequences—but, these days, not for those who blundered: While central bankers and politicians continue to draw a salary, nearly two-thirds of 16 to 25-year-old Greeks are unemployed. Two-thirds!
Greece's young: Dreams on hold as fight for jobs looms – BBC NEWS

See, this is what charity looks like.
Awesome Spanish Restaurant Says If You Can’t Pay, You Won’t Go Hungry – CONSUMER AFFAIRS

While the western world goes down the path of increasing statism, China continues its long walk in the other direction.  “This is both noble and desperate.” And necessary.
Elite Retreat: Now Chinese Leaders Plot a Freedom Reformation! – DAILY BELL

With the closure of Ford Australia, what future now for manufacturing in a place with a combination of high labour costs and restrictive work practices?
Sunrise industries like food manufacturing – Judith Sloan, CATALAXY FILES

As the rest of the U.S. struggles, more Americans than ever are saying “I’m a Texan.” One primary reason being: it’s cities are the most liveable and the most affordable in the country.  Mind you, they’ve got to endure country music!
10 reasons why so many people are moving to Texas – BBC NEWS
Keeping Austin Weird – Max Borders,  THE FREEMAN

How long now with the Quantitative Easing? As long as the non-recovery it’s created continues. The Quantitative Beatings will Continue Until Economy Improves – Keith Weiner, KITCO

“If you know someone that actually believes that the U.S. economy is in good shape, just show them the statistics in this article.”
40 'Frightening' Facts On The Fall Of The US Economy – ZERO HEDGE

You have to ask:
AUDIO: Based on the facts of our debt, isn’t an imminent collapse of the U.S. economy inevitable? – Yaron Brook, LEONARD PEIKOFF

Congratulations to Ben Bernanke for creating another housing bubble. Fast work!
U.S. Home Prices Post Biggest Jump Since 2006 – NPR

When stock prices no longer match reality: the “Bernanke Put” edition—does this look like a real U.S. housing recovery?

“The only reason we’re talking about Islam is because it doesn’t mean peace.”
My Name is Bosch and I’m a Recovered Muslim – Bosch Fawstin, FRONT PAGE

“Violence is in Islam’s DNA…. Brutality and violence are endemic to Islam’s history because it rejects on principle the only civilized means of settling disputes peacefully: persuasion, debate, discussion, i.e., man’s faculty of reason. Islam regards man as a helpless plaything in a chaotic universe ruled by a spiteful, omnipotent, supernatural deity (Allah). The common man must submit to Allah (and his representatives here on Earth) because he is by nature incapable of thinking for himself. Every totalitarian ideology starts by attacking man’s faculty of reason. Much is made of the "peaceful" verses in the Koran. But those passages are as irrelevant to Islam’s essence as is the fact that Mafia hit men might be ''peaceful'' at a child’s birthday party.”
"Islam's Reign of Terror": An Excerpt – Ed Cline, RULE OF REASON

Politicians versus volunteers—the different responses to the Oklahoma tornado today and a great disaster of yesteryear.
What is the Difference Between a Tornado and a Fire? – BURT FOLSOM

See, when it comes down to it, most people aren’t complete arseholes.  (Except maybe for the feller who wrote the opening line.)  This is the sort of stuff human beings just do.

“I think George W. Bush was a disastrous President, but I don’t doubt that he is a good man at the personal level. It is probably true, though, that truly good men don’t make very good Presidents.” – Bill Quick
At the Wounded Warrior 100K, How George W. Bush Really Rolls – DAILY BEAST

So how’s that “peer review” system working for you?
What Would We Do Without Peer Review? – SMALL DEAD ANIMALS

Always worth re-reading: “This is a defence of phasing-in open immigration…”
Open Immigration – Harry Binswanger, HBL

Yes, its true.
Free Objectivist Books for Students
Jason Crawford on Free Objectivist Books for Students – PHILOSOPHY IN ACTION

Researchers in Australia have demonstrated that, contrary to what the Heisenberg uncertainty relation may suggest, particle properties such as position and momentum can be measured simultaneously with high precision. But it comes at a cost.
More Precision from Less Predictability: A New Quantum Trade-Off – SCIENCE DAILY

Australian scientists have also narrowed the predicted range of global warming through groundbreaking new research…
Australian scientists take 6 degrees of global warming off the table, say it is closer to 2 degreesWATTS UP WITH THAT

Recantations on man-made global warming beginning in 3, 2, 1 …
'Trougher' Yeo recants on global warming – James Delingpole, TELEGRAPH

Turns out Obama was right. The seas have started to fall.
Hansen falsified: His extreme sea level rise projections are drowning in hubris – WATTS UP WITH THAT

“What is your "Fair Share" of what someone else has worked for?”
- Thomas Sowell

A cry for values in a post-modern age.
"Perhaps Culture is Now the Counterculture" – Leon Wieseltier, NEW REPUBLIC

See, we told you this would happen and you scoffed…
7 Newly Classified Mental Illnesses – EPJ
The man who thought psychiatrists were nuts – Doug French, NOT PC

