Mangled Thoughts

Monday, I heard a snippet on a radio station to this effect, euthanasia is now the next aim. Next to what? The Bracks and Brumby abortion bills being pushed through the Victorian Parliament.

“Red” Ted “the Toorak Village Idiot” Baillieu, it has been reported, fully supports the the Bill. However, this item is about whether Rudd is about to do a Holland to Australia and turn it into a charnel house of state ordered murder, and that is exactly what the situation is in Holland.

How so? This so:

Senator Crossin is an ALP Senator, Northern Territory. Crossin steered a bill raised, surprise surprise, by Bob Brown and the Greens. Here’’s the evidence:

Hansard, Senate, Thursday, 26 June 2008

“Senator CROSSIN : As the Chair of the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs I present the report of the committee on the Rights of the Terminally Ill (Euthanasia Laws Repeal) Bill 2008 …”

Crossin, in explanation of the report, evaded the substance of the matter. Crossin reduces it to a question of jurisdiction:

“I uphold the view of the Northern Territory government that Bob Brown’s bill should be amended to not re-enact the
Rights of the Terminally Ill legislation…. the Territory
being given back its powers… determining its destiny on the issue of euthanasia.

In summing up, the one way to solve this problem about the Commonwealth’s obsession with overriding Territory laws…”

In other words, if the Federal Senate is an obstacle, the back door route is through States’ Parliaments.

The background to the mention of the Northern Territory is when the Cabinet of diseased Leftists, who run riot in the Northern Territory, in 1995 rammed through that Parliament an ‘euthanasia act’. The ‘Act’ was challenged and oddly, the High Court of Australia ruled it was valid (why is state ordered murder valid?). To deal with this, the Howard Cabinet put through the “Euthanasia Laws Bill in 1996″, over-riding the NT Executive’s criminal act and ensuring ‘euthanasia’ remains a criminal offence in Australia. These facts are recited in the speeches to the current “Bill”.

What of the Democrats. Well, they are now gone but Senator Allison, Bartlett relates, raised a Bill for state ordered murder. Bartlett himself, having been pestilential on many grave matters, seems reasonable on this matter.

He stated that it is a matter that must be debated, though he is opposed to it. The reason he gives is, what it really is about has to be drawn out. This is reasonable, but not the way Bartlett recommends, ‘bringing on’ such bills. They bring state ordered murder an ever closer reality, because of the ‘legislative’ force of Bills. It should be an open, ‘no-holds barred’ debate, and this requires no Bills raised in Senate or House of Reps.

There is further ambiguity in Bartlett’s position statement. He cites approvingly Dr “Death” Nitschke. Then there is this bit of obfuscation:

“As I said, I have apprehension about whether euthanasia could be safely implemented, but I would like to see it if it could be done. I am not religious at all, so that is not the issue for me…”

Unsure as to why ‘contradiction in terms’ occurs but it is a good idea to throw it in just in case. For Bartlett’s edification, there is a completed ‘experiment’ called Nazi Germany. He can also examine the results of a continuing ‘experiment’ and it is called Holland. What jolly nice ‘experiments’.

Bartlett equated euthanasia with suicide, it “is a form of suicide”. Not it is not. Suicide is strictly self-murder. “Euthanasia” is someone else committing murder, even if at the request of the one killed.

As for Bob Brown, let his own words damn him as this bit of mendacious evasion shows:

“The argument is that the Senate or the parliament should not force the availability of legal euthanasia on all Australians; it should not force options. What an extraordinarily dictatorial, antipublic point of view this is.
Let me, again, make this very clear: this bill will proceed.”

These are not the words, in the imperative, of a “wannabe” dictator - “this bill will proceed”? Why, it was shortly enough before when Bob Brown read into Hansard the Greens updated Stalinist manifesto. This slime-ball cries foul only when the Greens face obstacles against their wildest aims and, the trouble is, what is counted extreme these days is precious little, as Rudd’s plans to destroy Australians through Co2 taxation and hard left central planning.

Smoke indicates fire, and it is burning. The basis of euthansia is the death cult of the fictional vicious cow called “Nature”. To this, the equation of man with animals. To drive home what is behind what is now a serious putsch to decree State ordered murder of Australians, these items:

Hard Left Fronts advocate legalised murder of children

Legalised euthanasia’ = State ordered murder. Now we have calls for ‘legalised’ murder of children.

