Guest essay by Viv Forbes
To compete in today’s world we need to score well on resource availability, capital assets, energy costs, tax burden and workforce/management. It also helps to have secure property rights and a sound currency. Today’s Australia scores poorly on all counts.
In 1901, the year of Federation, Australia was the richest country in the world per capita.
The Pioneer generations, with freedom to explore and invest, had developed valuable mineral assets – gold, silver, lead, zinc, copper, coal, tin and iron. And they had bred up large numbers of sheep and cattle on our native grasslands.
Energy was abundant – wood, horse power, kerosene, gas, hydro and coal powered electricity – we were among world leaders in cheap energy. Sydney had gas lights in its streets as far back as 1820.
The Pioneering innovators also invented game-changers such as the stump jump plough, the Ridley-Sunshine Harvester and froth flotation of minerals, and they developed better Australian versions of Leviathan coaches, Southern Cross windmills, Merino sheep, Shorthorn cattle, Federation wheat, Kelpies and Blue Heeler dogs.
The Builder generations who followed the pioneers invested heavily in productive capital assets like flour mills and wool sheds, mines and collieries, smelters and saw mills, power stations and electric trams, trans-continental railways and overland telegraph lines, orchards and plantations, stockyards and abattoirs, breweries and vineyards, dams and artesian bores, factories and universities, exploration and research, pipelines and harbours, railways and roads. There were no “Lock-the-Gate” signs.
Governments were decentralised with minimal taxes and red tape, creating new business was easy and union power was minimal and generally beneficial for workers.
But then the Termite generations took over, and for much of the last forty years taxes, handouts and green tape have been smothering new enterprise. We are sponging on the ageing assets created by past generations and building little to support future Australians. The monuments left by this generation are typified by casinos, sports arenas, wind-energy prayer wheels, sit-down money and debt.
The trendy war on carbon has already inflated our electricity costs – this will hasten the closure of more processing and manufacturing industries. Green tape is shutting-the-gate on new investments in exploration, grassland protection, dams, power stations, fishing, forestry and coastal development. Taxes are weakening existing industry and the savings that could build new industries are being wasted on bureaucracy, delays, legalism, subsidies, climate tomfoolery and green energy toys. Finally, union featherbedding is crippling any large survivors.
Australia’s future prosperity demands cheap energy, more investment in productive assets, reduced government costs, more productive labour and the freedom to explore and innovate.
We must change, or more jobs will follow Holden.
More at carbon-sense.com
This post seems about as well thought out and documented as something we might expect in a paper from a high schooler.
Where are the facts and figures, the charts, the reference data?
And how does the author explain this story from one year ago that says “AUSTRALIA has recorded its 21st consecutive year of economic growth, the only developed nation in the world that can make that boast.” One would have expected Australia to have had one of the worst growth records in the world with “green tape” and the so-called “Termite generation”.
http://www.news.com.au/finance/business/economists-expect-solid-gdp-growth/story-e6frfkur-1226465183237
Climateace
“The opposite of all these things is brought by good, strong democratic government and efficient and effective bureaucracies.”
Like elsewhere, here in Oregon efficient and effective bureaucracies were all but abolished in the ealry 80s as they slowly became saturated with entrenched left wing ideologues who’s public employee unions rewarded them with unfunded benefits in exchange for their funding the campaigns of left wing candidates.
All of our government bureaucracies have evolved into self interested, agenda driven, conniving and lying centers of propaganda and manipulation.
I know that sounds anti-government & ridiculous but the truth is that is what we have.
The examples are long, wide and deep into every arena and issue.
This problem if what allows the perpetration of illegitimate policies and programs that are not vetted or justified with any authentic evidence.
Even as programs fail year after year the response is always more of the same to avoid admitting error.
Staff are assigned not to develop remedies but to spin forward what has already failed.
Climate Change policies riddle nearly every bureaucracy with busy work and costly interference into people’s lives and businesses’ affairs.
Leo Morgan says: @ur momisugly December 27, 2013 at 12:26 am
I regret that this issue was raised.
Yes, many of us, myself included, agree overall with Viv’s article. But so what?
If we start mixing our politics with our science, we’ll end up as badly wrong as the extreme greens.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Since science is connected at the hip to government via grants, you CAN NOT take the politics out of science. That is why science has been so badly corrupted, it serves its paymaster.
Without that insight you are just spining your wheels over in a corner while Big Money and Big Media and Big Government get on with the job of tightening our slave collars.
