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    Eye-Opening Dispatches From Vietnam

    By
    Kenelm Tonkin
    -
    0

    After three long years of covid lockdown-induced solitary confinement, a loyal Liberty Itch subscriber cut loose, left Australia for South-East Asia and found herself in Vietnam.

    Animated by what she saw, I started to receive her much-welcomed dispatches about daily life there.

    Now, if you read any 1960s and 1970s history, you know Vietnam is communist. But what my friend’s streetscape dispatches reveal is that daily life is anything but centrally-controlled. In fact, what she witnessed felt more like the hustle and bustle of enterprise or, as our intrepid adventurer pithily described …

    “official communism, sure,
    yet with a je ne sais quoi libertarian, freewheeling spirit,
    small-scale capitalist at every turn.”

    I’ll step out of the way. These are her words …

    There are no rules, Kenelm. It’s fend for yourself. Even these communists realise capitalism is the way to go. Free markets and small business. It feels like what I imagine 1880s London or 1980s Hong Kong to be. Free. Laissez faire. Taxes are low. 5%+ for residents. 20% flat tax for foreigners. The communists simply don’t have the money for bureaucrats. They’ve taken themselves out of the game and let people live their own lives.

    There’s genuine economic development here. It’s booming.

    There is little of government here to save you. You save yourself or drown, which isn’t an option.

    So, family is very important. Your family takes care of you in your old age, not the government. You know, like we used to do in Australia.

    Prices are so low.

    Petrol is a mere 37 cents a litre. No fuel excise. Can you imagine?

    Food is cheap.

    At the end of a long, hard day, cocktails are $2.50.

    Road rules? The only rule here appears to be there are no rules, almost anarchy. Yet it works. A loose framework exists where thousands stop on a red light. But only when it suits them. Lanes on the road? Only use those if you absolutely must.  It’s better to weave right, left, and even preferrable to pit your life against a semi-trailer coming from the opposite direction, because you absolutely must overtake the vehicle in front of you.

    Pedestrian crossings? A mere piffle, an abstract idea where someone thought stripes of white paint were to beautify the road. The pedestrian who stands at one end expecting the traffic to stop for her, hah! She is the pedestrian who never returns home alive. As one local said to our observer, “If you don’t move, you’ll die. You need to move. Not too fast. Not too slow” … to which I replied, “Oh, you mean the Goldilocks effect”. The harrowed local muttered “Who is Goldilocks?” under his breath. Big tip! It’s best to wait for a small gap in the traffic. Walk whilst praying to God the entire time that He will see you safely to the other side.  

    Footpaths? You know, for human feet? A figment of an idea, I tell you. They are just another lane for bikes to scoot down in the gridlocked peak hour traffic. Footpaths are places to park, to open your front gate, to wheel your dolly-trolly, to sell your wares for the day. All day and every day.  The pedestrians are after-thoughts.

    Did I mention $3 Singapore Slings?

    There aren’t suffocating regulations about, say, straws. Yes, you can get a decent plastic straw in Vietnam!

    Communism, lurking in the background somewhere, OK. But the streetscape looks what I imagine laissez faire to be. It’s a rambunctious, rollicking, throbbing freedom, not that poor imitation back home. It’s every man for himself. As the saying goes, “It’s the quick or the dead” around here. Maybe that’s because the communists simply can’t make central planning work to feed people. Maybe they gave up that aspiration long ago. Everyday people her feed themselves and their families through good old-fashioned free trade.

    This is what Australia is competing with! Enterprising, self-reliant people. Low prices. There’s a lot of manufacturing being exported. They value add. It’s not a big quarry like other economies we’re familiar with!

    The West is on the precipice of losing something incredibly precious. 

    In comparison to Vietnam,
    we need to wrap society in cotton wool
    and legislate for every possible scenario that might make us sick, kill or injure us.

    We’ve left the realm of common sense, we’re stifled and soft-pruned by a socialist bubble bath. Individuals can no longer assess risk with any degree of rationality. Individuals are increasingly absolved of all self-responsibility and that power is being placed into the hands of faceless bureaucrats and legislators who make decisions on our behalf. It’s not needed. It’s not in our best interests. Vietnam proves it.

    Remind my fellow Liberty Itch subscribers, as I often remind my friends, none of us are getting off this planet alive! We need to take back our autonomy, before it’s too late.

    To all of which, I can only say to my friend, hear hear!