The Nazi cult of nature, now the national cult of Australia?

Reply to Jan Fredericks

This item addresses the last challenge put by Anon under, Second reply to Anon:

“wouldn’t abolishing or reducing trainee wages allow the market process to operate more freely? After all…”

To summarise the exhange to date, in reference to the clowns of the HR Nicholls Society and their pal, John Day, Anon put a question in comments on apprenticeships and wages.

The question Anon put that initiated the exchange actually turns on: the HR Nicholls Society holds, amongst many fallacies and their subsequent crude blunders, what the ACTU also happens to rely on to attack free labour markets; wage rates are indeterminate. Secondly, to the exchange, they hold the height of wages is decisive for employment and its reverse, and this is also false.

The height of wages blunder is assumed by the nonsense of Hugh Morgan’s tripe, and parroted by Bob Day:

“The ratio of minimum wage rates to the median wage rate explains whether wages are either about right or too high. Wages are 58% of the median, they are too high.”

Wage rates are not indeterminate. They are set by the marginal value of the product of labour. The ratio of capital to labour sets the height of wage rates. This is crucial, and it showed out; the Howard Cabinet swallowed the snake oil pumped out by the HR Nicholls Society that free labour markets raises the productivity of labour. The ACTU and the then Labour Party Opposition seized on this to effortless devestating effect:

Not only is it false, but in free markets wage rates can fall. Why? The problem is the telling ratio, capital to labour and the mvpl. Next, only capital accumulation raises wage rates, because only this raises productivity. To illuminate it, it’s all the difference between using a digging fork to plant 1,000 acres with potatoes and a single man using a massive, modern tractor hauling a seeding machine.

Can anyone doubt who will earn more in a period of time, the second seeding 1,000 in a day or two, or the former manually digging them in over a couple of years? Well, yes, apparently. After all, Liberal Party Ministers only echoed the rubbish labour itself can raise production. Amusingly, the Rudd Cabinet also claims labour raises production. Their twist is, mass re-education, ‘credentialism’, will make labour super productive, a great leap never before witnessed in history. No doubt, if enough bits of paper stamped credential are glued together, the resultant papier mache will be a machine superior to tractor towing seeding machine; except when it rains - paper tends to sogginess and disintegration in the wet.

It must be noted, if the HR Nicholls Society’s grasp of labour market economics was sound, they could have effortlessy have smashed the ACTU on these facts, as well as other facts of economic laws. This is why the ACTU fears Jackson, and not the insular buffoons of the HR Nicholls Society.

In an article in The Australian, Bob Day stated that tradesmen on construction sites are doing very well under labour market reforms. Needless to say, the ACTU seized on this. Combet replied in The Australian with the obvious, Day committed the fallacy of treating what might be true of some as a universal truth. Combet finished off the Day ‘expert paper’ on labour markets by observing that there are those who are not doing anywhere near as well as the HR Nicholls Society claimed they would.

What voters in 2005 correctly concluded was Hugh Morgan, puckering up to the ABC camera ‘who loved him’, telling them that they are paid too much. That, their wages must be cut, and this way Australia will prosper.To reinforce this, the HR Nicholls Society asserted that employees could be compensated by income transfers! It was truly numbing reading their ‘labour market economics’ material.

Returning to Anon:

He put the question:

“wouldn’t abolishing or reducing trainee wages allow the market process to operate more freely? After all, the trainee wage is a minimum wage, not a maximum wage…Rather, a lower minimum wage rate might encourage employers to recruit those jobseekers who are currently locked out of the labour market.”

This is still loaded with the error of the height of wages. If jobseekers are “locked out”, it points to an effective minimum wage is in force. Though, to be sure, this is not intended to unreasonably press Anon’s statement, in view of the qualification:

“I wasn’t suggesting, not for a second, that wages “be forced down below market rates.” Rather, a lower minimum wage rate might encourage employers to recruit those jobseekers who are currently locked out of the labour market.”

It must be observed, if a prescribed minimum does not deliver unemployment, it cannot be an effective minimum. So long as a prescribed minimum is equal to or less than market rates, it is not effective. Anon’s reply raises the question of, is the prescribed minimum effective? It might well be.

