Time to rant about economics and politics

[tcpip]

It's been a while since I've had a jolly good rant about politics and economics and related subjects and this is as good as time as any. So let me get stuck into three favourites; land and housing prices, religion and the NSW government, and finally, the environment and vested interests.

Firstly, let me draw your attention to the collapse of the UK housing market. A few days ago Barratt Development has announced cuts of 1200 jobs in attempt to crawl out the £1.66bn debt it's found itself in - and it's not an isolated incident. Housing prices have been falling for months now in the the UK, with expectations that a million homeowners could end up in negative equity. Why does this occur and why now? Because the value of land is hopelessly inflated, fuelled by speculation in what Winston Churchill accurately described as "the mother of all forms of monopoly", a fact well recognised by almost all economists. Many months ago, Alan Moran of the Institute of Public Affairs, commented correctly that "land based wealth is an illusion" and condemned government rationing of useful land as a restriction on supply. He's right of course, but regrettably typical of the IPA he lacks the intellectual and moral courage to point out that all landlords - public and private - reduce supply. Hence the need for a massive increase in land taxes with an equivalent reduction in taxes on productive goods and services. As that most heroic lawyer (yes, they do exist) Clarence Darrow deemed to say: "The 'single tax' is so simple, so fundamental and so easy to carry into effect that I have no doubt that it will be about the last land reform the world will ever get."

Sometimes Green Left gets it right, such as their article on Religion and Socialism. However these principles have not been embodied in the legislation by the NSW Labor government for World Youth Day 2008 which carries fines of up to $5500 for those causing "annoyance" and "inconvenience" to participants. Apropos, a student who smuggled out a Eucharist wafer has been receiving death threats. Back in NSW however, it is clear that with the decision to go ahead with electricity privatisation (contrary to public opinion) and this fundamental breach of civil liberties and the right to protest, that Premier Morris Iemma simply has to go. Fortunately, there seems to be some moves against him.


In recent weeks, the Garnaut Review has been released, an independent assesment of the effects of climate change to the Australian government and commissioned by the Australian Commonwealth government and the State and Territory governments. Following on with this is the aim of the G-8 nations to halve carbon emissions by 2050 (perhaps too little, too late). Whilst all this is happening, OnlineOpinion publishes an article entitled The UN climate change numbers hoax, where the authors cannot understand why review commentary on the IPCC working groups was, in their eyes, minimal (maybe they agreed with it?). I took the opportunity to show that one of the authors (Tom Harris) one held dual positions as the Executive Director of Natural Resources Stewardship Project whilst holding a position as Director of Operations for the registered energy-lobbying firm, the High Park Group. Further, Mr. Harris has been on the public record advocating a campaign to deliberately create chaos and confuse everyone about climate science. In response to this, the chief editor Graham Young has deleted these true and directly verifiable comments three times. If there was ever any doubt of OnlineOpinion being a highly-biased in favour of the AGW denial industry, it is certainly all over now - and others have noticed.

Comments

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

You mean this?

Yeah, it's a disaster. "What taxpayers need to understand is that Fannie and Freddie already practice socialism, albeit of the dishonest kind. Their profit is privatized but their risk is socialized."

(Heh. Souns like the National Party, eh?)

Fred Harrison did an excellent Youtube video on a related topic.

[brockulfsen.livejournal.com]

I never did get my head around the openly national socicialist Country Party changing their name to the National Party.

Yes the lower case letters were deliberate despite the connections, especially in Queensland.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

In Western Australia there was a three way split.

There was those who opposed the transformation, who remain the Country Party.

There were those who supported it, who became the National Party.

And there were those, centered around the local leader Hendy Cowan (a decent conservative, one you could reason with), which called itself the National Party of Western Australia.

It was the later group which eventually became dominant.

[roadriverrail.livejournal.com]

The catchphrase du jour on it is "socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor."

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Ahh, it's great for labour productivity and it's comfortable for those with power and money!

[roadriverrail.livejournal.com]

On a philosophy-of-economics level, I've been starting to wonder if perhaps capitalism, at least as it's so commonly considered by most people, carries adverse effects in an environment where success encourage centralization. Here in the states, our banks are becoming ever-centralized, and now if one falls, the phrase "too big to fail" comes up. I hate that phrase, but it's got a certain kernel of truth to it, in that if one of these banks badly goes under, we can kiss a wing of the economy goodbye.

So what do we do, then? We're ransomed. We end up having to bail their asses out because the alternative is worse, and we get socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor. It seems that either businesses need to not be able to get that big or the public deserves the right to become a stakeholder.

Granted, Fannie Mae Freddie Mac are examples of really bad socialism, having been government social programs that were then allowed to have real shareholders. Other companies, however, really have crawled themselves into positions of making us share their fates.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Perhaps Joseph Schumpeter was right after all.

[roadriverrail.livejournal.com]

Hm. Looks like I have someone new to read, then.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Schumpeter is interesting. He sees a development of capitalism to the point where the key positive characteristics (competition, entrepreneurship) become limited by institutional powers, especially (ironically) large capital which seeks stability more than profit and mass democracy in the welfare state. The two elements merge in advanced capitalism thus leading to minor variations between social democratic and liberal democratic parties.

And excellent follow-on to Schumpete is Habermas' Legitimation Crisis (although the original German title - transliterated as "Structural Problems in Advanced Capitalism" is superior).