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NBN and Turnbull: The price of pragmatism.

Monday, December 20, 2010

Turnbull this year has been given the job by the opposition Liberal Party to take on the Government’s plan for a national broadband network.  He has done so without an ideological argument nor with even a shred of philosophy. Turnbull has attacked the NBN as a needless expense and as something nobody will want. His cost-benefit approach will mean nothing to altruists who believe that the means of production is worth the sacrifice. His “nobody needs it” approach makes him sound like a bureaucrat in the politburo rationing out what people can and can’t have based on “from each according to his ability, to each according to his means.” At one moment, Turnbull looks like a proponent of capitalism. At another, he appears to be a socialist calling for less luxuries and to quote Turnbull: “Every billion dollars spent needlessly on the NBN is a billion dollars that cannot be spent on public transport, roads, hospitals or schools.”

Turnbull is obviously not even trying to take on the issue of the NBN. All he is really doing is trying to appeal to everyone possible which limits his arguments considerably. This also means Turnbull will never shed light on real truths to the issue unless by a matter of luck that they are based on popular means. This pragmatic and poorly principled approach by Turnbull is not going to work. He started out complaining about the cost, and now Labor have come up with a plan that makes a 9 percent profit. This shouldn’t be very hard for Labor because the NBN is a monopoly. Turnbull, as one without an ideology or principles, was not able to point this out instead promising us all year that figures would come out showing he was right about the NBN. The figures have come out, and Turnbull is wrong. The NBN really is profitable, and instead of saying “That isn’t hard when you illegalize any competition,” Turnbull has instead decided to tell us all now that “We don’t need fast Internet.” Well, Mr Turnbull, I do want fast internet.

The fact is, it is presently illegal for anyone including myself to provide anybody with a better phone line, that is replacing one existing copper line with a better quality fiber-optic line. Most of what stands in the way is the corpse of Telstra who privately own all the lines which they obtained the same way the NBN is about to obtain the entire fiber optic network. Telstra used to be Government owned and it was that way that they got their hands on 99% of the market-share for fixed lines – any market for them was banned. Instead of dealing with this problem when the Liberals were in power they simply sold the company including this massive barrier to competition. What stands is a system where one cannot even make the switch to better grades of copper let alone fiber optic which clearly some people do want.

I hope this really stands as a lesson that the Liberals are not capable of providing freedom or free markets – which is the only productive function of Government. They do not understand nor care about the most shocking cost of the NBN which is the loss of all competition and innovation in Australia. The Liberals do care about freedom but simply violating freedoms at the lowest monetary cost as possible. Labors plan itself is poorly principled, they don’t consider anybody that it might hold back a decade and they do not consider that tomorrow fiber-optics might be rendered obsolete. The Liberal opposition to it is just as equally annoying and for the same reasons. Neither know anything about computer networks, link types, and things like that. They don’t just lack special wisdom, they lack any form of conventional wisdom on the subject.

Without any knowledge of a subject competition can seem irrational and harmful. Conroy and Turnbull don’t seem to understand that there is only one way you really can compete in any IT related area: innovation. The best idea should be what wins, not the best Government proposal even if it did have a good cost-benefit analysis. I’ve been suggesting anti-monopoly rhetoric to Malcolm Turnbull for a good few months now with my last article on the subject and some tweets and emails. I was not taken seriously at all. Now, Labor have provided some accounts which show the NBN will be profitable. Malcolm Turnbull’s rhetoric died right there and then, what lives is mine. Yet, instead of Turnbull coming out to say that it shouldn’t be too hard for the NBN to profit being a monopoly – he has decided to just say that the money would be better spent on hospitals, schools, and roads. Not that the Government as no right to decide how we spend our money, but that it doesn’t have the right to spend it on nice things. His new approach is more poorly principled than the last.

Also the new approach of it being “too nice,” seems to undermine and contradict the approach of it being “needlessly expensive.” Because when we have Turnbull to tell us all if we don’t need broadband or not and that the Government is better at deciding how they spend our money – who needs a price system or choices at all? Perhaps, Turnbull should just join the Labor party where he can attack what people want on a free market and fuck off leaving his seat to someone who actually supports free markets. Because the fact remains, it might not be everyone, but I and many others  do want fiber optic Internet access and it doesn’t matter how small a market we are. We deserve the freedom to make it happen, and we would make it happen but the Government needs to get out of our way.

What stands out from this NBN fiasco is the fatality of pragmatism. Turnbull’s tried to attack the profitability of the NBN – when it stands to reason that the project being a monopoly can easily profit. Yet, despite this loss, he doesn’t attack the losses a monopoly creates but instead “Every billion dollars spent needlessly on the NBN is a billion dollars that cannot be spent on public transport, roads, hospitals or schools.” Turnbull isn’t a capitalist, he has rejected classical liberal principles, and it becomes clear that all he really wants as many ears to hear his nonsense as possible without being offended.

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Recovery Hits A Wall

Saturday, December 4, 2010

That and you can actually see it.

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The Propaganda Department for the Pseudo-Elite

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Talking on the Facebook page Capitalism about Julian Assange, the conspiracy right as I’ll call them make the following absurd claim (I’ve written this quote as it summarizes their logic):

HURR DURR. Julian Assange must be an insider because there is no other way he can get the information. HERP DERP. Nobody in the Government can be good and make these leaks.

I responded with this comment

I am finding it concerning, the absolutely delusional remarks made by people that to get the information he gets he must be an insider. It seems these people actually believe that there are people not just capable of evil but flawless organization on this page. More dangerous than anything else, is that people seem to believe that there are actually “special angels” who can ensure everybody in their organization is evil as well.

