Think Right

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

If a conservative doesn’t like guns, he doesn’t buy one.
If a liberal doesn’t like guns, he wants all guns outlawed.

If a conservative is a vegetarian, he doesn’t eat meat.
If a liberal is a vegetarian, he wants all meat products banned for everyone.

If a conservative is homosexual, he quietly leads his life.
If a liberal is homosexual, he demands legislated respect.

If a conservative is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation.
A liberal wonders who is going to take care of him.

If a conservative doesn’t like a talk show host, he switches channels.
Liberals demand that those they don’t like be shut down.

If a conservative is a non-believer, he doesn’t go to church.
A liberal non-believer wants any mention of God and religion silenced. Unless it’s a foreign religion, of course !!!!!!

If a conservative decides he needs health care, he goes about shopping for it, or may choose a job that provides it.
A liberal demands that the rest of us pay for his.

If a conservative reads this, he’ll forward it so his friends !!!!!!
A liberal will delete it because he’s “offended”.

“The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but a subordinate clerk in a bureau. What an alluring utopia! What a noble cause to fight!

“Against all this frenzy of agitation there is but one weapon available: reason. Just common sense is needed to prevent man from falling prey to illusory fantasies and empty catchwords.”

Bureaucracy, Conclusion, Ludwig von Mises (1944)

“The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled.
Public debt should be reduced.
The arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled.
The assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome becomes bankrupt.
People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.”

Cicero – 55BC

 
A Soldier Died Today

He was getting old and paunchy
And his hair was falling fast,
And he sat around the RSA,
Telling stories of the past.

Of a war that he once fought in
And the deeds that he had done,
In his exploits with his mates;
They were heroes, every one.

Although sometimes to his neighbors
His tales became a joke,
All his mates listened quietly
For they knew where of he spoke.

But we’ll hear his tales no longer,
For ol’ Bob has passed away,
And the world’s a little poorer
For a Soldier died today.

He won’t be mourned by many,
Just his children and his wife..
For he lived an ordinary,
Very quiet sort of life.

He held a job and raised a family,
Going quietly on his way;
And the world won’t note his passing,
‘Tho a Soldier died today.

When politicians leave this earth,
Their bodies lie in state,
While thousands note their passing,
And proclaim that they were great.

Papers tell of their life stories
From the time that they were young
But the passing of a Soldier
Goes unnoticed, and unsung.

Is the greatest contribution
To the welfare of our land,
Some jerk who breaks his promise
And cons his fellow man?

Or the ordinary fellow
Who in times of war and strife,
Goes off to serve his country
And offers up his life?

The politician’s stipend
And the style in which he lives,
Are often disproportionate,
To the service that he gives.

While the ordinary Soldier,
Who offered up his all,
Is paid off with a medal
And perhaps a pension, small.

It’s so easy to forget them,
For it is so many times
That our Bobs and Jims and Johnnys,
Went to battle, but we know,

It is not the politicians
With their compromise and ploys,
Who won for us the freedom
That our country now enjoys.

Should you find yourself in danger,
With your enemies at hand,
Would you really want some cop-out,
With his ever waffling stand?

Or would you want a Soldier–
His home, his country, his kin,
Just a common Soldier,
Who would fight until the end.

He was just a common Soldier,
And his ranks are growing thin,
But his presence should remind us
We may need his like again.

For when countries are in conflict,
We find the Soldier’s part
Is to clean up all the troubles
That the politicians start.

If we cannot do him honour
While he’s here to hear the praise,
Then at least let’s give him homage
At the ending of his days..

Perhaps just a simple headline
In the paper that might say:
“OUR COUNTRY IS IN MOURNING,
A SOLDIER DIED TODAY.”

A veteran is someone who, at one point in his life, wrote a blank check made payable for an amount “up to and including my life”.

Writing about the German Inflation of 1923, Otto Friedrich, Time Magazine editor, wrote in his book titled Before The Deluge:

“The fundamental quality of the disaster was a complete loss of faith in the functioning of society.

“Money is important not just as a medium of exchange, after all, but as a standard by which society judges our work, and thus ourselves. If all money becomes worthless, then so does all government, and all society, and all standards.

“In the madness of 1923, a workman’s work was worthless, a widow’s savings were worthless, everything was worthless.”

English historian, Alan Bullock, wrote in his book titled Hitler: A Study in Tyranny:

“The collapse of the currency not only meant the end of trade, bankrupt businesses, food shortage in the big cities and unemployment: it had the effect, which is the unique quality of economic catastrophe, of reaching down to and touching every single member of the community in a way which no political event can.

“The savings of the middle classes and the working classes were wiped out at a single blow with a ruthlessness which no revolution could ever equal.

“The result of the inflation was to undermine the foundations of German society in a way which neither the war nor the revolution of November 1918, nor the Treaty of Versailles had ever done.

“The real revolution in Germany was the inflation, for it destroyed not only property and money, but faith in property and the meaning of money.”

Ronald Kitching
Frenchville QLD 4701

It is refreshing to see that that the WA Government are talking about abolishing payroll tax for a year. If they do, they ought to abolish it for ever.

Payroll Tax really is a tax from Marxland. If ever a tax should be immediately abolished without any equivocation whatsoever, it is payroll tax. It is inconceivable that people or companies employing workers should be taxed as though employing people was a crime, a heavy penalty for creating real jobs providing goods and or services for which people scramble.

The payroll tax is a huge impediment to employment, it prohibits some people from even starting businesses. And as far as exporters go, it is a huge additional cost and so helps to render Australian goods uncompetitive. The late Professor Colin Clark has pointed out that the long-run effect of payroll tax is to lower the remuneration received by labour.

With the advent of the GST, it should have been the first tax to go. To his credit Sir Joh Bjelke Petersen not only abolished death duties, he planned to also abolish payroll tax. However, he was threatened with retaliatory action against Queensland by the then federal government if he did so.

The tax on employment is both criminal and stupid.

Ronald Kitching