Think Right

“We are taxed in our bread and our wine, in our incomes and our investments, on our land and on our property not only for base creatures who do not deserve the name of men, but for foreign nations, complaisant nations who will bow to us and accept our largesse and promise us to assist in the keeping of the peace – these mendicant nations who will destroy us when we show a moment of weakness or our treasury is bare, and surely it is becoming bare! We are taxed to maintain legions on their soil, in the name of law and order and the Pax Romana, a document which will fall into dust when it pleases our allies and our vassals. We keep them in precarious balance only with our gold. Is the heartblood of our nation worth these? Were they bound to us with ties of love, they would not ask our gold. They take our very flesh, and they hate and despise us. And who shall say we are worthy of more? … When a government becomes powerful it is destructive, extravagant and violent; it is an usurer which takes bread from innocent mouths and deprives honorable men of their substance, for votes with which to perpetuate itself.”

Cicero http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicero, 54 B.C

The Editor
The Australian

Dear Sir

The last time a mining tax was imposed, the infamous ‘Utah tax’, a $6 per tonne levy on every tonne of coking coal loaded on a ship by that company, a ransom on top of all the other taxes which had to be paid before any ship left the wharf, development of new mines by that company was stopped in its tracks for 3 years. Japan commenced investing in new mines in Canada, South Africa and South America. The equally infamous Fringe Benefits tax stopped the construction of mining towns in favour of Fly-in, Fly-out arrangements.

Surely it’s time to replace the tax happy chappies in Canberra with people who have at least some idea of the consequences of destructive tax policies.

Can I suggest they catch up on their holiday reading with an excellent tome ‘For good and evil, the impact of taxes on the course of civilisation’ by Charles Adams.

Regards
John McRobert
Indooroopilly

It is true that liberty is precious; so precious that it must be carefully rationed.
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/v/vladimirle131407.html

No amount of political freedom will satisfy the hungry masses.
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/v/vladimirle180596.html

One man with a gun can control 100 without one.
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/v/vladimirle136307.html

The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency.
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/v/vladimirle384251.html

The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/v/vladimirle125951.html

To rely upon conviction, devotion, and other excellent spiritual qualities; that is not to be taken seriously in politics.
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/v/vladimirle403889.html

When there is state there can be no freedom, but when there is freedom there will be no state.
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/v/vladimirle386289.html

Read more:
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/v/vladimir_lenin_2.html#ixzz1cxVs
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Viv Forbes writes on the late Ron Kitching:

I first met Ron Kitching in 1966 – he took me to inspect a copper prospect called Mount Colin near Cloncurry. We struck a chord that day and since then our lives seem to have crossed many times over his long life. I never failed to learn something useful or interesting from him.

Ron was never luke warm – he was either engrossed and enthusiastic, or indifferent, or fiercely opposed.

He was engrossed and enthusiastic about exploration, drilling, soils, pastures, cattle, water, the principles of freedom, sound money, classical liberalism, the history of the universe and the battle for carbon sense.

More: http://think-right.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/rip-ron-kitching.pdf [PDF, 336 KB]

There is a growing chorus seeking to ban building on flood prone land.

Many settlements started near a permanent water supply on good alluvial soils, often at places where pioneer tracks crossed rivers or where pioneering ships berthed in river estuaries.

All such land is likely to be flood prone. It is not “certain” to flood in any particular year – it is “certain” to flood some time.

Similar water risks go far beyond flood plain inundation and include events such as flash flood, tsunami, tidal surge, dam failure, land slip, mud slide, wave erosion, storm damage, avalanches and advancing glaciers; even rising sea levels if you live as long as Methuselah. Will we also ban development on all of this land?

There is some risk associated with every block of land and the risk varies from place to place.

Some land brings higher risks from lack of water such as drought, bush fires and sand storms; or is located in unstable places where earth tantrums bring volcanic eruptions, earth-quakes, fault movements or subsidence.

