ColinBehr.com

“Developed nations” around the world have been giving sex change operations free of charge on public healthcare. Don’t get my wrong, I would love nothing more than to live in a society where a sex change operation was actually a viable, free option being provided by the public.

Just think of the insanity: the economies of these nations are in turmoil, Government revenue is plummeting and the State is borrowing at levels which will put our great grand children into debt. Yet for some reason, Socialists seem to think that it is necessary to finance a sex change operation at the expense of valuable medical resources being made available to those people who actually need it.

The hypocrisy of it should make us all consider seriously the state of the world. People are starving and dying for lack of basic medical aid in Africa as well as other third world nations and we are borrowing from China to pay for “free” sex change operations!!

One “free” sex change operation in the USA, Canada or Britain is equivalent to the yearly income of 90 people in Nigeria.

We must stop the insanity of the Socialists who proclaim to be the saviours of the third world, yet sacrifice valuable and scarce resources to fund extravagant experiments.

Stimulus
Let me start off this particular blog by talking about the absurd situation which we are all in as a result of these enormous, worldwide economic “stimulus packages” and bank bailouts.

The politicians of today think only of their own generation, only about short term economic gains at the expense of long term stability and prosperity.

The public sector pensions deficit at £1TRILLION in the UK. US Public debt stands at more than $11 TRILLION and the EU alone currently spends more than €50 BILLION on farming subsidies every year.

In my opinion it doesn’t take a very long look at the position of world wide Governments to see that they are in no position to be spending “trillions more on “stimulus” packages. Over the next 30 years we will have a much larger population of pensioners to support, with less workers than before, so somehow, we will have to not only pay the vast pension deficits of previous generations, but also manage to service huge debt payments which left-wing Keynesian politicians are wracking up now.

The argument for pursuing a Keynesian policy has always been to generate longer term returns through money being invested into the economy. This principle does work, but not in the way which we all think. As most Governments have no reserves, or positive cashflow, they have to borrow to spend often leading to inflation which wipes out the so-called gains. But even assuming that this policy has some credit to it, how can any organisation efficiently manage such large budgets, let alone a $3 trillion stimulus package.
No organisation can handle that amount of money without a significant amount of waste. In fact, the result is almost akin to filling a pond using a leaking bucket - most the money gets poured out where it’s not needed. The end result, therefore is essentially one of little impact but enormous mismanagement simply creating more debt for future generations.

Bailouts

Of course, the blame with everything lies with the beastly banks - lending out money which didn’t exist to people who couldn’t afford it.
But wait…. what about the people who borrowed the money, where did the money come from and why would anyone risk losing so much money? Surely those are all questions which we should be asking, not blindly agreeing with Socialist politicians about how all of this was the fault of rampant Capitalism.

Government’s have been at the forefront of unrestrained borrowing every step of the way without a thought as to how to repay the debts. Isn’t it ironic how the very institutions blaming us and the banks for this crisis are the pioneers of the very problem they are pointing to? Government’s must lead by example.

Remember, whenever the Government spends money, it is our money which is being spent, not that of some mystical institution which can do no wrong. Yet Government’s are spending our money without a thought, and worse still; spending our childrens’ childrens’ money.

Risk is an important part of business, if we know that something is risky, generally speaking we are less inclined to do it. But we can guarantee that in several years time, we shall face the same problem again because the very people who were more risk averse are now paying for those who threw caution to the wind.
Think of the neighbour who bought a house larger and more expensive than he could afford, is it fair that you should have to pay his/her mortgage to keep them in that house? Is it fair that the banks who lent him/her that money should be given the money to cover their losses?
In my opinion, this can only deeply harm the future stability of the world economy. Calculated risk is being punished, and foolhardy financial decisions are being rewarded.

Contrary to popular (Socialist) belief, this is not the fault of Conservatives promoting rampant Capitalism. This crisis developed out of Socialist ideals - the ideal that everybody can have everything. That everybody should own a home, regardless of the cost. Banks have been encouraged to lend and given the facility to do so recklessly without suffering the consequences.
Conservatives and Libertarians world wide have been warning for years of such an impending crisis but all caution was thrown to the wind in favour of easy votes and more Government programs, higher pensions and bigger welfare programs all to be funded by further borrowing. Future generations - my generation now have to foot the bill.

When will we learn? Socialism does not work

I have often come across the argument used frequently by socialists against big business and globalisation.

This argument states that business will strive to open markets and liberalise trade thus leading to huge global trade and in turn a huge global organisation which will create an enormous global unaccountable government. An example often given is the WTO (the World Trade Organisation). The theory then goes on to argue that this will erode the protection that governments give to ordinary people, eventually taking away everybody’s’ rights and to use the power of international business to dictate their working conditions.

First of all, the only way that this can happen in the first place is if there is a strong government, this is why:

A strong government makes the entry of new firms into a market more difficult due to more barriers to entry in employment law, health and safety and so on. This reduces the amount of competition in an economy thus giving those businesses that can survive more power.

The other reason is that when there is a strong state, business and state will always mix. This is inevitable. Politicians will become lobbyists to protect the interest of businesses, and corruption will increase as businesses increasingly struggle to compete against an ever growing state.

When government AND big business mix, then problems of favouritism and bending of the rules to suite business (most likely only individual businesses, the ones who can pay enough) occur. The only answer to this is to reduce state control to encourage more competition and to make corruption more difficult. This is the only way to guarantee individual liberties.

Secondly, the most basic principle which makes this “doom and gloom” theory improbable is that business needs us to survive and to prosper. By dictating to us what we should do, they are essentially destroying themselves. We can already see that the biggest advances in consumerism and prosperity not only for business, but also for the general public have been during a time when the Middle Class has emerged. A class with spending power. It is not in the interest of business to squeeze and to abolish this class as it is the lifeblood of business.

