Monthly Archives: October 2015

Their vision of our future

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You antediluvian reptile, you. You reactionary, backward neolithic barbarian, locked into your out-dated twentieth-century mindset. This is what our elites believe, and this is the world they are making for us from inside their gated communities. From The Atlantic: The Case for Getting Rid of Borders—Completely. This is the conclusion:

Closed borders are one of the world’s greatest moral failings but the opening of borders is the world’s greatest economic opportunity. The grandest moral revolutions in history—the abolition of slavery, the securing of religious freedom, the recognition of the rights of women—yielded a world in which virtually everyone was better off. They also demonstrated that the fears that had perpetuated these injustices were unfounded. Similarly, a planet unscarred by iron curtains is not only a world of greater equality and justice. It is a world unafraid of itself.

Merkel’s not insane. She, like others of her kind, just thinks that everyone should be allowed to go wherever others have been successful in creating wealth so that they too can have their fair share as well. What could possibly be wrong with that? What could be more just? A hundred years from now they will all look back at us and think how primitive we must have been.

[Via Instapundit]

Something we can all agree with Trump about

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I’m not sure if you are being diplomatic that you’re supposed to say it just because you think it. From the Donald: Trump: Merkel Insane.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s invitation to migrants to come to her country has been described as “insane” by U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump, who has predicted more violence will follow in the country as a result.

Donald Trump, the Republican Party presidential front-runner, was talking about Mrs. Merkel’s invitation to migrants on the American political interview show, ‘Face The Nation’.

Mr Trump said: “I do not like the migration. I do not like the people coming”. Instead he favours “a safe zone for people”, an idea on which he expanded.

He said: “Frankly, look, Europe is going to have to handle — but they’re going to have riots in Germany. What’s happening in Germany, I always thought Merkel was like this great leader. What she’s done in Germany is insane. It is insane. They’re having all sorts of attacks.”

It will be hard to keep this out of the news but the media will no doubt find a way.

What does a modern economist think a classical economist believed?

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I am writing a paper in which I begin by setting down what a modern economist would believe about “classical” economics. In reality, of course, virtually no economist today would have the slightest clue how an economist prior to 1936 would have looked at the operation of an economy or dealt with the problems it might have. I have pulled together my own summary and am putting up it here so that others can tell me what they think. I would merely emphasise that what I have below is such a misbegotten caricature that economists ought to be thoroughly disgusted with their own discipline if they really think their ancestors believed anything like this caricature. Because if this really were what economists once believed, even Keynesian economics would have been an improvement.

The more one knows about the economics prior to the publication of The General Theory, the less dogmatic one can be about the teachings of “classical” theory, especially since in the Keynesian version it covers the entire period from 1776 to 1933. Nevertheless, here is a summary statement that more or less captures the modern version of the essential beliefs of economists prior to 1936.

The economy was seen as a world of more or less instantaneous adjustment due to the flexibility of prices and wages. Such rapid adjustments were expected to lead to an almost instantaneous economic reconfiguration in the face of new circumstances. Theory was almost entirely devoted to the long term with short-term fluctuations of little interest since downturns were so brief and government policy would anyway have been unable to alleviate any of the problems that might arise. The economy was, for all practical purposes, in equilibrium because of virtually instant adjustment made through changes both upwards or down in the price level. The key concept was Say’s Law, which stated that supply created its own demand, which in turn meant involuntary unemployment would never occur. Laissez-faire was the core policy setting. Market adjustment could not be improved on, with regulation of business and industry seen as almost never beneficial, but virtually certain to cause harm. Regulation was kept to a minimum as were welfare payments to the poor and unemployed.

For us it’s still not too late

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There is no doubt that Malcolm’s hold on the Lodge is dependent on how he handles “multiculturalism”, that is, on how he lays down the law on unacceptable behaviours in a society made up of many different peoples from many different backgrounds. And we have the European example right before us of how it is not to be done. Nick Cater discusses just this issue today in an article with the appropriate title, Nightmare behind the diversity dream revealed.

The utopian dreamers who see virtue in diversity seem oblivious to the damage they have done. If only we were nicer to our guests, they insist, then everything would be fine.

The severity of the social fracturing is seldom reflected in the mainstream media. Well-intended journalists and editors are uncomfortable about giving oxygen to the ugly side of multiculturalism. Strict social sanctions have been imposed on anybody breaking the code of niceness.

Now, thanks in part to the internet, the thought police are losing control. On social media, ordinary citizens share information — some of it correct, some little more than rumour — in a space where they no longer feel ashamed to speak their minds.

