The Federal Government’s recent court action to constrain The Australian Financial Review reporting on subsidies to an unsustainable automotive industry is a violation of all our rights.
Mahatma Gandhi is quoted as saying ‘the state is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence to which it owes its very existence’ This quote is used by pacifists, anarchists, Libertarians and Austrian school economists to highlight the coercive evil at the heart of the state and its inevitable violent consequences.
What Gandhi actual said was “the individual has a soul, the state is a soulless machine……” The recent behaviour of Australia’s political crew aboard the ship of state has done little to persuade us of their fitness to serve as the moral hand upon the tiller.
A Pandora ’s Box of coercive force, the state exerts an irresistible attractive pull on those who would hold to themselves the discretion to direct its power and its tithe. Whether born of the left or right members of the political class share one central motivating force. That force is to wield the power and harvest of coercion. Whether doing good or serving self-interest politicians on the simple spectrum of left through right are spending without making. The rivers of gold that flow from Pandora’s Box have been cleverly renamed revenue to confuse it with the legitimate act of receiving in return for value created.
The oppression of the individual’s rights to freedom and liberty is sanctioned by 51% of the ill-considered. A symbiotic pact, of the entitled and those who seek to serve the soulless machine of state in return for the transient power to award without the obligation to create, curtails the enlightenment dream of liberating human potential.
Democracy’s history, of righteous acts of war, oppression, and the pursuit of special interest at the cost of all, lives behind a veil of franchise. That xenophobic pact of preclusion is common to every democracy leaving it vulnerable to the soulless pursuit of the justified ends. Universal franchise has always been a lie. The oppression of someone by the voting masses is the price we pay for self-justification. We avert our eyes from the inconvenient truth that it is not refugees, gay couples and recreational drug users alone that pay the price of our Faustian deal. The soul of every individual is at risk of being diminished.
Ideology no longer acts as the rampart of values to defend the politician’s soul from the two pronged assault of self-interest and the rent seeker. Who stands watch over our precious liberty and the future? Our children’s involuntary financial support for the car industry makes clear the oppression of the disenfranchised. As The Economist recently recorded young people are expressing their lack of interest in the automobile in record numbers with rapidly falling rates of application for driver’s licences around the world. And yet our elected guardians have redistributed the wellbeing of future voters to automotive workers in unprecedented acts of largesse.
At its core this is not an economic issue. Buried under the blanket of our 3 billion dollars being redistributed to cover the cracks in a political façade is an existential question. Who will stand the ground for the market, and peace, freedom and liberty it protects? Unshackled from the oppression of church and monarch, 18th century educated merchants and entrepreneurs championed an alliance with Freedom and Liberty.
As Ayn Rand said “Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision.” Today, more than ever our prosperity, liberty and freedoms need a new generation of guardians. Australia desperately needs people of courage enlightened, openly self-interested, and armed with nothing but their own vision to stand and speak truth to the power of the soulless machine and its pragmatic allies on the left and the right. They just need to be willing to withstand the slings and arrows of Wayne Swan’s faux class war.
Your first sentence doesn’t make much sense to me. Maybe it needs an edit?
mondo
19 Oct 12 at 10:54 am
Yep.
Sinclair Davidson
19 Oct 12 at 10:57 am
If you’re looking for things we shouldn’t be spending money on there are plenty, but the car isn’t one of them.
How about the guy who climbed a power pylon with the intent of stealing copper wire, got himself electrocuted and badly burned, fell to earth to be found by a passing truck driver. Then taken to the city where all the resources of the hospital are being mustered in order to save his miserable life?
blogstrop
19 Oct 12 at 11:13 am
What?!!!!
I’ve heard nothing about this. That can’t be right. No Australian government would do such a thing.
dd
19 Oct 12 at 11:33 am
It was mentioned by Combet on Insiders last week. The show that you find unwatchable.
Combet explained that the material was obtained via clerical mistake in response to FOI request. The reporting in the AFR does not dispute this.