WINSTON 101
Coming in late onthis but you had an interesting point on Baby Bonus, baby benefits etc. In the UK, under the “Man-of-the Manse” Gordon Pension-snatcher Browne. He brought in Tax Credits – Working Tax credits (WTC) to boost the low-paid, Child Tax Credits (CTC) to help low paid families. Good, in theory. But, re WTC, workers paid income tax – then filled out forms to get SOME of it back (as in Dickens – “Please Sir, can I have my money back?) Hate our Lib-Dems BUT they have increased tax threshold so that people are not paying tax until earning 10k. Thereby reducing some WTC requirement.
But,WTCand CTC requires civil servants to administer. I was one for as period. And, becuase of the rushed way it was brought in, the amount of fraud was immense. It caused resentment of the recipients as well as the higher paid who insisted in claiming their share… In effect, it bought votes and would require a brave government to abolish it….
But read the following on BIG GOVERNMENT:
John Cowperthwaite, colonial O I/C Hong Kong form 1945, and colonial secretary 1961 – 1971:
“… in the long run the aggregate decisions of individual business men, exercising individual judgement in a free economy, even if it often mistaken, is less likely to do harm than the centralised decisions of a government; and certainly the harm is likely to be counteracted faster.”
Newsweek: While Britain continued to build a welfare state, Cowperthwaite was saying “no”: no export subsidies, no tariffs, no personal taxes higher than 15%, red tape so thin a one-page form could launch a company.”
Milton Friedman: “It would be hard to over-estimate the debt Hong Kong owes to Cowperthwaite.”
I agree with Gail.
It is nothing short of total capitulation and surrender to let a fear of over steering deter one from acting to stop the extreme green left. They would like nothing better than for you to have such fear leaving them a free range to impose anything they decide.
Leo Morgan’s worry may as well be a decree that resistance is futile.
Climateace said:
“In fiscal terms the Australian national government debt is small and manageable.”
This is one of the great myths of the Left here in Australia.
Our National Public (i.e. Government) Debt is only $ 300+ billion dollars. This is small and manageable when compared to most affluent countries, given that Australia has a 1.5 trillion dollar economy.
Unfortunately, what Climateace fails to mention is that our National Private Debt is almost equivalent to our total GDP. Hence, the total National private plus public debt puts Australia in the same league as basket case economies like Greece.
Fortunately. most of the Private debt is in the form of foreign investment and loans that are being used to purchase mining and industrial machinery, essential infrastructure for industry and mining and other productive enterprises. This means that there is good possibility that this debt will get paid back.
However, As a mid-level economic power spanning a whole continent and have a population of only 23 million people, Australia cannot provide the funds needed for the necessary investment and loans that are required to maintain healthy levels of economic growth. This means that we must seek these funds overseas.
Hence, if Australia is to maintain access to future foreign investment and loans, its Government must keep the National Public Debt as low as possible so that the Public debt structures does not suck up money that are needed to service the Private Debt Structure.
What I find sad is the number of people who fall for the outside covering. Whether it is CAGW or “We are from the government and we are here to help you.”
DEATH BY GOVERNMENT by R.J. Rummel should be required reading in every school around the world. The “termites’ seem to think life is a bowl of cherries and we live in an ‘enlightened’ era where the government is responsible for protecting and feeding and clothing them from cradle to grave without them lifting a finger. After all they are ENTITLED. Nothing could be further from the truth.
It was the same George Bernard Shaw who wrote:
Who also wrote “A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.” and designed the Fabian Window with its coat of arms of a wolf wrapped in a sheepskin. One wonders how soon that sheepskin is going to be removed.
Well I see Climate ace is back, having read the comments, as with another longwinded and certain visitor, a certain Warren, I notice a amusing tactic.
Both when called, on their 3 monkey trolling, immediately complained to the moderators, whined about the blog rules.
When losing on the facts, fight over the rules.
Now I see both as Pointman describes them, so it easy to be amused.
But this “law fare” will be used more as the debate is lost by them, the attacks on the moderators time, appeals to Anthony to silence harsh criticism will increase.
This is a tactic of the politically correct progressives.
Also a tactic of the bureaucracy, were your time is willfully wasted until you give up.
It is quite possible all the fact free verbiage of both climate ace and warren, is simply cover for the intent of putting the site moderation to as much extra work as possible.
I enjoyed the comments of both immensely, I am always charmed by absolute certainty.
@ur momisugly
climateace says:
December 26, 2013 at 10:27 pm
Regarding Mass Extinction
It can hardly be stated that the minor species loss experienced in Australia over the last 225 years would qualify as “Mass Extinction” under any definition.