This could not be further from the truth. There are always people in every organization that are there for the best reasons and this includes Government. There are public servants that took up the role to be honest about it and found themselves wading through filth. Well, we are seeing the power of the Internet when this filth can be picked up of their shoes and sent to people like Julian Assange.

I find it disturbing because for those here who do seem to believe that evil cannot be stopped pacify any goodness they are capable of. The result is this despicably potent evil and an invisible good. It reminds me of something Ayn Rand wrote about compromise. Only it isn’t compromise, it’s just a delusional view of the world, a malevolent universe premise. I don’t doubt that these people are also “God fearing,” but even then they reject their premises because evil human beings are not as powerful as God – they are just con-artists, spinsters, and frauds that manage to make it look that way.

Personally, I think there is some pretty condensed evil out there. Groups like the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Group, and others. I am sure they love the image that these people who see them as powerful and unstoppable portray. Really, the new media of the religious right are doing the left a huge favor over at Infowars and sites like by disseminating a crushing world-view where it is impossible to be anything but small. This is the opposite of what Capitalism represents and so I ask those who believe that these hacks can maintain perfect order in their organizations to leave this group or cease making comments in it. You have no place here, and you are basically the propaganda department for the pseudo-elite. Fuck off!

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The National Broadband Network is Immoral

Thursday, November 25, 2010

When telecommunications were being implemented in Australia the Government did not imagine that it would ever be used to transmit voice. Sending ones voice to another was a simple task. So that everyone could take part in the technological advantage the Australian Government founded its own nationalized telecommunications industry. They did this despite the evidence even back then that the free market can also provide a standard way of communicating. Though in the end creativity is lost and heavily restricted. People cannot innovate on a nationalized network through competition but only through colluding with it.

Despite the privatization of Telstra regulatory fiat gives them control of what we call the last mile. Telstra own all the wires between the exchanges and peoples properties. Because of this we are always forcefully limited to what is best for Telstra. The National Broadband Network is considered a solution to this problem as the Government then provides an alternative monopoly. This ugly feature of the NBN is overlooked and people like myself against the project are viewed as against technology. Yet it is often quite the opposite, in fact supporters of the NBN are usually too naïve to see competition as a requirement of innovation.

There is no freedom for an individual or business to replace certain aspects of telecommunications. Despite this fact a myth seems to exist that the private sector does not have the ability to create such a lavish network. The truth is that it is legally impossible for a business to provide fiber-optic services or any kind of non-wireless replacement to the copper wire based network owned by Telstra. When John Howard privatized Telstra as a single entity every exchange and cable to the home went with it. This has left Australia in a situation of absolute stagnation in regards to infrastructure for telecommunications and internet.

The National Broadband Network is a project that will end with problems of the exact same nature as we have now. The project snuffs out all competition through its link to Government power and effectively sticks users with the same system. No matter how advanced the network may seem now, it is only more advanced than an older network with the same problems it will share. Eventually it isn’t much of a stretch to imagine Labor purporting yet another NBN a decade down the line to hook everyone up with some new technology with the exact same caveat as the NBN and Telstra: monopoly and anti-competitiveness.

To have a system of competition requires the private ownership of telecommunications infrastructure which is something forbidden because of Telstra’s grip on this end of the network. With a system of private ownership, that is de-facto private ownership and control of the network, businesses are empowered to provide higher grade copper lines, various grades of fiber optics, and any future technology that might exist quite easily. Telstra however does not just own the lines or this would already be in its line of business, including the possibility of selling these networks. Telstra is held back itself by regulations which inhibit investment in this field.

The fact remains that despite Labor’s appeal for being open to technology that they are in fact quite closed. The coalition is also willing to do anything but deal with the monopoly, itself offering subsidy to more inefficient and the less capable wireless technology to avoid one of the biggest issues: the Telstra shareholders. Yet, it might make more sense to either end the du-jure relationship between Telstra and the last mile and simply compensate shareholders with taxpayer money. Still, another possibility is to simply force Telstra to auction such assets providing value to Telstra shareholders, competition for Australian consumers, and the possibility for innovation for Australian entrepreneurs. Economic growth is driven out of freedom and the National Broadband Network is a phony imitation of something done in America at no cost to taxpayers.

The National Broadband Network relies on the Governments power to physically coerce and is maintained through nothing other than the suppression of the work of the human mind. The NBN is an immoral project that will go out of date and hold this country back in another decade. Clearly we should end this cycle of replacing one Government mistake with what will one day be another Government mistake. Competition is too easily viewed as meaningless copying, when in reality, it implies improvement and creativity. The National Broadband network is however nothing more than a Government sponsored copy-job of services created in America by American entrepreneurs with the freedom to buy and control property and infrastructure which this naive nation Australia views as “too important” for private ownership.

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Call of Duty is not a game

Sunday, October 10, 2010

I live in a crazy country called Australia with an absolute crazy mob for a political atmosphere. The only major party I am inclined to support have a big problem with violent video games. They are that awful and crazy that they have even swapped cause and effect, disposed of logic, and come up with the idiotic idea that people are violent because of computer games rather than computer games being violent because people are violent. This coming from the Liberal Party – the “money” party among them all is pretty abhorrent. This logical error is the same one that drives arguments about money itself. Money is given a conscience and a motive and then we are all told it is the root of all evil not the actions of human beings.

