In the wake of the double downgrade, the debt blowout, and further afield the Occupy Wall Street movement, one thing keeps coming through for me. If we want to improve our lot economically, if we want to address the growing inequality in our society, we have to do things differently.
An interesting contribution to that debate in New Zealand is coming from Gareth Morgan and Susan Guthrie. Their latest piece appeared in the NZ Herald on-line today.
Morgan and Guthrie highlight the obsession with property speculation, the reliance on commodity prices to keep us afloat, a narrowly based economy and monetary policy and a tax system that fuels the worst of speculative behaviour. These are not new messages from Gareth, but there is more reasonance as we look at a global and national economy defiantly not recovering and staggering (or is that muddling) through the year. He puts it this way
There is a naive single dimension to our economic policy – we either raise or reduce the budget deficit or we raise or reduce interest rates. That’s the sum total of the intellectual capital being applied to managing our economy. That it could be so bereft for so long has led to the persistence of our “structural imbalance”. There is a chronic need for policy enlightenment and a sweeping aside of a simplistic policy orthodoxy that has been rigidly paid homage to for 30 years now.
Now, of course I don’t agree with all of their prescription, but the idea that we have to change the way we think about our economy is the core message, and it is one that Labour has heard and taken on board. We are offering a different way of doing things both from where the current government is, and where we have been.
Monetary Policy. Labour has already announced that we need to change monetary policy to address the structural issues in the economy, including the volatility of the dollar that makes life difficult for exporters and high interest rates that discourage investment in productive parts of the economy. While curbing inflation remains important, having that as the single focus is not working for us. Our policy is to broaden the objectives of the Reserve Bank beyond just controlling inflation to look other issues, such as employment and to support more aggressive interventions to deal with currency speculation.
Fairer Tax System. As noted we are going to introduce a Capital Gains Tax to ensure we tax income in all its forms and start to move toward investment in our productive economy. We also are going to return the top tax rate to 39c over $150,000, the first $5000 tax free and taking the GST of fresh fruit and vegetables
Procurement/Overseas Investment. Labour is going to make important changes to focus to support our own economy. This means new rules on government procurement, that will be compliant with our international ageements, but will require a process that gives Kiwi firms a fair go and will look at a wider set of criteria for awarding contracts including the impact on the domestic economy. We want overseas investment but as announced in 2010 we will put stricter controls on purchases of farm land, monopoly infrastructure, so that we keep control of our assets (and of course there will be no asset sales!).
And there is more to come in terms of innovation and economic development, to build on the R and D Tax Credits, Youth Employment. And more to come in Savings, where we really can build a basis for creating the pool of resources to invest in our own companies, just as Kiwisaver funds have done with Scott Technology.
This post is too long already, so I will come back to some of the social policy issues Morgan and Guthrie raise, but for now I am confident that Labour has a different vision on offer this year. Some of it is policy we have done before, but a lot of it is thinking differently, because as they say a definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
@ Tribeless – in response;
No one is forcing you to buy groceries, gregor. If nothing else you can grow your own produce like I do. Why don’t you understand the difference between a voluntary transaction and coercion?
So let me get this straight; You produce everything you consume or if not, voluntarily transact with another party for its use?
The water you drink – you directly pay for its purification and distribution to your home and incure all costs of supply and maintenance?
You pay for the R&D for the medecine that you use when sick, you trained the doctors that diagnosed you and built the hospitals you were treated in?
Furthermore, I am being forced to pay for those goods unless I choose to steal them. Or starve I guess.
Similarly you could choose to pay tax or not if you wanted to stand up for your principles. Plenty of people do, but they do tend to get caught and don’t elicit much sympathy from the general public.
And I don’t want social services funded by taxes. That’s precisely the problem with our Gulag of Good Intentions.
So let me see – you don’t want a state police force for when you get assaulted or burgled, or a legal system either to defend your personal and property rights.
You don’t want to pay for roading infrastructure that you aren’t using directly. Hang on! How would all those goods you voluntarily consume get to market?
This is the ultimate conceit of the Libertarian.
They want all of their rights to free contract defended by an apparatus they don’t want to pay for. They want to have all the benefits of civil society – trade, freedom of association – without society.
The irony is that the Libertarian dream cannot exist without a society that underpins it. John Donne had it right hundereds of years ago; ‘No man is an island’.