“I've posted several times about the amazing new 3D printing technology and how technology experts predict it will dramatically change our world.  Well, the famous management consulting firm McKinsey has just released a report where they detail 12 "disruptive technologies" they feel "will transform life, business, and the global economy".  3D printing is number 9 on the list.” – On Liberty Street
McKinsey report: 12 disruptive technologies that will transform life, business, and the global economy – Mark J. Perry, AEI IDEAS

But don’t wait for summer.
To Avoid Jet Lag This Summer, Travel Like a Scientist – WALL STREET JOURNAL

“I Do Dream” by sculptor Michael Wilkinson, at Quent Cordair Fine Art:

The rich history—and rich present—of a unique art form.
Opera Is Not Dead – G.W. Bowersock, NEW REPUBLIC

Oh crikey. New Russian fashion trend: Ironic Stalinism.
Back in the (’30s) U.S.S.R. – NY TIMES

The Chicago Architecture Foundation is kicking-off a month of celebrating Frank Lloyd Wright in June.
Celebrate the legacy of Frank Lloyd Wright all month long - CAF

ImageSo many of today’s prominent “artists” (e.g. Jenny Saville, left)are “heroic mediocrities … outshone by your average newspaper cartoonist. And art critics, like their literary counterparts, should be encouraged to say so.”

The mystery of the Mona Lisa’s flickering smile solved: blink, and you’ll get it.
Don’t Blink: The Science of the Mona Lisa’s Flickering Smile – CREATIVITY POST

Top  tip for your wedding photos: don’t get photobombed by a llama. That, and 30 more…
31 Tips For Taking The Perfect Wedding Photo – BUZZFEED

Written by a former evangelical Christian who is now an atheist and skeptic living in the Deep South, Godless in Dixie is an atheist blog you should be reading.
Introducing Godless in Dixie – ATHEIST REVOLUTION

It’s a simple question. If Noam Chomsky was such an anarchist, then how come he likes so many government programmes.
Chomsky the ‘Anarchist’ – TOM WOODS

Worth watching?  “He is a market-oriented professor of economics who talks about Milton Friedman to his young Danish students.  She is — suddenly — Prime Minister of Denmark and leader of a moderate left party, but not actually prepared to wield power…”
Borgen, season one – Tyler Cowen, MARGINAL REVOLUTION

Son of God used to play at Geelong. And will again this weekend.
Best Of Gaz Jnr at Geelong: Highlights from Gary Ablett's career with the Cats – AFL VIDEO CENTRE

Because you asked…
21 Quick Tofu Dinner Recipes: Tasty reasons to give tofu a try for dinner tonight. – EATING WELL

[Hat tip Jasmine Kamante, Stephen Hicks, Keith Weiner, Jeff Perren, Diana Hsieh, Arts & Letters Daily, Prairie Mod, On Liberty StreetAri Armstrong, Sam Schulman, Oren Kessler, JWSpry, Doug Henwood, Foundation for Economic Growth ]

Thanks for reading
Cheers
PC

Thursday 30 May 2013

Beer! And awards for it.

NZ brewers have been over the Tasman picking up medals.

Beer writer and general gourmand Neil Miller describes them as “rampant”—having won 65 awards at the 2013 Australian International Beer Awards (AIBA), including six trophies and seven gold medals, and Marlborough’s Renaissance Brewery, yet again, taking out the award for AIBA Champion Small International Brewery.

Neil has all the winners over at the always sharp Beer and Brewer blog—being winners here, I’ve listed below all the local trophy and gold medal winners.

So these are the gold-medal-winning beers to check out next time you’re buying*:

Moa Brewing Company, Marlborough = 6 medals (1 gold, 1 silver, 4 bronze)
Gold in Belgian Lambic: Moa Sour Blanc

Renaissance Brewing Ltd, Marlborough = 2 trophies and 9 medals (1 gold, 1 silver, 7 bronze)
Trophy for Champion Small International Brewery
Trophy for Best Scotch Ale/Barley Wine: Tribute 2011 Barley Wine
Gold in Barley/Wheat Wine: Tribute 2011 Barley Wine

Lion, Auckland (Lion!):
Trophy for Best Australian Style Lager: Mac’s Gold
Trophy for Best Pilsner: Mac’s Hop Rocker
Gold in Other Pilsner: Mac’s Hop Rocker
Gold in Australian Style Lager: Mac’s Gold
Gold in Low Carbohydrate Lager: Mac’s Spring Tide

8 Wired Brewing, Marlborough = 1 trophy and 6 medals (1 gold, 2 silver, 3 bronze)
Trophy for Best IPA: Superconductor
Gold in Imperial/Double IPA: Superconductor

* And good luck if you can either find or afford a Renaissance Tribute 2011 Barley Wine.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: On the morality of taking welfare

“Since there is no such thing as the right of some men to vote away the rights of others,
and no such thing as the right of the government to seize the property of some men for the
unearned benefit of others—the advocates and supporters of the welfare state are morally
guilty of robbing their opponents, and the fact that the robbery is legalized makes it morally
worse, not better. The victims do not have to add self-inflicted martyrdom to the injury
done to them by others; they do not have to let the looters profit doubly, by letting
them distribute the money exclusively to the parasites who clamoured for it. Whenever
the welfare-state laws offer them some small restitution, the victims should take it. . . .
    “So long as financial considerations do not alter or affect your convictions, so long as
you fight against welfare statism (and only so long as you fight it) and are prepared to
give up any of its momentary benefits in exchange for repeal and freedom—so long as
you do not sell your soul (or your vote)—you are morally in the clear.”

