Alberta & the NDP - Alberta?

I often say, “shake a tree at any post-secondary institution and a half dozen Trotskies fall out”, this is the brain trust of the Canadian socialist movement – the source of a regurgitated dogma, a dogma, when given cursory review, has in every instance ended in the few, running the many and with everyone having less as opposed to more – China, Soviet Russia …, even Sweden had to come back to the market economy to repair the damages caused by their pursuit of socialist policy. The pursuit of equality always ends badly, when equity is held as a priority and people can pursue their interests – people get more. Why, then, does a doctrine that drives policy that never works always seem to get another chance – bad government market policy that’s why. My Uncle taught me, it was bad conservatism that was the birth place of socialism; my observations have confirmed his assertion. Conservatism is seen as a fusion between market economy, fiscal restraint and social conservatism – in effect, market economy and good fiscal policy are falling prey to social conservatism – Canada is a progressive country, forget that and prosperity will die the same death that oppressive social conservative inclinations have.

There has never been a more prosperous civilization in the history of the world than the western modern economic complex; we are now at the apex of human existence. The two things that have driven the accent of prosperity has been the market economy, in concert with democracy. The constant competition for companies to provide a better product cheaper, has created a circumstance where people spend their entire day figuring out what I want, then making it, getting to me where I want it and finally at the cheapest price – disruption, creative destruction are the marvels that have given us so much. This stands in startling contrast to the monoliths socialist policies have generated – medical system that is failing us and an education system that is delivering services the same way it has for 5000 years.  I ran a fishing lodge for eight years, I took over in 1989 – I purchased a computer and automated guest interaction, accounting and all administrative aspects of the business. I stopped going to the doctor 7 years ago and then they still had paper files and I was unable to even communicate with the guy by email.  

So hold onto your hat Alberta, maybe the NDP will give you a few more monoliths to live with like ICBC, or maybe you’ll be lucky enough for the government to regionalise your already waning medical system. Alberta Farmers, just wait, the NDP may mimic the largest expropriation of land in history as the BC NDP did, in the manner they implemented the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR). The ALR has grown into its own industry here in BC, farmland is getting eaten up anyway, it is just that we have another byzantine hoop to jump through – you even have to go to the Agricultural Land Commission if you want to bring a belly-dump in to change the drainage or alter the topography on your own place. Oh, and when you want to put in a septic system on your place – it is going to cost you about $10,000 more to higher an accredited insulation company. The metaphorical horse shit is going to pile high and wide in Alberta now, the real stuff will have several inspectors with permit books and forms in triplicate to fill out – it will sit there longer now because you will be unable to do anything with it until a recent graduate from Resource Management, with the life experience of a lab rat grants permission to move shit around on your own place - enjoy. 

Everyone that believes in the individual, in enterprise, in prosperity needs to wake up and start making capitalism accessible. The socialist brain trust has feed the doctrine of envy, they teach people to hate the successful, they cut the heads off of the tall poppies and the tax initiative – we should be able to beat that pretty easy. What’s stopping us, we are, we are failing to be generous enough – we need to build a culture of facilitation, entrepreneurial adventurism. Alberta is the most prosperous jurisdiction in North America, when you go there, one sees many who are absent access to business and it fruits, doctrine won in Albert, the NDP has spun the molehill of inequality in to the mountain of societal injustice in the most prospers place on earth, exceptional political play. This standing in startling contrast as well, to the protectorate of the market economy, your bickering on the right – well enjoy. I hope for your sake, that this government takes the same tact as the Blair government, at least there, there was a grand bargain; OR you may sit down to a banquet of consequences, a bunch of redistributionist policy and a whole bunch more government.   