Secondly, labour is not homogeneous. A prescribed minimum might be only a minimum in some cases, but can be an effective minimum in others. The problem is, it is not market processes setting minimums.

The statistic Anon gives, 45% of apprentices are paid above the minimum centrally prescribed rate is useless. The only additional remarks to be made are stresses, e.g.:

- Some of the 45% might be apprentices who, some time into their apprenticeship, do have higher mvpls, and so will be paid more.

- Some of the 45% might reflect the ACTU is enforcing closed shops and effective minimum wages. Next:

“After all, the trainee wage is a minimum wage, not a maximum wage, so employers would be free to pay above that rate, as many (52% of employers) already do…”

As a price floor, is it an effective minimum? This is a real concern, contained in the real problem: If it is, it wipes out the opening of some apprenticeships.

The trainee wage rate, however, was raised as an attempt to counteract imposition of effective minimum wage rates, and the capacity of the ACTU to extort effective minimum wage rates. The floor was actually lowered. The ALP hotly contested this in Parliament and to check here are some documents from Hansard:

WORKPLACE RELATIONS AND OTHER LEGISLATION AMENDMENT BILL 1996: Second Reading

Unemployment: Youth Wage

Apprentices

Training Packages and Wages

Youth Wages

These are only a tiny fraction of the documents in which ‘trainee and youth wages’ is a price ceiling is the subject of the document, or one of the subjects raised.

To reiterate, the problem is, it is not free market processes setting rates, it is capricious central authority, in no position to discover market rates, fixing them.

It must be noted that employers are not bound by ‘trainee wages’ as a ceiling. Next:

“I don’t think the 45% statistic is completely meaningless. To me it demonstrates that employers value some workers more than others and so, I think, reinforces your earlier point that “labour isn’t homogenous.”

In addition to the above remarks, this sentence also treads dangerously close to Adam Smith’s error.I’m not saying Anon intended it but it does read so. Smith resurrected the erroneous notion of the value of labour. It had been demolished as false long before Smith. Why did Smith commit it?

Perhaps it was because of his Calvinist background. Smith’s mistake is now a vulgar commonplace. Some clergymen, for example, echo it when they bang on about the dignity of labour and the labourer is worthy of his hire. To the former, dignity of labour, this is rubbish. Only those who hold really nice, comfy jobs are prone to this nonsense. The scholastics, drew the right distinction, work is a fact of life, we are physical beings.

They asserted the dignity of the man, not work. They held no nonsensical, mystical sentimental belief about work. They simply said, we have to work, we have to produce, in order to live, advance, prosper. They did not insult modest men, women and children that in their day engaged in backbreaking, and for some also very dangerous work to earn modest pay indeed.

The scholastics observed market prices was for the labour supplied. There is nothing personal about wages. Market rates are not an insult, it is the value of labour at the time.

The problem is, to say employers ‘value some workers more than others and so…’ injects a false moral note that obscures labour markets and the economics of labour markets. Let’s put it in the ACTU’s slang, “Fair pay for a fair day’s work…equal pay for equal work”, also committing the fallacies of indeterminancy and, from perfect competition, labour is homogeneous.

Adam Smith also committed the error of indeterminancy, and this leads into the next matter Anon raises:

“…a lower minimum wage rate might encourage employers to recruit those jobseekers who are currently locked out of the labour market….I can’t see what is wrong with this:

“The solution lies in allowing… tradesmen and apprentices, regardless of age, to negotiate indenture agreements which satisfy both parties.”

Bob Day’s expression is ‘indentured apprenticeships’. Now either this is a silly misuse of language, to appear scholarly by throwing in an anachronism, indentured, or it means exactly how it reads, binding apprentices to an emplyor. Day asserts that this will resolve retention of apprentices. Let’s return to more errors committed by Adam Smith, and Mr. Jackson who remarks:

“According to Smith employers can force labour into “compliance with their terms. The masters, being fewer in number can combine much more easily”….