- Ayn Rand, 'A Question of Scholarships,' from the collection The Voice of Reason

AFL: What did McGuire say?

Goodes

Astonishing. Aside from a brief flurry of news reporting about the Anzac Day AFL game in Wellington, the great game of AFL only gets reported here in EnZed when there’s a scandal—when said “news” is reported without any context.

As it was this morning on Newstalk ZB: “AFL: McGuire to face officials over King Kong comment.”

imageSo for those who don’t know what Collingwood president and general loudmouth Eddie McGuire said (yes folks, he’s the fella on your Who Wants To Be a Millionaire), and what he thought he said, here’s an update.  Basically, he was found on his breakfast radio show wondering why Sydney Swans’ champion footballer Adam Goodes (one of the finest players the game has produced) wasn’t being used to promote the Melbourne stage show King Kong—this just three days after personally apologising to the champion for a 13-year-old Collingwood fan calling him an “ape.”

Now for what it’s worth, I think Eddie McGuire is basically an idiot. But he is passionate about his club, and even though that club is Collingwood, I think his explanation here rings true. For what it’s worth:

And if you’re wondering why you should care, then ask the folk occupying the local sports desks at TV3, Newstalk ZB et al who report on stuff like this, but never bother reporting, say, Geelong blowing Port Adelaide off the park on Saturday.

Pathetic.

Ans

As milestones become entitlements… the “feed the children” edition

"The State is the great fiction through which everyone
endeavours to live at the expense of everyone else."

- Frédéric Bastiat

Welfarism: [n.]   The Great New Zealand Disease; an affliction
imbibed  with  Mother's  Milk,  incubated  in  the  state's factory
schools  and  released  like  a bacillus  in  humanities departments
across the country.  A mentality that assumes … the right … to fleece
the productive in order to placate and to fund the unproductive.

- “Cue Card Libertarianism: Welfarism

“Feed a stray cat, and you relieve its hunger for a day.  Keep
feeding it, and you’ll make two dozen friends. For life.”
- Traditional saying

“Build it and they will come…”

NZ’s means-tested Old Age Pensions Act was introduced in 1898, establishing the basis of the present welfare system. Fabian socialists the world over applauded. Unlike those benevolent souls who introduced it, they understood how gradualism works.

Income tax was introduced in 1908 to pay for it.  The rate was sixpence in the pound for income – about three cents in the dollar.  That was how things started. Superannuation (as it’s now called) now costs $11 billion every year—around $11,000 for every taxpayer in the country.  A “need” has become an entitlement.

There were other milestones on our path to rampant entitle-itis.

The United Government passed the 1930 Unemployment Act just as the Great Depression began, which required those those registered to participate in government 'make work' schemes such as building roads and working on farms or in forestry projects. When the register was opened, 23,000 people put their names down. (It was an emergency.)

In 1938, when Australasia’s Great Depression was already over, the pension act became the “cradle to grave” Social Security Act, “the first comprehensive and integrated system of social security in the western world.” It mashed together existing pensions and widows, invalids and unemployment benefits with a free-at-the-point-of-use health system and numerous new welfare benefits and allowances. The number now receiving an “allowance” rose overnight from 42,6oo to 230,000.  It was financed by a tax surcharge of one shilling in the pound, or a further 5 cents in the dollar, with a government deficit to make up the difference—the Reserve Bank having been nationalised in 1936 to make large government deficits possible.

Tax 001In 1972 the Accident Compensation Commission (now Corporation) was brought into being, with a 'pay-as-you-go' funding model collecting "only enough levies during the year to cover the cost of claims for that particular year."  It now costs well over a billion dollars annually, has $28.5 billion in liabilities, and the state is financially responsible for all accidents, injuries and trauma by either misadventure or negligence.

The Domestic Purposes Benefit was introduced in 1973 to offer assistance to children with unmarried mothers. It cost $250,000, and several dozen mothers were enrolled. At the end of December 2012, 109,000 working-age people were receiving the Domestic Purposes Benefit, around 4% of the working-age population of New Zealand.  It now costs $149 million every year, 15% of the  total welfare budget.

As a 2005 election bribe, Helen Clark and Michael Cullen introduced Welfare for Working Families, costing nearly two billion dollars every year and at a stroke transforming two out of every three NZ families (mostly middle to higher income) into welfare beneficiaries. Then opposition finance spokesman John Key called it communism by stealth. When elected he never touched it.