  

Self Reliance - The Lost Cultural Artifact

Self Reliance - The Lost Cultural Artifact 

Self-reliance has nearly become unspoken, even maligned to a degree in society at large. Self-reliance is ofttimes mocked by the left as “anti-government” and promoted by the right to the point where the only things a baby needs are bootstraps. Self-reliance is critical to independence and from independence comes freedom of person, and by extension, freedom of thought. So self-reliance is a gift we can give to all people, a little at first and more as knowledge and resources allow. It is neither to be assumed to be innate nor to be assumed to be absent, it is something to nurture, or to acquire in ourselves. The government could be a part of its delivery, too often, however; the quest for power inhibits the extension of self-reliance by the government.

Self-reliance as a cultural artifact has left Canadian society in much the same way as the “pioneer spirit” has. The pioneer spirit, the willingness for a person to enter the wilderness and shape the land by the sweat of their brow into a productive enterprise absent the trappings of civilization, was a large part of the collective Canadian psyche pre-1960. The whole pioneer spirit entity had as large components self-reliance, do it yourself and independence; to be a pioneer has as reality these components by virtue of the physical realities of pioneer life. The local midwife was the neighbour that rode a horse 15 miles in a snowstorm to deliver your baby OR as often as not, was your husband. Pioneers were forced by their chosen life course to find their own solutions, to be self-reliant. The narrative until 1960 supported this pioneering reality as a quality, as a cultural component.

Since 1960 there has been collectivization in Canadian society, granted with some positive outcomes, but at the near annihilation of self-reliance as a cultural artifact. One can contemplate self-reliance as a meme in many ways, a way of "being" passed from one generation to the next.  Self-reliance has been attacked by the migration in the general narrative away from independence as a virtue, to a narrative the increasingly directs people to find a solution from society. The seeking of solutions from each other, neighbour helping neighbour is generally a good thing, the relationship is pure functionality, uncorrupted if you will, human by humanity.

The challenge comes, however, when the narrative drives people to self-serving institutions, in main created by or supported by government legislation.  The nature of our political system coupled with the migration to collectivism generates a pernicious circumstance where people become increasingly dependent, and with dependence comes subservience. It is subtle in execution and insidious by nature. Little by little, each year, fewer choices are our own.

You see, the government always has the choice to liberate, to grant self-reliance but rarely does. Contemplate our medical system. Ask yourself, why do we have a shortage of medical services and no government-sponsored self-diagnosis websites? Or ask yourself why is the process for getting the 10th same medical prescription the same as the first? Ask yourself, why are we required to have a prescription at all?  When you come up with the quick “obvious“ answer; please ask again.  

Medical care is only one place where there could be more self-reliance, there are many places in society where the extension of more judgment to the individual should exist in the context of personal choice, but more, however, more self-direction is needed so that people can exercise themselves in their best interest. 

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Law, Legislation and Liberty - THE PARADOX OF THE INDIVIDUAL & THE COLLECTIVE

Law, Legislation and Liberty - THE PARADOX OF THE INDIVIDUAL & THE COLLECTIVE

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Individualism, as a concept, beyond the reality that individuals exist within a group or community, has, in part, found its origins in the protestant privilege to be one’s own conduit to god. This comment is made in a value-neutral context, that is to say, individualism was given a forum due to the empowerment of the individual in protestant worship modalities, relative to the centralized modality of Catholicism and other religions. The concept of an individual as an ideal also found support in the enlightenment movement, where it was fashionable to construct one’s own map of reality away from the church and traditional norms. To an extent, Stoicism, as a byproduct of the need to be free of human want, in this case, the needing for typical social interactions, has served to shore the other contributing factors to becoming an individual.  

With the advent of mass media a homogenization of society began to occur, the individual at once gained access to a larger volume of information to feed individualism, however, the communitization of the general societal narrative resulted in the perception of the Individual being distilled down to perhaps a dozen stereotypes – a circumstance that had “character type” and “Individual” becoming synonymous. Individualism incurred a challenge with the escalation of media influence; in much the same way that the homogenization of theology had done in earlier times.