In a free market, business will create the Middle Class, the prosperous people. Most of the people in developed Western European countries and in North America are considered to be middle class. This is due to the development of business and its constant search for larger profits. In searching for large profits, business competes; in competing they also need staff. As more people become employed in order to better individual businesses for competition reasons, the more these businesses make in profit.

It is therefore in the best interests of big business to compete and to take on more employees which in turn, over time creates better working conditions due to the added demand for labour.

This post is a follow on from the previous one on democracy.

I have already discussed and shown how our democracy can and often is taken away from us through the process of taxation, this post is meant to show how that is further worsened by the process of subsidisation.

Here is an up-to-date example of subsidisation of industry in the UK;
recently Rover MG was given millions of pounds by the UK government in order to continue to operate and to avoid the loss of jobs.

There is a reason why Rover was not making a profit - its cars were not good enough - simple. Therefore, people chose not to be Rover cars and to buy other brands instead.
Is it therefore not unfair that if you have opted to buy a VW rather than a Rover that your tax money should be spent on maintaining a company which you deliberately chose not to support in the first place?

How about if you were not one of those to vote for the political party which opted to use your tax money to pay for a company which you deliberately chose not to support? I would consider that to be grossly unfair.

Subsidisation is not only an unfair and unjust system to us, but also a system which creates inequalities abroad. For this I will use the example of the Common Agricultural Policy in the EU.

The EU spends about E50 Billion per year on farming subsidies. This has in the past led to massive over production in butter, wine and other products. In order to get rid of this, the EU has flooded African markets with the produce at well below cost price, which has not only made it impossible for the farmers there to export their goods, but has also ruined the domestic production of those goods. Farmers could no longer produce vegetables cheaply enough as the EU was selling the goods at a huge loss making rate simply in order to get rid of them.

In a developed EU country this may not be as bad because only 1%-3% of the population are employed in farming, however, in African countries farming often makes up a large number of those in employment.

This means, that not only are the subsidies being used to pay for goods that we won’t even use, but they are also crippling those who are most vulnerable.

People in Western countries like to think that they live in a democracy, that every person has a vote and can actually make a difference.

True democracy in a political sense does not exist.

Let me give an example;
If you live in a two party country, where there are only two many parties capable of winning an election, such as the UK (Labour and Conservatives) or US (Democrats and Republicans), 49% or more of the population end up with something which they don’t want.
In a system of proportional representation (often considered to be the purest form of democracy) parties need to form coalitions in order to be able to control. As a result of merging together, the original aims of the parties involved is entirely lost, and even less people get what the originally voted for.

The only true form of democracy is the market system. Every day we vote tens if not hundreds of times with our wallets. Every time we go into the supermarket and choose a certain product over another we have voted and the products available change as a result.

Here is an example (for this example we are assuming that the services are privatised);
if you travel by train from London to Manchester, and the price is too high or the service is poor, you will use the coach or perhaps even fly. The company running the train service will soon lose customers and will reduce prices and improve the service in order to make a larger profit, and so we can see that the motivation to make profit and your satisfaction or consumer taste have a direct impact on the goods and services that you use.

However, assume that the service is nationalised and that you get to vote once every 4 or 5 years; what motivation is there for the elected party to drastically improve the rail service? You pay tax no matter what happens. What about if you were one of 35, 45 or 65% who didn’t vote for that party?

I’ll take an example from the last UK election. Labour won with just 22% of those eligible to vote voting for Labour.

Simply by having to pay tax, the other 78% (the vast majority) have lost their right to democracy. However, if all services were privatised, then the remaining 78% would still have the ability to pick and choose between goods and services which would otherwise all have been decided by the minority.

Taxation in itself is therefore unfair and unjust. Anything that is forcefully taken from you without your agreement takes away your right to a democratic choice.

Therefore, the more the government changes and adds laws as well as regulating and nationalising industry the more our individual freedom is taken from us by a minority of people who get what they want.

The Socialist argument is that a minority of bourgeoisie control the masses, but in reality it is a minority of proletariat who have control.

I have been working on a “theory” recently. I don’t know if this has been already discussed anywhere as I have not done any research on it. Some of the theory was inspired by a lecture on Austrian economics.

Entrepreneurs are a type of labour and produce what they think will meet future demand. Entrepreneurs take entrepreneurial decisions (obviously) which means that the benefit exceeds the cost.

Without realising it we all make entrepreneurial decisions, every time we switch gas company we do so because the benefit of switching exceeds the cost (e.g the time taken etc). Every time we buy something in a shop the private benefit must exceed the cost of the good or we would not buy it.

If a private company is to make a profit it must satisfy the needs of its consumers in order to make a profit for its shareholders. If they do not do this, the cost of the shares will be more than the benefit derived from them for the shareholders; the shareholders will therefore sell their shares and can therefore have a direct influence on the company if it is not creating a greater benefit than cost.

The government also has to make entrepreneurial decisions using our (shareholders of society) tax money. They have to make the benefits exceed the cost.

So, what we have to decide is who will be most efficient at ensuring that the benefits are greater than the cost? Will that be a private company which MUST do so in order to survive, in terms of providing a benefit to the consumer AND shareholder?

Or would that be the government? We don’t have a choice about tax, but we do have a choice about where we spend our money. Therefore a lot of the time a tax paid (by society’s shareholders’) will often not be exceeded by the benefit for the consumer, as the government has far less incentive to use the money efficiently than a private company, as the money supply is practically guaranteed, whereas (as already said) a private company MUST provide a benefit to their customers AND their shareholders in order to survive and prosper.

That is why I am against taxation in most cases, as it usually leads to inefficiency.