 

As we speak then, the government now takes over $80 billion from some New Zealanders and gives it away over their lifetime to other New Zealanders receiving some form of regular welfare payment.

How many NZers in total? As of April, there were 310,416 New Zealanders receiving one of the many benefits now on offer (all cunningly renamed by the present Welfare Social Welfare Work and Income Social Development Minister).  Add to that those the many tens of thousands sipping their lattes with their WFF benefits while trying not to think of themselves as beneficiaries (not to mention the many beneficiaries of the bailouts of South Canterbury Finance et al, or the country’s most highly-paid beneficiaries down there in Wellingtown).

So as of now, there is now around one net taxpayer for every net tax receiver—and that ratio is falling, not rising.

There’s nothing wrong with honest charity. But honest charity is not what any of this is.  Honest charity has long ago been crowded out.

What started just over a century ago as something that looked like simple benevolence to those who introduced—something costing their constituents only three cents in the dollar—has gradually morphed into something very different, and vastly more all-encompassing.  The “need” of others has become virtually a first mortgage on the lives and earnings of every taxpayer, and in the minds of many voters the moral purpose of their existence.

In the course of a century, simple benevolence has become raging entitle-itis.

And this week John Key announced the government will now feed the children. But, he says, it will only cost $11 million. And the 25,000 children getting the government’s breakfast really need it, he says.

Those old Fabians sure as hell knew what they were doing.

cartoon_28_12_03

Wednesday 29 May 2013

ECONOMICS FOR REAL PEOPLE: Planning Without Central Plans: Part II

Here’s the note from our friends at the Auckland University Economics Group about tomorrow night’s discussion:

Last week we discovered how buying a bottle of milk helps explain how all prices are set.
This week we discuss how millions of simple choices every day, just like that one, are coordinated by their effect on the choices of others.
We’ll discuss how wages are set (and why employer greed is irrelevant), how planning is done without central plans (and how it never can be), and how consumers rule the world—and how entrepreneurs serve them.
All this and much more, including five simple principles to help you understand how the market almost automatically coordinates the economic activity of every person on the planet, and why the result is dynamic order rather than an “anarchy of production.”

    Date: Thursday, 30 May
    Time: 6pm - 7pm
    Location: Room 215, Level Two, Business School

Look forward to seeing you there. All welcome.

Check us out on the web at our Facebook Group.

Why the “peaceful majority” is irrelevant

"While it's true that jihadists don't represent most Muslims, they do represent Islam."
- Bosch Fawstin

History lessons are often incredibly simple. As an Op-Ed once more doing the rounds makes clear, when the “silent majority” ignore atrocities carried out in their name, they share all the guilt of the perpetrators.

I used to know a man whose family were German aristocracy prior to World War II. They owned a number of large industries and estates. I asked him how many German people were true Nazis, and the answer he gave has stuck with me and guided my attitude toward fanaticism ever since.
    “Very few people were true Nazis,” he said, “but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.”
    We are told again and again by experts and talking heads that Islam is the religion of peace, and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this un-quantified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the spectre of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam.
    The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars world wide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or execute honour killings. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. The hard, quantifiable fact is that the “peaceful majority” is the “silent majority,” and it is cowed and extraneous.

It was the “peaceful majority” in Nazi Germany, in Mao’s China, in Soviet Russia, in Castro’s Cuba, and in Hutu-ruled Rwanda who were silent, who spoke up too late, and who so often died themselves of what they were too cowed to name. 

It was the peaceful majority in Ireland however (that’s peaceful majority without the scare quotes) who finally ended the murders, the bombings and the assassinations perpetrated by the IRA—and who demonstrated how powerful a response it can be to rise up an say of such violence “not in my name!”  (Witness the effect that the sisters of Robert McCartney had in speaking out against Irish violence -- in saying "NO MORE!" theirs became the voices that brought an end to what had once seemed unending.)

The fact is, however, that until or unless that happens then the silence of the so-called peaceful makes them anything but. Because the fact is that

peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by the fanatics. Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence. Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don’t speak up, because, like my friend from Germany, they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun. 

Ayaan Hirsi Ali makes a similar point plain in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal when she asks who really speaks for Islam? It’s not an idle question; it becomes more important by the day.