Individualism tends to be challenged in the general discourse of humanity, as Individuals become challenged they seek support from others, and from there a collective within a given society begins to form. As the collective coalesces around an imperative or common desire, the organization begins to demand a degree of uniformity – and so, uniformity and Individualism are inversely proportionate or at least inverse to one another – proportionality is affected by what drove the coalescence at the outset. Oft times, like the coalescence of individuals to a collective takes place in the face of extreme human conditions, where the group is highly dependent or a unified front, hazing mechanisms are utilized “break down” the individual, to effect a state of merged egos or perhaps a “common ego”. The individual is then wholly defined by their association with a group.

It may be said in general terms, that a commonage derived from like-minded individuals, who have coalesced in a common interest or cause finds a generally healthier state of being, than, a commonage formed of conscription and hazing. The commonage of free accumulation finds common action by responding to environmental realities from a core set of beliefs; the commonage that forms from conscription finds common action at the behest of a central power entity. The commonage of fee accumulation is very difficult to corrupt, as ideals inform action, and the association began in a healthier place, in a place of intellectual commonality. By contrast, centralized power, absent support of the individual expression is inherently corrupting – as the core of the centralized power always works to its self-interest, as those subordinated seek to further their lot through acquiring favour from the central power and work around the central power for selfish and practical reasons.  

It is important to note, that conscription takes many forms in the creation of a commonage, the indoctrination of children to a given belief structure is a form of conscription. Conditioning is a form of conscription. Our very existence is conscription, by way of example, we are all conscripts of the human race.

Individualism, or the act of developing one’s sense of oneself as an independent entity, and the societal act of provisioning the discovery process to build an individual, in no way impairs collective action, it serves to diversify the informing of collective action. There is a common misperception that Individualism and Collectivism are resident at opposite ends of a continuum; the fact is however, they are mandatory companions existing as an entity. The question is, under what conditions has the collective coalesced and by what means it is being maintained – how these questions are answered determines the health of a collective. A collective that permits individual expression and functions under a premise of common ideas results in a reverse hierarchy, a collective that emerges out of conscription of one type or another results in a hierarchy that leads to a central power.

When the individual is co-opted by the collective, thought that panders to leadership emerges – often effecting “group think” and disastrous tangents in the human enterprise. When the individual within a collective is nurtured, critical thought governs individual action, and by extension, thought governs the collective – inherent in this reality is diversification of power.  

             

“The natural effort of every individual to better “their” own condition is so powerful that it is alone, and without any assistance, not only capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity but of surmounting a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often encumbers its operations” Adam Smith 

Environmentalism Reconsidered

Environmentalism Reconsidered 

This is the first in a series of blog pieces that offer a new way of contemplating environmentalism so please allow me to premise all of the following comments by acknowledging the necessity for humans to integrate their actions with natural systems. There have been damaging effects requiring address from the industrialization of the world. To think human actions, as humans now exist, can occur without effecting change on the plant would be lunacy. As human understanding continues to grow at a startling pace, greater opportunities are presenting themselves that will permit us to enjoy abundant lives in harmony with natural systems.  

Having been born on a farm in British Columbia and then through the course of my working life being exposed to the natural world, the state of the environment is a point of concern and contemplation. The environment, particularly as it concerns humanity’s healthy existence needs to take priority in the minds of the entire world’s population. A bold and “truthful” assessment of the environmental situation needs to occur. Focused debate on the next steps toward human harmony with nature still needs to take place. While there is consensus that the environment is challenged; the rhetoric we are hearing from the extreme elements of the environmental movement is questionable at best. It’s apparent at times there is a religiosity associated with some in the environmental movement, accompanied by the indoctrination of recruits rather than their edification. This is evidenced by the hostility encountered at the mere inquiry as to the credibility of claims forwarded by some.   

