What is the right size of government?

In response to a newsletter from a thinker I respect, I was moved to reply and it turned into a mini-essay that I felt had some valuable insights. 

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One of your comments struck me as almost accurate and I thought it worthy of a response.

o Also, note that government doesn’t produce anything but simply redistributes capital from producers of capital to consumers of capital.

o   And while government has an important role to play in a thriving economy, it is one of facilitating the production of wealth, not creating it.

o  Therefore, the larger the government, the greater a drag it is on the productive capacity of the economy.

One of the obvious differentiators between Objectivism (which is a full philosophical system) and the economics-focused Libertarianism we commonly see is the role of government in a proper society. 

Libertarians fall into a range of camps that include Anarchy, Anarcho-capitalism, Minarchy, and related ideas. According to Rand, these are all anti-concepts that attempt to fuse a negative into a positive, thus destroying people’s ability to properly conceive and consider the positive. Anarchy is the absence of a central government. Anarcho-capitalism is the worst because it names the positive and then destroys it. Minarchy generally means the smallest government necessary and might be the closest to a proper formulation, but unnecessarily clouds the issue by creating a new term for what is simply capitalism. 

The positive is capitalism, the political and economic system where all property is privately owned and government is created to protect the rights of every individual citizen to life, liberty, and property. So long as the individual does not violate the rights of others, the government has no role, no policy, and takes no action. 

In a free society, government is an unalloyed good, an absolute necessity. Such a government is generally very small, but it may expand sometimes if needed to protect the country from external threats. Such a government is not good because it is small – size is not the standard of value – but because of what is does: protect rights from internal and external threats.

The first bullet could be improved by stating that through economic policy and the resultant use of force against innocent citizens, the government seizes the capital of producers and gives it to those people and groups favored by government policymakers. Some of those receiving the favours are also producers.

Your second bullet is almost perfect but can be improved by reformulating it as “A free society requires Government to play an essential role in the economy by protecting the rights of producers and consumers, creating the optimal conditions for production and trade.”

The third bullet is the weakest because it implies a negative correlation between government size and economic productivity. This is contradicted by Objectivism. A better formulation would be that since government is essential, there is a Kuznets curve something like this:

 At the origin point, there is essentially no economic production due to the condition of anarchy. This was the state of humanity for most of its history, with almost no production other than that needed for subsistence, and even then, subsistence was miserable. This is the fixed-pie view of wealth where anything can be stolen or destroyed with relative impunity.

The introduction of a government that starts to protect rights enables a sharp increase in production such as seen in the transition from the Enlightenment re-discovery of the power of reason and the consequent introduction of rights through the Industrial Revolution. In the U.S. and other relatively capitalist countries this persisted into the late 19th century and economic growth was 6% or even higher for long periods. 

Once the government started to adopt and enforce policies that did not protect rights, but violate them, the rate of economic growth started to decline. Controls, regulation, tariffs, taxes and other types of non-objective law are all forms of rights violations. The decline side of the curve is much more gradual than the increase side because it still contains significant rights protection, and these are usually gradually eroded. Because all the infrastructure created during a period of rights protection is difficult to destroy, both physically and intellectually, it is possible for a fascist government to commandeer production yet not rapidly destroy it. I think a good case in point is Argentina, in the news these days due to the election of a relatively free-market figure, which was once among the wealthiest of nations but then suffered a slow decline as collectivism became entrenched. 

A proper formulation of the third bullet point would thus be: “Once a proper, rights-protecting government has been instituted, any further growth of government will of necessity be rights-violating and thus lead to lower economic production.”

All this started with just the idea that the third bullet point was weak, but I am very happy with the thoughts that emerged, particularly the shape of the graphic, the form of which I have not seen before. 

Due diligence on the notion of "responsible investing" is needed

Today I was moved to write a detailed response to an article I came across, titled From KYC to KYP: how one advisor weaves responsible investing into his practice. Here is my response.

I have examined the ESG, "responsible investing" and "sustainable" taglines for many years, doing my due diligence to decide if they have merits worth including in my practice. I have found them all to be so badly defined, to include so many biases, fallacies and outright falsehoods, and to be so fundamentally immoral that I want nothing to do with them.

The prime example is anything to do with carbon dioxide emissions, global warming, climate change, net zero and the linked ideas. In a world where 6 billion people would be incredibly jealous of the energy we have access to and the resulting life-enhancing technologies powered by this energy, and reducing poverty is the most important way to improve the lives of billions, the world can desperately use vastly more energy.

Fossil fuels currently provide over 80% of world energy and are the fastest-growing energy source as measured by the amount of energy created. Every single country that has emerged from poverty has done so using fossil fuel energy to enhance life and every country now trying to do so chooses fossil fuels as the primary energy source. Why? Because of the unique and currently irreplaceable qualities of fossil fuels, including availability, energy density, affordability, scalability, flexibility. Despite decades of taxpayer subsidies for wind and solar combined with policies impeding fossil fuels, the percentage of world energy from fossil fuels has been steady. Also, wherever wind and solar are adopted, to the degree they are added to the grid, the cost of electricity rises.