We’re creating the underclass the welfare state was about helping while denying everyone a life free of an abusive State to do so.
Here I actually agree with you to a degree. The pervasiveness of the welfare state has a lot to answer for; it disempowers the people it should be helping.
But don’t conflate universal assistance for childbirth (which benefits every single citizen for a marginal cost) with some form of totalitarianism. It’s absurd.
As much as I would like to see less children being born (The world is over populated by at least 6 billion) I will have to point out, again, that your utopian society doesn’t work and requires far more charity (not that there will be). Reality has already proven that back in the 19th century (see the link I supplied above).
That’s an impossibility as I’ve already told you. When you do something it affects me and vice versa as such whenever anyone wants to do anything they have to ask everybody if they can and, in a society without rules, everyone actually has veto. So we have rules that govern society so that we have some idea as to what actions are proper and what aren’t because having to go around to everybody in the country to ask every time we want to do something costs too much and is physically impossible. My drivers licence is, ipso facto, the permission given through the state acting as representative of everyone in society that I can drive without me having to go around asking everyone every time I want to drive the car. I have some disagreement with that as I don’t think I should have to get a motorcycle license as well as a car license but I can work to get the rules changed by talking to the MPs about it. I can’t just unilaterally decide that I don’t need a motorcycle license.
Quoth, society exists and needs an administration. This administration is the “government” (I don’t like that word as it has authoritarian overtones and would much prefer if we just called it the administration) which has control over an agreed (inter-nation agreement) territory. This government operates at the behest of the people (the society) that live within that territory. Often that government is called the state as it is representative of both the people (society) and the territory.
Societies need rules by which to live so there will always be some coercion. We have democracy so that it’s an agreed coercion rather than a top down dictatorial one.
Gregor, you will find that Libertarianz do believe in a police force and military… paid for by everyone
Low income is more insidious and widespread than welfare dependency, don’t be sucked in by myths and legends.
Labour lost a portion of its constituency in 2007 because of a huge and in-depth burrowing into welfare fraud, and benefit abuse. national rhetoric talks about having done this, in fact it was done in 2007. And it works. Speak to anyone on unemployment benefit and find out how often they got dumped off the benefit for failing to turn up to seminars, job interviews. I have spoken to ten people in the last 3 months on unemployment, and all were bumped off for not turning up to one thing or another (a good thing in my opinion).
Coersion comes in many forms, not all of it legislated. So does propaganda, which starts in any education system.
Gregor, until you can figure out the difference between a voluntary transaction (private sector) and compulsion (always with the State), it’s pointless me debating anything with you.
Draco, you are stuck in straight line thinking, which has led you to the belief democracy is necessary. It isn’t, and democracy, which is a tyranny of the majority, has become the problem for those of us who want liberty.
A classical liberal (libertarian) minarchy has no politicians and no elections, it has a written constitution that seeks to protect the rights of the smallest of minorities, the individual, and it does this by setting out the state (small s) has only the following limited functions:
Police force and army to police the non-initiation of force and fraud principle from domestic and overseas aggressors.
Criminal justice system to punish those whom initiate force or fraud against others.
Contract law system so laissez faire capitalism and free markets can operate.
That’s it. Under this I can do whatever the hell I like, as you can, so long as we don’t initiate force or fraud on one another.
That is the civilised, free, society.
Turning to your fixation on democracy, what’s missing from the following example:
A democracy is made up of ten people; eight are white people, two are black people. The democracy holds a plebiscit on the following proposition: ‘that white people not have to work, and be allowed to live off the efforts of black people’.
The vote is democratically taken and the proposition is won by a majority vote of eight to two.
Now, what’s missing? (Hint: morality).
I don’t want to live in a society like that. I want to live in a free and peaceful classical liberal society where no vote can disenfranchise me, and understands that if an individual does not have private property rights, and privacy from the state, then it is an Orwellian State.
To put another way, I just want to pursue my happiness, living with my loved ones and family, peacefully by you simply leaving me alone: but you won’t – you believe you/society, the needs of total strangers, needs that are now created and grown by the welfare state, have a call on my life, and I must be sacrificed to them.
You represent the brute state and barbarity, and you can’t let me out of it. No one can opt out of it, as much as it revolts many of us.
