Michael is a co-founder and director of Liberty Australia. He is currently studying at Griffith University, doing a Bachelor of International Business / Bachelor of Business with majors in Management and International Relations.
Michael is passionate about ethics, political philosophy, economics and finance. In his spare time, he is also interested in cycling, rock climbing and music.
Over the past few months there has been much discussion in the media about the Queensland government’s plan to "privatise" and sell off the states “assets”. The public assets that are still yet to be sold are the Port of Brisbane lease, Queensland Motorways lease and the Abbot Point Coal Terminal lease. Queensland Rail National has launched its share pre-sale registration, but the share offering has not yet been made.
The largest outcry against the governments proposals comes from the special interest groups that will be directly affected. Naturally the loudest and most vocally organised are the unions. They're mad as hell but sadly, for all the wrong reasons.
The intuitive concerns voiced by the public are often well placed. They sense something is not right about this whole process but unfortunately guided by a public debate that offers only false choices, who can really fault them for falling into the trap of blaming the market as the mechanism that will fail, as opposed to government and state intervention which already has. As pointed out in this article, the general concern from the public appears to be that “[they] are already deeply suspicious about privatisations after electricity asset sales led to higher retail prices.” Read more
"Armed with this knowledge, let him proceed in the spirit of radical long-run optimism that one of the great figures in the history of libertarian thought, Randolph Bourne, correctly identified as the spirit of youth. Let Bourne’s stirring words serve also as the guidepost for the spirit of liberty:
[Y]outh is the incarnation of reason pitted against the rigidity of tradition; youth puts the remorseless questions to everything that is old and established – Why? What is this thing good for? And when it gets the mumbled, evasive answers of the defenders it applies its own fresh, clean spirit of reason to institutions, customs and ideas and finding them stupid, inane or poisonous, turns instinctively to overthrow them and build in their place the things with which its visions teem.
Youth is the leaven that keeps all these questioning, testing attitudes fermenting in the world. If it were not for this troublesome activity of youth, with its hatred of sophisms and glosses, its insistence on things as they are, society would die from sheer decay. It is the policy of the older generation as it gets adjusted to the world to hide away the unpleasant things where it can, or preserve a conspiracy of silence and an elaborate pretense that they do not exist. But meanwhile the sores go on festering just the same. Youth is the drastic antiseptic. It drags skeletons from closets and insists that they be explained. No wonder the older generation fears and distrusts the younger. Youth is the avenging Nemesis on its trail.
Our elders are always optimistic in their views of the present, pessimistic in their views of the future; youth is pessimistic toward the present and gloriously hopeful for the future. And it is this hope which is the lever of progress – one might say, the only lever of progress.
The secret of life is then that this fine youthful spirit shall never be lost. Out of the turbulence of youth should come this fine precipitate – a sane, strong, aggressive spirit of daring and doing. It must be a flexible, growing spirit, with a hospitality to new ideas and a keen insight into experience. To keep one’s reactions warm and true is to have found the secret of perpetual youth, and perpetual youth is salvation."
"The move could have a major impact on Queensland contests, due to the state's high informal vote rate.
The chairman of the parliamentary committee examining last year's high number of informal votes, federal Labor MP Daryl Melham, wants to introduce a "safety net" to halve the number of votes deemed informal in federal elections."
The unquestioned premise here is - why is a high number of informal votes a bad thing? Unfortunately there is no way to officially determine the number of protest votes versus those who simply cannot fill out a ballot form properly. Read more
Well, just about everything! Following on from my previous post about intellectual property called "Pirates Under Pressure", the below video is a great illustration of how even on its own terms - Hollywood and the big business entertainment industry fail to live up to their own standards. I present:
The above clip focuses on the movie industry where the point made is that:
"George Lucas collected materials, he combined them, he transformed them. Without the films that proceeded it, there could be no Star Wars. Creation requires influence, everything we make is a remix of existing creations, our lives and the lives of others."
What kind of world would it be if the above was not possible, because an individual can own ideas? Is this not what copyright and intellectual property supporters must defend? A world without Star Wars and so much more? (Edit: Oh wait, it appears George Lucas has turned to the dark side. I guess the possibility of a state granted monopoly privilege can do that to you).
The part one remix can be seen here, it is about music. There is also a better look at Kill Bill and the numerous influences Quentin Tarantino draws upon to make one of the top rating movies of all time.
And by "won" I mean you and other Australians have forked out an unnecessary $13 billion extra to the car industry over the years. Some prize right? Well...
The government now has its hand in your pockets in more subtle ways, but you still fork out more than $2400 a car more than needed. This year we are paying $300,000 for each job in the business. When Mitsubishi got its last lifeline, it would have been cheaper to pay the workers for life than to keep the plant open.