Nature to me is the smell of pine drifting across my path on an August day in the high country. The smell of fresh-cut wood is pungent in contrast to ambient fragrance. Nature is alpine flowers in July, ephemeral beauty. Nature is the excitement, as a flicker of a whitetail passes from view. Nature is hours spent astride a horse and watching the county pass by. Nature is the bite of a cold winter wind, the shiver from early spring rain. Nature is bold beautiful and powerful, comforting and intimidating. I’ve spent my finest moments in life at the whim of nature, a crisp October morning giving way to an afternoon’s nap against a south-facing rock. I’ve quacked at the rustle of a bear in the bush. I wondered to find my way when a flat piece of the county on a cloudy day stole my sense of direction. I have spent time with nature and felt bound to it and grown to love it, making an emotional bond. I feel I understand it and appreciate it as well as anybody. Given this intimacy I’ve developed with nature, when I hear someone speak of protecting “nature” my ears prick up. When, however, I hear someone prostituting nature to promote bygone political objectives, I become deeply offended. 

Far too often I’ve turned my head toward individuals expounding with save the earth rhetoric from the heart of urbansville, only to hear every word they say underpinned by an ulterior motive. When they say “cap and trade”, they really mean enforce monetary equality. When they say “100 Mile Diet” they really mean down with world trade. When they say “community-managed forest” they really mean stop logging. When they say save the earth, they really mean stop everything, freeze it all, stop society dead in its economic tracks. The constant salvo of urbanized thinkers trampling on the progress of humanity in the absence of an aft-ward glance is offensive and most certainly frightening. As Winston Churchill said, “the further back you look the further ahead you see”, and when I look back to when nature had its full sway, humanity was a small ship on a rough ocean. The modern world has brought both promise and pearl to be sure. The reality is we are the earth’s stewards now, and we are expanding, and we need to harvest nature’s generous bounty. Nature exists in a changing landscape; a new road can be viewed as a scare or as a mode of transport. There is a critical balance to be had to be sure, one needs to be cognisant of the result of our actions, but action is necessary; more than necessary it is exciting and filled with opportunity. This opportunity needs to be pursued with a clear mind, however, informed by clear information. The environmental message has lost resolution and fidelity, as it has been appropriated by social interest.          

The modern western population is now predominantly urban people who possess an idealistic view of nature. In grade school, they were told about the “balance” of nature, how, as a rodent population exceeds its food supply and they die off from starvation, and other examples of predator populations declining in response to predator overhunting of prey. Nature is a mass of happenstance and these are examples demonstrative of inherent imbalance as opposed to balance, anthropogenic interventions in the form of mindful stewardship can mitigate these fluctuations by integrating natural processes in human action. Anthropogenic intervention can enhance natural processes through the course of human endeavour. The view of human activity on the ground needs to be transformed in the minds of people, from the shroud of detriment to the realization human endeavour is integral to natural systems. A road built blind to the requirements of nature is a scare on the land; a road built mindful of nature serves to enhance human endeavour and maintains or enhances natural processes. We can harmonize our actions with nature; that should be the focus, rather than having social engineering take us off course.  

The Dali Lama teaches us to “avoid putting a goat's head on a yak's body”. This is precisely what many social activists are doing to the environmental movement – perhaps the social activists are best regarded as wolves in sheep’s clothing. The wolves are the authors of the environmental manifesto and the builders of the road to subsistence.  

It is my desire to move the environmental movement's thinking away from obstruction to participation, from scarcity to abundance, from analysis identifying problems to their massive brain trust in finding solutions. The only way to change humanity's dependence on fossil fuels is to find a solution, free unlimited energy will render fossil fuels obsolete and provision for abundance.

Is there Room for Libertarian Thought in Canadian Politics.

