John Humphreys

Last year, American funny-man Jon Stewart asked a series of questions to libertarians. Since then, plenty of people have responded, giving fairly comprehensive answers. I agree with some of those answers, but I thought I’d put together my own “short answers” anyway… only six months late.

1. Is government the antithesis of liberty?

We need definitions. If “liberty” means people being allowed to act voluntarily with each other (as I define it) then the antithesis is involuntary behaviour — e.g. violence, coercion, theft, murder. The government certainly does all of that, but they are not the only example (eg mafia, rapists). Further, some libertarians will suggest that if a limited government is able to decrease “private” violence & coercion, then they might even be a force for good. (This idea is known as the “night-watchman government” or “minarchism”.)

It’s worth quickly noting that government does not mean “governance”. You would still have much governance in a libertarian society (for example, cricket rules).

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I believe in free speech. I mean — I really believe in free speech.

That doesn’t just mean that I support Andrew Bolt’s right to say whatever he likes about aboriginals, irrespective of who gets offended. And it doesn’t just mean that I oppose all censorship, such as the banning of Mein Kampf in some European countries. It also means I oppose defamation laws, and I believe you should be allowed to say anything about anybody, whether true or false, for whatever reason. It even means I believe that tobacco companies should be free to advertise.

I believe attempts to limit speech “for the public good” will mostly do more harm than good, and that messy and imperfect freedom is better than neat and tidy (but even more imperfect) government control.

Today I was discussing another of the controversial areas of free speech. Yesterday, that crazy old kook of the blogosphere grumpy-Graeme Bird wrote an eloquent rant aimed at me, where he said:

“He must die. John Humphreys must die so that this country can live.  He has betrayed this country too many times and he must no longer live … This is too important a subject to let John Humphreys live. Where does the lying end. I’m convinced that it only ends when John Humphreys is cold and stiff … HE MUST DIE, FOR THE LYING TO END. AND THIS IS A LIFE OR DEATH MATTER … I am accusing Humphreys of being a knowing traitor … SO MY NEW CLAIM IS THAT HUMPHREYS WILL NEVER STOP LYING. THAT HE WILL NEVER BE A SAFE PAIR OF HANDS. THAT HE WILL ALWAYS BE A TRAITOR. WHILE HE YET LIVES.”

My first death threat. Now I know that I’m important. A few friends have suggested I take it seriously, and one kindly offered to call his federal police friend who would call Graeme… but I nixed that idea. For his part, Graeme says that it is not a death threat because he doesn’t plan on doing any killing himself. That’s good to hear. But another friend pointed out that the above sentiments might still be considered incitement to violence… which got me thinking about free speech.

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Over 60 years ago Hayek wrote “The Road to Serfdom“, which attempted to glimpse into the future of the western world. He predicted that if a country gave over significant control of it’s economy to central planners, then eventually the country would start to drift away from democracy. In the decades that followed, the UK and the rest of the west steadily gave more economic power to government but remained democratic, and so some concluded that Hayek’s predictions of doom were wrong.

Perhaps they were just premature.

Hayek argued that democracy can be slow and messy, but that economic decisions often need to be made quickly and decisively. If the government controls the economy, then the people have a choice between slow and messy economic decisions, or making the government less democratic so that leaders could “get things done”. As we look at the economic problems in Europe and America today, the lessons of Hayek seem very appropriate.

From American towns to the European countries of Greece and Italy, elected leaders are being replaced by technocrats. With growing debt problems, the idea that some Europeans may start to look for a “strong leader” to make “tough decisions” without having to deal with those “meddling and bumbling politicians” doesn’t sound too outlandish. Even in Australia, we have seen one commentator hint at the idea of suspending democracy so that leaders can take strong action.

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In November next year, Barack Obama will go up against a Republican candidate for the Presidency of the United States, and defacto leader of planet earth. But before then, the Grand Old Party (GOP) of the Republicans will need to pick their candidate, which involves an eight month marathon of rolling mini-elections in 55 States and territories (including Guam and American Samoa) starting in Iowa on 3 January 2012.

While sane people have been ignoring the political circus, election junkies have been closely watching the long campaign as various candidates have come and gone. At the beginning of the year the pundits pontificated as a string of potential candidates — Donald Trump, Sarah Palin, Chris Christie, Rudy Giuliani, Jeb Bush, Paul Ryan, Mitch Daniels, Haley Barbour, and Mike Huckabee — all opted out of the race. Tim Pawlenty said “yes” then “no”. Tease.

And so when debate season rolled around, the field had been narrowed to a rag-tag bunch of about a dozen, with the most prominent being the millionaire Mormon ex-Governor of Massachusetts — Mitt Romney. From the start, Romney has consistently been 1st or 2nd in national polls among GOP voters with about 20-30% support, and he has been seen as the frontrunner due to his decent polling, wealthy friends, establishment support, and high media profile. The race has then been seen as a contest between Romney and “anti-Romney”, a mythical creature who has so far taken four human forms — Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain and now Newt Gingrich. Cain has since dropped out of the race.