Computer games are very much a merging of art, sport, and software development. Obviously computer games can influence people but obviously not near as much as people influence computer games. George Bush didn’t download Insurgency and start a war in Iraq. The developers of the game saw a war in Iraq that Bush started and made a game about it. Obviously not every computer application is a game nor is every game violent. Though, I think some things being sold as games are not really games at all but battlefield simulators.

I own a copy of the flight simulator X-Plane. This is a great and realistic flight simulator and it is sold under that title “flight simulator.” Were Planar Research to sell copies of X-Plane as an “aviation based game,” I would call this fraud. Many people would buy a box that tells them it is fun and open it to find a drab and boring realistic flight simulator. This is because it isn’t a game, it is a flight simulator, and to say it is a game would be fraud.

Well, I don’t own a copy of Call of Duty but I believe it is not a game but a fraud. Every time I have played it with a friend I’ve noticed it doesn’t try to be a game but a simulation. Game classifications just don’t apply to simulators in this country. The company that make the game could easily get rid of the title “game” and sell it to ten year olds as a warzone simulator. The Department of Education could add it to curriculum and call it a history lesson because that is how boring it really is.

When it does come to games, the issues of taste are a lot more complicated than simple age rules. This is why a free market has provided the world with game reviews throughout their entire existence. I hate drab and crappy warzone simulators and anyone that calls them games. They are not real games, they are not really fun, they really do lack imagination and art, and so they are simulator applications and not really games at all. To be a game, art is a prerequisite, and to be more exciting than an accounting application (which is about as exciting as Call of Duty is) it needs obvious arbitrary rules and to be fun it needs them to be balanced for fair game play.

What really is avoided though is the aspect of fraud in computer game advertising. I am sick of things that are as boring as hell being sold as computer games. They belong on that boring shelf next to Microsoft Office, X-Plane, and anything else. In a civilized society we are protected from false advertising as it is considered fraud. Rather than worrying about that though, the Liberal Party and Family First want to lull you into a false sense of security where non-games can be classified as games and given an age restriction. This won’t affect X-Plane, but perhaps the developers of violent warzone simulators could just avoid these regulations by giving their products a fitting title.

People are being scammed by Call of Duty brand warzone simulators calling themselves games. Most of these people will never realize that they have been defrauded because the cultural atmosphere calls them games anyway when they are not. Every player I have seen is a frustrated and angry idiot and is likely to act violent, not because of the game though, but because of it not being a game but a simulation of a battlefield. A frustrating simulator of a frustrating and brutal world – and it is sold as a nice relaxing thing to do after work in spare time. Do not be fooled, Call of Duty is not a game; it is a battlefield simulator and is exciting as watching paint dry. Let’s stop letting them call it a game.

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The Sexualization of Children

Friday, September 17, 2010

I’ve been looking into a subject that many people and many parents treat like the end of the world. They complain about the sexualization of children through the open commercialization of sex. The worry for these people is that the world is falling apart. Today I’ve decided to spend some time looking at what these people have to say and why they say it. As something that has already and will in the future become something that will become policy and land right in my sights. There is a lot of valid concern, and a lot of invalid behavior that is contrary to good parenting.

I was considering a lengthy rebuttal of certain comments by random idiots. I am not going to bother quoting them – being random comments most of what these people say is unimportant. I will run you through these events how I see them and it might be annoying that you don’t really get to see them but you will find them of course if you look. I really only care to provide a rebuttal and these are usually with rather abundant facts and realizations.

One such fact is that I consider it is abuse to have a mindless obsession with keeping as much of a child’s skin covered as possible. In some news article I was reading about a clothing line by Beyonce’ – the article had an issue with the marketing of something towards children that is already implicitly sexualized. The content of her music is the problem – pragmatists from all around the world commented that children’s skin is covered and that it’s less revealing than mainstream clothing already is. One such inept parent was not concerned about anything but fighting comfort – and told of the great lengths of covering up something that isn’t sexual: a child’s body, in the name of preventing sexualization.

Not only to I pity this child on any hot day now, this parent is the one doing all the sexualizing. We don’t really need to focus too much on such a thing with a non-sexual entity like a child. That it pleases pedophiles or does not please them should not even come into it. The fact is treating a non-sexual entity like it should cover and make scarce their non-existent sexuality attributes the child with a sexuality it doesn’t have. Children obviously need to learn to take pride and wear clothes – but a naked child is not a sexualized child. A child who is damned for things the child cannot understand, that is “revealing” and non-existent sexuality, which is a child being sexualized.

Another case of a child not being sexualized is any child doing any form of dancing. The child literally isn’t sexually developed. All the people calling this trend on YouTube a sexualization of children ignore the fact that for the same reasons the child is unaware of the sexual nature of a dance (they don’t have a sexual nature yet) is why you shouldn’t see anything sexual about it. When a child is involved, it is not sex, until someone sends the child on a vision-quest that remains impossible until puberty. That last part is the sexualization of children.

The problem is not the way children are dressing, and it’s actually not ever an issue. Children don’t even have to dress – and unlike us – they are still not sexualized. An undressed child can imitate all the pop stars and still not be sexualized because sexuality and those forms of desires are incredibly limited. A child “shaking it” (shaking her buttocks) is not sexual behavior. Whining about all these things and calling it sexual behavior, that is the sexualization of children.

The themes of the music they are dancing too is always going to be the source of the sexualization. Beyonce and her slutty dances alone cannot do anything than give a child something to imitate – but only the words, lyrics, and ideas given to them by adults can sexualize them. The reason this is wrong is because that teaches children to behave against the facts of reality. They can do all the sexual poses in the world – and Children and especially toddlers do these by accident just mucking around and nobody sees that as sexual because it just isn’t sexual.