“Police force and army to police the non-initiation of force and fraud principle from domestic and overseas aggressors.
Criminal justice system to punish those whom initiate force or fraud against others.
Contract law system so laissez faire capitalism and free markets can operate.”
How is the police force and army formed and trained? Who pays for it and how? Who determines what they police and do not police, and how?
Who decides what is a crime and what is not? Who decides who will be a judge (assuming you have judges)?
How far back do you go to determine who “owns” the property you seek to have freedom to? Example. In New Zealand between 1820 and after, the Government through the New Zealand Company and other vessels granted property to settlers. But, hang on, not believing in Government, do you accept that the contract is not a valid contract, in Libertarian terms? Particularly if the bargain was coercion or theft in the first place and hardly a bargain at all.
Gregor, until you can figure out the difference between a voluntary transaction (private sector) and compulsion (always with the State), it’s pointless me debating anything with you.
The refuge of someone who has no point to debate, I’m afraid Tribeless.
I am well aware of the difference, but you have failed address any counter example that challenges your assertions. You throw out idealogy with no fact base and expect readers to take it as axiomatic.
I don’t believe in any absolutes (particularly of the Utopian variety) when it comes to politics and am hugely sceptical of the motivations of anyone who does.
@tracey
Low income is more insidious and widespread than welfare dependency, don’t be sucked in by myths and legends.
Agreed. Which is why I stated earlier that it is simplistic to treat poverty as a monetary issue. It’s a societal one.
Poverty of the spirit (far more insidious) is at one extreme, a product of welfare dependancy and crude state interventionalism in peoples daily lives, and at the other, rapacious un-moderated capitalism.
Due to time constraints keeping this brief. And having the respect of dealing with the intelligent poster first, Tracey.
To fund the systems of limited state – note there is still a state, it’s not anarchy – ideally that would be through voluntary contributions. The cynical will now be jumping up and down, but why not that? Of course I would pay voluntarily to be safe: I would pay for the reason that I pay now for fire alarms, for property security, the voluntary contribution I make to St John’s general fund, and in the same vein, insurance. It’s called rational self-interest.
As stated, there is still the very small state, with the very small bureaucracy that performs the function of hiring, etc, the judges – ie, a Justice department. That is simply part of having, still, a criminal and civil justice system. Indeed, theoretically, we have no political inference in appointment of judges now, probably not much needs to change. It’s just that instead of somewhere over 65 government departments we would probably only need two or three (Justice, Armed Forces … actually, that’s it. isn’t it?)
Regarding past wrongs, none of us can pay for the sins, in this case, of our great, great, grandfathers. Nor is it possible to undo what was done so long ago. If Western societies had been classical liberal over 19th century, then I would posture there would be no land grievances, as the bedrock of classical liberalism is the sanctity of property rights.
Oh God. Oh Rand. Now to Gregor.
I grow this basket of veges Gregor, and offer to sell them all to you for $40. If you don’t like my price, then you can go buy from any other grower of veges. Whether you transact with me or a competitor is completely voluntary.
There is no force involved in that. You are confusing bodily functions – your need to eat – with the voluntary contracts you can make to get food. (If you have a problem with your body forcing you to eat, then I invite you to ‘get with’ reality).
Now try not paying tax. A rational man pursuing his self interest will pay tax because to do otherwise is literally to lose everything. IRD have full Orwellian police state powers of search and seizure for a very good reason, and they are ruthless. There’s a great movie called ‘The Lives of Others’: I recommend you watch it. Because just like they were in East Berlin, we all live behind the IRon Drape.
I must be stupid to continue with this, but here goes Gregor:
You say: “The irony is that the Libertarian dream cannot exist without a society that underpins it.
Of course I can’t exist without anybody else, a society, and I wouldn’t want to, but don’t turn that to mean that everybody else ‘owns me’. They do not own me, and I don’t them.
The following quotation from Austrian school economist Matt Ridley sums up, via analogy to the computer cloud concept, how we all all dependent of one another, but that doesn’t justify totalitarian government or central planning, indeed the opposite:
“The crowd-sourced, wikinomic cloud is the new, new thing that all management consultants are now telling their clients to embrace. Yet the cloud is not a new thing at all. It has been the source of human invention all along. Human technological advancement depends not on individual intelligence but on collective idea sharing, and it has done so for tens of thousands of years. Human progress waxes and wanes according to how much people connect and exchange.
