THE POWER OF ZEITGEIST.
“It really is like they’re intentionally trying to destroy the country.”
He is. There is no doubt about it. And he’s going to succeed. Because people cannot seem to be sensible about the idea of conspiracy. They try to make it that leftist conspiracies can never happen. Whilst some people see conspiracies everywhere and this may well be a form of mental illness, it is indeed unfortunate for our culture that we find the idea of non-leftist sanctioned conspiracies such a personal and social embarrassment that we cannot bring ourselves to believe it.
But there really is no question that Obama is deliberately trying to weaken and destroy the United States. Its the guiding principle of everything he’s doing.
Perhaps the world doesn’t revolve around conspiracies in the way that an Alex Jones would believe. But they certainly happen from time to time. And taken in the totality of this mans past, behaviour, and actions it could not be more clear that he has a deliberate plan to wreck the United States from within. Not a million miles different from the Reagan plan to bankrupt the Soviet Union from without.
You might call it the leftists riposte to what Reagan did to the Soviet Union.
Obama turned down 90 million dollars of government money for his campaign. Simply to avoid an automatic audit which would have revealed many multiples of this amount of money coming into his campaign illegally, and from abroad.
What this really reveals is how our species work. He is conducting this conspiracy in full view of us. But our zeitgeist says that he cannot be. But still he keeps going with it. And yet our zeitgeist will not let us recognise the obvious. Purely out of social embarrassment. Its something we perhaps didn’t know or think about our species. That our thinking could be so dreadfully locked like this. The same way that foolish Keynesian ideas are locked into the zeitgeist of the economics profession.
“More extraordinary still is seeing these deficit numbers in the context of household incomes, tax rates and debt. According to the Heritage Foundation, the Federal Government in the United States will in this year alone spend $30,958 per household, tax $17,576 per household, and borrow $13,392 per household.”
Even this one metric on its own is virtual proof of the open trashing that Obama is performing. Of course this becomes more clear when one explores his background and his associations. But this one metric alone ought to make the matter pretty plain. But the Zeitgeist says “Be Blind” and so we cannot see. The cultural zeitgeist overrides virtually all peoples ability to think objectively. Or even to see the most obvious things.
A Better World: Graeme Bird For High Office 
Logged Moderated Post:
“If you think AGW is a problem, the better solution is a carbon tax over a cap and trade system.”
Look come on Sinclair. You know thats not true. If you think AGW is a problem the better solution is to stop ignoring the data. Or to see a psychiatrist.
“”All professions are conspiracies against the laity.”–George Bernard Shaw.
How do you think this crazyness continues, except but for people like you who should know better deferring to other specialists? You ought not be working through this matter in such a compartmentalized way. What is this? Object-Oriented-Analysis? The professional economist unconsciously revealing the zeitgeist of the institution of Australian economics? And thereby analysing matters under the public servants code of plausible deniability?
Some of the most ineffective institutions in the Western world would have to be secret service institutions. The iron law of secretive stolen-money institutions being that they reinforce their mistakes. But here you seem to be willfully restricting your vision. Allowing yourself, almost as if through some high Eastern Voodoo of Zen, to analyse this thing in such a compartmentalized way that the information might just as well of come to you on a secret service NEED-TO-KNOW-BASIS.
Is this what the public service does to person of clear high congenital intelligence. Does it really narrow your vision and your ability to think and talk openly that much? Like as if there are massive mined tripwires all around and one small failure to compromise could leave you out in the cold and discriminated against like the wonderful Dr Marohasy.
I have not seen anyone take your compartmentalized way of thinking but that they’ve got the economics wrong as well. I thought it was because you guys didn’t understand economics. Well I’m quite sure about that but I think this is inherent in the compartmentalised approach. Because the world of Reason recognizes no such boundaries. Hence its not possible to simply get the science department to haggle and sign off on a document, and some globalist then defies that agreement in subtle ways by monopolising on the final draft…. and then they send it to the economics department and then the science is forgotten from there on in.
This is simply not possible. Since the science of the case forms the ground floor reasoning. In epistemology we realise that a case for anything is built up from the ground. Sometimes like a pyramid and sometimes like and upside-down pyramid. But with networked diagonal supports rather than only vertical ones.