…Smith is viewing wage rates as indeterminate…”

[The H. R. Nicholls Society torpedoes the case for deregulated labour markets]

Observe that Smith also commits the fallacy of ‘imbalance of power”. As another example, in this quote Smith committed both errors:

“[They] should receive a wage sufficient at least to support a standard of living that allows them to participate actively and fully in the community.” (Wealth of Nations)

The HR Nicholls Society committed it too, and the importance of this is: The ACTU asserts ‘imbalance of power of employer over employee. Day commits it too and, unfortunately, so has Anon. Anon must appreciate that in the insular, narcissistic world of the myopic “Right”, they don’t believe the man in the street should draw conclusions and act accordingly, they should do as they are told. Also, the callous “Right” believe in benign tyranny and hold rather feudalistic sentiments, and the man in the street acts. We can be sure of this because not only did the HR Nicholls Society blow the fight for reform out of the water, they blew up the Liberal Party with it. The man in the street told this lot of arrogant prigs:

“Nick off. We are not your slaves.”

They did so in the 2007 election when enough put on their steel capped, hob-nailed boots and sent the Liberal Party scudding across the House onto the Opposition benches.

Lastly:

“Here’s another statistic for you: around 53% of trade apprentices fail to complete their training. Again, I can imagine some people (I’m sure you can guess who) claiming that increasing trainee wages would help reduce the high drop-out rate.”

I’m not sure ‘who’ would say that. I certainly would not say that. However, the matter of retention is part of the HR Nicholls Society’s desire to press ‘indentured’ labour. They believe employers must be an updated version of vassal lord? They have delivered enough evidence to say they in fact do hold this peculiar notion, leaving:

Employees should be grateful to an employer for taking them on and they are ingrates for daring to consider leaving employers. And, accept humbly whatever an employer capriciously decides to pay them.

It might be those who do not complete have found a different line of work that for them pays higher, which means they are engaged in work that has a higher mvpl. Secondly, these alternative jobs might also lead to greater opportunities into the future. It is rational to leave jobs that are dead end streets - short with a hard stop at the end. Yet, this is a subjective matter; some-one’s dead end is another’s open highway.

It is possible to list infinite reasons and motives but this has nothing to do with the matter in hand, wages and generation of apprenticeships. It is not the height of wages that is the trouble. It is whether effective minimum wage rates are in force, and whether Union closed shops are still asserted. I do note Bob Day’s concern for the unemployed. Unemployment is vicious, but it is not cured with abject nonsense purveyed as the analysis of labour markets.

To the contrary, abject nonsense destroys sound correction, as the HR Nicholls Societ masterly destruction of the fight for reform demonstrated. Now what do we see? These cretins blaming Howard for what they did. At least one of these unctious moralists, Bob Day, whining about their inability to obtain labour, preferably in vassal form. These illiterates still doing their best to ensure the campaign for reform is permanently buried. This lot are as much responsible as the ACTU is for this abysmal state of affairs and the appalling upshot of high unemployment. They supplied the ammo to ensure this abysmal state of affairs.

The saddest thing is, Liberal MPs, did not challenge the HR Nicholls Society clubmen, including Peter Costello and Senator Nick Minchin. They did not seek out sound alternative advice. Committed to the ignorant man’s intellectual heights, pragmatism, they swallowed the snake-oil and lived long enough to tell Australians what a wonderful potion it is. Then they died.

In Rudd’s new way,-corporative andzwangswirtschaft, iit was putwhether the Rudd Cabinet’s grand plans might not be a fusion of Corporativo and Zwangswirtschaft. It’s worse.

Centre for Independent Studies has caused great damage. Along with their pals in the Institute of Public Affairs, the HR Nicholls Society, Michael Kroger and his chums, and this is only a short list of the unprincipled ignoramuses, including Peter Costello who have not merely strangled the Liberal Party. They have done far worse than this. They paved the way for Rudd and co.

There is one other thing to muse before launching into the rub of this piece. Perfect competition, as a fiction is thus not only no explanation of markets, and pertinently free markets. It discredits the effort to defend free markets, a thoroughly sound and moral cause. It smashes the effort. Next, it supplies ammo to interfering politicians. Take regulation as an example, an abysmal one at that.

Regulation is not the rule of (common law). It is taxation and strangles markets. It also serves Statism, incipient absolutism. The assumption of Perfect competition is why The Centre for Independent Studies and the IPA have failed over decades to fight for and defend free markets.

It is why, to the contrary, they provided advice on how the Executive can increase regulatory control over Australians, and continue to do so. They did this during the decade of the Kennett administration and the 12 years of the Howard administration.

