Government
How Sunk Cost Fallacy Drives Authoritarian Policies
Sunk cost fallacy is the tendency of people to stick with a decision or course of action that isn’t having a positive result because the person has invested time, money and/or resources that cannot be recovered and do not want to feel that they have wasted them. In many cases, sunk cost fallacy can even drive people to double...
Childcare – Why should you pay for it?
Starting before they are born, our governments spend a lot of money on children. The Commonwealth budget for education alone is $67 billion, and in NSW $24 billion. Add the other states and territories, plus health care, and as the saying goes, pretty soon you’re talking real money. While our society obviously values children highly, it is rare that anyone questions...
Slaying the dragon of censorship.
Is there no wild beast more savage than man when his passions are armed with power? This is the question the ancient Greek historian, Plutarch, asked in relation to the actions of the newly formed triumvirate of Octavian (soon to be Rome’s first emperor, Augustus), Antony, and Lepidus as they turned on their Roman countrymen in their quest for power...
GST is Better than Income Tax
In my last article I argued that a flat and broad-based income tax is much the same as a broad-based GST, so we have little reason to hate the concept of income tax more than the concept of GST. I argued this by setting out an imaginary scenario with five citizens, one business, and no government. But there is an...
Too Much Government
Expectations of the role of the government have been rising steadily over the last decade. They rose substantially during the eastern states’ bushfires in late 2019 and early 2020, and again in response to the floods that followed in NSW and Queensland. And they reached stratospheric levels during the Covid panic. Judged by the number of lives lost, those bushfires...
The Myth of Speed
We are constantly told that Australia has a huge road toll. Every holiday break and long weekend there are reports of how many people were killed, amid inferences that this is a major and growing tragedy. Equally constant is the assertion that the underlying cause is speeding. There is a never-ending campaign, complete with gory advertisements warning of lifelong injuries,...
The Art of the Deal
US Libertarians met for their National Convention in Washington DC late last month, where they heard from a range of speakers and selected their presidential candidate. However, this was unlike any other Libertarian National Convention – in fact, it was unlike any prior political party convention in US history. MAKE AMERICA LIBERTARIAN AGAIN The headline speaker for the Libertarian National Convention...
Why You Should Oppose the Government’s Attempt to Censor the Sydney Church Stabbing Video
If you have been following the issue of freedom of expression in Australia, you will be aware of the efforts of the government to censor the Sydney church stabbing video on X (but not mainstream media websites) via a court order. The court order has since been overturned although what will happen next is still uncertain. It is not unusual...
The Case for Wisdom, Temperance, and Common Sense.
With all the chaos occurring within western democracies right now, I thought it timely to focus on solutions rather than the troubles we face. In the primer to this publication, it states that Liberty Itch will present ideas that will champion your rights as an individual, challenge concepts that threaten those freedoms, and warn you of impending coercion. My contribution, as...
Hate income tax? You shouldn’t
Some taxes are more damaging than others. But when working out which taxes are more damaging than others, you should not judge a tax by its name. The impacts of income tax and GST can be much the same, because income tax and GST largely tax the same thing. So a special hatred for the idea of income tax relative to...
