deficits matter

With the Trudeau government's maiden budget looming amid threats of stimulus spending, it is a virtual lock that the Canadian federal government will run a 15-20 billion dollar deficit this year. And while so called 'deficit hawks' may be quick to point the blame at one of the few good thing that Trudeau has done so far (the middle class tax cut) the reality is that balancing the budget by raising taxes (or not cutting them) is like curing the disease by killing the patient.  Deficits matters because government spending matters.

There is a truly bewildering array of statistics and misinformation (but I repeat myself) surrounding all things political. Economics has long been one of the softest of soft sciences, coloured significantly by political bias and economic interests. But of the morass of numbers and data points that claim to elucidate current events there is one you should keep track of; aggregate government spending in nominal terms. This is the true measure of whether government is growing or not; of whether we are headed towards a free society or leaving it behind. Massive borrowing on the part of the state enables significant expansions in spending programs that would not be politically feasible were the electorate forced to pay up front in the form of tax hikes. But despite the silver tongued claims of etatists there is no free lunch. Ultimately a price must be paid for these borrow and spend policies, either through the devaluation of savings, sluggish economic growth or capital flight as investors seek more business friendly jurisdictions. The more money the government spends the poorer our nation. Resources are finite; this money does not simply appear out of thin air. It is taken from individuals and businesses. Every dollar of government spending means less money in the private sector and fewer resources directed towards creating wealth and satisfying consumer demands. There is a massive loss in utility when you take money from someone, who would be spending it on their highest ranking ends, and instead have some bureaucrat decide to spend it on their behalf, inevitably on an end which is significantly lower down on their hierarchy of values. It is precisely because of the constant growth of government throughout the 20th century in Canada that we now live in an age of anemic economic growth and perpetual depression. With such a massive amount of the wealth created in this country every year expropriated by the state it has become increasingly more difficult for ordinary Canadians to make ends meet. 

Deficits can be inflationary. Whether or not deficit spending is inflationary depends on whether they are financed through the sale of savings bonds, in which case they would not be, or if the money comes from expanding bank credit (printing new money).  Given that only some 2 billion dollars was obtained through the sale of government savings bonds in 2011 it seems reasonable to conclude that this deficit will be financed through the expansion of bank credit and contribute to the inflation that has plagued our nation for too long. Inflation distorts price signals, causes havoc in our economy and makes it difficult for people to save. A stable monetary unit is crucial to a nation's economic health. Money is the blood of the economy, through which everything flows. What we should have is a sound monetary policy; a dollar, backed by gold, which instead of constantly depreciating in value actually appreciated as the number of goods available for purchase steadily increased. With sound money comes prosperity. Paper money is inherently unstable and the temptation to print more of it will always prove irresistible for politicians who are never the most principled of people to begin with.

Deficits matter. The Canadian government is moving full speed ahead in the wrong direction. Instead of less government, every year we are saddled with new spending obligations and expansions of old, failed programs. Where we need deregulation and non intervention in the economy we see instead ever expanding government control and regulations lobbied for by established business interests to perpetuate their profits and harm small competitors. Unfortunately for Canadians, Trudeau's handlers (and let's not fool ourselves about who is calling the shots, Trudeau is an utter moron, incapable of doing anything aside from mouthing vague platitudes, no doubt because he's been hit in the head a few too many times) are devoted to a dirigiste ideology and completely opposed to the free society and liberal economic policies. If our nation is to avoid bankruptcy and return to our rightful place in the sun then we as a people must rise up and demand that the run away government spending stop and some fiscal sanity be imposed on Ottawa. 

What to do about Cologne

Reports of a terrifying incident in Cologne, Germany have left social democratic politicians scrambling for an expedient solution to the very real problem of immigrants who are less than respectful of individual rights. And while opponents of open borders are quick to latch upon this tragic mass attack as an opportunity to espouse their dogmatic fear of 'the other' what this really underlines is the general social democratic policy of leaving citizens defenseless towards criminals and promoting dependency upon the state and it's monopoly on security.