Combined with their execrable conduct, these wreckers, and their fellow cleptomaniacal, narcissistic dunderheads of the ‘Right’ not only helped to fling Rudd into Cabinet. They laid the foundations, paved the way for Rudd and what he is about to do to Australians. Senator Wong, Rudd’s chief priestess for the Greens’ cult of death and economic destruction through Co2 taxation announced on Monday:

‘What is involved is a whole of economy approach. We are planning a new economic future for Australians’.

Who else said much the same thing? Mussolini, Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao and his gang of butchers, Pol Pot, and Castro; that’s who.

Wong’s short sentence boomed across the Senate did send a chill down the spine.

A couple of months ago, Rudd’s senior ministers declared, many goods will have to be scrapped for Kyoto compliant replacement products. They include heating appliances, kitchen appliances, a whole range of appliances, tools and whatever other apparently evil device that ‘hurts itty wittle bubba mad mudder bloody nature’.

Co2 taxation will wipe out energy companies and thus firms will also collapse because there will be no energy. Assume, however and for some mystical reason they survived. What are they talking about? They are talking about destroying efficient lattices of production and dictating new capital combinations be set up. This alone, it is easy to discern without stepping through all the implications, is staggering in force. As with Wong’s announcement, it is also incipiently totalitarian.

The week before, we had the Bracks’ plan unfurled, billions to be squandered on a ‘volk’s’ car. Needless to say, more larceny to support another scam, in something no one is prepared to freely buy.

Today, Rudd’s Cabinet of brown pantalooned dictators announced, extensive price controls, but guess what? They use the euphemism ‘price standardisation’. They are also all for breaking up companies, because this is what ‘anti-trust laws’ are about - attacking consumers, destroying efficient firms, and protecting those who produce nothing much at all.

45 % of farm operations are genuine enterprises, producing 92% of total agricultural output. The remainder are loss making, not by any stretch of the imagination consumer serving, ‘lifestyle’ indulgences subsisidised to the hilt. This 55% are supporting ‘anti-trust’ measures. Two of their their ‘MPs’, Bob Katter and Tony Windsor, relying on the falsehood of perfect competition, declared the ACCC is a toothless tiger; supermarket chains should be broken up; that there should be a central price fixing board setting ‘fair prices for farmers’. They declared, ‘the notion of serving customers is wrong, it misses the point; without farmers they will have no food’.

Knock out the 45 % of genuine agri businesses producing for consumers, running to markets. and let’s see what we have. The 55% that are so good Australians would starve to death if they relied on them for supply.

Listening to what the Rudd Cabinet has declared in Cabinet this week, it is hardly exaggeration to speak of his ‘grand plan’ as not simply central planning, though this is damning. There is sufficient in what they have laid out to date to begin calling it Corporativo and Zwangswirtschaft.

These developments are reinforced by what is an increasingly strident attack on free markets by:

-ALP members

-ACTU thugs, who were vociferous this week against free markets

-Bush socialists pretending to be businessmen and women

-Staggeringly, Liberal MPs! This is correct. Some who did so, to be sure, are too stupid to realise this is what they are doing, and have never been enlightened by the likes of the Centre for Independent Studies.

The above is brief,but today has been another of unceasing interruptions. So, one apologises to readers for being light on the juice this week. Tomorrow, however, will be a Festshrift day. Hansard will be brought to bear, to lift out the above. A few outstanding matters will be written up. And, Centre for Independent Studies Institute of Public Affairs, the HR Nicholls Society, and the rest of the death rattling ‘Right’ will be hammered again, including on the matter of how they laid the foundations, paved the way for Rudd and what he is about to do to Australians.

It is chilling: Australians are being trampled over by a pack of venal psychopaths, the zombie ‘Right’ and the diseased Left. After all, it is the zombie Right who set up their own “let’s destroy Australians through Co2 taxation cheer squad”, and too many of them hope to make billions from pretending to be junior high school cheer squad girls and larceny courtesy of their pal, Kevin “Little Mussolini Rudd”.

Centre for Independent Studies are not the only outfit running on flawed economics. Neither does it suffice to only finger also the Institute of Public Affairs and the HR Nicholls Society, and rather too many holding precious Liberal Party seats in Federal and State’s Parliaments.

If it were only a matter of buffoons playing at economics, there would be an end of it. Oh, apart from irritated Liberal Party members groaning under the deadweight of ‘nincompoops’. The root problem is the fiction of perfect competition. Hayek nailed it, concluding that it is no competition at all. Why? It’s a fiction; it does not exist.