The real problem with sexual molestation isn’t that the “sex” itself is painful or even unenjoyable sex. It isn’t anything the religionists have identified and I want to make a point. Nobody cared about this issue until the Enlightenment – in the court of history Christianity is condemned to the truth that through its entire history until the Enlightenment when it had to either change or fade away was typically followed by people who sold their barely pubescent daughters and married them off like property. Not only does the Bible have nothing to offer – what it has to offer is more in service of the destruction of children than about protecting them. Through most of history most adults had no realization of rights – let alone Children.

It is incredibly difficult to imagine a world that does nothing about child molestation but that is the fact. Doing something about it is a product of the Enlightenment, a product of rejecting concepts like original sin. It is a fact and an outright fact that Children not only have no purpose in sexualized behavior they also function entirely on second-hand value judgments. Whores also function entirely on others approval – the difference with a whore is that it is a choice. As children, we have to learn to make judgments for ourselves. Children cannot apply value-judgments to anything; they are incapable of moralizing about anything let alone on picking a sexual partner. The alternative is what we used to have when Christians did practice what the preach: arranged marriage.

A child having sex is a lot like an arranged marriage. The child, being a child, isn’t independent and its pretty reasonable to come to the conclusion that a child having sex is having sex with who they were told to have sex with. This doesn’t stand anymore – because the philosophy of the Enlightenment attributes great purpose to sexuality. Nobody likes a second-hand whore because she gives sex away without considering the value of the recipient and this brings them into contact with people who are bad for them and people who do not value them. Children cannot do any better than this, they depend on us as an authority – and we in this modern world preserve sexuality in children so they can decide with their own minds who bares the goods in later years.

To stop the sexualization of children takes firstly a focus on the sexualization of children and not a focus on children dancing to music you do not like they cannot work out how to like. Children don’t dance to raunchy videos because of some lost sacred boundary. They don’t make value judgments like this – THEY ARE NOT SEXUALIZED. You see a child dancing to a raunchy video – the child doesn’t even know it as really “raunchy.” The child is playing a game, and you are the one sexualizing the child in this scenario every time.

Yet, we shouldn’t be worrying about younger children who are ultimately impossible to sexualize. We should be worrying about the roughly 12-year-olds who are fast growing an implicit sexuality in a world that gives them two detrimental courses of action: use this sexuality before your mind has developed and naturally regret a lot of it, or hide this sexuality like it doesn’t exist and turn out similarly screwed up. We are in a vacuum of sexual ethics – a world of sexting and chastity vowels made by people who should not be making chastity vows for the same reasons they should not be sexting. They are too young to be making long-range decisions on how they dispose or don’t dispose of their virginity – they are also too young to be sending out photos of themselves because they cannot grasp the long term implications of such photos.

Teenagers should be having sex. When they are not having sex, they are not going to make the kinds of mistake that develop sexual self-esteem, nor any of the successes. This is a messy and confusing process for anyone. I know plenty of people who have not had sex as teenagers, that go through the same thing anyway as adults. I am not going to pick an arbitrary number, but the time between your first erections or your first arousals and periods and the time you are 18 is roughly in the area you should start having sex and gaining this experience.

There is also lots you should not do while doing this, as you will do it wrong, and gain nothing. You do not have sex with just anyone – that just skips the whole purpose. The whole purpose of going through this is that you gain methods of discriminating against people. You learn to find your highest values in others and if you are just sleeping around you are not even making an effort to this effect. You also don’t use others rules of discrimination – or you open the doors to anyone who fits a stereotype.

Quite controversially, I don’t think our teenagers or adults should face much trouble of doing this together – especially when they are older. However because of reasons I’ve already stated, that children simply don’t choose but use the choices around them. So sharing your first romances with an adult because they know more is “cheating” and is thus as against learning independently, our unspoken rite of passage, as you are not learning with someone about sexuality who also doesn’t know – you are just being shown everything. The orgasms will be more intense, but the romance will be non-existent.

One thing is certain though; we need to be encouraging our teenagers to be experimenting toward the end of romance and affection. Be it chastity or whoredom – both of those rob teenagers of knowledge some of us but not all of us discover. The later it is left and the longer it takes, and so there is no better time than puberty. I do like that this is just common sense to most people and that we have laws in my state that protect 12 year olds discovering with 12 year olds in the same law that stops adults perverting them. It’s a weird thought to some of you, but there really is something romantic about two barely pubescent people learning together and experimenting with a certainty about what they can discover as two reasoning humans. I experimented almost quite this young, and those are the times I never really regret, but everything I do regret and everything I value in sex was discovered in its basic forms all those years ago.

Children dancing to dirty videos are only a bad thing when they are doing it to gain sex. Children unlike Teenagers do not naturally attempt to gain anything I would call sex. They might find some special places and experiment a little but this is still not sexual. Nothing is really sexual to a child like it can be to us and that is the entire point of protecting them. Things can only gain sexual meanings with the work of teenagers and adult. Until we are teenagers, sexuality just is not a part of us. I thought of following this up with a moral rebuttal of the organized pedophile movement but it seems that was so easy I ended up doing it by accident while writing about something else. Sexualizing children isn’t bad because of superstition or that sex is sacred. It is bad because it encourages children to evade their non-sexualized nature – and it encourages children to evade the facts of reality.