Those of us who have ever been a victim of crime realize how truly apathetic the police are about the citizens they are supposed to protect. Most cops are abusive bullies who sought this professional because they like hurting people but they don't like getting in trouble for doing so. Since police are given effective immunity for any crimes they commit in the line of duty, their badge and their gun give them virtual impunity to harass, assault, confine and otherwise assail innocent civilians. We have seen in recent times in America an astonishing variety of assaults and outright executions, often caught red handed on video tape, gone completely unpunished as some idiot judge excludes the evidence or some corrupt DA subtly leads the grand jury not to indict.

One immediate reform that would enable ordinary citizens to look after their own protection, instead of being forced to rely on the apathetic and incompetent enforcement arm of the state, would be for western governments to immediately legalize both open and concealed carry. If every two bit thug that went out to commit a sexual assault or break and enter had a very reasonable fear that he would end up with a bullet between his eyes, there would be a lot fewer of these attacks (or better yet, they could actually end up dead). But guns are tightly controlled in Europe and North America. Guns are a great equalizer between men and women.  How else is a tiny, 95 lb female supposed to fight off a hulking, 250 lb assailant? Krav Maga simply is not going to cut it.

Another very real problem are the lenient sentences that violent criminals routinely attract. Instead of coddling those who victimize others, the government should crack down on them. They should be incarcerated in brutal conditions for the rest of their lives. Instead of giving them a slap on the wrist, they should be forced to endure hard labour on minimal rations in some awful gulag until one day they simply collapse from exhaustion and never recover. Instead, horrific monsters are given comfortable living conditions and even access to violent movies and video games. We should bring back the death penalty for murderers and make the penalties for serious crimes absolutely brutal. Forget about second chances, we need to protect innocent people and stop fretting about the 'rights' of criminals. With all due respect to Jesus Christ, our enemies must be crushed mercilessly, not loved and forgiven.

A free society with a functioning legal system does not fear newcomers. Perhaps it is a good idea to limit male immigration from nations where respect for the rights of females is not as well developed. It is important to understand that despite the social democratic platitudes, not every cultural attitude is equal. Not every culture is equal.  Traditional liberal values of equality before the law, the right to own property and the right to be free from assault and a tremendous thing and people who do not respect these rights have no place in our society.

libertarianism is not a big tent movement

The last decade has been an exciting time for our movement. With the campaign for president of Congressman Ron Paul libertarianism has become mainstream and with this new found popularity, many disaffected conservatives and social democrats have come to identify, in part or in whole, with this label.  Too many perhaps.

It is important that the struggle for a free society attract new converts.  The movement desperately needs fresh blood. But we also have to ask ourselves, what are we trying to accomplish?  What are our ends, what are our means, and are our means suitable for achieving our ends? If we are to accept, as we should, that our struggle is righteous, even vital to the long term prosperity of the human race, then it behooves us to engage in some critical examination of our activities and to ensure that we have the greatest chance of success in combating the state and promoting the ideals of the truly voluntary society.

The problem is ideological purity. In our present etatist climate, libertarianism an anti-populist vanguard movement. The problem is as these newcomers enter the fold they dilute and moderate our message. This is both poor strategy and poor tactics. It is bad in a strategic sense because this weakens our chance of long term success, and emboldens and strengthens our enemies. By advocating for half measures either in a bid to appeal to the public or because these are the actual beliefs of those who push for them we weaken our case and make the middle of the road or pro-state position seem more reasonable. And it is also poor tactics to make these half-hearted pleas for freedom because it is the very radicalism of the pro-freedom crowd which can attract newcomers and youngsters. The most attractive thing about this philosophy is that it is uncompromising and relentless in pursuit of justice. There is an acknowledged hypocrisy in the social democrat viewpoint and this is the Achilles heel of the menshevick belief system. By turning into hypocrites ourselves, we provide no contrast and offer aid and comfort to those who support the state. And the limited government position is self defeating, since once you acknowledge that a government monopoly on X is important, you open the door for a monopoly on Y, and Z and everything else. If your logic is not internally consistent then what hope do you have of promoting your world view?

Another problem is that there are many who are attracted to our blossoming movement with their own ideological axes to grind. Both social justice warriors and racist bigots tarnish our great ideas with their idiocy. These people must be shouted down, ridiculed and ex-communicated. By allowing every half baked idea to fly under our flag, we set ourselves up for failure.