It’s not only a “Rightwing” affliction. It is ground into every economics undergraduate in Australia. It is rote learned, textbook bound dogma. Sadly, as is all too apparent, not many, very few indeed, intellectually matured and escaped the great myth they are rooted in.

In the core textbooks:

1. Eckert and Leftwich assert that it is the logical starting point and analysis of action.

2. As also, Begg Fischer Rudiger and Dornbusch.

Interestingly, Begg abandoned perfect competition when one telling absurdity dawned on him : it is also the justification for destruction - the breaking up of firms by coercion in the name of ensuring ‘perfect competition’. Or, what in the US is called ‘trust busting’, reinforced by the ‘anti- trust’ Sherman Act.

Fittingly for a fiction, perfect competition involves a hornets’ nest of fallacies, such as horizontal demand curves. To the contrary, all demand curves slope down and no exception has been found to this fact. The central point is, it is not theory, explanation in economics; it’s a fantasy.

It is unfortunate that it was raised as ‘mainstream’ economics, because of the force of what that means. The upshot is not only failure in economics. Great damage has been caused on great matters, and continues to be caused because of it. The CIS’ position on Co2 taxation is another rotten instance of this record of failure.

The above is given as a general statement. It will sharpened as required in other items. For now, that it is orthodoxy in Australia points to why there is no debate and cut and thrust and why debate is suppressed.

Honest debate does entail those committed to the fiction having to face up to itty bitty difficulty that their intellectual foundation is quicksand. The killer is, perfect competition has been demolished. This sets up something nasty for the work shy in the CIS, IPA, and HR Nicholls Society, rectifying fundamental spadework is required.

The Centre for Independent Studies refusal to answer for its disgraceful lobbying for Co2 taxation is understandable. It has hung itself, and has retreated behind its steel doored, bolted, clubrooms. There’s an interesting snippet to this. What of Sinclair Davidson?

Monday and Tuesday were filled with interesting irritations needing attention. The hiccups over, a couple of things this week are noteworthy, one for a separate item. Is it true, as reported early Monday morning, that ex-Prime Ministerial “wannabe” and another great, unprincipled, Liberal Party wrecker John Hewson is a front man for interests hoping to make squillions out of, surprise, surprise, Co2 taxation?

Hewson was also reported as saying kyoto compliance will generate a flood of jobs and make all Australians wealthy? I suppose he means all will become wealthy bankers, lawyers, and ‘alternative energy’ con artists. Noting, as the Centre for Independent Studies, the absurdity involved in the notion that in mass economic destruction, through Co2 taxation lies economic progress and growth. This is the metaphorical ‘war is good’ fallacy.

Hewson was hailed by the left dominated media Monday morning as a leading economist. Well, the Centre for Independent Studies, Institute of Public Affairs, and the HR Nicholls Society do rate themselves as distinguished economists. The diseased Left dominated media, for some obscure reason, don’t care to disabuse neither the public nor them.

The question to answer is: do the venal brigade Hewson is lobbying for also pay the CIS to campaign for Co2 taxation? Having identified at least two conflicts of interests that hang the CIS, how many more are there involved with the CIS, interests seeking to enrich themselves by demolishing millions of Australians? It’s a question that must be answered.

Given what is at stake, the antics of the CIS and their two fan clubs is revealed for how scandalously contemptuous they are of Australians. What have they been whining about? Criticism of what they are campaigning for. The callousness and narcissism is revealed in full daylight: they don’t give a damn about what the impact will be for millions of Australians. What really counts is themselves. It hurts them that their position is demonstrated to be the pack of fallacies it is and worse. Lobbying for it, they are also deceiving the Liberal Party, Party members, and Australians.

As for the good Professor Sinclair Davidson, we shall break up the concern here into two, the second in a separate item, which is the next item to be posted today. First off, then, Davidson seems strangely loathe to publish an article in which he debates Jackson’s criticism of the CIS position, as parroted through the Humphreys paper.

It is to be noted again, Davidson’s ‘blind alley’ complaint, ‘Jackson mistreated Humphreys’. Why the blind, Sinclair? No, it couldn’t be true? To smear Jackson and deflect attention from the arguments put by Jackson?