I was sexually abused as a child and what was abusive about it was not my “precious” virginity but the time I wasted acting like a man in a boy’s body. I hurt girls doing this, and that happened because it wasn’t my nature and I had no facts to act on other than what I would hear rather than notice with a sexual nature. This changed when I was a teenager – but this development was slowed and distorted by all the discoveries I was attempting to make before without the “tools.” That was a long time ago, but I really should end this on that personal note. To me, I lost my virginity at 19 – because that was when I discovered my sexual nature in an original fashion. This is of course, a lie, I was raped and if preserving a point of penetration had any value I’d have never known innocence. This couldn’t be more false, no matter what, I couldn’t not be innocent. It’s filthy that when people see a little girl dancing to Hip Hop they see a little girl acting like a slut and not get a laugh that the little girl doesn’t understand anything and enjoy the beauty and innocence of it.

It really doesn’t surprise me that religious people shelter pedophiles because when it comes to children dancing to things that for us have sexual themes – they openly speak like pedophiles. I know it isn’t people focusing on reality that misplace sexuality so easily. This isn’t really a big issue anyway. Traditional beauty pagents teach little girls to find what cannot be found: self-esteem in crowds. These children would be less damaged in the arms of pedophiles. A pedophile would be the lesser of two evils – and I am glad I was raised screwed up and not just as a second-hander.

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The Case for a High Interest Rate in Australia

Friday, September 17, 2010

Typically the thought of a high Cash Rate at the Reserve Bank is incredibly unpopular. An imagery comes to mind surrounding the subject of displaced homeowners, higher repayment costs, a growing domestic debt, mortgage and credit card defaults and general depression. Yet nothing is mentioned of the amount of resources tied up in what is basically subsidized consumption. Trade deficits are not really my concern – but the target of credit and thus imports and where the resources of the economy are focused.

Low interest rates destroy the distinction between consumption and investment. That is the productive use of goods and services to provide more goods and services. When interest rates are at artificial all-time lows like now, people with access to credit are given a great deal of purchasing power. When deciding how to use this in the environment of low interest rates the losses incurred by using credit to consume are lower.

Seeing a movie and billing it to the bank, when interest-free periods may mean you spend nothing on interest at all certainly seems more appealing that buying some tools with that credit and doing lots of hard work to produce something. When interest rates are higher – a rational person is going to realize the movie would cost more than ticket price by the time the loan is repaid but that the tools and productive task will pay the loan and generate profit.

The Australian Dollar stands strong among global currency. This trend itself could weaken as low interest rates spur consumption and weaken the dollar on foreign exchange markets. As a small country our buying power on overseas market is still increasing. So when focusing entirely on the value of the Australian Dollar things seem rosy: we are getting a lot from overseas, despite the widening availability of credit. My question is this: just what are we importing with our famously valuable currency, things that will increase our future productivity or just some entertainment and some short term fun?

Strong currency positions like ours don’t usually last long. This month in September credit conditions continued to ease since the global financial crises. As lending increases and retail continues to boom all of this has the net effect of sending lots and lots of Australian Dollars overseas. Sooner or later, the high value position of the Australian Dollar will weaken, and what have we done with it? We’ve done nothing but consume, and the S&P ASX 200 still sits about 2,000 to 1,500 points shy of the investment and production we once had before the global financial crises.

This is by any definition a false recovery. When it really comes down to it strong purchasing power is worthless when the artificial credit conditions imposed by the Reserve Bank encourage people to blunder and consume on borrowed money and thus borrowed time. The artificially low rates encourage us to not use resources productively precisely at a time when we have everything to gain doing so, with purchasing power that will only increase in the medium term. The long term outlook for the Australian Dollar will wane, and we will have less than we have now, certainly if we have done nothing good with our current advantageous position because credit was so cheap we didn’t think to profit from using it.

There is a case for a high cash rate at the Reserve Bank of Australia. Firstly this would propel the Australian Dollar to newer and newer highs on a solid foundation. Although consumption would become a greater burden – productive uses of cheaper and cheaper imports would grow the economy. People would not be interested in importing anything non-productive, at least, not near as much as today. This would mean that our overseas debt including our Government debt would become smaller as the foreign currencies we technically owe most of them in would become more available.

Austerity crises and credit freezes around the world are rarely rooted in the domestic currencies of effected economies. They are usually based instead in debts denominated in foreign currencies. At the moment many Australian’s see a threat on the horizon with a growing amount of foreign debt and growing Government debt. Apart from the Government spending less – which has been put off for three more years and does nothing about rising foreign debts people see little in the form of economic obstacles in the present.

Certainly a high interest rate would create a lot of “pain” as the bleeding hearts will call it. People already saddled with debts will have to work a lot harder towards paying those debts. Certainly the weight of domestic debts would grow and this would seemingly “bust their balls.” Yet this ignores entirely the benefits which are far more relevant now than ever before. The pressures of foreign debts would wane, the incentive to grow the domestic debt would shrink, and many of the causes of our future doom would stand dead in the tracks.

Meanwhile, under high interest rates, where people saddled with debts are finding it harder to make ends meet, more credit that ever would be available for productive enterprises. With domestic consumption down, the value of the dollar higher than ever before, and “pain” going around the economy people would act to alleviate it. People acting this way would find the economy in their favor, cheaper and cheaper import prices would mean access to powerful tools and the means of production – so to speak. Bankers would favor giving a loan to a skilled man who wants to produce rather than a wealthier man who wants to consume. Actual physical resources in the economy would land in the hands of the productive – and the direction of this country would change.

