Blog description.

Accentuating the Liberal in Classical Liberal: Advocating Ascendency of the Individual & a Politick & Literature to Fight the Rise & Rise of the Tax Surveillance State. 'Illigitum non carborundum'.

Liberty and freedom are two proud words that have been executed from the political lexicon: they were frog marched and stood before a wall of blank minds, then forcibly blindfolded, and shot, with the whimpering staccato of ‘equality’ and ‘fairness’ resounding over and over. And not only did this atrocity go unreported by journalists in the mainstream media, they were in the firing squad.

The premise of this blog is simple: the Soviets thought they had equality, and welfare from cradle to grave, until the illusory free lunch of redistribution took its inevitable course, and cost them everything they had. First to go was their privacy, after that their freedom, then on being ground down to an equality of poverty only, for many of them their lives as they tried to escape a life behind the Iron Curtain. In the state-enforced common good, was found only slavery to the prison of each other's mind; instead of the caring state, they had imposed the surveillance state to keep them in line. So why are we accumulating a national debt to build the slave state again in the West? Where is the contrarian, uncomfortable literature to put the state experiment finally to rest?

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Friday, June 28, 2013

I Don’t Like Political Hypocrisy. (Nor Gareth Morgan's Independent Tax Setting Body.)



If you come from a party that believes in the big state, with its big tax take, you have no grounds, certainly not moral, for tweets such as this. File the below hypocrisy in that planet-sized bureaucracy called busy-body bossy left politics.





Needless to say, I got no answer. David was trying a cheap shot, and took off his toe again.

I also note this week Gareth Morgan writing of the need for an independent tax setting body to take tax decisions out of the politicians hands – he now sees this as the only way of taxing housing, property, business equity (I seem to remember), that is, capital. Sorry, Gareth, as bad as these politicians are, it’s called representative democracy. I am worse off with a technocrat setting tax policy – and let’s take it for granted I’m not going to agree with your technocrats – than a politician, because at least I have this tiny, incey wincey possibility of helping to vote a politician out of office, whereas I will have no control or voice, whatsoever, in the role, decisions or careers of permanently established Humphrey Appleby technocrats. Technocrats will be as open to self-interest as politicians are, but will be utterly beyond my reach. Worse, this then truly does institutionalise the notion of taxation in our society, and freedom lovers like myself, libertarians, the very odd librarian, classical liberals, are implacably opposed to that. We’ve all forgotten how much of our taxation, certainly income tax, is a very recent concept, and the only revolution that has had lasting good, that American one, was rightly set off by the imposition of taxes at minute levels our current parliaments pass annually without comment, even through excises (forget the really big taxes).

We need a conversation about tax, alright, but that conversation starts in philosophy, and the role of government in our lives, and whether the West is about freedom, or this surveillance state we find ourselves in.

6 comments:

  1. "We need a conversation about tax, alright, but that conversation starts in philosophy, and the role of government in our lives, and whether the West is about freedom, or this surveillance state we find ourselves in"

    On the same page with you there Mark. Let's keep that conversation happening, and perhaps the ideas will spread before it is too late.

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    1. I've pretty much given up. There's no politician in the Fortress who understands the principles of classical liberalism anymore.

      You've been busy on your blog this month, Brendan. Have a good weekend.

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    2. Couldn't agree more Brendan. The frustration of no debate on the role of Government is appalling. The enormous lack of discipline and irrationality in the West keeps society from freedom.

      Mark states that he has "pretty much given up" and I think that many people feel the same way. Understanding the principles of classical liberalism is not complex, yet so many politicians struggle with the concept - are they really stupid? Or are they manipulating for advantage? Or a combination of both perhaps.

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    3. I wish I knew the answer to your question: I think partly stupidity, unfortunately, brainwashing from the state school system, meaning the state has so much mass, as in physics it virtually impossible to stop it now.

      Great comment.

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  2. You've highlighted an important point, Mark: that Gareth Morgan is a very dangerous man, spreading some very silly ideas. Keep up the good work.

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  3. Cheers Richard. How are Libertarianz shaping up for 2014?

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