As issues evolve in the political world all parties oscillate along a continuum of what is typically described as the right and left, the libertarian perspective often finds solution anywhere between the two extremes. The common theme is the absence of coercion. The libertarian has the focus of thought which seeks to construct a society that expels all foreign influences over the individual; it is in this context that the absence of coercion ranks highest in all matters related to governance. The liberal also seeks to deliver free agency to the individual but seeks to do so by intervention and is willing to compromise free agency. The conservative seeks to maintain social stability through tradition and convention and is willing to compromise free agency in the process. The libertarian says “leave me alone to make my way” absent exploitive circumstance. The liberal says “there is an obligation to provide means”. While the conservative says “one needs to be reliant on one’s self and execute actions with strong adherence to convention”.

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The creep toward “collectivism” that is permeating the Canadian political liberal movement repels libertarians. Liberals in Canada have many of the same traits as Trotskyism, as expressed in strong redistributionist tendencies. The imposition of state on the actions of the individual is repugnant to a libertarian, so redistributionist policy is opposed by libertarians because it’s viewed as being coercive and taxing to the autonomy of the individual. While most libertarians understand and support the necessity of government as a means of facilitating human exchange, they seek to minimize the effect of the government on the actions of people. Libertarians seek neutrality and minimalism in government. Liberals are willing to forfeit autonomy by allowing the government to encroach on personal choice in the context of the collective influencing the choices of the individual. Conservatives find accord with libertarians in their inclination toward self-reliance and the constraint on the size of government but tend to lose accord on matters related to regulating the individual – particularly in the realm of conservatism as it relates to social issues. Libertarians seek to constrain the size of government in the interest of maintaining an autonomous sovereign individual and conservatives want to constrain the size of government in the interest of efficiency or to prevent overtaxing the individual and the liberals are more willing to allow the government to grow in the interest of effecting social equity.     

Sweden recently restructured its pension system from a generalised government pension plan to a plan that accumulated pension contributions attributed to the individual. The individual was then extended the choice to manage their own contributions or they could opt to let the government manage their contributions. The presence of choice for an individual to influence the outcome of their own resources is an element in the legislation a libertarian would look for; the forced and coerced contribution to the pension plan in the first place would be completely offensive to a libertarian, as a libertarian wants the choice to save when it is most beneficial and  as they see fit. A liberal views this intrusion as acceptable because there are people absent the discipline to save for themselves and it is just more practical to force them to save now than pay to keep them later. It is evident in the liberal acceptance of such policy that over time state paternalism will rise, as it has in Canada. Increasingly, the government in Canada is sacrificing personal choice for collective action; the question for people is how far do we want this trend to go?

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Libertarians find harmony with liberals on government’s actions as it relates to morality. Libertarians may be socially conservative themselves, but want that choice to be theirs and reject paternalist dictates from governments in this regard. Liberals are in the main “socially” liberal and less constrained morally. So while the genesis of thought regarding the direction of policy relating to morality may be different, the outcome often is the same. Conservatives are willing to encroach on the individual with respect to social issues, more so than the libertarians find palatable. Libertarians see contractual law focused on managing human exchange as valid, where laws related to morality or personal conduct are viewed as invalid – Libertarians favour free action in the absence of harm to others.

There is an absence of direct political expression of libertarian perspective, so finding a means to promote and preserve the sovereign person is difficult. There is a willingness throughout the political spectrum to encroach on the individual, the conservatives tending toward being morally paternalistic and the liberals tending to be generally paternalist. In the full spectrum of political thought, only libertarians are seeking to give the highest priority to the absence of coercion. When one examines our life in Canada, one sees governments’ influence in every aspect of their daily life, at some point the level of government involvement reaches diminishing returns socially and monetarily. It is apparent we have breached acceptable bounds of government involvement in many cases on both scores. What is more concerning in Canadian society is a cultural inclination to acquiesce to state authoritarianism. We are polite which is fine but, we’re too compliant – we need to introduce a higher measure of the individual into our culture.      