Instead, strong credit markets, and strong buying power being used for productive purposes would create indicators of great future wealth. We would be looking forward to a stronger GDP and shrinking foreign debts. We all see now our decimate future if we maintain our current course in Europe with shrinking purchasing power overseas and rising foreign debts. Seeing that we have already experienced credit freezes, witnessed Government bubbles and austerity crises – we clearly need to do something different to these other countries if we are to have a better future.

In reality there is only one thing we can do short of a gold standard or free banking – which despite being far better are not an option as they are not understood. What we all do understand is that we are not on a sustainable path. What I want people to realize is that a road out of this is for a better future and the sooner we take upon it the better. Higher interest rates loom anyway – and this is something else (and sorry about using the appeal to popularity here ad museum – but I think it carries a point) everyone knows: the only way out of a massive debt without a crises is paying it.

As painful and as unpopular as high interest rates really would be, the road ahead is marred with far worse fortunes. In Greece, people are rioting over money simply not showing up at all because it simply doesn’t exist and nobody wants to fund it because their debt skyrocketed while being utilized for incredibly unproductive things. Most Government spending is actually spent on employees who consume from imported goods – and so Government debt and Domestic debt when not used productively is a problem.

For a more self-sufficient nation with more domestic ownership we need to put domestic owners who use goods productively first when considering fiscal policy. We don’t need tariffs and things that simply shoot producers in the foot when importing goods. We don’t need a buy Australia back policy that would probably never work and sell us out in Treasury debts while doing so. What we need is the kind of economic situation that leaves Australians only one option: produce things here with everything you import – or you don’t get access to the credit that imports it. Nothing else will save us.

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A New World Order: whether you like it or not.

Saturday, September 11, 2010

Note: I will try to make this my last article about the opportunistic liar that is Alex Jones.

Many people these days fear a New World Order. What is a New World Order? The phrase generally means a new balance of power in the world, generally in terms of nations. Early in the 90s George Bush Senior said we are seeing the beginnings of a new world order. Two decades later that has come to pass, the balance of power in productive terms is in China’s hands. Militarily, China has the most potential and the most to gain. When it is said a New World Order will happen whether you like it or not – it usually isn’t referring to World Government but just simply that a New World Order will come and you might not like it or you might.

Alex Jones’ the popular New Media billionaire constantly drums up fear about a New World Order. What does Alex Jones want? Conservatism – an old world order. Considering Government is bigger than ever Alex Jones should be praying to his defunct Christ for a New World Order – because for it to be  the conservative world he wants that is precisely what would have to happen. The New World Order that Alex Jones routinely paints is actually the Current World Order and he wants the Old World Order. The “Current World Order” is the world of Roosevelt’s New Deal: central planning in every area of the economy, the disintegration of families because people get more from Government now, and so on.

All the disasters that Alex Jones “predicts” in his film Endgame had actually already happened. The only reason people fall for this garbage sadly is because they didn’t notice until they saw Alex Jones talked about it. Often many of us meet a conspiracy loon who makes the following argument:

“You can’t deny all the things Alex Jones said would come true and did.” As if, his prophetic skills have value without explanation. Often a skeptic will say this back: “What about those that didn’t happen?” Well, I want to provide, as a skeptic, an even better retort: “All those things happened already, Alex Jones simply said they were going to happen when they had happened and you didn’t know it was happening and you mistakenly thought he saw it was going to happen when it had already happened.”

I don’t think Alex Jones has any predictive powers of any kind. This is coming from someone with some incredible predictive powers on the stock market. I can see things happening as well, but most of them have already happened just not many have realized it. I often say “the bond market is going to crash.” The only reason I can say this is that in my mind, American treasury bonds have already been rated junk (by me). All I am waiting for is for Standard and Poors to make the same analysis I have and I believe they will rate them junk. At that point my shorts on every bond fund will become a value to me. I’ll make excessive paper losses until then.

Another case was during the Bank Stress Tests. Geithner’s stress test suppressed the value of banks. I knew that it couldn’t possibly have any real effect on their long term businesses. I had already realized the temporary nature of the Stress Test and thus the suppression of stock prices in banks. So I bought low and waited for the rest of the market to catch on that these are valuable entities pushing the prices up for little old me. This move made me more than any other on the market.

So take it from someone who often brags about his skills of prediction just like Alex Jones: we cant really predict anything. All we can do is notice things before the masses and profit from it. I do this rightfully on a peaceful market. Alex Jones does this not to profit from stocks but to gain your submission and ignorance of fact when reading his garbage. I profit from Government interventions in the economy and I do it well. Alex Jones profits from people who stop thinking critically in awe of his supposed psychic powers. On behalf of all psychics: we have no powers, it’s a lie we say – most of us as a laugh. I never actually believe for a second I am psychic, but for those who don’t understand my methods of analysis of investment products I sure look like a psychic. The difference between me and Alex Jones is that when someone thinks I am psychic: I tell them I am not.

On that note, if Alex Jones had any integrity at all he would “show his workings out.” He would share his methods rather than obscure them like he does, but if he did that, he just wouldn’t look magic would he?

When Alex Jones quoted a guy saying “A new world order whether you like it or not?” That guy wasn’t talking about conquest or the subterfuge of the worlds leading leftists in the trilateral commission or Bilderberg. He was talking about the world changing and nothing more – for whatever reason. You were simply mislead by all the other out of context quotes working together to produce a phony context for all of them.

Just for the record, I can’t even remember who made that comment. Anyone fearing any kind of New World Order and then whining about the state of the world cannot fix either. It’s fucking stupid, that is what it is. Stop watching Alex Jones, stop reading his articles, and pirate liveleaks – AND STOP DAMAGING YOUR BRAINS.