Then there is property threatened by noxious neighbours such as wind towers, old mine workings or risky dam developments.

Someone could probably develop a “ban building” case for every bit of land on earth.

Whether he knows it or not, every land occupier assumes the various risks associated with that land. He should be free to do so. The price paid for the land generally reflects these risks and it is the responsibility of buyers and their advisers to enquire about flood and other risks.

But other people should not be forced to share that risk. Risk sharing should be a matter of free choice between every owner and his chosen insurer, even if that is “self insurance”. Insurance contracts should be clear and not deceptive and contracts should be enforced, but insurers and property owners should be free to decide all matters regarding insurance.

The worst risk to all landowners is government action. These include blanket bans involving Wild Rivers, Strategic Cropping land, parks, World Heritage, reservations, wildlife corridors, vegetation bans, green bans, resumptions, rezoning, interference and confiscations. These seizures are generally un-insurable, un-predictable, un-appealable and un-compensated.

What should governments do?

Governments should publish clear flood plans and make sure they are readily available.

Every landowner seeking building approvals must be advised clearly of the flood history of that land.

In national disasters the most useful things they can do is get roads, water, power and airfields working as soon as possible, and clean up all rubbish on streets. Use of defence forces and equipment is sensible – taxpayers are paying for them no matter what they do and much of disaster work gives them real experience at logistics and management in difficult situations.

But no bans.

If we had banned development on “flood prone” or “high risk” areas half of Australia would be given back to the bush.

Viv Forbes

Rosevale Queensland 4340 Australia

Viv Forbes is a geologist and farmer living on a farm in the rain-soaked Bremer River valley. He lived in Brisbane in 1974 and helped friends clean up in Graceville and, as a school boy, joined Warwick volunteers who helped to clean up flooded Inglewood in the 1950’s.

Conservative journalist Paul Johnson is right in observing:

“Universities are the most overrated institutions of our age. Of all the calamities that have befallen the 20th century, apart from the two World Wars, the expansion of higher education in the 1950’s and 1960’s was the most enduring. It is a myth that universities are nurseries of reason. They are hot houses for every kind of extremism, irrationality; intolerance and prejudice, where intellectual and social snobbery is almost deliberately installed and where dons attempt to pass on to their students their own sins of pride. The wonder is that so many people emerge from these dens still employable, although a significant minority – as we have learnt to our cost - goes forth well equipped for a lifetime of public mischief making!”

“Universities? We’d Be Better Off Without Them”, The Australian, September 18, 1991, p.21.

The victories which Lenin, Mussolini, and Hitler won were not defeats of capitalism but the inescapable consequences of interventionist policy.

Lenin defeated the interventionism of Kerensky. Mussolini won his victory over the syndicalism of the Italian trade unions which culminated in the seizure of factories.

Hitler triumphed over the interventionism of the Weimar Republic. Franco won his victory over the syndicalist anarchy in Spain and Catalonia.

In France the system of the front populaire collapsed and the dictatorship of Pétain followed. Once interventionism was embarked upon, this was the logical sequence of events. Interventionism will always lead to the same result.

If there is anything history could teach us it would be that no nation has ever created a higher civilization without private ownership of the means of production and that democracy has only been found where private ownership of the means of production has existed.

Should our civilization perish, it will not be because it is doomed, but because people refused to learn from theory or from history.

It is not fate that determines the future of human society, but man himself.

The decay of Western civilization is not an act of God, something which cannot be averted. If it comes, it will be the result of a policy which still can be abandoned and replaced by a better policy.

So wrote Ludwig von Mises in the conclusion of his “Interventionism: An Economic Analysis.”

See: http://mises.org/etexts/mises/interventionism/section8.asp

Ronald Kitching
Frenchville QLD

“You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The Government cannot give to anybody anything that the Government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work, because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work, because some body else is going to get what they worked for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any Nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.”

Dr. Adrian Rogers,1931