The mainstream media are in cahoots with the barbarians not at the gates but inside the gates. Cater lists examples of crime explosions caused by the arrival of migrants who have absolutely none of the background cultural understanding of what it takes to live in a modern society. Yet he also notes this about Angela Merkel

Scarily, Germany’s Angela Merkel has responded by preparing to send the thought police into Facebook. “Are you working on this?” she was overheard asking Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg last month. “Yeah,” replied Zuckerberg.

The idea that private thoughts could be expunged on the orders of a German chancellor is too horrible to contemplate. Yet Merkel nurses the delusion that a quick word with Zuckerberg will silence discontent.

Merkel has become a deeply polarising figure, splitting Europeans into opposite camps. There are those who think she deserves the Nobel Peace Prize and those who think she has completely lost the plot.

Progressive internationalism is the socialism of our era, an insane belief that we can all get along through good will alone. A bit of reality would therefore go a long way.

A 2010 study by the Institute for the German Economy found the unemployment rate for those without a German passport is 14 per cent. Among those from Islamic countries it was even higher: 55 per cent for Lebanese migrants, 46 per cent for Iraqis and 28 per cent for Afghans.

Elsewhere in Europe, the picture is much the same; asylum-seekers are far likelier to live off welfare than locals or migrants who arrive by other means.

The same picture — mercifully on a smaller scale — is emerging in Australia.

A study of 8500 entrants under the humanitarian resettlement program conducted by the Gillard government in 2011 found that more than six out of 10 refugees had failed to get a job after five years. Eighty-three per cent received Centrelink payments. As in Europe, those from Islamic countries fared worse. Fewer than one in 10 Iraqi and Afghan refugees had found work; 94 in every 100 were receiving welfare.

“Fared worse” depends on the intent of those who have come here, such as whether their intent was actually to work for a living. And there is nothing merciful about our smaller numbers. That has been through the hard work done to limit those arriving uninvited by boat, not an ounce of which was supported by Labor.

We are not a “multicultural” society. We are an Australian community made up of people from many different backgrounds. We are the freest most open society in the world, and it should be the most pressing imperative of our political class to ensure that we stay just exactly like that. Meanwhile our “well-intentioned journalists and editors” should get out of their bubbles and start to think of how we might ourselves avoid the fate of Europe. For us, it’s still not too late.

Refugees have stopped flowing into Europe

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Either that, or the news has stopped flowing to the rest of us. In somehow related news:

Turkey says two male suicide bombers behind Ankara blasts…
Govt Imposes News Blackout…

And then there is this:

China asks world to impose ‘code of conduct’ on Internet…

The best bit in this last story is in the final para, that “observers will be watching to see what China’s conception of a ‘code of conduct’ entails.” Yes, we will all be watching closely. Who could possibly guess what they would want? Which then leads to this:

WIKILEAKS release of Obamatrade text stokes ‘freedom of expression’ fears…

From which we find:

One chapter appears to give the signatory countries (referred to as “parties”) greater power to stop embarrassing information going public. The treaty would give signatories the ability to curtail legal proceedings if the theft of information is “detrimental to a party’s economic interests, international relations, or national defense or national security” – in other words, presumably, if a trial would cause the information to spread.

I don’t suppose that means that if there can be no trial, the thieves who stole this information would then immediately go free. Depending on judges to maintain free speech is such an old fashioned idea. How’s this for a story: Judges plan to outlaw climate change ‘denial’.

Including senior judges and lawyers from across the world, the three-day conference on “Climate Change and the Law” was staged in London’s Supreme Court. It was funded, inter alia, by the Supreme Court itself, the UK government and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).

As one of the two UN sponsors of its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, UNEP has been one of the main drivers of alarm over global warming for 40 years. The organiser and chairman of the conference was the Supreme Court judge Lord Carnwath, a fervent believer in man-made climate change, who has worked with the Prince of Wales for more than 20 years, and with UNEP since 2002.

The purpose of this strange get-together was outlined in a keynote speech (visible on YouTube) by Philippe Sands, a QC from Cherie Blair’s Matrix Chambers and professor of law at University College, London. Since it is now unlikely that the world will agree in Paris to a legally binding treaty to limit the rise in global temperatures to no more than 2 degrees C from pre-industrial levels, his theme was that it is now time for the courts to step in, to enforce this as worldwide law.

“The most important thing the courts could do,” [Justice Sands] said, was to hold a top-level “finding of fact”, to settle these “scientific disputes” once and for all: so that it could then be made illegal for any government, corporation (or presumably individual scientist) ever to question the agreed “science” again. Furthermore, he went on, once “the scientific evidence” thus has the force of binding international law, it could be used to compel all governments to make “the emissions reductions that are needed”, including the phasing out of fossil fuels, to halt global warming in its tracks.