When the Mediterranean was socially networked by the trading ships of Phoenicians, Greeks, Arabs or Venetians, culture and prosperity advanced. When the network collapsed because of pirates at the end of the second millennium B.C., or in the Dark Ages, or in the 16th century under the Barbary and Ottoman corsairs, culture and prosperity stagnated. When Ming China, or Shogun Japan, or Nehru’s India, or Albania or North Korea turned inward and cut themselves off from the world, the consequence was relative, even absolute decline.
Knowledge is dispersed and shared. Friedrich Hayek was the first to point out, in his famous 1945 essay “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” that central planning cannot work because it is trying to substitute an individual all-knowing intelligence for a distributed and fragmented system of localized but connected knowledge.”
Damn, client arrived early, got to go … later
No one disagrees that society needs rules or laws. Where we are in disagreement is where the provision of those laws should come from. Everyone cannot be the state by definition. You cannot get a state controlled equally by everyone (see Arrow’s impossibility theorem). Therefore the state always involves the ruled and the rulers and is a top down institution. From Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology (1996)
Yeah, it’s called logic and rationality and involves thinking. None of which, according to your diatribes, applies to what you say.
If you want to do anything that impacts upon me (pretty much everything you want to do) can I stop you? Because if I can’t then what you describe is oppression not freedom or liberty.
But that’s just it – you don’t want liberty but the ability to ignore everyone else’s wants and needs. This is called, in normal parlance, oppression and so you prove the rule:
Libertarians: Dictators hiding behind liberal values.
Who rights the constitution and how? The one in the USA was written by, get this, people who actually wanted rule by the rich. No, I’m not joking. It didn’t turn out that way because everyone else wanted democracy but that’s what they wanted and designed. NZ started off so that only people with land could vote and Act want to introduce legislation that only allows those who pay net tax to vote. In other words, Act only want the rich to be able to vote even though the only way to get rich is to pay others less than what they’re worth.
Hint: Research tells us that the majority of psychopaths are on the political right – the side that you support.
No one stopping you from moving to Somalia.
Yeah, that’s why we have representatives who are, supposedly, accountable to everyone. Although, with modern technology, I’m sure we actually could get the state controlled by everyone.
Much of what you say above doesn’t make sense Draco. I’m not replying to nonsense.
Clare: I do now wish you’d put up my earlier, admittedly long, post on how a Libertarian minarchy is not only the opposite of Somalia, but how that country far more closely approximates the barbarity of a social(alist) democracy. Up to you obviously. (I can post again below, with your permission).
Draco: I would have been interested in a considered response to my immorality of a tyranny of the majority, albeit I realise there’s not one. Pity you just descended into a frustrated vitriol though.
For reasons I have explained, and even more so in the Somalia post Clare kept off because it is too long, the social(alist) democracy, which is based on the welfare state created needs of total strangers, is dripping with the blood of innocents. I’ll take the white light of liberty and classical liberalism thanks, and an economy where all transactions and relationships are voluntary – that’s the peaceful, prosperous society.
As for who writes the constitution: well unlike in the State that exists to tell individuals how they will be allowed to live their lives on the altar of others needs, the concepts of liberty are universal. A constitution for New Freeland is already written:
http://freeradical.co.nz/content/constitution/
So, the free society: we’re ready to go, we just have to convince the bossy big nosed busy-bodies to leave us alone. Clare?
By the way, Raven: interesting posts.
@ Tribeless
I guess I struggle with your definition of ownership and society. Most people outgrow their ideological dalliance with Rand (as others do with Trotsky) and learn pretty quickly that there are no universal thruths.
Society has mutually enforced rights as well as responsibilities.
Those responsibilities include helping those less fortunate and often paying for things that, while they don’t have a direct improvement on you personal wellbeing, assist with the functioning of society as a whole.
If you are unhappy with that obligation then no agency will stop you looking for another country to live in.
How is our government or society expressing its ‘ownership’ of you? Are you enslaved? Do you have no free will? Or are you really just bitching about taxes?
You talk about some form of ‘Orwellian’ society (an term that, like ‘Fascist’, is awfully overused by idealogues) as though it exists as a reality in NZ.