Marxism found is origins from the injustices of the sanctioned exploitation of the working class through the evolution of the industrial revolution. Governments, heavily controlled by corporate interests permitted, either through legislation or the absence of action, an extended period of exploitation to occur; people's basic human requirements left wanting in spite of dawn to dusk work day. Unflinching government commitment to business interests in the face of corporate coercion absent any mitigating influence is a blight on humanity - a testament to humans’ ability to subjugate “others” through separation; this reality is a persistent thorn in the side of those wanting to promote an enlightened capitalist perspective. It is important to recognise that the libertarian perspective seeks to generate a circumstance where people are at liberty, and so the circumstance of the working class coerced to subservience is precisely what libertarian thought seeks to curtail – the libertarian seeks the absence of all subservience. This is very likely the only point of commonality that exists between Marxists and Libertarians, the desire to see people absence exploitation through coercion. Where Marxists seek equality through government intervention, Librarians seek prosperity through government facilitation.

The legitimate fear of a generalised exploitive circumstance, similar to what occurred during the initial stages of industrialization, looms large in the psyche of the socialist movements. There is a cultural meme that remains constant from one generation to the next, which transmits this fear into an era where the breadth of influence renders it irrelevant and in fact harmful to progress.

There is, the world over, an overabundance of people to perform menial tasks, this reality results in labour being unable to garner sufficient remuneration for subsistence. This has been a chronic fixture of humanity for thousands of years. The ongoing observation of this reality perpetuates the Marxist doctrine as valid in the minds of many. The Marxist doctrine inappropriately directs blame for this circumstance on the misallocation of capital and hence the capitalists, when it is the fact that there is too much supply of labour relative to the capacity of the economy that is to blame. The Marxist response is to effect redistributionist actions in the pursuit of equality which results in the punishing of those who have found productive means to affluence. As someone who values the unfettered pursuit of self-interest, but recognises this chronic challenge, I would choose to find a means put a floor on human existence and allow the market to assign relative value to a given good or service. The floor on human existence would include the resources to subsist and a means to advance. As asserted in other places in this document, governments best way to contribute to the betterment of the individual and by extension society as a whole is the provision of education. Education requires little in the way of physical resources and builds the most critical element of society: human capital.       

The Marxist, Socialist and to a lesser extent Liberals are still holding on to equality as a focal point for governance. Equality is an errant pursuit for a host of reasons, where equity is laudable and achievable. The pursuit of equality, particularly at the point of actuation, has built into it so many disincentives to action that any society premised on equality has failed. Human beings are divergent creatures whose pursuits follow an infinite number of vectors, levels and outcomes; equality is a frighteningly stifling perspective when seeking the course that allows humanity to find its full expression. The hallmark of any society espousing equality as its primary focus for action has resulted in, firstly the emergence of a concentrated authoritarian government operated by “elevated” equals and then secondly it evolves to a plutocracy.  

While equality is desirable, when it is pursued, dynamics emerge that result in detrimental effects. The progressive tax structures typical of western societies generate an inhibition to the most productive in society to pursue vigourously their area of endeavour. The better you do the more you pay, the less you do the less you pay – the existence of this pressure impairs action in society as a whole, with the net result being less opportunity in aggregate and hence less opportunity for the impoverished to find their way to prosperity.  

The libertarian focus is to provide people with a circumstance that allows the populous to engage freely with its environment and let whatever relative outcome that emerges be commensurate with a given individuals production as it is valued by the society at large. One person may choose to cut grass, another to build rockets. Society will value their respective contribution and that value is expressed in the abstract representation of human action, commonly money. By allowing a variance in action to result in a variance value, ergo life outcome, more attention flows to what is important and or interesting for people. The libertarian perspective accepts the existence of inequality, it seeks, however, to prevent its entrenchment for a given individual or group - it is inherently disruptive and dynamic.  


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CANADA - ECONOMIC STAGNATION NATION
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Senate - Government Financial Monitor?

Government Resource Revenue Dependence

Government - Ensuring Optimum Size

Senate Spending & Restructuring

                       Government Scale & Accountability

                                         TRANSCENDENCE - WHY IT MATTERS