The question requiring an answer at this moment in history is clear: Which group of leaders really speaks for Islam? The officially approved spokesmen for the "Muslim community"? Or the manic street preachers of political Islam, who indoctrinate, encourage and train the killers—and then bless their bloodshed? […]
    Some refuse even to admit that this is the question on everyone's mind. Amazingly, given the litany of Islamist attacks—from the 9/11 nightmare in America and the London bombings of July 7, 2005, to the slayings at Fort Hood in Texas in 2009, at the Boston Marathon last month and now Woolwich—some continue to deny any link between Islam and terrorism. This week, BBC political editor Nick Robinson had to apologize for saying on the air, as the news in Woolwich broke, that the men who murdered Lee Rigby were "of Muslim appearance."
image    Memo to the BBC: The killers were shouting "Allahu akbar" as they struck. Yet when complaints rained down on the BBC about Mr. Robinson's word choice, he felt obliged to atone. One can only wonder at people who can be so exquisitely sensitive in protecting Islam's reputation yet so utterly desensitized to a hideous murder explicitly committed in the name of Islam.
    In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing and the Woolwich murder, it was good to hear expressions of horror and sympathy from Islamic spokesmen, but something more is desperately required: genuine recognition of the problem with Islam.
    Muslim leaders should ask themselves what exactly their relationship is to a political movement that encourages young men to kill and maim on religious grounds…
    Of course, the overwhelming majority of Muslims are not terrorists or sympathetic to terrorists. Equating all Muslims with terrorism is stupid and wrong. But acknowledging that there is a link between Islam and terror is appropriate and necessary…
    I don't blame Western leaders [for saying otherwise]. They are doing their best to keep the lid on what could become a meltdown of trust between majority populations and Muslim minority communities…
    But I do blame Muslim leaders. It is time they came up with more credible talking points. Their communities have a serious problem. Young people, some of whom are not born into the faith, are being fired up by preachers using basic Islamic scripture and mobilized to wage jihad by radical imams who represent themselves as legitimate Muslim clergymen.
    I wonder what would happen if Muslim leaders like Julie Siddiqi started a public and persistent campaign to discredit these Islamist advocates of mayhem and murder. Not just uttering the usual laments after another horrifying attack, but making a constant, high-profile effort to show the world that the preachers of hate are illegitimate. After the next zealot has killed the next victim of political Islam, claims about the "religion of peace" would ring truer.

Like the McCartney sisters, the silent Muslim majority need to become the Muslim leaders.

Until then, the silent majority will have to endure all the consequences of the killing being done in their name.

[Hat tip Phil S.]

Everest!

What was once a mountain has now become the world’s tallest metaphor.* And today, sixty years ago, was the day it was finally conquered.

My favourite story of its conquering is possibly apocryphal, but still delightful.

It’s said that when Hillary and Tenzing reached the top of Everest for the first time, Tenzing fell to his knees and gave thanks to the spirits that had helped their journey; he prayed to the gods and to each of the four winds, and he carefully placed in the ground a small stake on which prayer ribbons were attached.

While he was doing this, Hillary stuck a flag in the ground, unzipped his fly and took a piss.

That's how a man like Sir Ed celebrated conquering his Everest.

* Have you “conquered your Everest” yet?

Breakfast in bed. Almost.

We used to say that New Zealanders imbibed statism with their mother’s milk.  Prime Minister John Key confirmed yesterday that the state will now become the nation’s mother.

Key has signed off on a programme in which the state, in the guise of provider, will hand out milk and cereal provided by others. Breakfast on the taxpayer, with Uncle John as host.

Key dismisses criticism saying,

"...if the child is not fed ... we know they don't learn...

Really? We know? But as Lindsay Mitchell writes,

“an Auckland University study undertaken across 14 low socio-economic schools where children received free school breakfasts organised through Red Cross or the private sector concluded ‘A free school breakfast did not have a significant effect on New Zealand children's school attendance, academic achievement, self-reported grades, sense of belonging at school, behaviour or food security’…”

So apparently Key knows what no-one else knows. On Planet Key, "...if the child is not fed ... we know they don't learn [and] in the end they are a victim.” A victim yet.

It might be argued by Key supporters that this is just a calculated political move, with no further ramifications. In which case, Key has transformed every child from a notional victim to a political pawn.

It’s Madness.

Frank Lloyd Wright: “The present education system is the trampling of the herd”

A neat new book that’s perfect for your pocket compiles over 200 of architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s pithiest ponderings on different topics.  Maria Popova has posted a few of her favourites on the topic of education, with links to related presentations from Ken Robinson, Richard Feynman, William Gibson et al, including some of these gems:

“The present education system is the trampling of the herd.” (1956)

“Cultivate the poet. The poet is the unacknowledged legislator of this universe and the sooner we knock under to that the better. Get Emerson’s essay on the American scholar and read it once a year.” (1957)

“Culture is developed from within and education is to be groomed from without.” (1959)

“You have to go wholeheartedly into anything in order to achieve anything worth having.”

“When anyone becomes an authority, that is the end of him as far as development is concerned.” (1948)

“An expert is a man who has stopped thinking because ‘he knows.’” (1957)

“There is no real development without integrity, that is — a love of truth.” (1957)

“A man is wise for within … and from that within comes this quality of the human soul that we call wisdom.” (1954)

“The fresh mind sees with a seeing eye and is likely to see the truth.  But the more you are educated and the more you are conditioned, the less able you become to see straight.” (1956)

“ I wanted to be developed into an individual capable of honouring the profession I was in, not selling it down the river.” (1951)

“If you were to deduct Froebel, Goethe, Beethoven, and Nietzsche from my education, I should be very much the poorer.” (1955)

More in the little book, Frank Lloyd Wright on Architecture, Nature, and the Human Spirit: A Collection of Quotations.

