by Ronald Kitching, dissenting editor

Stimulations, Booms and Busts

History shows that freedom of the individual, and the open, competitive spontaneous organizations, customs, and procedures in a free market, secure private-property system, is much more efficient than centralised consciously rational-directed systems of organising the human economic activity.

The mystery for any economy, is how people’s actions are impersonally coordinated by the market. All classical liberal monetary theorists noticed, that the price system — free markets — does a remarkable job of co-ordinating people’s actions, even though that coordination is not part of anyone’s intent.

The market, wrote F. A. Hayek, is a spontaneous order. By spontaneous Hayek meant unplanned — the market was not designed by anyone, but evolved slowly as the result of human actions. But the market does not always work perfectly.

The main cause of market distortions is increases in the money supply by the central bank. Such increases make credit artificially cheap.

Entrepreneurs then make capital investments that they would not have made had they understood that they were getting a distorted price signal from the credit market.

Artificially low interest rates cause investment to be artificially high, and cause mal-investment and the boom turns into a bust. As readjustment to reality occurs many people are thrown into temporary unemployment.

Monetary theorists see the bust as a healthy and necessary readjustment. The way to avoid the busts, they argue, is to avoid the artificial booms that cause them.

The “stimulation” commended by many was and remains an artificial boom. Bernanke is getting ready for another one.

The Election, Its Outcome And The Bureaucrats

Clearly the voters are not happy with Labor. Clearly the independents would do the Nation and themselves credit by supporting the Opposition.

And clearly Katter, Windsor and Oakeshott need to take a cold shower and recover their senses. Their grandstanding has done none of them any credit at all.

Personally I think the Governor General ought to call another election if sanity does not prevail.

We only need a government to protect us from internal and external thugs.

The Nation’s most brutal internal thug is the tax office and its operative agents.

It is past time their wings were clipped.

They should release Hogan and pay him compensation for their blatant insults to him. These jackals are the ones who should be facing jail terms for overreaching their authority.

The entire bureaucracy in this country needs a heavy pruning.

The Bureaucrats Waging War on the Producers

In ancient times war was waged to plunder successful societies.

As conquest became more and more expensive, it became necessary for plunder from war to be replaced by the less violent form of plunder known as taxation.

Initially taxation on incomes was prohibited. But Adam Smith recommended that “In levying taxes the convenience of the contributor should be paramount.”

He stated also, “Every tax ought to be so contrived as both to take out and keep out of the pockets of the people as little as possible above what it brings into the Treasury.”

The taxation furore of Paul Hogan being held in Australia against his will by the Taxation Department shows that this country has descended to the vile depths of totalitarianism that exists in North Korea.

Ex-President Jimmy Carter has visited North Korea to successfully appeal for the release of a U. S. journalist, accused of being a spy.

Perhaps he ought to also visit Australia for the release of Paul Hogan from these predatory pests.

A sure sign that we live in an un-free society when the Nations workers and producers are held to ransom by the bureaucrats, without charges being laid.

It is shameless blackmail and the jackals in question should be tried and jailed.  A lengthily term in the slammer ought to curb their enthusiasm for plunder.

Anna Bligh and A Critique of Interventionism

There is no doubt about Anna Bligh. She is a champion at closing down viable industries which support hundreds of jobs and industries that would add enormously to production and prosperity.

A now desperate Anna, after closing the Proserpine shale oil project in exchange for green preferences now proposes to close the Stradbroke Island Mineral Sand project. This also, for green preferences, which, she thinks, will improve her image.

Queensland has never ever had such a destructive government and Premier.

History will record these disastrous policies as interventionism on wheels.

For a great education on interventionism see Ludwig von Mises’s 164 page masterpiece “A Critique of Interventionism” at: http://mises.org/etexts/mises/critique/critique.pdf .