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The Fear School of Art

Monday, August 30, 2010

Since the Financial Collapse cultural elements have emerged on a minor but relevantly large portion of people. A considerable amount of these people believe the world is doomed. They believe largely that a giant conspiracy has been concocted from long ago that has sustained. These people have a variety of sects and themes of course: how the world is going to blow up, who is blowing it up, why we should blow them up or vote them out. Little effort is put into what one might do after all the blowing up is done or the election is over. Though, there is small attention paid to who we might vote for. Most of the attention is instead about blowing up disparate facts into giant conclusions.

Ironically some of the solutions to crises that become more obvious as each day passed in an age of Capitalist’s escaping to the social media focused Internet. Problems such as sovereign debt have already met the bond market and are coming soon to America. Yet still nobody knows what is coming – they cannot explain it and so they derive information from incredibly strange but often innovative means. I do not mean in art – and I do not mean in just economics. There is a crisis of ethics in a world closer than ever before and never before so divided on ideas. Everywhere there is a crises going on in the eyes of New Media and Old Media alike.

All kinds of different philosophies fill the conspiracy circle that I call the Fear School of Art. When we think about Government and “Big” Media scare campaigns nobody quite masters the art of fear like the small world geniuses of Internet scare campaigns behind such things as “Endgame” and “Zeitgeist”. These are the magnum opuses of the Fear School. This is characterized by emulating journalists and applying a political theme instead of principle and facts to the journalistic work. An incredibly distorted Baroque theme turned into a fictional account that seems legitimate under the subterfuge of journalism is presented.

This actually has its roots in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, UFOs conspiracies, and numerous fringes. The specific component in wider Objectivist thought is that these artists of deception project a malevolent Universe premise. The simplest way to describe such a belief is that the holder believes the world is not just in their way but an unstoppable obstacle. Many of the Fear School artists also offer no solutions of any kind – just a fringe genre of fiction that emulates an objective and focused practice, journalism. In the mainstream however – the plague is similar.

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a text believed to have been forged to look like a view into a future ruled by Jewish conspirators spread in Europe in the late 19th and early 20th century. Interestingly many events in it – in some form occurred yet the timing was always far off and the bulk of it is rubbish. This was not a popular text in the Industrialized world where people had a longer history and culture of education but for the reactionary mobs around the first factories and the first industry their part of the world had ever known.

Socialist political philosophy basically insists that human beings are inherently broken – not sometimes evil as that wouldn’t be liberal enough for them to consider moral. Everyone at elections votes not to fix themselves but to have themselves fixed or to have someone else fixed by the politicians who they vote for. Milton Friedman had better words than any about this particular situation that we are not: “Just where are we going to find these angels to design a nice society?” Apparently and this is by the actions of those who have proven they are unwilling to use words objectively: our free will cannot be trusted.

The Fear School of Art is surrounded by the theme of the Government silently nannying society. Within this theme it can go in two different directions. A socialists work of Fear-Art will say that the Government could be doing all kinds of good but the rich and evil Capitalist families have corrupted them. Another direction in which it goes is the one Alex Jones uses. He believes a Government filled with evil people would be thrown out with all its meddlesome socialist policies if they didn’t hear his story. With Jones I find it quite interesting how he uses his own work to put his own work on a pedestal because nobody else would. He often throws a spin on the stories, that the Government is doing something for another reason. He appears to pick whatever that is out of the predicted side effects of Austrian school economists. Hayek’s theory says that central banking undermines an economy, Alex Jones says before yet-another-central-bank in yet-another-country blows up because of yet-another-recession simply that this is what they wanted.

The various Fear School artists perpetuate this concept that mankind does not control his body and not the Objective reality of the world and its components but specifically about media and with visual contact with media. The Fear School of art is art that cannot express the real value of life when its only purpose is to imitate truth under the guise of a message that saves one from Government control. Literally, instead of people actually restoring a Constitution objectively they instead change the focus often to poorly understanding the Constitution.

David Icke who is far from popular among modern conspiracy circles goes back well into the late 20th century. He is someone who literally believes that aliens control our Governments and that they create a rigorous police state out of Machiavellian tactics to rule the world by stealth. These are just some of the elements that are not sourced to fact by their logic in any way at all. Indeed there are back-room deals everywhere and there are laws that protect privacy. Yet David Icke takes it to another level – he doesn’t just do what other journalists are paid to do and mentions that the Government is doing wrong – instead he makes all other journalism and knowledge out as susceptible to the attack of an alien race which distorts everything that doesn’t come from David Icke or those he approves (seriously, if this works, how hard can the Aliens be to beat in the first place?).

These ideas are often popular among those who consume this media first – when they decide they are of the age to get involved in politics typically fall for a source that claims it is the one source of truth. The perpetrators of easily not the greatest deceptions of all time but a complex one is the mock artists of the Fear School. Preying on naivety and emotional tactics that always suit the situation the Fear School of art is pragmatic by using all and any means to produce a maximum amount of fear. When someone is trying to learn about the world the Fear School likes to be there first. If this were ancient Greece, far more fear-schoolers would have been drinking Hemlock than Socrates for crimes of hubris. In a modern society the best we can hope for is that the young learn to make value-judgements on the basis of objectivity themselves independently their entire lives. This includes helping them gain this ability which can never be innate.

