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Policy: Autumn 2011

9 comments

The latest issue of Policy is out. It includes articles by Sukrit Sabhlok on how to curb foreign adventurism, Jessica Brown on population, John Hyde Page on Project Wickenby and our own Julie Novak on the size of government and Judith Sloan on the PC. Julie is responding to this article.

Written by Sinclair Davidson

March 31st, 2011 at 11:52 am

Posted in Uncategorized

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9 Responses to 'Policy: Autumn 2011'

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  1. Thanks for flagging this, Sinclair

    Nice to see my son’s article published in Policy. I did get a chance to look at a draft and I support the underlying idea – of democratic consent for ‘war’.

    However, I’m afraid we need a proper analysis of the theory of the state and individual to classify something as “adventurism” (for instance), and others as a shared concern for our fellow beings. By all means attacking other nations in order to seize territory or colonise them is a serious issue. A constitution could forbid it without 80 per cent majority, but assisting oppressed people at a minimal cost to one’s own economy, is consistent with the higher ideals of freedom. Such action could be authorised through a general act of parliament that sets out appropriate constraints and limitations, without requiring the executive to constantly go to parliament to see a vote.

    The world must move rapidly when tyrants like Gaddafi start massacring their people. E.g. see: http://sabhlokcity.com/2011/03/india-should-bomb-the-hell-out-of-gaddafis-armed-forces/

    Regards
    Sanjeev

    Sanjeev Sabhlok

    31 Mar 11 at 12:08 pm

  2. dinner table discussions at the Sabhlok household must be interesting :-)

    jtfsoon

    31 Mar 11 at 1:40 pm

  3. Sanjeev:

    The world must move rapidly when tyrants like Gaddafi start massacring their people

    Oh yea… not for nothing but your kid’s been advocating a hate America line for the past 8 odd year peddling how evil the US was to attack Saddam and the Taliban.

    How do you add up you own position on Libya to that held by your kid…or you don’t agree?

    JC

    31 Mar 11 at 1:44 pm

  4. Good to see a sensible Sabhlok comment. I’m afraid Sukrit is thoroughly anti-American and quite pacifist these days. He claims to be libertarian but ignores the fact that this refers to the rights and liberties of individuals, not countries. Sitting by while your fellow humans get slaughtered because they are within a different national boundary does not compute.

    DavidLeyonhjelm

    31 Mar 11 at 2:59 pm

  5. Sanjeev

    As his dad perhaps you could knock some sense into the kid, by giving him a few decent clips across the head.

    JC

    31 Mar 11 at 3:32 pm

  6. Maybe Australia shouldn’t be involved (I don’t agree), but this is how the UN ought to work.

    .

    31 Mar 11 at 3:35 pm

  7. Sanjeev: Do you think the armed forces who do what you want should be funded through voluntary means, or via taxation and the threat of further deprivations of citizen’s liberties? And one more thing: compare what you are suggesting with Iraq, Afghanistan, etc, etc. Is there nothing to learn? What do you suggest to do differently to get a better result this time?

    Jason, JC, David: You guys are too soft and pacifist. Cf. http://economics.org.au/2010/08/principled-foreign-policy-options-reinvade-or-shut-up-and-get-out/.

    Benjamin Marks

    31 Mar 11 at 11:46 pm

  8. Interesting thoughts, everyone. Thanks.

    I do not interfere in, nor influence Sukrit’s thinking. I expect him to be an independent, critical thinker. I’m still learning, so I don’t have much to teach.

    Re: Benjamin’s question: “Do you think the armed forces who do what you want should be funded through voluntary means, or via taxation and the threat of further deprivations of citizen’s liberties?”

    I’ve suggested parliamentary consent for such armed action. Duly authorised action by a parliament is usually implemented through taxation. However, parliaments should be restrained by constitutions from mindless intervention – in the interest of protecting the freedoms of their own citizens. No parliament should have a right to make a blanket demand on our pockets. Light handed approaches are needed.

    Re:”compare what you are suggesting with Iraq, Afghanistan, etc, etc. Is there nothing to learn?”

    Counterfactuals and hindsight excluded, the fact is that at the time of intervention in Iraq, there seemed (to me, as a common reader of newspapers) to be serious evidence of potential WMDs. In Afghanistan, the objective of neutralising Al-Qaeda seemed unexceptionable, given 11/9/2001.

    I also believe, however, that an approach that spends hundreds of billions of dollars on such “defensive” wars is not going to get us a civilised world.