    Talkin’ About My Generation (Part 1)

    By
    Bob Day
    -
    7

    In his excellent Liberty Itch post Golden Years last week, Max Payne writes, “By the time today’s young people are finally ready (or allowed) to retire, they may find they face a double challenge. First, their superannuation funds might have been ransacked by previous generations; second, the availability of quality care may be limited due to the challenge of delivering high-standard care without a large tax-base – especially in times of slowing productivity.”

    In their hit song My Generation, English rock band The Who – Pete Townshend on guitar, Roger Daltrey on vocals, John Entwistle on bass, and Keith Moon on drugs – err, I mean drums – sang, “…things they do look awful cold …. hope I die before I get old.”

    It is reported that German economists are baffled by reports from Australia that rising house prices are deemed to be ‘good news’. In Germany, inflation in house prices – like inflation in energy prices or food prices – is considered to be just the opposite.

    “How can it be good news?”, they ask, “when it takes two incomes to support a mortgage when previously young couples could buy a home and raise a family on one income? Or that homebuyers will pay many hundreds of thousands of dollars more in mortgage payments and government taxes and charges than would otherwise be the case?”

    Why has housing become so expensive in Australia? Motor vehicles, whitegoods, kitchen appliances, widescreen TV sets, personal computers and mobile phones are consumed in abundance around the world, yet prices remain low. Why is a house, which like other manufactured goods is made from readily accessible components, so much more expensive than other consumer products?

    No doubt demand stimulators like high immigration, low interest rates, capital gains concessions, negative gearing and first home buyer grants have increased demand for housing. However, increases in demand do not, of themselves, cause prices to rise. The exponential increases in demand for mobile phones, laptops and digital TVs did not lead to increases in their prices. In fact, the opposite occurred – prices fell – in some cases by more than half, due to increases in supply. The 1950s and ‘60s population explosion – the ‘baby boomer’ generation – likewise saw massive increases in demand for housing, yet house prices remained stable during that time because supply was able to keep up with demand.

    So, what has gone wrong in recent years?

    As most people know, over the past 20 years or so the actual cost of building a new house in Australia has roughly kept pace with inflation. Land prices, on the other hand, have skyrocketed.

    By restricting the amount of land available on the urban fringe, state governments have sent the price of entry-level housing through the roof.

    Land is the problem.

    On the fringes of our cities there is more than an adequate supply of cheap, unzoned land.

    Cheap land attracts not only home buyers but commercial interests as well, leading to more employment opportunities.

    So why are houses and commercial developments not being built on this cheap land?

    In short, manipulation of zoning laws.

    (For Part 2, click https://libertyitch.com/2023/08/22/talkin-about-my-generation-part-2/)

    The Right To Keep and Bear Cash

    By
    Nicholas Samios
    -
    2

    A libertarian friend called me at 6.30am last Tuesday whist I was riding the train to work. “How do you start a community bank?” he asked. My friend lives in rural NSW and as they say in the country, he is “jack” of the major banks. 

    “The banks are closing one after the other and the ATMs are disappearing too. Which means cash is disappearing. We need to get our own bank around here”. 

    This issue is fast becoming mainstream, reported in media outlets including the ABC, News, and Sky in the past seven days alone. 

    Rural folk love their cash for practical reasons. Libertarians love it for ideological ones, which some might find ironic given many libertarians also advocate the end of fiat currency and its replacement with gold or crypto. 

    But here is why libertarians hold cash dear: 

    1. Financial Privacy
    Cash transactions provide anonymity and privacy. You can do your business without a centralised authority monitoring your every move. Electronic payments can be tracked and monitored by banks, governments, or other third parties, potentially compromising your financial privacy. 

    2. Vulnerability To Surveillance
    Electronic payment systems create a digital trail of transactions, creating an incentive for governments and corporations to collect vast amounts of data on your purchasing habits, preferences, and of course personal information. 

    Cash means you can do your business without a centralised authority monitoring your every move.

    3. Government Tyranny
    A shift toward electronic payments can give governments greater control over our financial activities. They can potentially freeze or confiscate funds, impose restrictions on transactions, or even manipulate the monetary system to suit their own interests. This would never happen, right? Ask the Canadian truckers or Nigel Farage. 

    4. Vulnerability To Cyber Threats
    Relying solely on electronic payments increases the risk of cyber attacks and fraud. Carrying cash comes with its own risks, sure, but cash can’t be hacked. Major corporations are getting hacked left and right. Who is safe? 