Are the secret police watching your every move?
Does the state control what food you put in your belly, dictate the daily calisthenics you must perform or oversee the quality of the razors you shave with?
Has our history been systematically erased?
We live in a social-democratic mixed economy not North Korea, for God’s sake.
That’s called the Gulag of Good Intentions, Gregor, and it is a Gulag. Get yourself a four year IRD audit and see if don’t think we’re an Orwellian society or not. And again, 23% of all babies born in 2010 were reliant on a benefit by the end of their first year to eat: morally and mathematically, where do you think that leads.
More importantly, you answer to my tyranny of the majority example: that’s the barbaric society. Look at the violence being bred into New Zealand.
Finally, two quotations from Ludwig von Mises:
The issue is always the same: the government or the market. There is no third solution.
And:
Capitalism and socialism are two distinct patterns of social organization. Private control of the means of production and public control are contradictory notions and not merely contrary notions. There is no such thing as a mixed economy, a system that would stand midway between capitalism and socialism.
So basically it is all a whinge about the tax department and everything else is ideological window dressing.
Glad that’s settled.
PS – If you’re worried about audits and you’re an accountant, I would respectfully suggest you are in the wrong profession.
Shows how little you know of tax law, and how bad policy making has been over last ten years. For example, a mom and pop dairy farming company that can’t sell herd to son without copping an extra half million dollar tax payment over selling herd to total stranger. How logical does that sound?
I pick the tax department, because that department now has more power than any other, including police. You have no privacy against them: none. It is the symbol of how we are the Orwellian State.
But well done, in every post I have made sound idealogical points about freedom, and you pass it off glibly because you can’t actually raise decent arguments. You just go off bemoaning how your body is forcing you to eat … (Jeez). I’m out’ta here.
Gregor –
Society does have and does need mutually enforced rights and responsibilities I agree and I think we do have some positive moral obligations. None of which justifies the continued existence of a territorial monopoly on mass ideologically legitimised, mass coercion – the state. An institution which I believe does more harm to society than good. That is where I would disagree with both Randians, who believe in the necessity of the state, and other statists. When we give a group of people a subsidized monopoly on violence it often results in tragic consequences. For example, the estimated 262 million people killed by governments in the last century.
I know you are arguing with Tribeless, but I want to address these points from an anti-statist libertarian perspective not an objectivist one. I want roading infrastructure, a police force if I get assaulted or burgled, and a legal system to defend my personal and property rights. None of which necessitates a state. It would be both empirically and logically false to make such a claim. For example, property rights existed before the emergence of states. See: Samuel Bowles and Jung-Kyoo Choi. The First Property Rights Revolution: presentation at the Workshop on the Co-evolution of Behaviors and Institutions. Santa Fe Institute, University of Massachusetts, 2003.
Or see this: A Brief History of Society Property Rights versus the State.
Finally, I would ask you to look at the empirical evidence that demonstrates that economic freedom correlates positively with higher per capita income, higher income for the poorest, less childhood malnutrition, higher women’s income, greater human development, look at the millions lifted out of poverty in recent times by economic liberlization in countries like China, India, and South Korea and ask yourself whether a desire for more statism, however good intentioned, may do more harm than good to society.
Fairer Tax System. As noted we are going to introduce a Capital Gains Tax to ensure we tax income in all its forms and start to move toward investment in our productive economy. We also are going to return the top tax rate to 39c over $150,000, the first $5000 tax free and taking the GST of fresh fruit and vegetables
How can you promised solution be fairer- When there are so many exceptions that have been reported and cater for small vested parties “The family bach would be caught by the tax, but only if it was sold. If it was handed down through the generations, no CGT wuld be paid” – If the bach is “handed” down the generations from a conveyancy point of view this counts as a sale. Why do these people deserve the exception? this pandering to small vested wealthy group (some I imagine contain current and past MP’s) is just sickening. So a multi million dollar bach being exempt is FAIR ???
Raven, yes I’m Libertarian/Objectivist, though ‘at times’ I’m coming closer to the viewpoint of your last post. I know tags are awful, but how generally would you name your position, that is, which anarchist viewpoint?
QtR;
I’m not suggesting Statism is an answer to anything.