This being the case, any mistake at the lower levels automatically renders the whole structure erroneous, unsound and unstable. Hence when we build up a body of knowledge of a controversy we must always spend at least half the time cirling back, autistic-style, overe first premises. And in this case the first premises are usually scientific.
Energy economics is stunningly different from the rest of the field. Thats got to be appreciated. As does the time we are in with regards to our historical energy development. As does the fact that we don’t have a good property rights basis for infrastructure. As does the fact that we are not a capitalist country. As does the fact that we have been subjected to energy investment obstruction for a very long time now. As does the fact of the “lumpiness” of our energy options.
If you compartmentalize the situation and you just look at things through the neoclassical models of what might happen for some or other good in a theoretical free enterprise economy you’ll make mistakes.
For example:
“I wouldn’t use the revenue to ‘compensate’ households, rather the revenue should be used to reduce taxes. I like the idea of raising the tax-free threshold, but others might like to lower rates.”
Because of the specific nature of the case, where our current environment differs from idealized free enterprise, and because of matters specific to producer goods markets, energy technologies, and matters to do with the structure of production I feel entitled to ask you this question……..
WHAT REVENUE?????
No doubt your compartmentalized analysis would show you that our electricity prices would double, and the expense of running a car, and the upshot would be to simply raise the tax free threshold. But thats not how things will work. This tax will destroy all the revenues from all the other taxes. Every quarter it will be destroying the revenues from other taxes. And then it will begin to destroy the revenues FROM ITSELF. We won’t be left with any extra revenues any more than we would be if we carpet-bombed the Hume highway, and all other roads connecting our cities, and cranked up capital gains and company taxes.
Chodorov
26 Aug 09 at 3:39 pm
By: graemebird on August 26, 2009
at 10:23 pm
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
“The Rudd government has nationalised the stock market and as best I can see nobody has batted an eyelid.”
A nationalisation? Is that fair Sinclair. I saw this yesterday and it doesn’t sit right. I mean one is very pessimistic of the economics lunatics that Rudd wants to listen to. So I suppose in this crowds hands your above statement might be a heartbreaking prediction.
If I was running things I’d try and get a broad historical understanding of how the ASX evolved. To what extent its got fundamentally crony-socialist genes running in it. I mean surely this is the case that it grew up as a sort of protected monopoly right? How is it that it doesn’t trade around the clock? My experience is that this is a big market imperfection. And market imperfections mean higher than normal insider profits (not inside the firms. Inside the ASX and associates) They are always calling these trading halts just when one imagines that ones share prices are going to break to a new plateau a bit closer to what fair value would be. I hate these guys. I think its cronytown.
The other thing is that given that they don’t have 24 hour trading why have not competitors opened up all over the place? These days crony advantage tends to be of the “subtle-yet-devastating” sort. I would definitely have thought that a competitor might have opened up at least for overnight trading in Brisbane. I think this would serve share pricing much better, therefore reduce profits for people like me of course…… But if it improves share pricing then it leads to better resource allocation. I really hate the way these guys keep stomping on small-cap shares if they start doing good volumes. It smacks of crony-stench. It smacks of powerful people thinking…..”HEY. SOMEONE OUT THERE IS MAKING MONEY. AND WE DON’T KNOW ABOUT IT. WE ARE NOT IN ON IT. LET US CALL A TRADING HALT TO SEE IF WE ARE ONTO A SURE THING. LET US HALT TRADING SO THAT WE CAN ASCERTAIN THE SITUATION AND WET OUR BEAKS (FOR YAY, WE BE NOT GREEDY) ONCE WE HAVE THE MATTER ANALYSED DOWN TO THE GROUND.
I cannot tell you how much I hate these people and how much their behaviour stinks of favouratism to experienced traders, ASX insiders, and AGAINST company insiders. Who I believe have every right to bring new information to the market and in doing so enhance their wages and possibly allow the company to get buy paying some of these guys a bit less.
“What makes matters worse is that Chris Bowen is in charge of this process.”
Well there you are. Now you are talking. Now when we circle back to just who is doing this then your accusation comes across as a fairly good prediction.
“Wait till he discovers that stock prices are more volatile than petrol prices – there’ll be a website up in no time telling us the three-month price of an undefined basket of stocks.”