... Worse, keeping assembly workers in subsidised jobs is keeping them from better jobs in areas where Australia is competitive: technology, advanced engineering and some components. Favouring domestic assembly disadvantages Australia's efficient exporters, such as mining, agriculture and services.
But what about getting around the governments measures by importing cheaper cars? Well the politicians have plugged that hole.
To make life this difficult the bureaucrats, assisted by auto lobbyists, have used that old chestnut - safety - as an excuse. Even though the government was told by its own inquiry back in 1995 that Australia should accept international safety standards.
The chief concern among auto-lobbyists and their respective clients is that of safeguarding their bottom lines against competition. The politicians are only too happy to lend a forceful hand - given the number of votes they hope to "purchase"!
The only safety issues worth paying attention to are those announced by the ancaps.
A net "pirate" ruling may force ISPs to cut off "cheats":
..."As of [the day before the judgment] the law was that the ISP really had no obligation to take any steps to interfere in the activities of its users if it was acting merely as an ISP and if it had no other relationship with that consumer other than it was a user of those ISP services," said Clayton Utz's John Fairburn.
"So what this decision does is it unwinds that to some extent and says 'Well no, you've got to look at the individual facts and in this case ISPs do have the power to prevent the infringements by terminating accounts or by sending warning notices'. It all depends on the degree of knowledge that [the ISPs] have and even though we have three judgments there is consensus on that point," he said.
..."I think that’s what they are looking for; they’re looking for either suspension or termination ultimately for repeat infringers," Mr Gurnett said.
The un-questioned premise here is whether copying is actually theft? Is there anything wrong with an individual copying something? What is stolen? Who is the victim?
The obvious and standard "answer" that comes to mind is - the content producer... they have had "value" stolen from them. They have "lost" a sale. But you do not have a right to a sale or value. The real pirates here are those using a state granted monopoly privilege.
I don't think it is necessary to go into the rationale here, but feel free to browse and watch these videos that make the legitimate case against Intellectual Property "Rights". Or search our site here.
In the video below, Indian scientist Sugata Mitra tackles one of the greatest problems in education: the best teachers and schools don't exist where they're needed most. The reason this problem exists is because the state has a monopoly on schooling. It has marred incentives. Why would an individual go to a 'trouble zone', or into a rural area, for the exact same pay they would receive for teaching in a ‘trouble free' environment near a city?
How much money should teachers be paid? What are the costs and benefits? One of the many problems of socialism is both the lack of incentives it produces and the inability for central planners to get the right information to make the correct decisions. They lack the pricing mechanism supplied by the market – that of profit and loss.
What is amazing is that even in some of the poorest areas, parents are willing to spend $2 a day to educate their children, even when public schools are available.
When James Tooley first discovered low-cost private schools for the poor in urban slums and rural areas in India, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and China, aid agency officials and local government administrators did not receive the news warmly.
Most flat out denied that such schools existed. Even if they do exist, said the experts, they can’t possibly be any good. School owners that run for-profit schools in shantytowns and poor villages are just exploiting poor communities. Their teachers are untrained and poorly paid. Their buildings are cramped, dark and filthy. Worst of all, kids don’t learn anything there—they come out “half-baked,” one education official told him.
But what Tooley found, in four years of site visits and a five-country study described in his book The Beautiful Tree, throws a wrench in this familiar-sounding reasoning. Between two-thirds and three-fourths of students in the impoverished areas he studied were in fact attending these allegedly nonexistent schools, even when public options were available.
The initial problem outlined, has now essentially been solved.
Vice Chancellor of the University of Buckingham (Britain's only independent university), Terence Kealey is a vocal critic of government funding of science.
Chris Leithner is interviewed by Steve Austin from 612 ABC Brisbane about interest rates, central planning, the IMF, democracy, debtors and savers in Australia.
Secession in Australia, besides that of Western Australia? It seems unlikely, but there you go. A few days ago the issue of North Queensland seeking independence from the rest of the state was on the front page of the Courier Mail.
According to Bob Katter, North Queensland must become a separate state to save the region from economic ruin. Read more
Chris Leithner was on 612 ABC Radio last night (Monday the 23rd of August). In case you missed it, the discussion with Steve Austin can be heard here. The interview covers how the "US Empire is broke, and that when people belatedly realise it, rates will rise appreciably, the prices of assets will fall, bankruptcies will rise, etc. Also the simple reality that savings, not consumption, creates wealth."
In this anti-fascist film produced by US Military in the wake of WWII, the producers deconstructs the politically motivated social engineering of Germany by the Nazi regime.
Over the past few months there has been much discussion in the media about the Queensland government’s plan to "privatise" and sell off the states “assets”. The 