I am rejecting his flimsly postulations re the untested and unproven benefits of Libertarianism.
If you take the narrow academic view of ‘State’ being post-Westphalia then sure, you can claim plenty of governments had legal systems, property rights and police forces without ‘The State’. I mean if you have to go back to Hammurabi to make that assertation, go nuts.
But to point to a modern social-democratic state and base your arguement for its abolition on the straw-man of “Look how shitty people were to each other in the 20th Century under autocratic regimes!”, not to mention backing the claim that taxation for social services is some form of oppressive de-humanising totalitarian tyranny, then you need your head read.
It’s sophistry at its worst.
Gregor -
What we can provide is clear empirical evidence of the benefits of greater degrees freedom. Economic freedom correlates positively with per capita income, the income level of the poorest 10%, women’s income, human development, leads to a reduction in poverty and so on.
By which you mean the functional definition of state. One that goes back to the father of sociology Max Weber and gets at the core of what is uniquely characteristic of a state.
The point is to show that when we give a group of people a subsidized monopoly on mass coercion it creates obvious incentive and calculation problems, hence functionally defining the state, and has caused immense human tragedy.
P.S. I would prefer to think we are liberal democratic.
Tribless – I would say libertarian anti-statist, but of course any political label is problematic.
Gregor
IRD can raid your premises without even having to go to court and getting a warrant – happy with that?
IRD can take money from your bank accounts, including term deposits, and you won’t even know it – happy with that?
By law you only need keep your records for 7 years, however, IRD can issue an assessment (in tax you are not innocent until proven guilty, IRD just assess you and you have to prove otherwise) for eight or more years back and if you have no records you’re stuffed – happy with that? (One Chinese restaurant owner in Auckland has just been asked to produce last 20 years records).
All this money they’re taking, and in my case to use for purposes I have no philosophical agreement with whatsoever: but who earned it? Whose property is that income?
I could go on and on – point is, if you have no privacy from the State, and given the IRD shock and awe powers of search and seizure, then is an individual in New Zealand free? Prove your answer.
Qtr -
What we can provide is clear empirical evidence of the benefits of greater degrees freedom. Economic freedom correlates positively with….etc.
Sure you can. But that’s not what Tribeless is doing. S/he is positioning baseless doctrinaire opinions as fact without any proof. Read back in the posts. Not a shred of anything other than supposition couched as truth.
Furthermore NZ scores very highly on in the international ranks for economic freedom which sort of blows the whole position that we are oppressed and trapped in the Iron Laundry Basket or whatever Tribeless keeps banging on about completely out of the water.
@ Tribeless
So again – it’s about the IRD.
That’s fine; no love lost between me and them either.
But don’t use your beef with them as a fig-leaf for some flimsy ideology that would deny every NZer access to state subsidised childbirth FFS.
I’m currently going through a few issues of the type you have stated with them now but you know what?
I work through it! It’s called compliance!
I don’t feel particularly oppressed or aggrieved. It’s a bit of a hassle but in all fairness, it’s a result of my often lax book-keeping; overall the IRD have been more than reasonable in my case.
Re your examples of G-Men busting through the door and raiding bank accounts. This generally isn’t the first step in a conversation with the IRD as you well know; it’s the last. So don’t make out as though this is a daily occurrence for your average New Zealander. It’s not.
But in your weird world I guess I’m not ‘free’ because the tax dept. can request a look at my accounting records if they think I’m not paying tax, and if I don’t comply, compel me to produce them using seizure as a last resort.
How brutally oppressive of them.
Quite the opposite of positing baseless claims, Gregor, I simply cite history to back up what I’m saying.
Regarding the tax, what if I have no form of agreement with the violent society they’re creating with the money being taken from me? How is it moral to make me pay for my own nightmare, and a society I think will end badly (the situation growing in the bankrupted countries of Europe and the US my base for that one.)
The State works only by coercion: what for those of us who want none of that? What’s reasonable for you, is not for me, why do you get to call the tune of my life?
Oh, and regarding that tax issue of your’s, what if you happened to get an investigator who for whatever reason just took a disliking to you? With their power, they can destroy your peace in life completely, and your only recourse is to rely on the whim of other bureaucrats in the same department to call them off.
Happy with that?