I can only echo the words of one of my favourite Australian lefties: “OH JERUSALEM.” (I know it may be a bit offensive being well-disposed to someone whose a little bit harsh on Israel. But you know. You take the good with the less good.)
“The ‘best argument’ I’ve seen for the regulatory change is that the ASX is somehow conflicted because it is a for-profit organisation. But so what? We can trust bureaucrats more than we can trust entrepreneurs?”
But do we have such a sharp distinction in this racket? Is the history of this thing a bit more akin to some airbrushed royal charter? And might not we suspect that they be 40% bureaucrat, 40% crony and only 20% entrepreneur? Honest question since I don’t know the history. Not a rhetorical question at this point. think of these people as about I don’t think so. The bottom line is that you can’t trust people who are not motivated by money.
I’m not a believer in subsidies or special priviledges. But I am in favour of industry policy to bring a formally crony-socialist setup to a more functioning free enterprise industry in a few short years.
Big business must come out of small business success under conditions of clear rules not discriminating in favour of the deep pockets crowd. Or the DNA of the industry is likely to be hopelessly corrupting. And this may be a situation where its not right to imagine that the ASX and the Australian government were fully disaggregated in the first place.
Chodorov
26 Aug 09 at 4:50 pm
By: graemebird on August 26, 2009
at 10:54 pm
[…] Peace homies, and props to the Birdman. […]
By: 2009 is a joke « Kevin Tha Konservative on August 26, 2009
at 11:02 pm
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
“any thoughts on the economists on Government-run tourism campaigns?….”
I think that you can always find some sweet point. Some number of years wherein the efforts of a specific tourist industry is hitting paydirt and they might be bringing in more money indirectly then what they are costing us.
I had a flatmate that worked in one of the state tourist departments and I had managed to get her to look at matters through my eyes. I asked her if she thought that her department was pulling in more indirect winnings then what they cost. She said not when she first started or before that. But just in the last prior few years.
That was her subjective assessment. And I held her judgement in this matter to be honest. But there is simply no way that she would have been adding up every possible externality in her subjective cost assessment.
1. What does this do to the public choice theory state of affairs? More taxeaters form a constituency for globalism and general leftist policies. Thats a real externality. A real cost. It could be a fatal one. In fact it will be fatal for many people in the oncoming years.
2. We don’t just lose the cost of the salaries of these people. We also have to realise that if they were in the private sector they would be actually PAYING TAXES. Also if they were in higher level jobs in the private sector they would be reducing costs to the people on the bottom of the labour market without increasing labour supply on the bottom level. So thats a greater level of “social justice” (I’m trying to claim this much abused term for myself.)
3. Its not just the socialist overhead, the cost of salaries, the taxes foregone, and the foregone opportunity to cut the cost of skilled workers to business and therefore living costs to unskilled workers (and most everyone else not directly competing with what these guys would be doing).
Its not only that. But the fact is that in every modern organisation, labour cost does not make up the majority of costs. It makes up nothing but some sizeable minority chunk. Seldom even does labour cost make up the majority of VARIABLE costs (a University might be an exception to the latter but not the former as a best impromptu guess)……
… So you’ve got all that extra hiring of office space. And that computers investment and depreciation. You know I don’t need to go through the whole income statement and all the journals. I did trust Angela’s ( a real sweetheart)honest judgement and intuition at that point but no way known she would have internalized all these extra costs here. I forget to remember them myself. Always there is so much the greater overhead where government spending is concerned then what a smart and honest persons intuitive assessment would be.
((((((((( Just a sly note going in the other direction: Under bad monetary policy the costs we list here and add up are somewhat indeterminate……. since any cost savings in government can wind up as part of a mindless land price bubble, or credit card addiction…. but we ought to aspire to analysis with a better system in mind. This is an extremely important point. A more important one than it ought to be. We won’t get instant gratification from cutting spending as we might if the savings only go to bid up asset and land prices, and also simply lead to credit card splurging…..)))))))))))
Now the fact is these tourism outfits wind up becoming a legislation-producing constituent. Or we might even say a legislation-producing-MACHINE!!!!!!!!!!
