Economics
Victoria: Back in the Basket Again
Reproduced with permission from The BFD https://thebfd.co.nz/2024/05/09/victoria-back-in-the-basket-again/ I grew up in Victoria (don’t judge me, it wasn’t always the way it’s become), and lived through the dark days of the early 90s. Back then, it seemed that hardly a week went by without another economic calamity: the Pyramid building society collapse, the Tricontinental bank collapse, the State Bank of Victoria...
Mind Your Language
Everyone knows a suit is comprised of a jacket and a pair of pants. Two jackets are not a suit. Neither can two pairs of pants be called a suit. This was an argument I often made during the marriage debate. Marriage, I argued, was the joining of a man and woman in a special relationship. If two men or two...
AI Dystopia
Many voices are warning about the impending dangers of artificial intelligence (AI). They fear everything from mass unemployment to societal collapse, the destruction of humanity by ‘the singularity’, the malicious, sentient AI boogieman (boogie-robot?) from so many science fiction novels and films. It only takes a brief play with publicly available AI tools, such as Chat GPT, to understand the...
Broken Systems and the Deteriorating Psyche of Our Nation.
Australia is on life support – politicians “and” the people are both to blame. Few people could deny that Australia is not well. The cost of living is unacceptably high. Home ownership is a long-lost dream. Our mental health is deteriorating rapidly. We are at war with one another over almost every issue. Polite debate has disappeared from our public discourse,...
The Tax Power
The Commissioner of Taxation has too much power. Libertarians consider tax to be either theft or, at best, should be low and flat to cover bare necessities. It certainly shouldn’t be as complex as it is or run to thousands of pages. Most mainstream tax reform proponents have grandiose visions that would only add complexity and likely raise the overall tax...
The Federal Government Should Deliver a Decade of Surpluses
A government’s balance sheet indicates whether it is engaging in intergenerational redistribution. If the government has negative net assets it is leaving future generations with more obligations than benefits. A government with positive net assets is leaving future generations with more benefits than obligations. Governments have no advantages over individuals in making decisions about what to leave to future generations,...
The Global Online Safety Regulators Network: A Global Surveillance State?
The journalist Michael Schellenberger recently discovered that there is a formal government censorship network called the “Global Online Safety Regulators Network” (GORSN). Australia’s top Internet censor, Julie Inman Grant, an American, described it at the World Economic Forum. The group includes censors from Australia, France, Ireland, South Africa, Korea, the UK, and Fiji. This is a concerning development for anyone...
Pro-Natalist Policies – The Jury is Out
“By 2050, over three-quarters (155 of 204) of countries will not have high enough fertility rates to sustain population size over time; this will increase to 97% of countries (198 of 204) by 2100.” Global fertility in 204 countries and territories, 1950–2021, with forecasts to 2100: a comprehensive demographic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021, Lancet. Fertility rates...
Free Markets Work Better for Energy
Energy is again front and centre in the news with the debate over the merits of nuclear energy becoming mainstream. But then last week the Prime Minister announced a new scheme to subsidise the manufacture of solar panels in Australia. One wonders whether this is to support industry or just to close down a debating point against solar -...
The Rule of Law is Being Ignored by Conservatives
The High Court recently ruled that: - if immigration detention is not a practical step towards a person being removed from the country, the detention amounts to punishment, and - governments can only mete out punishment if they are sentencing someone for a crime. This ruling led to the release of around 140 people who were in immigration detention but not on...
