justice – Page 39

Could The Government Fund Itself With A Georgist Tax?

One of the great political problems is how to fund a government. Governments cannot realistically be funded by donations, so they have to levy taxes. No matter how you slice it, levying taxes on the people will always create discontentment, and not levying them is often no better. This essay discusses whether Georgism might work for New Zealand.

Georgism is a political philosophy named after American theorist Henry George. The essence of it is the belief that, while people should own the value they produce themselves, economic value derived from land (often including natural resources and natural opportunities) should belong equally to all members of society. Income provided by things that are part of the natural world, and which do not depend on human activity to have value, should be the common property of the citizenry.

Georgist ideas were very popular a century ago, before the rentiers used their ownership of the apparatus of propaganda to persuade the population that government should be funded by taxes on labour and consumption. Since then, the mainstream media has normalised the idea of taxing labour and consumption, mostly by not allowing any discussion of Georgism, and by restricting discussion to a narrow range of pro-capitalist models.

Alt-centrism finds much in common with Georgist ideas. Georgism is a very alt-centrist approach to funding a Government, because it rejects the Establishment, and their focus on taxing labour. Georgism stands directly opposed to the Establishment because it is precisely the Establishment who profits the most heavily from charging rent. In taxing the Establishment the most heavily, Georgism accords with alt-centrism the most closely.

An Australian study suggested that heavy taxation of rents could provide up to 87% of the funding necessary to run the Australian Government. The remaining money could be raised according to a similar philosophy – i.e. it could tax other properties whose value did not depend on human labour inputs (such as oil and mineral royalties), or it could charge fees to use common property such as the electromagnetic spectrum and fishery stocks.

Georgism rejects the idea of levying taxes on economic activity that is the result of a direct human labour input. The idea is that tax on ground rents ought to be enough to fund the Government, and therefore that taxes on income would no longer be necessary. For a modern state like New Zealand, the numbers don’t quite add up, but a Georgist tax could be enough to slash income taxes.

According to the New Zealand Household Expenditure Statistics for 2016, rent costs comprised 31.8% of New Zealand’s total weekly housing costs, which were themselves 25.6% of the total weekly household expenditure of $1,300.

31.8% of 25.6% of $1,300 is $105, the average weekly household rent expenditure. Multiplying this by 52 weeks equals $5,460 every year per household on rent. Multiply this by the 1,500,000 households in New Zealand, and we arrive at a figure of $8,190,000,000 charged in rent money every year. This is just from household rents – it does not include commercial rent, rural rent, mineral royalties, banking license fees or fishing licenses.

The Australian study linked above found that the total resource rents of Australia were over two times the size of just the household rents – in fact, household rents are only about 40% of the total resource rents charged in Australia. $8.2 billion divided by 40% gives us a figure in the ballpark of $20 billion dollars every year.

The total operating costs of the New Zealand Government run at about $76 billion per year, so a Georgist tax of 90% on resource rents wouldn’t cover more than a quarter of this.

However, it’s notable that individual income taxes bring in about $37 billion every year to the New Zealand Treasury. A Georgist tax of 90% on all resource rents would therefore provide the leeway to slash individual income taxes by a half.

Another way to look at it is that New Zealanders pay tax of around $7,400 on income up to $48,000. So if there are 2,500,000 taxpayers in New Zealand, this suggests that a Georgist tax on resource rents in New Zealand could replace all income taxes up to $48,000 per annum.

Eco-Georgism is a variant of Georgism that gives special consideration to the environmental challenges facing humanity this century. This involves heavy emphasis on making polluters pay for the externalities that they introduce to the environment. This would combine the heavy tax on resource rents discussed above with e.g. carbon taxes.

21st century Georgism for New Zealand, then, would be the political philosophy of funding government activity through two primary means: heavy taxes on resource rents, and heavy taxes on all activities that cause environmental destruction.

In particular, ground rents on urban locations, such as city-centre shops and rental apartments, would be taxed the hardest. This is because such economic activity amounts to little more than parasitism. Shifting the burden of taxation to this kind of extortionate activity, and shifting it away from labour, will also make the economy not only more fair, but also more efficient.