How could have Davidson overlooked: There was no ad-hominem attack against Humphreys in Jackson’s articles. Jackson criticised the ‘economic arguments’ put in the position-lobbying paper.

Davidson, it seems, holds to a novel notion of intellectual engagement. Cut and thrust, and incisive incineration of, flawed, bad, and worse propositions are nasty habits. These days it is, no doubt, intrinsically a ‘hate crime’. This runs against the history of not only economics, but also science, law, theology, philosophy, history, and archeology. Not much progess was ever made when nonsense and rubbish have been passed, except for a mere quibbling at the edges.

What makes Davidson’s objection genuinely unconscionable is, it is not merely a debate over theory. It is a debate about a proposition, Co2 taxation, which is staggering in its impact should it be imposed. It is inverted immorality to whine against anyone who makes the effort to apply the blow torch to this and, indeed, any proposition an Executive - the Cabinet, is contemplating imposing. Is Davidson asserting that any proposal contemplated by the Executive, even a good proposal, should not be scrutinised and debated in public?

Does Sinclair recognise the incipiently absolutist force of that strange notion? Does he hold, as many of the scrofulous “Right” do, the man in Australia should merely obey a self annointed ‘elite’, rather than be presented with principled justifications that they might support? The economic illiterates of the HR Nicholls Society took this approach on Labour Market reform, and the voters told them to “get stuffed”.

Having also remarked on Davidson’s snide and false dismissal of Jackson’s standing as an economist, here’s another challenge:

Noting Davidson’s credulist belief in credentialism:

I challenge Professor Davidson to enquire of Dr. Frank Shostak, who held a University Chair in economics. I challenge Professor Davidson to ask Dr. Shostak for his assessment of Jackson’s work in economics, and his evaluation of Jackson as an economist. This is besides all the other references one cited in the last item on the scandalous conduct of the good Professor Sinclair Davidson.

So, two challenges are issued and the betting is, all ‘can whistle Dixie until the cows come home’. Then, is it not true Professor Davidson, along with your Rightie clunker tank, anti-free market pals, it’s never been anything but about smearing Jackson’s reputation as a genuine free market reputation? The reason why, is pretty well summed up above, and also that this pack of parasites can’t be exposed for shallowness - bang goes the unearned revenues and pay.

Oh, Jackson isn’t the only talent they have attempted to bury, which will be expanded upon in another item. Attempted is, of course, not the same as succeeding, and this distinction also upsets “Sinkers” Sinclair, the Centre for Independent Studies and, at that, also the Institute of Public Affairs, and the HR Nicholls Society.

However, Sinclair, there is now many who can’t wait to see your masterpiece in rebuttal of Jackson’s strictly economic analysis and criticism of what the CIS laid out through the Humphreys paper. A published paper, Sinclair, out in the open, over the Internet. If it is effortless to do as the impression you convey of it is, this should be a rather painless exercise for you.

You aren’t telling readers you are afraid, are you Sinclair? After all the put-downs and bon-mots you have littered comments boxes on other sites with, showing you are supremely confident of the CIS position and your capacity to defend it, isn’t it niggardly, Sinclair to refuse to do what you demonstrate you are willing to do? Why refuse readers what they are excitedly anticipating; a solid, sustained response demonstrating, as you keep on banging on about, Jackson has got it wrong?

I defy anyone to call Sinclair a coward. It is plain he is not. It is plain he has delayed publication of his rebuttal for all to read over the Internet, because he has taken great pains to prepare a real treat in the neatest, most soundly, rigorously argued paper in economics written for some time.

A paper of such aesthetic quality even the layman could not fail to acknowledge the prowess, the mastery and incisiveness of Sinclair’s formidable genius. A genius heightened, as he appears to boast of, by him being a ‘professional economist’ and no mere rank amateur. Indeed, with such a list of qualities, I wonder how I could have under-estimated Sinclair. Only one conclusion is possible:

Sinclair will put up, because if he can’t then it is obvious:

He has a bit of repair work, such as issuing very public apologies, and generally undoing a great deal of damage caused by his ‘Rightie’ pals that he has, so far, been a willing party to.

Surely such a decent and courageous Professor, as Sinclair must be, fully appreciates why all the above is the decent thing for a good professor to do? That he sees his public duty and will do it?