Peer consensus is something that only teenagers should obsess over. Ultimately, our movement is iconoclastic. We are necessarily alone and apart from the respectable voices of society. One day in the future our work will be completed and libertarianism will be a mass movement. One day the man in the street will mouth the pro liberty platitudes that have echoed down from our work.  But that day is not today and we must never compromise our beliefs and ideals in order to hasten it, lest it never come at all.

open borders not foreign aid

In 2012 the Canadian government spent 5.6 billion dollars on foreign aid, and given that our new Prime Minister has already pledged billions more to help third world nations fight climate change we can only expect this number to increase. These funds are mostly directed towards local CIDA employees, businesses and NGOs. There is no question that we have a moral obligation towards those who live in the third world, but is this band-aid solution really the best we can do?

There is another alternative, one which would not simply help a few people living in poverty get through another day, but which has the power to uplift billions out of poverty and benefit our nation at the same time. Canada should adopt a policy of open borders. This would simultaneously allow all of those who moved here enjoy a higher standard of living, which would in turn enable them to bring and support their families and friends. This massive increase in population would be a boon to our economy and these newcomers would be able send money back home to their families. Instead of forcing taxpayers to finance foreign aid schemes, why not simply let individuals who want to come here and send their own wages home, do so?

There really is no limit on how many people our society can absorb. Housing is flexible. No doubt initially, immigrants might have to pile a dozen into an apartment, but as they all found jobs this would normalize and the resultant increased demand would stimulate construction and over time balance things out. By allowing tens of millions of individuals suffering under the yoke of tyrannical governments and the oppressive poverty ubiquitous throughout the developing world we can transform their lives, and all without slipping our hands into the pockets of the working poor. Canada has the second largest land mass of any country in the world with a population of a very large metropolitan area. We have the room and people out there are suffering.  Why not let them in?  Why not turn our entire country into a safe space for those who wish simply to be left alone and to live in peace?

If we couple this program with a liberalizing of the economy, we could also help to transform the third world.  It is no coincidence that some nations are rich and some are poor. The deciding factor in the growth of the wealth of a nation is the degree of economic freedom which exists. By coupling an aggressive program of laissez-faire with a permissive immigration policy we would not only see phenomenal economic growth here at home we would also inspire the future leaders of third world nations to copy us and promote a free society in their homelands.  Ideals ultimately determine the course of history so it is incumbent upon us to advocate for the right ones.

Of course there are risks to immigration, as there are to anything.  Some who come might be criminals, and they would need to be deported and banned from ever re-entering our country. We should screen for disease, and cooperate with foreign governments or other organizations to try to keep out terrorists. But these risks are minor and functioning society need not fear newcomers.

Foreign aid is a stop gap measure. Instead of bailing out the boat, let's fix the damn hole, and bring on the immigrants.

call off the lynch mob

There is no question that police brutality is a serious problem in North America.  In 2014, Eric Garner was choked to death by cops in New York city.  His crime?  Selling loose smokes.  Just recently in South Carolina people across the world were outraged when a teenage girl was body slammed by a police resource officer for not giving up her phone. The police are militarized, hopped up on steroids and able to literally get away with murder. But the shooting of Sammy Yatim was not an example of such.

Yatim, who masturbated on a street car while threatening to kill young girls met his fatal end as he walked, purposefully, knife extended, towards the officers who were called to deal with him. The threat he posed to the lives of the cops was palpable.  He had a weapon, he was completely out of control and he was moving deliberately towards them.  This is a textbook example of when force is justified in self defense.  Unfortunately social democrats don't like to attribute the blame for criminality to the criminal. Instead, they blame society or capitalism or inequality and they whine about the rights of murderers and rapists while ignoring their victims. And so, instead of focusing on the fact that Sammy Yatim was psychotic and quite likely to kill, they have decided to lynch Const. James Forcillo.  For doing his job. For sticking up for the innocent people on that bus.  For trying to keep us safe from criminals.