“mass extinction
The extinction of a large number of species within a relatively short period of geological time, thought to be due to factors such as a catastrophic global event or widespread environmental change that occurs too rapidly for most species to adapt.”
Your linked WIKI articles indicates that over the last 225 years 67 animal species and 52 plant species have been confrimed as extinct. This equates to 1 animal species every 3 years and 1 plant species avery 4 years. There is no apparent “Mass” episode of vanishing species in any given Decade or 1/4 century period that can be determined as a Mass Extinction episode where any greater number of species has vanished over what could be expected from Natural Selection.
Man has done more damage from the introduction of the Cane Toad than any possible Climate induced disruption that could be atributed to industrialization.
Can you find any other possible supporting evidence of “Mass Extinction”?
climateace says: December 27, 2013 at 2:09 am
Oxymoron alert.
Decarbonize the economy?
This is newspeak, perhaps the decarbonizers, such as Climate Ace, would show us the way, please decarbonize yourself.
The insanity of ,a carbon based life form, demonizing carbon, is very hard to parody.
[nicholas tesdorf says:
December 27, 2013 at 3:18 am
: Australia has, over the past couple of decades, climbed up the ladder of the world’s largest economies, because over the same period the EU and US have done even greater damage than Australia to their own economies..]
nicholas, Forbes article argued that Australia’s economy was uncompetitive because, inter alia, it has regulations and a carbon tax. My point was that this is a bizarre position when Australia is moving up the rung of world economies. Further, if these things are so damaging, why has the Australian economy – virtually alone among OECD countries, grown for 21 consecutive quarters?
The argument simply does not hold water.
[climateace says: December 27, 2013 at 2:09 am
… efficient and effective bureaucracies.
AJB
Oxymoron alert.]
Some bureaucracies (whether in large multi-national corporates in the private sector, large religions, or in the public sector) are efficient and effective. Others are not.
Clearly, the issue is not whether to have a bureaucracy because bureaucracies are indispensible.
The issue is how to get and keep an effective and efficient bureaucracy. This is harder than most people think.
@ClimateAce
Considering that nearly 10,000 new species are discovered each year, 1 loss every 3 or 4 years over a 225 year timespan in any given geographic area is bordering on the verge of being ecologically insignificant rather than Mass extinction indicative
Animal group Number of species
Vertebrates
Amphibians……………6,199
Birds…………………….9,956
Fish…………………….30,000
Mammals ………………5,416
Reptiles ………………..8,240
Subtotal ……………….59,811
Invertebrates
Insects …………………950,000
Molluscs ………………..81,000
Crustaceans …………..40,000
Corals ……………………2,175
Others …………………130,200
Subtotal ……………..1,203,375
Plants
Mosses …………………15,000
Ferns and allies ………13,025
Gymnosperms ……………980
Dicotyledons …………199,350
Monocotyledons ………59,300
Green Algae …………….3,715
Red Algae ……………….5,956
Subtotal ………………..297,326
Others
Lichens ………………….10,000
Mushrooms ……………..16,000
Brown Algae ………………2,849
Subtotal …………………..28,849
Total ………………….1,589,361
climateace puts forth a nice strawman agrument, doesn’t
he? His statement was:
As if there is no choice between an overbearing, smothering government
and a third-world hellhole. Governments are not a quantum entity, but
a continuum entity. They are not necessarily either huge, smothering
masses or incapable of enforcing their will beyond a day’s infantry march.
It is possible to have a government that is sufficient to do its job but still
small enough to be minimally intrusive. It has just become extremely
difficult.
The bureaucracy which climateace praises is the
directly culpable party. Once a bureaucracy has come into existence, its
stated mission inevitably becomes secondary to
its real mission. The real mission becomes simply
the preservation and expansion of the bureaucracy itself! Goals
become evaluated not on the basis of, “Is our particular agency
able to do its nominal job efficiently, or has it become too obese?”,
but instead on the basis of, “How can we expand our budget, staffing,
and reach?” This is simply due to human nature–people want to feel
good about themselves, and their jobs. In a bureaucratic setting,
that equates to a larger budget and a larger number of people
controlled. This desire operates up and down the bureaucratic
chain.
I wish I could confidently recommend a set of solutions that would
keep a government lean, mean, cost-effective and focused on
delivering value to the people governed. Such a set of solutions
may not exist, since it would have to effectively counter human
nature. I would suggest that a citizenry that is sceptical about the
ability of government to do “everything” is a small first step.