(Sadly, the self-described vampire Jonathon Sharkey has also dropped out… and the “rent-is-too-damn-high” candidate Jimmy McMillan has failed to get into the early primaries.)

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The recent report by Four Corners about the live cattle trade to Indonesia has got people talking. The report showed that some Indonesian abattoirs are acting “inhumanely” towards the cattle, where some cows take over three minutes to die (instead of the industry standard 30 seconds) and other cows are beaten and abused. Many scenes from the report were gruesome to watch, and it has stirred a popular backlash against the live animal trade. In response, GetUp started a campaign against live animal exports, and the government has responded.

This debate is framed as being about “animal rights”. But it isn’t. If anybody was honestly determining the rights of animals, surely the first right would be the right not to be killed just so that people could eat their flesh. No honest person would say that “the right to not be punched in the face” comes before “the right to live”. If I told you that there was a guy called Brian… and that one person wanted to beat him up, and another person wanted to kill him and eat him, are you honestly going to say that you think the first guy is doing the greater crime?

What if I told you there was a cow called Brian? This is from the GetUp campaign:

Brian (a cow) did nothing to deserve being hit in the face, whipped, or kicked. Each time this occurred he called out in a way which was heart-wrenching. I swear I could hear him call out ‘why’

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The problem with irresponsible gamblers is the word “irresponsible” not the word “gambler”. The same is true with “irresponsible drinking” or “irresponsible drug-use” or any other irresponsible action. It is not the existence of gambling or alcohol or drugs that create irresponsible behaviour. And yet the nanny-state campaigners want to punish the product instead of addressing the underlying problem. With wowsers Nick Xenophon and Andrew Wilkie in parliament, and the government in trouble with the carbon tax, the pressure is growing for the government to “do something” about poker machines.

It’s easy to attack poker machines. I don’t like them. I enjoy playing texas hold’em poker for the judgement, excitement and social element… none of which I get from poker machines. But personal preference is besides the point. In a free society, people should be free to pursue their own hobbies and activities, and I shouldn’t force my preferences on others. People who use poker machines (like smokers and shooters) are the new whipping boys of politics. While “progressive” politicians love to wax lyrical about defending minorities, they only seem to defend fashionable minorities. And while trendy lefties will advertise the moral superiority of their tolerance, they only seem to tolerate groups which they actually like.

People who enjoy playing poker machines are seen as the “wrong sort of minority” and therefore they apparently deserve no tolerance.

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People are losing faith in capitalism. Even in America, only 53% of people believe that capitalism is better than socialism. For under-30s, that number is only 37%.

Despite the incredible gains in health, wealth and happiness that have been correlated with the free-market system, compared with the relative failures of planned economies, many people are turning away from capitalism and embracing the security blanket of big government control.

The free market has an image problem. While the government has representatives who can get in front of a camera and with a solemn face tell you how much they care about you and your family, the “market” is an abstract concept which is hard to understand and has no opinion about anything, including your family.

The great advantage of the government is that it can claim good intentions. The market doesn’t have any intentions. Consequently, it is easy for some people assume that the government is “nicer” than the market. But poor people can’t eat good intentions.

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I’m exploring maths, and my first step is Gödel’s incompleteness theorem as explained through the eyes of Douglas Hofstadter’s famous book “Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid“. I still have a few chapters to go… but so far it’s a good read, and I find myself particularly looking forward to more chats between the Tortoise and Achilles. The book has given me a greater appreciation for Bach, and especially Escher… but strangely, not so much for Gödel.

Some background.

First, think about the sentence “this sentence is false”. It the sentence true? If so, it must be false. But if it is false, then it must be true. But if it is true, then it must be false. But if it is false… you get the idea. It’s a paradox of language caused by a self-referential infinite loop.

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Academics go through fads just like everybody else. At the moment, one of the new crazes is “happiness economics”, which is getting quite popular among leftists because it allows them to justify all manner of taxes, regulations and new government programs.

Another fad with perhaps more substance and less political partisanship is “evolutionary economics” which focuses on the process of economic interaction rather than the outcome of market equilibrium. In truth, this “new” approach isn’t new at all, but a re-badging of Austrian and institutional economics which were developed a century ago.

Dr Jason Potts is a leading evolutionary economist, and he was kind enough to let me read through a draft of his latest paper which brings these two fads together — evolutionary happiness economics.

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Last week Aidan McLindon and Rob Messenger quit the Liberal National Party (LNP), and have decided to stay in the Queensland parliament as independents. I don’t know the people involved, and I don’t know the background, so I’m not going to comment on that.

But one thing that did catch my attention was Aidan’s “seven principles” of government. In summary, his “philosophy” is that the government should help people and do good stuff. Amazingly, those fluffy buzz-words were actually reported with a straight face. I think Aidan missed a few, so I thought I’d help him out…

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