I know, admittedly over a long period of time, of two auditors who had a predilection for auditing their neighbours, and one his fellow Lions and Rotarians, despite common sense screaming how stupid that was. One of those two thought people were shooting at him on his bike – apparently IRD profiling leaves a bit to be desired. Yes, he got the boot, ultimately, but I don’t want any single person with their power anywhere near my life, or loved ones. But I don’t have a choice.
I don’t have a choice because I’m not a free man.
Tribeless , seems to living in dream world of ‘warrants’. There is plenty of circumstances when warrants are not required.
The dog catcher doesnt need one, the noise control doesnt need one either and then there are plenty of circumstances for the police as well.
These seem to be the IRDs powers
Can search a business without a warrant and copy documents.
* Can search a private dwelling or take documents away, but needs a warrant to do this.
* Any information the IRD deems relevant to an investigation can be taken or copied.
* Can bring dog control officers, police and locksmiths along with them
NZ Herald
Those dog control officers will land only if my dog is initiating force (or noise) on someone: no problem with that.
Now tell me why the IRD raid happened?
Also ghost you never answered to my questions.
So, what you’re after is a single global administration?
@Tribeless
Last entry on this therad (I promise!) beacause you’re probably bored of it:
Quite the opposite of positing baseless claims, Gregor, I simply cite history to back up what I’m saying.
I went back through your posts. Now I’m prepared to front-foot it and say I missed something, but I can’t find a single factual citation that backs up anything you say. I see a lot of opinion, but no facts. Happy to be proven wrong though!
How is it moral to make me pay for my own nightmare, and a society I think will end badly…
Then don’t pay! Stand up for your principles, stick it to The Man, have your day in court and be a martyr. Just don’t whinge about it if you feel so strongly. Resist, man!
Oh, and regarding that tax issue of your’s, what if you happened to get an investigator who for whatever reason just took a disliking to you? With their power, they can destroy your peace in life completely, and your only recourse is to rely on the whim of other bureaucrats in the same department to call them off.>
This is just not true. If you feel you’ve been persecuted then take it up with your MP. Write to the Minister of Revenue. Nothing pollies hate worse than a vocal and disgruntled citizen who is happy to kick up a fuss and go to the papers if the situation is embarrassing.
I know, admittedly over a long period of time, of two auditors who had a predilection for auditing their neighbours….But I don’t have a choice. I don’t have a choice because I’m not a free man.
You know, there are plenty of police officers, nurses, bureaucrats, dog catchers and bus drivers who turn into complete f*cking maniacs when they get a uniform and a bit of power. It’s called human nature. You just have to get over it, smile sweetly and fantasise about your revenge when you’re in charge.
It doesn’t make you somehow less ‘free’ to have to rub along with other people, no matter how loathesome. It makes you a grown-up.
And you do have a choice. You have free will. You can resist @ home by refusing to pay tax or you can move to some survivalist cult in the USA. You have plenty of choices; you just don’t like the consequences.
A rational man will pay tax in our Western Social(alist) Democracies, Gregor, because the highest powers of search, seizure and then punishment has been given to the IR’s for a reason. Our police states have very sturdy feet, indeed, no individual or group stands a chance against them.
I want to be a free man, not a martyr. And the bonds of natural love and affection with my family, make what you call the principled action, but which is actually just stupid, an impossibility. Don’t you agree? Mind you, in a free country no such decision should be necessary; that is, this is supposedly the free West, so why is the alternative position to freedom now martyrdom? (Which it surely is). That fact alone should wake us all up.
But yes, I’ve got to get work done, this thread is dead.
Oh, you say You just have to get over it, smile sweetly and fantasise about your revenge when you’re in charge.
Yeah, that sounds like a lovely society to be part of; just bloody great.
Grant: You know I agree with most of Labour’s proposed tax policy – I have never had an issue with paying tax if you earn a heap. My issue was that Labour kept the tax thresholds at such unrealistic levels, left the door wide open for the baby boomers to buy all our first homes (along with the open door you left for foreign investors) & hide their money in trusts & LAQCS (usually rentals that we were renting off them) making things really hard for Gen X & Y to earn a decent enough wage to pay off our student loans, save for a deposit & have a family before our eggs dried up. All this in the face of living costs that saw a 70% or more increase in your 9 year tenure.
So I am not really sure if I believe that Labour will follow through with this carrot, or if I even care – it is too little too late.