Picture 8

[Hat tip Friends of Kebyar and Prairie Mod]

Tuesday 28 May 2013

31 charts that will destroy your faith in humanity

You might recall a series of 31 charts I linked to last week showing the optimists are right: human activity is making the world a better place in which to live.

As you’d expect, however, the pessimists were out in force.

So if these 31 charts will restore your faith in humanity, then these 31 charts will destroy it.

Buahahaha.

Do you know the way to Timbuktu?

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You wouldn’t know it now, but Islam was once a historically moderate and intellectual religion. Yes, true story.  The seat of science and civilisation a thousand years ago was in the Muslim world—largely because the Muslim world had become the repository of Greek manuscripts that would otherwise have been destroyed by Europe’s barbarians.

Aristotle and his works are important leading players in this historical drama.  In a parallel to the story of how Aristotle’s own manuscripts were rescued from destruction by savages, scholars at Timbuktu’s Ahmed Baba Institute rescued thousands of scholarly documents reflecting Islam’s historically moderate and intellectual past from  jihadists who took control of Timbuktu in April 2012.

Radical Islamists had entered Timbuktu four months earlier, and they had set about destroying everything they deemed a sin.
   They had demolished the tombs of Sufi saints. They had beaten up women for not covering their faces and flogged men for smoking or drinking. They most certainly would have burned the manuscripts — nearly 300,000 pages on a variety of subjects, including the teachings of Islam, law, medicine, mathematics and astronomy — housed in public and private libraries across the city… The jihadists who took control of Timbuktu in April 2012 quickly chose as their headquarters the Ahmed Baba Institute, a state-run library and research center named after a 17th-century Timbuktu scholar…
    The militants kicked out the employees and scrawled the name of their organization on a wall in Arabic: “Ansar al-Dine,” or “Defenders of the Faith.”
    The jihadists, along with fighters
from al-Qaeda’s affiliate in West and North Africa, had piggybacked on a Tuareg separatist rebellion that had taken advantage of a military coup in March to overrun the north. Within weeks, the radicals pushed out the Tuareg rebels and asserted control over Timbuktu and other cities in the north.
     In the 15th and 16th centuries, Timbuktu was a
center of Islamic culture under several African empires. It had a university and many Islamic schools that attracted scholars and students from Cairo, Baghdad and other corners of the Middle East. Some brought along sacred Muslim texts. Others produced several hundred thousand manuscripts, handwritten in Arabic and African languages, sometimes in gold lettering.
    The jihadists initially appeared not to know the value of the manuscripts kept in Timbuktu — or didn’t seem to care. But after local television reports about the manuscripts, some Islamists, clutching guns, came by the old Ahmed Baba Institute and asked the employees whether any documents were inside.

Then began a tale of heroism, derring-do and intellectual heroism, the centre’s scholars and their families spiriting away and preserving the intellectual heritage of an earlier, more benevolent, Islamic age.

Read this inspiring story of how Timbuktu’s treasured manuscripts from the end of this “golden age” were saved from today’s jihadists.

[Hat tip Stephen Hicks]

Greens: Reciting the rail mantra while reality passes them by

The Greens constantly push public transport as the ideal transport system for every city, every passenger, every transport case.

See what I mean:

Motorists' petrol taxes should go to increasing public transport, they say.
Hang everything else and get the Auckland City Rail Link built, they say.
Scrap the Kapiti Expressway plan and build more public transport, they say.
Scrap the Puhoi-Wellsford highway, they say, and build more public transport.
Scrap Transmission Gully, they say, and build more public transport.

Their mantra, a never-ending refrain, is more rail, fewer roads—and if in doubt, get motorists to pay more.

“Rail, rail, rail, rail, rail.”

You’d think by their constant worship at the altar of rail that the environmental case for public transport was overwhelming! 

That city’s could develop no other way.

That rail really is the “highly energy-efficient means of commuter transport” the Greens website says it is.

But it’s not.   Rail is far from the most efficient means of commuter transport, as figures from the U.S. government bureau of transportation statistics figures and the U.S.Dept. of Energy Transportation Energy Data Book demonstrate.  Brad Templeton looked at the figures from these sources and produced this handy graph, below, which shows that the average passenger uses less energy to travel a mile in the average car (with an average load of 1.57 passengers) than if he travelled in a diesel bus, a trolley bus, a heavy rail train, or a light rail train—and only marginally more energy than if he travelled by jet plane.

So if the Greens’ real goal were saving energy then instead of reciting the rail mantra at every opportunity, why don’t they simply encourage more car pooling?  After all, technology makes that easier and easier with every app.

But they don’t.  Because that’s not the Greens’ real goal, is it.

Hat tip David Willmott, who says the case for roads is still sound.

Monday 27 May 2013

The man who thought psychiatrists were nuts

Guest post by Doug French

This week is a big one in the psychiatry world. The American Psychiatric Association released the fifth edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). What is now a massive 1,000-page tome doesn't come out very often, but when it does, as Johns Hopkins distinguished professor Paul McHugh writes, the book "shape[s] what psychiatrists say and do with their patients."

