Mangled Thoughts

Humphreys took exception to my article; “Centre of Independent Studies and the Institute of Public Affairs are covering for ‘alternative energy’ scams”. His feelings are hurt, as he explains. In explaining this, he avoids altogether answering substantive matters. On another site he whines, and deliberately told a number of lies. Humphreys is a liar. Well that makes sense, since the CIS is committed to the lie of man causes ‘climate change’ and to the massive fraud of carbon taxes.

Humphreys in the comments box wrote:

You didn’t understand my paper.

If you were rude and had a point, that would be acceptable. Or if you were mistaken and polite, that is also acceptable. But when you are rude & wrong then you just look like a tool.

Go re-read the paper slowly. Sit with a dictionary if it helps. You’ll get there.

1. I did read his paper, in December last year, and I did understand what he advanced, and the immoral, highly destructive force of the implications of not only what he advanced, but what the CIS is fully committed to.

2. The frist lie: Humphreys whines I was rude to him, and to the CIS. Humphreys is in no position at all to whine about manners. Here’s an example of why, and it’s from Catallaxy:

76. John Humphreys | February 25th, 2008 at 10:26 pmGerry Jackson is a muppet… and his weird little rant against me makes little sense.

He totally fails to understand my point… that the costs of a carbon tax will be offset by other tax cuts. It takes a pig-headed sort of stupidity to miss this while writing two articles.

He accuses me of inconsistency because I say that the evidence “suggests” AGW and that there is a growing consensus. 0.20c to the first person who can see the “inconsistency”.

And then he ends with a complaint about my brief introduction to Austrian economics. He makes no useful addition except for the tired old “Mises was better than Hayek” (sic) crap, and then complains about the title (which I didn’t pick).

I had wondered before why there was a falling out between Gerry & other smart free-market economists. Now I know. Gerry is a tool and a fool.

In saying that, Humphreys told a number of other lies. Firstly, what is Jackson’s “weird little rant” Humphrey’s complains of? It is this “weird little rant”:

Mr Humphreys responded with an email to a reader in which he said: “I never claimed that a tax was a free-market mechanism”. But I never accused him of making such a claim. What I did was call his approach “fallacious” and I used the following quote in support of my opinion:

Taxes do not result from a market process, nor do they reflect allocation decisions of resource owners . . . In other words, taxation is a method of intervening, not an alternative to intervention or nonmarket allocation. (O’Driscoll and Rizzo, cited in Efficiency and Externalities in an Open-Ended Universe, Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2007, p. 13).

On page 2 of Exploring a Carbon Tax for Australia Humphreys unequivocally states:

A better approach to encouraging the switch to non-fossil fuels is to put a price on carbon, which makes all alternative energies relatively more competitive and then allows the market process to discover the best new energy sources.

But this underlines the very point I am trying to make. He and the Centre for Independent Studies are promoting a tax that would override the market’s allocation of resources. Humphreys also argues that the tax would be “revenue neutral”. That is totally irrelevant. What matters is the impact of the tax on capital. (I use the term capital in the Austrian sense of the word. See How the Laffer curve really works. This is why we need to drive home the point that the carbon tax is not just a tax on energy, it is a tax on Australia’s capital structure and the process of ….

Read the rest of, Why is the Centre for Independent Studies supporting the destructive carbon tax?. The above extract demonstrates what Jackson wrote is no rant, let alone a “weird little rant” against Humphreys. Humphreys is trying to convince many that Jackson was being spiteful, and nasty, and damage Jackson’s reputation. The lie is obvious.

The lie is compounded by the curious fact, while whining and railing against others for being nasty to him, falsely in Jackson’s case, his comment on Catallaxy is not isolated in its ad hominem nastiness. He has a habit of being nasty to those who find his efforts in economics fallacious and for very sound, solid reasons. Humphreys is notorious for his poison pen comments.

Humphreys, as his salacious riddled attack against Jackson shows - “Gerry is a tool and a fool”, doesn’t attack opponents’ arguments. He simply smears opponents. Humphreys is in good company with, oh let me recall as an example… ah yes, that cretin, John Quiggin. It’s easy to mistake Humphreys for being a leftist.

What makes Humphreys protests absurdly silly is, for someone who is reputed to be a free market economist, he doesn’t recognise an Austrian School analysis when it is before his eyeballs. The paper for which he smeared Jackson happens to be sound, solid Austrian School analysis.

Humphreys told another lie - “tired old Mises was better than Hayek…”. I’ve never read anything Jackson has written in which he said that. Moreover, on Jackson’s articles, it is obvious Jackson never would make such a stupid remark. So, why did Humphreys pretend to readers at Catallaxy Jackson committed such a silliness? To discredit Jackson, and do so with a smear.

Now, I know who is defective in economics and it is not Jackson, it is Humphreys and the CIS. Here is my turn.

Humphreys finds my barbs against his rot and the CIS “rude”. Well, as readers can judge for themselves, there are many good reasons for not playing footsies with the garbage Humphreys and the CIS put out. What makes Humphreys’ position all the more indefensible is the clear lack of grip on capital and the blindingly obvious impact of taxes, inclusive of regulation; they destroy capital, and what is more, eliminates advantages of producing goods in Australia, and let’s demonstrate this with telling examples:

There is already a flight of capital out of Australia due to the hideous tax burden imposed by the Federal Governments, States’ Governments, and Local Councils. Heinz shut its Dandenong plant precisely for those reasons. In the 1980’s, ICI and Hoechst ran in 1980’s money $2billions/annum of production in Australia.