If you enjoyed reading this essay, you can get a compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2018 from Amazon for Kindle or Amazon for CreateSpace (for international readers), or TradeMe (for Kiwis). A compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2017 is also available.

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The Second Tenet of Anarcho-Homicidalism

The Second Tenet of Anarcho-Homicidalism is known as the Iron Tenet. It’s called this because, like the Clay Tenet, it lays down a cold law of human moral reality: you’re allowed to kill anyone trying to enslave you. This essay takes a closer look.

The Iron Tenet is the step after the Clay Tenet. Once it’s established that violence is the basis of self-defence, the next step is to determine when it’s permissible to use such violence. The Iron Tenet lays down the iron-hard law that it’s always morally permissible to kill anyone trying to enslave you – but the flipside is that you’re never allowed to kill anyone not trying to enslave you.

Enslavement is the same thing as death, because to be enslaved is for one’s life to be dependent on the whims of another. Therefore, everyone has the inherent right to take any measures necessary to avoid enslavement – up to, and including, killing the enslaver.

This means that if someone tries to assert a position of authority over you, and you have not consented to it, they are trying to make you their slave, which means that you have the right to kill them.

The beauty of anarcho-homicidalism is that, if everyone agreed to the four tenets of it, abuses of power would be minimised. Tyrants and dictators, knowing themselves to be subject to the Iron Tenet, would be extremely cautious before trying to subjugate a population of anarcho-homicidalists. They would rightly live in fear of the people they tried to rule over.

This flipside to the Iron Tenet, as mentioned above, means that you can’t kill anyone who isn’t in a position of power over you, or who is not trying to assert a position of authority over you. This means that certain actions taken by individuals in the past, although they might bear similarities with legitimate acts of anarcho-homicidalism, are not legitimate themselves.

For instance, killing immigrants simply because they are immigrants cannot be an act of anarcho-homicidalism. The Christchurch mosque shootings did not target people who were trying to assert special authority over anyone. An attempted synagogue shooting this week was also not an act of anarcho-homicidalism.

Anarcho means “without rulers”. Therefore, you cannot homicidalise a person who has not set themselves up as ruler over you. An everyday person at a mosque or synagogue, although they adhere to an evil ideology that seeks domination, is not an enslaver. Following an ideology of hate is not enough, because the correct first course of action in such an instance is to persuade a person to give that ideology up, not to attack them.

There is no doubt, however, that people who follow ideologies of hate are led by enslavers. These leaders might be legitimate targets – politicians who push ideologies of hate are legitimate targets, if anyone is. The typical pleb at the bottom of the dominance hierarchy, however, is not a legitimate target for anarcho-homicidalist action, on account of that they don’t rule anything.

The assassination of a politician like Walter Luebcke, on the other hand, may have been a legitimate act.

Luebcke was an outspokenly open-borders politician, and this led to him being killed in protest earlier this year by a German man named Stephen Ernst. The killing of Luebcke was not categorically different to the assassination of British politician Jo Cox, who was also outspoken in favour of open borders. Like Luebcke, Cox was assassinated by a working-class man who stood to lose heavily from further mass immigration.

Both of these politicians died because of their support for open borders.

Supporting open borders is to support genocide. The reason why the subject evokes so much rage is because it’s the same thing as supporting the destruction of the nation, and the identity of the people of that nation. This is a crime under UN law, which defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.”

Supporting open borders is to support genocide because, without a border, no national, ethnic, racial or religious group can maintain the necessary integrity to continue existing. It’s patently obvious that if a nation such as New Zealand would let ten million immigrants in it would no longer be New Zealand. Therefore, the support of open borders is an act committed with intent to destroy a national group.

Luebcke was trying to enslave the German people by shackling their nation to the designs of the globalist elite, who see Germany as little more than one great car factory to be populated by the cheapest labour possible. Cox was trying to enslave the British people to those same globalist elite, who also have designs for Britain, and who don’t care at all if the British people object to them.