    5. Exclusion of Marginalised Communities
    Not everyone has access to electronic payment methods. Not all communities have the same infrastructure as large cities. Denying communities which rely on cash for their daily transactions is surely discriminatory. 


    6. Dependency On Intermediaries
    My economics professor used to say, “the more you cut up the cake, the more of it sticks to the knife”. Electronic payments typically require intermediaries, none of which provide their service for free. And for every intermediary in the transaction chain, there is another point of control and vulnerability as users become subject to the policies and regulations set by these intermediaries. Look what happened when Israel Folau tried to raise a ‘Go Fund Me’ for his legal fees. 

    7. Limitations On Personal Choice
    Cash provides individuals with a tangible and universally accepted form of payment that can be used freely and without restrictions. 

    8. Infringement On Property Rights
    Cash represents physical ownership. You hold it in your hand.  It’s yours. Property rights are infringed when you are forced to rely on electronic representations of money stored at the pleasure of others. 

    9. Impact On Small Businesses
    Cash transactions offer certain advantages to small businesses, reduced transaction costs and the ability to avoid credit card processing fees for a start. Denying small businesses the opportunity to trade in cash makes it harder for them to compete with their corporate counterparts. Libertarians believe in free markets, not markets distorted in this way.

    Are ‘Community Banks’ the answer? Stay tuned.

    Better The Devil You Live Next To

    By
    Duncan Spender
    -
    0

    There are plenty of things you cannot do with your own land.  

    Sometimes you can’t chop down a tree, plant a blackberry bush, or start a bonfire. In heritage suburbs you might not be able to knock down your house, or paint your current one any colour you like.  

    Regardless of where you are, you cannot add as many storeys as you like, possibly because of the shadows you would cast or the views you would block.  

    In urban areas you can’t have roosters as they would wake everyone up; nor can you set up a mosque and blare out a call to prayer.  And after certain hours at night you can’t play loud music.

    Sometimes you can’t hire out part or all of your house for short-stay accommodation, set up a brothel next to a school, set up a school next to a brothel, or develop a housing estate on land that is zoned for agriculture or conservation.

    Dispute resolution would involve less of the opacity and potential corruption of bureaucracy, and more of the hard-nosed deal-making of markets.

    To me, some of these restraints are reasonable and some are not. I suspect you would also judge at least some of these restraints to be reasonable – even though we might judge particular restraints differently.

    Currently numerous decisions about what you can do with your land, like set up a brothel, are made by the State.

    It is as if the State keeps in a vault, alongside the piece of paper showing you own your land, a separate piece of paper saying that the State owns the right to set up a brothel on that land.  Only if both owners agreed can a brothel be set up.

    In fact, every limitation on what you can do with your land can be thought of as a property right held by the State.

    I propose that we take that imaginary situation, where pieces of paper in vaults define distinct property rights concerning what can be done with your land, and turn it into reality. 

    Here’s how.

    If the State’s planning authority is about to reject a development application, it should make an offer to the land owner: the planning authority will rule in favour of the owner, if the owner agrees to create a restrictive covenant relating to the things the owner wants to do to the land, and to gift that covenant to the owner’s neighbours.

    So instead of being banned from doing something, you would have to give the right to do that thing to your neighbours, as a tradable property right.

    If the planning authority objected to your development application to add an extra storey to your house, your neighbours would end up with a property right to build that extra storey.  If the planning authority objected to your development application to set up a brothel on your land that’s next to a school, the right to set up that brothel would end up being owned by the school.

    I propose that we take that imaginary situation, where pieces of paper in vaults define distinct property rights concerning what can be done with your land, and turn it into reality.

    The advantage of this arrangement is that the right could then be purchased from the neighbours, if an acceptable price is offered.

    A banned development would instead become a potentially expensive development.

    A disadvantage of this approach is that it would increase your neighbours’ incentives to complain to the planning authority about your development plans.  And the planning authority might end up approving fewer development applications, sending an increasing number of potential developments into the world of deal-making over covenants.

    But the advantages would exceed the disadvantages.  There would remain hope after a planning authority’s objection to your development, unlike currently where such an objection kills all hope.  Dispute resolution would involve less of the opacity and potential corruption of bureaucracy, and more of the hard-nosed deal-making of markets.  You’d be dealing directly with your neighbours – real people with real concerns.  And, on occasion, mutually beneficial deals would be done, making all parties better off.