Back in the old days, say, in 1952, when the DSM-1 was a spiral-bound pamphlet, people were shy; now they have “social anxiety disorder.” People who were once referred to as nervous Nellies are now afflicted with “general anxiety disorder.”  And children who were once simply inquisitive are now tortured by “attention deficit disorder.”
Everywhere you look there is a disorder, and someone who is allegedly suffering it. But after just a few precious minutes spent with a psychiatrist, the troubled are sent off to their friendly pharmacist for the modern version of "mother's little helper."

Thomas Szasz, who died at age 92 last fall, believed the psychiatric community was -- dare I say it -- nuts.

Szasz wrote in his book The Second Sin,
If you talk to God, you are praying; if God talks to you, you have schizophrenia. If the dead talk to you, you are a spiritualist; if you talk to the dead, you are a schizophrenic.
Imagine a book full of witty common-sense quips similar to the above, listed from A-Z. That is Szasz's Words to the Wise: A Medical-Philosophical Dictionary.
Thomas Szasz, M.D.
In this age of Obamacare, Big Pharma, and the therapeutic state, the wisdom of Szasz, arguably the medical profession's biggest classical liberal, will reassure you that you're not the one's that's crazy.
Szasz believed that each person owns his or her body and mind, and has the right to be free from the violence of others. The government, in his view, has no business interfering with the practice of medicine, suicide, the use and sale of drugs, or of sexual relations.

He argued that the definitions contained in books like the DSM-5 were simply names attached to sets of behavioural criteria. He opposed involuntary psychiatric treatment while at the same time condemning the insanity defence.

The scare tactics used by the drug prohibitionists were vigorously disputed by Szasz. In an interview with Reason magazine in 1974, he said,
The idea that a single experience with a drug -- say, heroin -- makes one a 'slave' to it, makes one unable to exist without it, is simply not true. It's what I call 'pharmacomythology' -- in contrast to pharmacology, which has to do with the real chemical effects of drugs.
Szasz believed in a free market in all things, including heroin.*  Giving yourself pleasure shouldn't be a crime, he argued, even if it kills you. In fact, killing yourself shouldn't be illegal either.

Szasz believed the term "mental illness" is simply a metaphor. His view was that psychiatrists can't really treat anyone. Szasz believed the subject matter of psychiatry is, the same as religion, "what used to be called moral philosophy, of what the great dramatists and novelists of all ages have written about."

When pressed, he called psychiatry a religion, or several religions. Szasz, the great libertarian, was essentially the atheist of psychiatry. Psychiatry is the misuse of language, he said. Patients aren't sick, and psychiatrists aren't treating any sort of illness.

He argued for a complete separation of psychiatry and state, arguing:
If we recognise that "mental illness" is a metaphor for disapproved thoughts, feelings, and behaviours, we are compelled to recognise as well that the primary function of Psychiatry is to control thought, mood, and behaviour. Hence, like Church and State, Psychiatry and the State ought to be separated by a "wall." At the same time, the State ought not to interfere with mental health practices between consenting adults. The role of psychiatrists and mental health experts with regard to law, the school system, and other organisations ought to be similar to the role of clergymen in those situations.
Szasz told Reason that he liked to think up short statements or aphorisms. Words to the Wise compiles 240 pages of the brilliant fruit from Szasz. It is the perfect book, not necessarily to read cover to cover, but to poke through for pleasure and reference.

There are extensive entries for "language," "drugs," "psychoanalysis," "suicide," and "therapeutic state," among others.
Szasz had a way of looking at the world that will turn you around and make you think. He does this not with long-winded monologues, but with sentences and paragraphs that are both pithy and memorable.

Remembering the country's founding, Szasz explains that the United States government "was established on the principle that there are certain things it must not do to people. These injunctions are properly called the Bill of Rights." Today's government, however, believes "that there are certain things it must do for or to the people. These prescriptions ought properly to be called the Bill of Wrongs."
  • "Giving oneself a controlled substance is a crime. Accepting it from a physician is a treatment"
  • "Treating addiction to heroin with methadone is like treating addiction to scotch with bourbon"
  • "Some parents want their children to have it better; others want them to do better. The former are likely to have incompetent and unhappy children, the latter, competent and happy ones."
"Statist medicine turns adults into children," Szasz writes.
Popular acceptance of this paternalistic substitution of needs for wants -- of medicalised permissions for personal decisions -- is emblematic of how readily the American people have embraced medical statism, and rejected individual liberty and personal responsibility.
imageMore than once, the author will make you chuckle. For instance:
The four categories of persons who can be relied on not to keep promises: politicians, psychiatrists, psychopaths, and psychotics.
Speaking of the DSM-5, Szasz writes:
What the sharia is to the Islamic state, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association is to the therapeutic state.
Unquestionably, Szasz displays his wisdom throughout:
Most people want liberty and self-determination for themselves and subjection for others. Some want subjection for everyone. Few want liberty and self-determination for everyone.
Thomas Szasz was one of the few who wanted liberty for everyone and is considered (rightly) one of the heroes of the freedom movement. Words to the Wise is great way to build a common-sense vocabulary in freedom, psychiatry, medicine, and so much more.