If Brenton Tarrant and Stephan B. had targeted people trying to enslave them, as Stephan Ernst and Thomas Mair did, there would be little cause to criticise their actions. As it is, there is no reason to consider either man different to a common murderer.

The Iron Tenet has so much power because, if its adoption were widespread, it would make any putative enslaver think twice before going through with their evil actions. If politicians understood that certain actions were considered enslavement attempts by their subjects, and that those subjects believed themselves to have the right to kill in order to avoid enslavement, the abuses committed by those politicians would be minimal.

This is why it can be fairly said that anarcho-homicidalism is an ideology of peace.

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Our Cruelty To Each Other Is What Keeps Them In Power

With another election fast approaching, many are taking the time to cry about the current New Zealand Government and how terrible it is. Few of these people are willing to take the time to consider that the alternative is at least as bad. As this essay will examine, they keep us like so many puppets on strings, and our cruelty to each other is what enables them to do so.

There’s no denying that Jacinda “The Unready” Ardern is a terrible Prime Minister. She looks and sounds every bit like an inexperienced young woman who would rather be at home suckling a child than trying to lead a modern nation. Making emotion-driven decisions with no apparent philosophical grounding whatsoever, she comes across as a horribly out-of-her-depth Marxist puppet.

Ardern rightly comes in for a lot of criticism, but what her critics neglect to acknowledge is that she only got in to begin with because the alternative was shit. This can’t be overemphasised. It was the utter shitness of the Fifth National Government – their hamfisted incompetence and psychopathic lack of empathy for the nation’s disadvantaged – that caused Winston Peters to finally say ‘Enough!’ and throw his lot in with Labour.

If the National Party hadn’t neglected the mentally ill by negligently underfunding the mental health system – something that was reflected in the nation’s suicide rate – they might have won enough votes to keep power. If they hadn’t proven themselves incompetent to deal with issues like medicinal cannabis law reform – something that saw African nations like Zimbabwe surpass us – they might have won enough votes to keep power.

Many on the right like to bitch about smacking, as if abusing a child was an inherent right that was granted with being a parent. These people have no respect for how appalling the rest of us find it. Society at large is also responsible for cleaning up the psychological damage caused by the trauma that smacking inflicts.

Again, it’s not reasonable to demand the right to abuse children and then complain when someone who opposes this gets voted into power. The right’s own cruelty, and their own stubborn, arrogant refusal to acknowledge that their cruelty is cruelty, gave the power to the left to put Ardern in charge.

By the same token, however, neither will the left have the right to complain when the National Party inevitably takes power again.

When the Labour Party decided to double the refugee quota to 1,500, they consigned tens of thousands of New Zealand women to the lifelong trauma of being a victim of sexual assault or rape. They did this in the name of wanting to appear “anti-racist” – in other words, to virtue signal.

Labour’s decision this week to lift restrictions on refugees coming from the Middle East and Africa was the sort of stupidity that will see many people turn away from them. The reason for those perfectly reasonable safeguards was the appalling rate of sex and violence crimes committed by men from the Middle East and Africa. The restrictions – in place since 2009 – will have had the effect of preventing hundreds, if not thousands of rapes.

What sort of evil would expose thousands of innocents to the depredations of people like Mohammad Farah, just for political capital?

Farah, who has sexually assaulted a string of women since coming to New Zealand as a refugee from Somalia in 2000, has repeatedly expressed the attitude that women owe him sexual favours – and he shows no sign of repenting. Why would he repent, when this attitude is common in his part of the world and is probably held by many of his male peers?

The Labour Party move will open the borders to more unrepentant sexual predators. More New Zealand women will get sexually assaulted or raped in the street, in local parks, at the swimming pool or in their homes. Grooming gangs will start up, preying on working-class Kiwi children of all races. Critics of the measures to open borders to the worst of the world will be pilloried, and threats to revoke their rights to free speech will be made.

Would it be any wonder, then, if vulnerable and marginalised Kiwi voters, demoralised by such insane moves, elected not to vote next year, and did so in sufficient numbers so that National came back to power? Simon Bridges (or Judith Collins) might well end up being another ignorant, cruel, out-of-touch autocrat, but they will only get away with it because of Labour’s own ignorant cruelty.