Better not to know any and all of this, specially with the world in such competent hands. Our elites are doing everything they can to cut off all sources of information that are not officially sanctioned. The rest of us can go on if we like here on the net since virtually no one reads any of this anyway. And you can see this for yourself by just asking all of your friends about global temperature growth for the past eighteen years. You know what it’s been and I know, but even so it is the best kept secret in the world.

A reminder to those who think Tony made no difference

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This is by Dominic Perrottet, Finance Minister in the government of NSW Premier Mike Baird: Abbott’s Legacy Must Live On. I am choosing the same excerpt that was used by Andrew Bolt but you ought to read it all:

Going against the grain isn’t easy. For all that’s written about Tony Abbott’s prime ministership, it must be recognised that he went against the grain for the good of the country. Under the last Labor government, over 50,000 people arrived illegally by boat, costing thousands of lives and billions of dollars. According to the ‘Canberra consensus’, this was simply the ‘new normal’ and nothing could be done….

Abbott went against the grain. He pledged to stop the boats.

Deterrence doesn’t work, thundered the Greens. A pig-headed refusal to accept reality, wrote Michelle Grattan. A policy that risks lives, said Mike Carlton. In the face of this opposition, Abbott delivered. Since the 2013 election, just one boat has arrived. Lives saved, borders secured, order restored.

On climate change, the “consensus” was more of the same. Climate Armageddon was nigh, we were told, so businesses and individuals must cough up billions of dollars.

Abbott took a more measured approach… This in the face of a climate orthodoxy that successfully frightened governments in NSW, Victoria, South Australia and Queensland into spending tens of billions of dollars on desalination plants that, to this day, sit idle while dams fill and flood.

So Abbott again went against the grain and promised to scrap the carbon tax. Too difficult to undo, said Labor. Impractical and disruptive, according to the SMH‘s Peter Hartcher. Reckless and disturbing the status quo, said Michelle Grattan.

In the end, the people agreed with Abbott, and the carbon tax was abolished. So, too, the business-killing mining tax, which just about every talking head in Canberra agreed was a great idea — right before the iron ore price crashed.

It has been said that conservatives are often in government, but rarely in power, in part because many centre-right governments simply accept the status quo, failing to reverse bad policy. Tony Abbott not only opposed bad policy, he actually rolled it back, and he did it decisively and quickly in the face of a hostile Senate and an intransigent Labor Party…

Meanwhile, going against the grain on climate change and boat arrivals earned Abbott the abject hatred of the political Left, as did stripping terrorists of their dual-citizenship, challenging the conformist orthodoxy of the ABC and opting for the will of the people to decide on gay marriage. Despite this, much like John Howard before him, the secret of Abbott’s initial success was simple: he addressed the concerns of the silent majority – not the chattering classes – using Liberal principles.

With a change of leader there will be a temptation to downplay, even do away with, the achievements of the Abbott government. This would be a mistake for several reasons.

Firstly and most importantly, conservative policies are not fantasies – they apply in the real world, and they work. The boats have stopped, the taxes have been axed, free trade agreements signed and the budget on track for repair. The country is the better for all that.

Secondly, any shift to the left would be a betrayal of the Liberal base, which is profoundly and unapologetically conservative. They do not get their talking points from Q&A or The Age. They will have no truck with a government delivering a Labor agenda in Liberal clothing.

Thirdly, Liberal electoral success has always come from the centre-right.

The good that men do is oft interred with their bones. In this case, not yet, but brave to say it all the same. And when you realise the amount of white-anting Tony had to deal with, you get a measure of just how uphill his battles were.

Malcolm is becoming an international metaphor for idiot

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This is from an article the other day by Mark Steyn which you should, of course, read in full. But these are the relevant bits about our new PM:

Let’s take Malcolm Turnbull at his word that it’s only “a very very small percentage of violent extremist individuals”. What is the actual percentage? In the aforementioned Malmö, where up to a thousand mostly young male “refugees” arrive each day, suppose the “very very small percentage” is two per cent. That’s 20 brand new “violent extremists” per day. During the Northern Irish “Troubles”, MI5 estimated that there were no more than a hundred active members of the IRA at any one time – that’s to say, people actively involved in shooting and killing. So Malmö is taking in the equivalent of the entire IRA every week.

What will be our contribution? And when you have finished reading Mark Steyn, you should go on to Andrew Bolt.

UPDATE: And if you want to see what mugs they take us for, have a look at these: Yesterday’s Terrorist is Today’s “Helpless Refugee”…THESE Pictures will SHOCK you. There’s more at the link than just this one.

terrorist to civilian