    Smaller Government: Georgia Shows It’s Achievable

    By
    Damon Hayhow
    -
    1

    To any true libertarian, Government regulation in Australia feels increasingly suffocating. This feeling is backed by statistics. According to the Parliamentary Education office the Australian Government added an average of 109 new laws every year from 1901 to 2013. Since 2013, that increased to 139 new laws per year.

    Typically, when the Government is criticised for its interference in our private lives and businesses, it justifies this by drawing a comparison with European countries. Sure, Australia has unsustainable state and federal deficits, business closures exceed new businesses, there is increasing crime and homelessness, a housing affordability and supply crisis, plus a plethora of worsening social and economic statistics. But some of our taxes are lower than Germany, we are not as broke as Greece, and citizens are freer than in North Korea. Therefore, apparently, everything is fantastic.

    The Government has a point, though. Looking at the nations of the G20, most are facing far bigger problems than Australia, and none are moving in a libertarian direction. All are increasing taxation, expanding the size and scope of the public sector, and raising the difficulty of operating a private business. There are almost no recent examples of a country achieving superior outcomes by moving in the opposite direction; except, perhaps, for the small nation of Georgia.

    … first task was to cull the regulation that was facilitating the widespread corruption and strangling the Georgian economy.

    Georgia was the birthplace of Joseph Stalin and formerly part of the Soviet Union. A decade after the Soviet Union’s collapse, it was a basket case. The government was insolvent; the country was rife with corruption, crime and poverty; the police force was essentially a mafioso street gang; infrastructure was crumbling; utilities such as power and water only functioned occasionally.

    In 2003 there was a revolution and Mikhail Saakashvili was elected to the presidency. The usual gaggle of globalist socialist technocrats showered Saakashvili with the usual ruinous recommendations straight from the book ‘Confessions of an Economic Hitman’: take out impossibly huge IMF loans, increase taxation and impose ruthless austerity.

    Shockingly, Saakashvili declined the loans and socialistc advice; incurring ridicule and disapproval from the EU, US and IMF. Instead, he immediately cut taxes by 70%.

    Mikheil Saakashvili. Third President of Georgia. 2008-2013.

    As a result, rather than deepening the country’s bankruptcy – as predicted by the IMF – tax revenue doubled in just the first year. Over Saakashvili’s two terms, the economy went on to quadruple in size while tax revenue increased 1200% and poverty decreased by 75%.

    Saakashvili appointed a committed, renowned libertarian, Kakha Bendukidze, as the Minister of Economy and Reform Coordination. Bendukidze was no academic bureaucrat; he was a self-made multi-centi-millionaire. He had a degree in biology and made his fortune creating a chemical manufacturing empire in Russia.

    Bendukidze’s first task was to cull the regulation that was facilitating the widespread corruption and strangling the Georgian economy. The head of every government agency was forced to justify their existence to him, like contestants on the TV show, Shark Tank. Bendukidze had authority to eliminate any agency on the spot.

    Among the first of the Agencies to be eliminated was the police force. The force was determined to be so corrupt, and so distrusted by the populace, that the only solution was to fire everyone. So that is what they did. Somehow they managed to quickly form a new police force. The whole exercise earned the trust and respect of citizens, so the streets became safe. Within just three years Georgia was ranked among the top countries in the world for personal safety.

    Shockingly, Saakashvili declined the loans and socialistc advice; incurring ridicule and disapproval from the EU, US and IMF. Instead, he immediately cut taxes by 70%.

    In his first two months, Bendukidze slashed approximately 70% of regulations and the majority of government agencies. He and Saakashvili also instituted a policy that no new regulation could be added unless two existing regulations were repealed. In total they achieved a 90% reduction in regulations, resulting in Georgia being recognised as the top reforming country in the world by the World Bank, and leaping from 137th to 8th in the Ease of Doing Business rankings. It also went from ranking among the most corrupt countries in Europe, to 3rd least corrupt.

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    They not only cut tax rates; they cut the tax code down to just six taxes, and amended the constitution so that the only way to increase taxation was via a referendum. This gave confidence to the international investment community that Georgia’s reforms were stable and reliable, resulting in a quadrupling of the rate of international investment.

    Georgia represents a compelling case study in contemporary politics and economics. It was brought to ruin by Marxism, then revived by the unapologetic application of libertarian principles and free market capitalism.

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