The only permanent solution is one based around genuine compassion for our own peers and neighbours. If we had the wit and will to take care of our own problems, rather than crying out to politicians like baby birds in a nest, there would be no reason to subject ourselves to the cruelties of the ruling class.

Labour can only get away with their bullshit because National neglected the mentally ill, the homeless and medicinal cannabis users. National will only get away with their bullshit because of Labour’s stupidity in opening the borders to cultures that believe women owe men sexual favours. If we Kiwis would govern ourselves correctly, with a long-term view informed by accurate science and genuine solidarity, we wouldn’t need either pack of scumbags.

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What The “Thug’s Veto” Means For New Zealand

Further confirmation that the New Zealand Justice System is comprised of arse-licking cowards was delivered by this week’s verdict in favour of the Auckland Council and Phil Goff, who had last year banned a couple of Canadian speakers from speaking at council-owned venues. Despite the fact that the ban was clearly a breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, the New Zealand High Court let them get away with it. This article discusses what this decision means for New Zealand.

It seems when the men and women of our Justice System aren’t locking up cannabis growers for years while letting repeat sexual marauders go free, they’re busy undermining our God-given and natural human rights.

New Zealanders have the right to free expression and the right to freely share opinions. This right is not only granted by the Will of God, but it’s also written into our Bill of Rights Act, Section 14 of which reads: “Everyone has the right to freedom of expression, including the freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and opinions of any kind in any form.”

We also have the right to freedom of assembly (viz. Section 16: “Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly.”) and the right to association (viz. Section 17: “Everyone has the right to freedom of association.”) and the right “to adopt and to hold opinions without interference” (Section 13).

Therefore, New Zealanders had the right to attend the Molyneux-Southern talk, and the move to ban it was in violation of those rights.

The High Court decision clearing the Auckland Council and Goff from any wrongdoing sets a very worrying precedent. It’s now official in New Zealand that if you want to silence someone, all you have to do is threaten violence, and that person will be kept quiet out of safety concerns, and then the courts will take your side.

This is not the first time such a thing has happened. In Nelson last year, author Bruce Moon had been due to give a talk at the Nelson Public Library, but it was cancelled on account of threats made to library staff.

Neither those whose threats cancelled the Molyneux-Southern event nor those whose threats cancelled the Moon talk were ever prosecuted. This is astonishing – and deeply worrying – because both acts were undeniably acts of terrorism. Using the threat of violence to deny New Zealanders the right to assemble peacefully and to peacefully share ideas is terrorism by any honest standard.

What these two cases have in common is that, in both cases, the alt-left were the terrorists and they were motivated by a desire to silence those they perceive as political enemies. Central to alt-left mentality is a persecution mania revolving around a supposed Nazi resurgence. This persecution mania leads to alt-leftists justifying all kinds of abuses in the name of the greater good (yes, history repeats).

The worry for many, especially those who understand how free speech is absolutely vital to the correct functioning of civilisation, is that the cowardly High Court decision will give the greenlight to further threats of violence. Now that it’s possible to silence your political enemies by threatening violence, more of society’s dregs will be motivated to do it.

This is of particular concern to us, being a media enterprise that champions free speech. VJM Publishing, despite a committed adherence to alt-centrism, is in no way exempt from being targeted by the alt-left, as our Fan Mail column proves (we have also been targeted by the Human Rights Commission). Therefore, a High Court ruling encouraging violence against those perceived to be enemies of the alt-left must be cause for concern.

All of this is part of a wider leftist rejection of free speech as a tool that upholds oppression. As those who identify with the left continue to sink into Slave Culture, they will become ever more resentful of those with the ability to freely discuss intellectual ideas about political issues that concern them. This resentment, coupled with the High Court’s approval for threats of violence, means that future attacks on free speech are likely.

Unfortunately, as this column has previously mentioned, the left doesn’t care about free speech, or much else to do with freedom. They have happily drifted into authoritarianism, and they now fight for that. This week’s victory for the authoritarian left is a loss for New Zealand. The rest of us can only hope that the judgment is overturned on appeal.

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