Any legislation not in the aid of deleniating fair, just and CLEAR property titles and rights brings to society a small yet growing negative-annuity. I’m quite sure that some acts of compulsion can actually solve an interim serious problem if the span of our view is some medium sweet-point of years. But by goodness such compulsions ought to be time-limited and go through a pretty thorough vetting process in the first place. Because if they outlive the mitigation of the worst of the medium-term concerns….. (not outlive the problem but outlive merely the worst-of-the-worst of the problem…..) they just sit there imposing hard to see costs on society for years to come.
Now there is also something else you need to take into account. Whereas you and I might visualise some way that we can get to a sweet point where this tourist outfit is making these net gains, the fact is once we go after this fools gold we are ceding funds, politicians efforts, and the publics attention, to activities that mad leftists can hijack and use for some sort of furtherance of their goals. And so they won’t get to that sweet point or they won’t maintain it long. And they will impose negative externalities since their Utopian movement gets to a point where it attracts every loony-toon in the world to its honey-pot.
Then there is the very long-term cultural impoverishment that these outfits will likely inflict on us. So that when we go all over the world now, all the tourist spots feel the same and we don’t get the unique experience. And everywhere we go the people we meet. Well most of these people are other tourists. The tourism promotion becomes part of the wider leftist cultural erasure machine. You might go to the Southern States of American and these various Boll Weevil Erasure machines have been at work and these kids speaking in improper intonations as if they were from New England. And tourism promotion just being a tiny insipid part of this debauch to the vernacular.
Then lets add to that the longer term effects of lobbying of the tourist bureaucracies. Clearly a big tourist outfit will be able to amortize any efforts trying to schmooze and get the ear of the tourist industry offices far better than the smaller outfit. So each such bureaucracy is contributing to bigness in corporate life. Which will bring a lot indirect revolutionary blowback down the track for sure. Indirect revolutionary blow back from both youth wings is not something to be the least bit flippant about.
Then again we have other costs, which Angela could not possibly have thought of when she assessed her outfits efforts as hitting cash cow status for some small prior time period.
The fact is it sets a precedent for the government to be favouring one set of people via the spending of stolen money. That is to say through increased stealing. This is a terrible precedent which can only add cynicism to many smart peoples view of things. Its just one more drop in the bucket encouraging powerful but bitter young intellects to favour social justice via eschatology rather than social justice through education, education, education.
Ok. I think I’ve covered a lot of the territory and enough for you to get the idea that you ought not trust your intuition, even if you are a smart guy, because there is no way you would be adding up all the indirect costs in your subconcious mind.
Think of how much something costs on the surface?
MULTIPLY THE SURFACE COSTS BY FOUR!!!!
DOES THE MULTIPLY BY FOUR RULE WORK FOR DEFENSE POLICING AND COURTS?
Is it still worth doing? If not its probably the wrong thing. Defense, Policing and justice, though we would want to creatively find a way to privatise or semi-privatise them also….. are totally different. Because they must be judged in accordance to the broken window hypothesis. Wherein if the window of your house that isn’t going to be occupied 24/7 right away gets broken, you better fix it and fix it quick or you’ll lose everything.
So until we find a way to phase towards private security provision, a massive multi-decade task that may prove only practical in a partial sense, we have to consider that indeed a lot of the spending, multiplied by four, would be worthwhile in these areas. In virtually all other areas not preventing a runaway pandemic effect the multiply by four costing of obvious costs will show the alleged investments to be not worthwhile. Perhaps for straight transfer payments or negotiated subsidised discount vouchers for the very needy and aged……. well perhaps in these cases (negotiated and slighty subsidised off-peak phone for jobseekers might be an example as a local initiative…….
Perhaps in these examples one might be satisfied with multiplying by two and not four.
That spending would justify four times obvious surface costs is very much not the case in almost all other government spending ideas. And if in some specific case it WAS still worthwhile…….. I think we will find it can only be made out that way by focusing on a few glory years.
Chodorov
26 Aug 09 at 6:02 pm
By: graemebird on August 27, 2009
at 12:03 am
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
“Sinclair – I’m glad to hear you say that the tax free threshold should be raised. However you do realise that this would mean that the top income brakets would be paying an even higher proportion of income tax. This seems at odds with your earlier article on this topic. Perhaps you have had a change of heart.”