Climateace,
That most dreadful non source gives me this:
So, yes, there are corporate bureaucracies. This said, I believe there is a fundamental difference between any sort of government and any sort of private activity. The difference is, if the private activity is too inefficient the company goes broke and ceases to operate, where the government does not operate under this constraint.
I disagree that the Grail consists of finding an efficient bureaucracy, I think this misses the important distinction that government activities tend to be less efficient that private activities by virtue of the simple fact that they can be.
Patrick said @ur momisugly December 26, 2013 at 10:57 pm
Liar! That’s the kind of crap my brother came out with when he was a Canberra policy wonk!
http://farminstitute.org.au/_blog/Ag_Forum/post/Australia_still_at_the_bottom_when_it_comes_to_farm_subsidies/
Here in Tasmania several business sectors had their costs of compliance assessed and farmers’ costs were far higher than any other business.
Good heavens, people.
reference: “carbon”
From time to time, we need to remind ourselves that there is one, and only one arguable causal point. Is the premise: “Increasing carbon dioxide levels cause increases in global temperature at a more rapid rate that the carbon dioxide itself is increasing, or not’? This is a theoretical question subject to experimental review.
Government, organizational, or personal folly on either side of the argument based on a “religious” (ie belief-based) view of this question is likely to end up on the same trash heap of history as other mass delusions of rumor, fear, or the madness of crowds.
The above of course references climate related prescriptive activities. One can, of course, research, document, and ponder lack (or growth) of species diversity or other topics, on their own merits. Presumptive causality should, however, be excluded for both clarity and civility. And there must be evidence. Would that the bugs that infest us were showing the same tendency to die off as the larger species are supposedly doing.
The government arguments are equally clear: indebtedness seems wonderously salubrious to those who pay is debt funded, so so much fun for those tasked to pay. A government overspending its receipts has much to answer for and should probably be trimmed rather than expanded. We have understood the sources of wealth of nations since Adam Smith, who has not been contradicted.
He, also, remained grounded in empirical observation.
If we the people are ever going to freed from ourselves , as in –
“the majority always votes for the candidates promising them the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over a loss of fiscal responsibility, always followed by a dictatorship.” –
then the government must consist of sufficient eligible individuals elected for a limited , once -only term , by lottery. There appears to be no other way to prevent vested-interest (elected politicians) from subverting a political process which involves the “will of the people” via “one man/one vote democracy”
” New Zealand farmers received the lowest levels of subsidies of any nations farmers (averaged over the 2008-2010 period), with an estimated 1% of their farm income being generated through subsidies, trade restrictions or other forms of government support.”
Long may it continue to be that way. The main focus now is to somehow keep the costs of business compliance at minimal levels. Even those practising the most sustainable agriculture are being hit with rapacious demands , particularly from local government.
Several posters appear to be having difficulty with accepting that Australia is undergoing a mass extinction event.
Australia has lost around .09% of its vertebrate species in 200 years. This is caculated using a figure of around 70 vertebrate species extinct out of a total of around 7,500 vertebrates.
(The numbers change around a bit as new species are found, species are reclassified and so on and so forth).
At this rate it will take around 10,000 years before ALL vertebrates are extinct in Australia.
Complete extinctions of this nature are unlikely but it is unarguable that we have initiated a continent-wide mass extinction event.
The pipeline of species threatened with extinction is extensive.
Other people questioned why I raised the issue of the mass extinction event in the context of the Forbes article.
The reason is quite simple: the only thing standing between our mass extinction event and the pioneers, the settlers, the builders, the developers, the farmers and the miners are government laws and regulations about environmental standards. OTOH, Forbes was arguing against green regulations.
My view is that we need to have development but that the development has to be constrained in order to be sustainable.
Where our mass extinction event goes from here is a matter of national choice. If the choice is to stop it, then green regulations will be required.
The Pompous Git
Good post.
Climateace.
Seriously. You’re seriously arguing that?
obvious glaring problems.
1 – we are extrapolating from .09% over 200 years a linear trend that will continue for 10K years?
2 – it is unarguable that we have initiated a continent-wide mass extinction event.
Is it? Who’s we? What’s the nature of this event? Specific mechanism? Evidence? As Willis says, can you show me the bodies?
3- he only thing standing between our mass extinction event … are government laws and regulations about environmental standards.
This has not been demonstrated or supported, merely asserted. For that matter, the extinction event has not been demonstrated or supported, merely asserted.
farmerbraun said @ur momisugly December 27, 2013 at 1:05 pm
From the bureau of census and stats:
So you believe these “middle class welfare beneficiaries” don’t deserve a fairer deal?