Yet remember these preachers that say mankind has not free-will, that knowledge itself is broken, and thus communication impossible – and variations of the theme appear all in which we are dominated by a sad  group of people. This time those people are the political class and the problems are obvious but named and identified so carelessly without pursuit of objective description.  The Fear School of art always tries to cunningly shock you down the alley of a philosophy that often required (it sucked and so they lied) or didn’t deserve this means of distribution. Fear Schoolers typically package a socialist or paleoconservative ideaologue in the work that it tries to sell.

Once a Fear School work was so terrible it forgot to have this ending that tells us how we’ve been doing it wrong and need to adjust our lives. That is Zeitgeist which was followed up with Zeitgeist Addendum possibly just to confuse anyone who questions a smear of society offering no solutions. Zeitgeist Addendum has basically started a political school of philosophy of its own where they try to have socialism through peer-pressure (there is MUCH I could expand on here) rather than Government.

There are literal victims of the Fear School of Art in every philosophy and idea they try to create or point people to can only bring them there by means of trickery and evading reason. We all have free will in some form, we all have willpower, and we all have a requirement to learn from what exists in reality whatever it may be. We need media and we need Art – the Fear School poison our food. Though not only that – no drinking hole is left unpoisoned. Major Media outlets have started cashing on in the small fans of the Fear School (minorities sell, just look at that junk you won’t watch on the box!). During 2009 for the first time American networks capitalized on Fear School propaganda by airing conspiracy theories dressed up as conspiracy facts on major and cable networks that the Twin Towers Collapse was planned by a different enemy: The Government.

I want to leave a small note of gratitude right here in the middle of my article. The 9/11 conspiracy theories and being able to see past the Fear School art gave me the insight I have today. Thanks liars, for inspiring me to open that doorway to truth by blocking it for me. Thanks, not sure how else I would have found it.

The worst part about it is that it is such an ugly sore on the site of the culture we live in that it is not discussed and debunked more thoroughly. Instead of interest in genuine and time-proven systems like Logical Skepticism, Empiricism, Objectivism and such there is an interest in lies and deceits carried out by second-handers clamoring for the only thing they really care about: a large audience. People find these people as unbearable as these people find whatever demographic or race they are targeting.

Stupidity is not contagious and it cannot possibly affect you the reader simply by looking into the picture show just once that has them believing the world is doomed – so have a look to see what these people really believe [PUT A LINK RIGHT HERE]. This movement grows across the entire planet thanks to the Information Age. They have become the closest thing to the New World Religion of their wildest fears in every way – and being inspired by fear it promotes only blindness through speculation.

The Fear School is like Government propaganda except nobody is forced to produce it or pay for willing producers. The Fear School of Art however has a creator with the same goal as the guy the Government hires to quell war dissent: He wants you to be afraid, specifically of other journalists, and to only listen to him. The Fear School artist hopes to dominate your grasp of Objectivity itself essentially being a pair of meddlesome glasses between you and the world. Unlike government propaganda the Fear School cannot license journalists into line – it can only smear them by any human errors they make so you start ignoring all other sources of information.

John Tate.

2010.

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Mankind’s Energy Future

Monday, August 23, 2010

Humans with complex language permitting concepts specifically allows values to exist and judgment to exist. All value judgments depend on humanity and all value and every concept this planet has ever known have been man made. We change our environment to survive and we are the source of all innovation on the planet. Change to the environment is our mandate, our purpose, and our right.

Because for a human at least survival is derived from concepts and knowledge – and thus we can exist in as many manners of existence as we can make possible. Space travel is one many believe can be possible – yet stunningly there is a lack of faith in our ability to survive minor changes to the weather we have effected.

In fact the best thing we can do to counteract climate-change is to consume. Consumption can be enjoyed in various ways, Investment consumes specifically for future production. Thus, if we respond to climate change by increasing our productive output, burning more coal, and so on we might have a chance of replacing the fossil fuels and uranium to do it with energy sources derived with the interests of an investor in mind: long term, sustainable investments meaning a next generation of energy production (extra-planetary solar, geothermal, fusion, you name it).

Yet instead, Enterprise is derided, production is threatened to be stunted. Irrational self-sacrifice is the primary response to climate-change. Actions with specific and obvious consequences as to make sustainability: a process involving human cognition as a step, become completely stunted as the productive means to reach this end are reduced through suicidal emissions trading and tax policies – a response to climate change that brings us closer to disaster.

The fact that as individuals we are capable of realizing our environmental effects no matter how late, and voting for our own destruction is evidence that we can also become inspired enough to trade, produce, and innovate towards a better future. This is further evidenced historically.

Oil once sat in the ground useless to human beings for centuries. Individuals innovated turning this material into a fuel source and it became the lifeblood of civilization. This is the same with coal and every other form of energy. This includes even the pulling power of a work mule, which was bred and kept by human value judgments and decisions. Oil became mankind’s largest energy source to date – before then we consumed many other sources. Alternative energy has been growing for some time.

Other sources exist all around us to obtain energy. Sources yet to be discovered and other sources exist which mankind currently relies about extending its industrial output to exploit. Grand projects and discoveries need to occur for humanity to reach a new age in energy production.

Yet instead, in response to climate-change and our future energy needs constraint is urged on the very elixir of life and modern pursuits in a world dependent on mans ability to survive based on the facts and thus more industrial growth.

Investment is completely dependent itself on resources including energy being available for investment – including investment in sustainable energy. Limiting energy and thus limited mankind’s productive ability is the worst possible answer to climate change ever conceived. The real road to survival exists on the grounds of massive consumption through investment in next-generation energy sources – yet the proclaimed solution is to starve our ability to actually make a difference in this world by sabotaging our own production.

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