And while I like the CGT in theory, in practice I bet there will be loopholes and the cunning ones will avoid it like they always have.
I am also not sure I think it is fair to go and tax a gain made from income that has already been taxed at source – isn’t this a form of double dipping? Bit like GST on rates and petrol?
Rebecca, of course a CGT is double dipping, just as is taxation on interest and dividends.
But the really interesting thing about a CGT is this. Labour (well, socialists) want to institute a tax on property to discourage property investment. And I have no doubt taxing does discourage it. But why don’t politicians, especially Labour with it’s envy tax, attach the same logic to taxing income?
@Tribeless
I’m going to break my promise and respond.
If you want to be ‘free’ and feel your freedonm is curtailed, then you have to fight for it.
Otherwise it’s all just hot air and posturing.
One man’s self-interest, however elegantly couched, is another man’s cowardice.
If everyone who felt oppressed used the “I would do something but I can’t bacause [insert reason here]” then we would still be stuck in the Dark Ages.
So if you feel so brutally oppressed, take a stand. After all, how can you live with yourself as a person of principle if you don’t? Good luck to you, Sir!
What’s your favourite movie Gregor: Rocky? Obviously one of those macho fantasy things.
I am a peaceable man, a family man, I have responsibilities, none of which are fulfilled by being crushed like a bug in the face of the shock and awe power of the NZ State in a protest that wouldn’t even make a blog byline. Now if more people lived up to their own responsibilities I wouldn’t be in the position, in a supposedly free country, of having to lose my freedom in order to prove I had none, would I?
(Incidentally, I respond quite quickly, where I am able, the only reason it doesn’t look so is all my posts are held in moderation for so long.)
Tribeless. You are now warned. You are trolling. if you don’t like our moderation policy go and start your own blog Clare
Not trolling Clare; just frustrated. Is everybody moderated?
Why not just allow free debate: you can still delete anything flammable after the event? You can trust me to argue against opposing opinion, yes, what’s the point of being here otherwise, however my parents taught me not to use the ‘F’ word, and I don’t
Had my own blog but with a bit of embarrassing incompetence managed to lose it. Although I was starting to think there was not much point simply posting to those who thought as I did, regardless. Better to debate with the enemy, surely, and see what both sides can learn.
And credit to your arm: the other parties don’t run anything like Red Alert.
Tribeless , are you so precious not to realise moderation kicks in all the time. I would say it occurs for me 30% of the time, usually its multiple postings in a short time.
You have ‘responsibilities’ – don’t we all? How santimonious can you get?
‘Now if more people lived up to their own responsibilities…etc’.
Not quite sure what these ‘responsibilities’ are but I get the impression that your grievances have been magically transmuted into everyone elses problem to resolve beacause you are a peacable, family man and have so many…responsibilities.
In the words of so many Letters to the Editor “Somebody should really do something about this”.
Standing up for what you believe in is a ‘macho fantasy’?
No wonder your lot can’t poll above the margin of error with an attitude like that. Dry up! Maybe give Lindsay Perigo a ring and see if he would be happy to share his cuddly blankie with you. Actually, probably not a good idea. Sharing is a bit socialist.
Basic premises, Gregor. Basic premises. You perhaps could do to re-examine yours.
Your thinking is straight line: libertarians need society as much as as any other, we’ve been through this. But that doesn’t mean society owns them. When Linz shares or sells his blanket to me he would do so voluntarily as I don’t own him, or him me. Whereas my relationship with the State is the opposite, it works by compulsion. Worse, the State has her hand in every single private transaction I make, wanting her cut for the privilege of bossing me around all over again.
The free, peaceful, voluntary society, versus the compulsion practiced by the police state, and the complete lack of privacy you have in that State, just as in Orwell’s nightmare: that seems to be your biggest blind spot.
Ghosty, I prefer a bit dense to precious.
Hmmm. Tribeless, we’ll have to agree to disagree on your police state fixation. Academic anyway since you clearly aren’t oppressed quite enough to do anything about it.
When the Secret Police manage to either send their mindcontrol waves through your tinfoil hat to make you vote Labour, or turn up at your place disguised as the postman to extort more taxes from you, don’t hesitate to sing out. I’ll pop over and help you give them what for.