Forget that royal libertarian concern. I understand the public choice theory implication, but there really is such a thing as LEADERSHIP that we must rely on. And your take was better Terje so no use going over meaningless old ground.
Hard money combined with no taxes on retained earnings (that aren’t strictly user pays) are the first cab off the rank. AND INCREASING THE TAX FREE THRESHOLD MUST BE USED FOR FAIR-MINDED WELFARE REDUCTION AND WAGE RESTRAINT.
As soon as you guys, battered and browbeaten by mock-Bloomsbury colleagues, and the media, around the clock…. As soon as you compromise in this way you are creating untold lost opportunity down the track.
If you use up increasing the tax free threshold to ease the hurt of the global warming racket, well where is that trump card when you want to use it to RIGHTEOUSLY bring in welfare reduction without callousness?
Will that particular batch of gunpowder still be dry and intact, when you need it to help you not sound like a dirty dirty hypocrite when you are sincerely, and in hard times, using moral suasion to request wage restraint at the bottom end, for the worthy cause of full employment?
You see you’ve blown your gunpowder ration right there, All because you’ve allowed the public service nutballs, that you talk to on friendly terms, and proudly think of as your colleagues…. You’ve blown your strategic reserve ordance just because you have to put up with your nutter offsiders weeping, shouting, berating and ostracizing…….. into the ground strategic fence-posts that they don’t want you to cross.
We’ve gotsta stop looking down on these leftist lunatics. They always seem to get their way and there has to be a reason for this.
“On the technology front more people should learn about the Integral Fast Reactor. Basically it is a device that:-”
Much as I hate to admit it I think we have to recognise the absolutely OUTSTANDING work of Barry Brook on this score. Expert promotion. Well argued. And influential in leftist circles beyond my wildest dreams. What can you say but Bravo. I just wish he would stop putting his fellow scientists down. Especially those who seem to be able to look outside the prevailing paradigm. But all carping aside magnificent work from Barry Brook nonetheless.
Chodorov
26 Aug 09 at 7:08 pm
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“Sounds cool!
I read a little while ago that Sir Roger Douglas was also arguing for a carbon tax rather than an ETS.”
Its not the least bit cool Chris. This is a much more dangerous movement than you take it for. Even if it wasn’t the worst possible time in history for this sort of tax it would be no good. They will take Sinclairs internal tax substitution and use it as momentum for and international tax and to support global institutions and therefore the demise of humane civilisation.
You just don’t know what you are up against here. This isn’t like the whole of communism all over. But its like the second half of the tip of the spear of globalism and a groundswell of communist-like utopianism driving behind that. The thing doesn’t have quite the same clarity of form as communism used to. But its a part of some heretofore amorphous creature that is almost as powerful and probably more dangerous yet, specifically more dangerous because of its slipperiness.
Chodorov
26 Aug 09 at 7:13 pm
By: graemebird on August 27, 2009
at 1:14 am
Sinclair – I’m glad to hear you say that the tax free threshold should be raised. However you do realise that this would mean that the top income brakets would be paying an even higher proportion of income tax. This seems at odds with your earlier article on this topic. Perhaps you have had a change of heart.”
Forget that royal libertarian concern. I understand the public choice theory implication, but there really is such a thing as LEADERSHIP that we must rely on. And your take was better Terje so no use going over meaningless old ground.
Well said Mr Bird, but I think you are too kind with Terje (say Turd-yer). He smells offensively leftist in his ‘thinking’ to me.
By: Kevin on August 27, 2009
at 2:00 am
Ha Ha. Good to hear from you Kevin. Hang out anytime.
Don’t mind me I’m just logging moderated posts. The good news is that a lot of people have been more reasonable lately and are letting a lot more of my stuff through.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
“I have major problems with introducing taxes, but if it were a forced choice between ETS and carbon tax (which I don’t think it necessarily is), I would choose the latter.”
Right. But thats a sort of mundane point to be mentioned only in passing and pretty softly under your breath. The answer is to JUST SAY NO when staring in the face of this coalition of looniness and hidden agendas. Notice how even Rogers mention-in-passing can easily get nudged to sound like support. If he supports it he is going soft-headed. If he was mentioning that its more-DISASTER…….. and ……. less-CATASTROPHE!!!!! ……. then the cap-and-kill, well try not to nudge his words to something more than that.