Author Image for Douglas French
Doug French is president of the Mises Institute and senior editor of the Laissez Faire Club. He received his master's degree under the direction of Murray N. Rothbard at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, after many years in the business of banking. He is the author of two books, “Early Speculative Bubbles and Increases in the Supply of Money,” the first major empirical study of the relationship between early bubbles and the money supply, and “Walk Away,” a monograph assessing the philosophy and morality of strategic default. This post posted by permission of Money Morning Australia.
RELATED:
* THOMAS SZASZ in The Second Sin: “We speak of a person being ‘under the influence’  of alcohol, or heroin, or amphetamine, and believe that these substances affect him so profoundly as to render him utterly helpless in their grip. We thus consider it scientifically justified to take the most stringent precautions against these things and often prohibit their nonmedical, or even their medical, use. But a person may be under the influence not only of material substances but also of spiritual ideas and sentiments, such as patriotism, Catholicism, or Communism. But we are not afraid of these influences, and believe that each person is, or ought to be, capable of fending for himself."

A Deadlier Disaster for the Third World: Unemployment

Photo of George    ReismanGuest post by George Reisman

The recent collapse of a garment factory building in Bangladesh, resulting in the death, at latest count, of more than 1,100 workers who were employed there, has led to international outrage not only against the building’s owner but also against the various retailers in the United States and Europe, many of them prominent, that have sold clothing produced in that building. It is demanded that they assume responsibility for working conditions in the factories that supply them and not deal with factories that do not provide safe and humane conditions and pay fair wages.

Such demands rest on the belief that, if left free of government interference, the profit motive of businessmen or capitalists leads them to pay subsistence wages to workers compelled to work intolerable hours in sub-human conditions. And, more, that the profits wrung from the workers in this way exist in the hands of the capitalists as a kind of disposable slush fund as it were, at least some more or less substantial portion of which can be given back to the workers from whom they were taken, or used on behalf of those workers, with no negative effect except to deprive the capitalists of some of their ill-gotten gains.

imageIt is generally taken for granted that the reason the kind of conditions that prevail in Bangladesh and the rest of the Third World do not exist in the United States and Western Europe is the enactment of labour and social legislation, and that what is needed is to extend such legislation to the countries that do not yet have it.

Every aspect of this set of beliefs is wrong and its consequences are highly destructive, above all to the masses of workers in the Third World who already live close to starvation and who are in danger of being driven into it by needlessly increasing the cost of employing them either by arbitrarily raising their wages or by requiring that they be provided with improved working conditions that must be at their expense and which they cannot afford.

imageOne of the most elementary propositions of the science of economics is that the higher the price of anything, the smaller is the quantity of it that will be purchased. This applies to labour no less than to goods. If wage rates in Bangladesh are arbitrarily increased, fewer workers will be employed in Bangladesh. In that case, workers who would have earned low wages will earn no wages. They will starve. If employers in Bangladesh are compelled to make improvements in working conditions of a kind that do not pay for themselves, the cost of those improvements represents the equivalent of a rise in wage rates. Again, there will be unemployment. The unemployment could be avoided only if workers’ take-home wages could fall sufficiently to offset the cost of the improvements. In that case, the situation would be comparable to making the workers use their already meagre wages to pay for improvements that they simply cannot afford.

These are not outcomes that the advocates of imposing labour standards want. What they want is higher wages and better working conditions. Their problem is that they do not realize what is actually necessary to achieve these results.

imageWhat will achieve these results is leaving business firms in Bangladesh and throughout the Third World alone, to be as profitable as they can be. (It should be obvious that the loss of a factory building and its machinery was not profitable and that while it may be legitimate to denounce this building’s owner for criminal recklessness and negligence, it is simply absurd to denounce him for seeking profit, when what he actually achieved, and could only achieve through such conduct, was total loss.)

The high profits that can be earned in a Third World country, if not prevented by too many obstacles, will be heavily saved and invested, mainly in that Third World country. As the experience of Taiwan, South Korea, and now even mainland China shows [see for example the recent TED talk on this subject by Leslie Chang – Ed.], a generation or more of such a process results in a vast accumulation of means of production in the country—i.e., numerous new factories, with better and better equipment. This results in an intensified competition for labour and thus rising wage rates. As wage rates rise, workers can more and more afford to accept lesser increases along with improved working conditions of a kind that must be at their expense.

Economic freedom, not government interference, is the road that the wealth of nations travels.

* * * *

George Reisman, Ph.D., is Pepperdine University Professor Emeritus of Economics and the author of Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (Ottawa, Illinois: Jameson Books, 1996; Kindle Edition, 2012). See his Amazon.com author's central page  for additional titles by him. His website is www.capitalism.net and his blog iswww.georgereismansblog.blogspot.com.
This post first appeared at the Mises Daily.