They shut their plants down because of the sacking of capital and all other burdens that wiped out the advantage they did once have in producing in Australia. As for supplying Australia with their products, their former head offices are now only small sales offices. They had warned the Hawke Government that that would be the upshot if the Govt. did not get off their backs.

Today I’m watching entrepreneurs doing one of three things in Victoria, in fact over the last four years:

1. Set up production in other countries, ruling Australia out. China is proving a very popular place in which to invest capital.

2. Shutting down plant in Australia and opening up in China, India and other countries.

3. Deciding to quit altogether and retire. I have a number of acquaintances who each made this decision last year. They will shut down their production plants in Australia this year.

I had an uncle, a classical Liberal, and who was an entrepreneurial manufacturer. He shut down his plants for the same reasons. He didn’t wish to, and he didn’t wish to turn his men out onto the heap of the unemployed, but it was either that or total ruination and he had his family to keep too.

There is one other thing to observe, on the administrative side, in my assessment, it is now such that it is beginning to cripple the capacity of entrepreneurs and their managers to successfully run firms. If the tax burden doesn’t finish many off first, some will still fall over because compliance is thoroughly sapping the capacity to run firms. This is matched by the rise of bureaucrats over market driven decision-makers in firms.

Now, that is occurring today, before the impact of the planned “Kyoto compliance” measures. What is horrifying is the sheer scale and destructive force of ‘carbon credits and trading’ or any other carbon tax. The force is capital destruction on a massive scale. No tax is ‘neutral’, marked by the fact they sap capital. As I wrote in the first item:

I doubt if you have a clue as to the damage being wreaked by all other taxes -inclusive of regulation on production in Australia. I doubt very much you have a single clue as to the flight of capital out of Australia and entrepreneurs and investors deciding to set up production in other countries.

That is apart from chaps I know who have simply decided to shut down their factories this year. This is before the devastation that will be wrought by such criminal frauds as carbon trading credit.

It almost seems lame to say, the CIS, and IPA, have no grip on capital theory, in the face of the horrendous ramifications of the measures they advocate. For I am now thoroughly convinced they do not even have an inkling of the sorts of realities I have just enumerated. I repeat what I wrote under the subsection, The Morality of the CIS and IPA:

What is truly objectionable is types like you advocating measures which are devastating in force, entail real cruelty against Australians, and are criminal in force. Types like you and your bosses in the CIS pretend to be free market economists and fighters, while in reality covering up for scumbags, and working out how to bludgeon modest Australians into the dust.

I assumed the meaning was plain enough but it seems expansion is needed. The carnage existing taxes wreak is savage enough. Carbon taxation, in wiping out capital on a massive scale, is nothing less than politicians, bureaucrats, aided, abetted and fully supported by the CIS and their pals, deliberately forcing large numbers of Australians into outright destitution. That will be the upshot.

These types have no moral compass at all - forget their defective economics. These types are so conceited they just don’t have clue about the realities many Australians have to deal with. Nor do they give a stuff about the fact they will be cuplable of deliberatley throwing very many Australians into appalling misery.

The reason they have no moral compass is, they are cosseted, professional dole bludgers, who have never engaged in real, market driven enterprises. They have never engaged in real production, and thus have never run the gauntlet of rapacious politicians and bureaucrats.

These cosseted know it alls have the hide to smear a fine economist in Jackson. These navel gazing spoilt brats are concerned with only themselves and their fat wallets. And what makes this even more unamusing is at least one of them, Mr. Peter Yates, has a direct vested interest in the fraud the Rudd Govt. is about to perpetrate. At least one CIS principal is profiting from the viscious, wicked, rotten fraud of ‘carbon credit trading’: Yate’s direct interest is no secret, it’s a published fact

Humphreys, as on each other point, avoids answering what is a serious matter, the CIS’ obvious conflict of interest on this count. Humphreys sees nothing wrong in this?!

Humphreys and the CIS are moral cretins. Their credibility as economists is, in my books, non-existent. Humphreys has only further exposed their dross by telling lies and then whining should anyone shred his papers for sound reasons.

Humphreys dares whine about rudeness when he slimes others, freely. What makes this funnier is my “rudeness” is rooted in the appallingly immoral force of what that lot are actually promoting. Humphreys suffers the sooky notion that irredeemably bad ideas and vile measures should not be robustly eviscerated and those who advance them dealt with accordingly. Rubbish.

Those sods can calmly advocate measures that mean ruination for many modest Australians. Not only advocate them, but also as their conflict of interest indicates, enrich themselves through Govt. imposing such savage measures. That lot is in good company with those scumbags called Ron Walker, Hugh Morgan, Steve Bracks, John Brumby, Hulls. Now we have little fat fascist Kevin Rudd and the “Brownshorts”.

What sort of men and women are the men and women in the CIS and IPA? Cowards, unprincipled, and venal are only a few adjectives in a very long list. No wonder the treacherous left love them and the HR Nicholls Society. Oh, dear, dear, dear, I hurt little Johnny’s feelings - here, have a tissue you great big sook.

While Humphreys wipes his nose, we can muse, he is a liar. He is caught red-handed in lying and that makes him a liar. And he has the hide to smear his superior in Jackson and whine about what I said. I am, however, grateful to Humphreys, because he is a wide open window for the public to peer through into the CIS, the IPA and Australia’s rightwing, and see them for what they really are.

Humphreys and the CIS, and the IPA have no credibility at all.