“The ’sounds cool’ was referring to Terje’s description of the Integral Fast Reactor….”
Oh yeah. Any nuclear that reprocesses spent fuel over and over again is a great thing. But there is so much work that the pollies have to do and they want to grandstand overseas instead of having an insular, internal focus and get this stuff done. No-ones minding the store!
Imagine you get a hundred million dollar inheritance. So you want to do the right thing. So you call me up and pay me to quit work and help you make out a business plan to put up a nuclear reactor. Just think of all the anti-capitalistic, anti-property rights and three levels of red tape that would need to be out of the way.
My understanding is that when people claim that nuclear isn’t by far the cheapest ELECTRICITY they are thinking of the situation where.
1. There is not continual reprocessing leading to 90+ % of the fuel being used rather than merely 0.7 if 1%.
2. There is waste left over because of the above so waste storage and disposal needs to be taken into account.
3. The nuclear plant is non-modular in design and so de-commissioning needs to be taken into account.
4. 10,000 times as much land as could possibly be used for this purpose isn’t pre-approved for this purpose so there is a sellers market for real estate for the investor.
5. The time to whack the nuclear plant up is 12-15 years rather than 3-4 years.
If all of the above is NOT the case then I’m pretty sure that nuclear is the cheapest electricity in all but a few niche situations. But all energy sources are complements not competitors and we needn’t disparage these niche situations.
So as you see from the above there is a massive amount of work for our politicians to do in order to SIMULATE functioning property rights. And matters are so desperate anyway that all new energy production investment ought to be given a 50 year tax holiday.
WHOSE MINDING THE STORE.
We don’t have capitalism. So we have to do our best to lock in a niche of capitalism to get this done.
By: graemebird on August 27, 2009
at 2:41 am
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
“How does a 20% increase in debt to GDP ratios actually increase productive, sustainable economic activity Homer?”
Its your annoying habit wherein you ask a question and you aren’t interested in the answer. And the question is not specific. It implies something that the other bloke never claimed.
Now listen up Mark. Each level of monetary growth has a level of debt that we can be comfortable with. And a small increase in the average would multiply many times how much debt people will voluntarily take on.
But producer goods spending and investment can only be powerfully effective under monetary conditions I’m loosely calling “growth deflation”. If you have pretty much any other setup your investment resources are misallocated to varying degrees.
So the key problem, when trying to reduce the rate of monetary growth in order to get right IN THE SWEET ZONE…. the biggest problem you have, electorally and economically, is getting down the debt to levels that suit your new slow monetary growth-rate.
In practical terms its dealing with debt that is the main problem. It is debt that gets in the way of good monetary policy, powerfully effective resource allocation, and electoral success in making these changes.
Last time around the Sado-Monetarism kicked the living crap out of us all for three reasons.
1. It was attempted in the context of fractional reserve.
2. This would mean that monetary expansion was more than adequate in some geographical areas subject to land value appreciation. And yet you go to a small town and nobody has seen a 50 buck bill since last welfare day.
3. They weren’t looking at the right targets so they would have crashed business sales revenues to disastrous effect in a clumsy and blundering way without even knowing it.
4. THE DEBT LEVELS WERE WAY TO HIGH FOR US TO FUNCTION WITHOUT GREAT PAIN UNDER THE SLOWER MONETARY GROWTH.
Out of the four points above we can deal easily with the first three. But its the debt that is the big problem getting in the way of better policy.
Chodorov
26 Aug 09 at 9:02 pm
By: graemebird on August 27, 2009
at 3:03 am
I don’tget it. Why are you always censored there? Who is running the show at catallaxy? It’s like the monkeys are running the zoo over there.
By: Kevin on August 27, 2009
at 10:44 am
Actually its not that bad at the moment. Pretty much everything has made it through. But I like to accumulate my posts somewhere just in case.
By: graemebird on August 27, 2009
at 11:34 am
Thank you very much and wish you more of Excellence
By: Household ideas on August 28, 2009
at 3:53 am
Bear in mind I’m only making the above call on Obama’s behavior up until the mid-term elections. The conspirational attempts to ruin the US seems to have gone, and he’s letting things run like Reagan some time after the appearance of Gorbachev.
By: graemebird on April 27, 2011
at 8:39 am