    It is far better to spend a few millions (or even less) in a systematic promotion of the concepts of liberty. See, for instance: http://sabhlokcity.com/2009/10/banishing-the-concept-of-foreign-aid/. The nonsensical and arrogant waste called “foreign aid” should be scrapped and all such funds allocated purely to the spread of the message of liberty.

    Muslims who advocate liberal views should be actively supported, instead of berating the few lunatics who are naturally to be found in any group, and creating a vicious cycle of despair and unrest among the Muslim community.

    Therefore the most durable solution (including to problems such as China and North Korea) involve the spread of the ideas of liberty. I’ve tried my best to suggest this simple message whenever any opportunity arises (including now, on this blog!), but Western “thinkers” are too short-sighted to understand this. Very opinionated I find them. Unwilling to listen to simple suggestions that will actually save billions of dollars! More into dirty games with CIAs and the lot, and geopolitics.

    No amount of direct intervention in Iraq or Afghanistan (no matter how necessary) will increase Western security. Let that be very clearly understood.

    Regards
    Sanjeev

    Sanjeev Sabhlok

    5 Apr 11 at 8:30 pm

  9. Just some quotes someone/anyone might like to respond to. Cheers.

    “If, in fact, we cast a cold and logical eye on the theory of “limited government,” we can see it for the chimera that it really is, for the unrealistic and inconsistent “Utopia” that it holds forth. In the first place, there is no reason to assume that a compulsory monopoly of violence, once acquired by the “Jones family” or by any State rulers, will remain “limited” to protection of person and property. Certainly, historically, no government has long remained “limited” in this way. And there are excellent reasons to suppose that it never will. First, once the cancerous principle of coercion-of coerced revenue and compulsory monopoly of violence-is established and legitimated at the very heart of society, there is every reason to suppose that this precedent will be expanded and embellished. In particular, it is in the economic interest of the State rulers to work actively for such expansion. The more the coercive powers of the State are expanded beyond the cherished limits of the laissez-faire theorists, the greater the power and pelf accruing to the ruling caste operating the State apparatus. Hence, the ruling caste, eager to maximize its power and wealth, will stretch State power-and will encounter only feeble opposition, given the legitimacy it and its allied intellectuals are gaining, and given the lack of any institutional free-market channels of resistance to the government’s monopoly of coercion and the power of ultimate decision-making.” ~ MNR (http://mises.org/rothbard/ethics/twentythree.asp)

    “Another inner contradiction of the theory of laissez-faire government deals again with taxation. For if government is to be limited to “protection” of person and property, and taxation is to be “limited” to providing that service only, then how is the government to decide how much protection to provide and how much taxes to levy? For, contrary to the limited gov­ernment theory, “protection” is no more a collective, one-lump “thing” than any other good or service in society. Suppose, for example, that we might offer a competing theory, that government should be “limited” to supplying clothing free to all of its citizens. But this would scarcely be any sort of viable limit, apart from other flaws in the theory. For how much clothing, and at what cost? Must everyone be supplied with Balendaga originals, for example? And who is to decide how much and what quality of clothing each person is to receive? Indeed, “protection” could conceivably imply anything from one policeman for an entire country, to supplying an armed bodyguard and a tank for every citizen-a proposition which would bankrupt the society posthaste. But who is to decide on how much protection, since it is undeniable that every person would be better protected from theft and assault if provided with an armed bodyguard than if he is not? On the free market, decisions on how much and what quality of any good or service should be supplied to each person are made by means of voluntary purchases by each individual; but what criterion can be applied when the decision is made by government? The answer is none at all, and such governmental decisions can only be purely arbitrary.” ~ MNR (http://mises.org/rothbard/ethics/twentythree.asp)

    “A tax-funded protection agency is a contradiction in terms – an expropriating property protector – and will inevitably lead to more taxes and less protection. Even if, as some – classical liberal – statists have proposed, a government limited its activities exclusively to the protection of pre-existing private property rights, the further question of how much security to produce would arise. Motivated (like everyone else) by self-interest and the disutility of labor, but endowed with the unique power to tax, a government agent’s answer will invariably be the same: To maximize expenditures on protection – and almost all of a nation’s wealth can conceivably be consumed by the cost of protection – and at the same time to minimize the production of protection.” ~ Hans-Hermann Hoppe (http://www.lewrockwell.com/hoppe/hoppe7.html)

    MichaelC

    7 Apr 11 at 8:24 pm

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