This wasn't an ambiguous situation.  There was a lethal threat and the police acted to defend themselves. This wasn't police brutality.  It was self preservation. The fact that Forcillo has gone to trial at all is insane. But to charge him with second degree murder? That is nothing more than a public lynching to appease the mob's distorted opinion of justice. This whole trial is a farce; Yatim committed suicide by cop and has only himself to blame.

no truce yet in drug war

Despite newly elected Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau's promise to legalize marijuana there have been few if any indications that the war on drugs is slowing down.  According to Statistics Canada police have been ramping up efforts to target drug users at the expense of focusing on bringing more heinous criminals to justice. The vast majority of these cases are addicts or low level addict traffickers. To the Canadian legal system's credit, the typical sentence for simple drug possession, even in the case of hard drugs such as heroin or cocaine, is a fine or a very brief gaol sentence. Trafficking in these forbidden substances, on the other hand, will usually (but not always) result in a prison (2+ year) term. Even marijuana cultivation can land you in substantial criminal trouble if the operation is deemed to be commercial in scope.

One disturbing trend in 2015 has been the rise of fentanyl, an extremely toxic opiod. In Alberta 213 people have overdosed on this drug so far this year.  Overdoses are a byproduct of prohibition. Illegal drugs become extremely high priced on the black market, since the supply is kept artificially limited by police seizures and the fact that prohibition militates against the inclusion of large scale enterprise in production. Demand, on the other hand, is as strong as ever (it helps that the product is highly addictive and thus the demand is inelastic). Since the drug is so expensive, and the type of people who are attracted to the drug trade are often unscrupulous (to put it mildly), almost invariably the drugs are cut with some inexpensive (and potentially toxic) agent. So an addict gets used to using a certain amount of a drug to get the high they desire and when they stumble upon some less cut product they use their typical amount and overdose. Drug addiction is a social and medical problem and should be treated like one.  Were drugs legalized, you would no longer have this issue of uncertain quality. Further, if we eliminate the criminal stigma attached to drug use it would be far easier to get addicts the medical or psychological help they so clearly need. And if the supply of drugs were not artificially reduced by prohibition, the cost would be much lesser as well, meaning that addicts may not resort to anti-social behaviour such as robbery in order to finance their addiction. If a crack habit costs only $5 a day instead of $500, then they won't need to rob or whore to finance it. Probably most crackheads don't want to rob, since it is fairly dangerous and could lead to a prison sentence; they just really want crack.

Police resources are scarce.  Instead of fighting a no win war on drugs they should be focused on protecting property rights and bringing actual criminals to justice. The purpose of law is not to perfect us or save us from ourselves; it is to protect property rights and to address aggression. The war on drugs needs to end.

on ISIS and the middle east, is there a third way?

The debate over Canada's role in the middle east most specifically with regards to combating ISIS seems to be narrowly defined.  On the one hand, you have the conservative position, which is that Canada should continue fighting ISIS.  On the other hand, you have the social democratic position, as enunciated by Mulcair and Trudeau, which is that Canada should continue fighting ISIS but not quite as directly.  Instead of bombing directly, we'll send money and train troops.  There isn't even a hint among the establishment political parties or their lapdogs in the media that there is a third option, specifically non intervention.

Which is curious, really, when you consider how terribly Western interventions in the middle east have worked out.  It was after all, the coup in Iran in 1953 which Washington carried out at the behest of British Petroleum that led eventually to the Khomeini revolution. And let's not forget that Al-Qaeda before it was Al-Qaeda was called the Muhjadeen and received funding and training from the CIA to fight off the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. The invasion of Iraq and the covert actions in Syria produced cumulatively over a million innocent casualties, but also paved the way for the rise of ISIS and Al-Qaeda. Virtually every foreign intervention in the middle east has resulted in blowback and inculcated hatred for the west. So why then is there not even a whisper in the press that perhaps we should consult the history books before rushing headlong once again into disaster?

The phenomenon of imperialism has been too brusquely treated by the social sciences.  One possible explanation advanced by Schumpeter, who conducted a survey of this phenomenon beginning in antiquity 'Imperialism', was simply that the weight of the military class carries the nation to war on it's own account. Whatever the cause it is important to consider the consequences that intervention has had in the past when analyzing the potential fall out from present day policy.

The foreign policy which the Canadian government should adopt is one of non intervention. It is not our role to reshape the world. We should not succumb to the hubris of Wilsonian imperialism; surely enough innocents have died at the hands of Western intervention in the middle east. Instead of bombing Syria and Iraq or funding and training a hated Vichy government we need to adopt a hands off policy and accept the limitations of our power. What hasn't worked in the past is not likely to work in the present.