The issue is the material contains “commercial in confidence” stuff.
steve from brisbane
19 Oct 12 at 11:46 am
More proof, if any were needed, that young people are increasingly less intelligent.
This state of affairs is entirely the fault of an “education system” that demands low expectations and instils a sense of guilt about western technological advancement.
It is utterly disgraceful and needless to say, something that should in no way be celebrated.
Rabz
19 Oct 12 at 11:51 am
One way to tame the state would be for all citizens to have an equal share in participating in government- don’t leave it to the politicians! By this, I mean that if you wanted to be a citizen, preferable of a canton or local council, then you would need to perform some community service (militia training, or fire-brigade duty, or other voluntary action) for eleven months of the year, and then you, and all those who had joined in the same month as you, would be the local government, reviewing all the laws of your county. we could grade it by length of citizenship, so the citizens with the most years of continuous service automatically become the leaders of their month. No politicians, no promises to expand government (no elections), minimal state duties- we’d be voting directly about ourselves, so we’d have an incentive to keep the state small.
Any other ideas for taming the state? I call this version Co-Autonomy, with the motto ‘Share Power’.
Nuke Gray
19 Oct 12 at 12:07 pm
I shouldn’t be relying only on the government for information on what the government’s up to.
Yeah, I bet it does.
dd
19 Oct 12 at 12:36 pm
awesome piece, Andrew, well done!
Julie Novak
19 Oct 12 at 1:00 pm
Any time you hear “Commercial in Confidence” you know the taxpayer is being screwed. It was a big favourite in WA during the ALP WA Inc years. Expect it to be heard around desalination plant contracts for the next decade or so.
H B Bear
19 Oct 12 at 1:12 pm
I actually blame Howard for this. He had 13 years to fix the tax system, cut spending, red tape and the public service.
He really achieved very little.
We need a Reagan !
Max
19 Oct 12 at 1:35 pm
You have 50% youth unemployment in Spain right now.
Maybe the decline in applications is because a lot of youth don’t have jobs;
a lot have no prospect of ever having jobs given the lost generation emerging in the Club Med economies and
therefore cannot contemplate car ownership as an option at any time in the foreseeable future to justify the cost of the training;
some populations have crossed the demographic hump into decline already, such as Japan and Russia – so the pool of new entrants is shrinking; and
driving is so f***ing expensive maybe it is just unaffordable and a bike is a better option in places like – for example – Amsterdam ?
Plus – in the places where there are growing numbers of young people – how formalised are the licensing requirements ?
What is the trend in Lagos Nigeria right now ?
The Economist seems to have an agenda or two.
Myrrdin Seren
19 Oct 12 at 3:43 pm
“…Australia’s idelogical crisis”
O !
( sorry Doomlord, surrounded by Gen Y ‘why do we need to spell and use grammar ?!?’ I have become a tad annoying about this subject )
Myrrdin Seren
19 Oct 12 at 3:46 pm
You forgot something – teaching idiots to count. 1996-2007 is only 11 years. And didn’t Hawke and Keating have 13 years to fix all that beforehand? Don’t we hear ad nauseum about what great reformers they were?
Don’t forget, though, about the coalition balancing the books, establishing the future fund, carrying forward a surplus, you know, small stuff like that.
blogstrop
19 Oct 12 at 7:06 pm
“commercial in confidence”
I’d like to propose that any individual, business or company doing business with the government should have the arrangement appear as a matter of public record. Including supply of goods and services, subsidies etc.
Don’t like it?
Don’t take the taxpayers’dollar.
Eyrie
19 Oct 12 at 7:19 pm
Heard Condoleezza Rice give a pretty solid speech outlining the responsibilities of the State and those that cannot be assumed by the State today while at GLS.
Seems to be enjoying no longer being in the hot seat.
But basically outlining in general all the principles of democratic government, which as noted here are being turfed by our current government.
DriftForge
19 Oct 12 at 8:12 pm