There are huge biases and great context-dropping when many people think about energy. While the advantages of fossil fuels are downplayed or completely ignored, the advantages of wind and solar are over-hyped. While the disadvantages of fossil fuels are over-hyped and demonized, the disadvantages of wind and solar are mostly overlooked. The most thoughtful examination of the flawed thinking process I have seen is provided by energy expert Alex Epstein, author of the 2022 book "Fossil Future" and of www.energytalkingpoints.com. Time and again Epstein provides evidence and ideas that no one has been able to refute, and opponents of his ideas are almost all afraid to debate him.

For a great look at how the UN social development goals can actually be met using just a fraction of the money wasted on climate change issues, I recommend the work of economist Bjorn Lomborg and his organization The Copenhagen Consensus. This includes his books "False Alarm" and "Best Things First."

For an excellent look at the science of what we actually know about our climate I highly recommend the book "Unsettled" by Steven Koonin, one of the world's leading scientists and former Obama appointee. Koonin aptly distills the science literature, showing where the gap between what we know and what is commonly believed has been created and persists.

In summary, my research shows that for those who actually care about improving human life, the ESG/RI/Sustainable movements as constituted are so far off-target as to be against human flourishing and I condemn them as immoral. I recommend that financial advisors and investment management companies do deep due diligence on this subject as I have, in which case they will find an overwhelming body of evidence that supports the rejection of the ESG/RI/Sustainable taglines. I want nothing to do with them and when clients very occasionally ask, I have clear and definitive evidence from every knowledge discipline to back everything I say on this subject.

The rot in the ESG investing ideology

Reading an article in Wealth Professional Canada I was moved to comment. 

ESG has been all the rage for several years but is based on deeply flawed and at their root anti-human principles. Consider just one issue that dominates ESG: carbon dioxide produced by fossil fuel use. Fossil fuels are used everywhere that people work to break out of energy poverty because of their unique combination of abundance, dense energy, flexibility, portability, scalability and affordability. They can be used in millions of location by billions of people and despite thirty years and trillions spend on wind and solar, they only provide 3% of world energy and fossil fuels provide 82%. The fastest growing energy in the world by gigawatts? Fossil fuels that have lifted every single developed country out of energy poverty and powered the industrial revolution.

What about side effects of carbon dioxide? CO2 is literally the gas of life, feeding the plant kingdom that in turn feeds the animal kingdom. As CO2 rises life flourishes and for the last several decades the world has been greening due to CO2 fertilization. Is the global temperature rising? Is appears to have risen slightly, by about one degree celsius since the industrial revolution, however we have only had good satellite data for forty four years and it is hard to separate the human effects from immensely powerful natural forces like solar cycles, Milankovitch cycles, cosmic ray cycles and impacts like volcanoes. Yes, cities have warmed due to the urban heat island effect but mainly they are warmer at night.

Did you know that deaths from extreme weather events have declined 98% in the last hundred years or so? Yes - FIFTY times lower. This is because with abundant energy enables humans to prepare for, recover from and be more resilient against the naturally dangerous climate. 

The anti-fossil fuel component of ESG is so deeply flawed, so immoral, so anti-reason and anti-human that if any good remains within ESG it is all poisoned by association and can't be trusted. I avoid all ESG in my practice and will never be a supporter no matter how irrational the world becomes nor how popular the ESG delusion becomes. Take a close look for yourself, read widely and think carefully and in full context while eliminating bias. If you dare to you will find in ESG the rotten ideology that I have found.

Should there be a tax credit for financial planning?

 FP Canada has launched an effort to get a Federal tax credit for financial planning. 

I disagree with this initiative of FP Canada for several reasons, even though I am a financial advisor and a big proponent of financial literacy and the value of my life's work - financial advice. Here is a short version of my first reactions to this idea.

1. It injects even more government interference into the economy.

2. Government, via regulations, has driven up the cost of advice and reduced its access. This distorted the economy. The solution to one distortion cannot be further distortion.

3, It introduces yet another aspect of private life that ends up being reported to our taxation authority.

4. This is like the children's sports activity and arts activity credits, which thankfully were axed.

5. All these reporting requirements add costs for providers, add non-productive work for taxpayers, add compliance costs to the taxman.

6. I think it is discriminatory, taking money from one class of taxpayers and favoring those who have had lobbyists work on their behalf. Essentially, political pressure is used to extract money from the group being punished to reward the favoured group, a regressive tax - one among many. This is a violation of individual rights, never mind being inequitable.

7. Most fundamentally, it is not a proper function of government to redistribute wealth according to anyone's preferences. Government is created to protect rights and not to violate them. Government representatives might choose to speak favorably about the value of financial advice but should never take my money to help others pay for the advice they seek.

8. Only plans covering advice “across multiple areas” would be eligible. This begs for jerry-rigged gaming of the credit: who is to judge when enough areas have been covered? What if multiple areas are not wanted or needed by the client? What if plans are "gamed" so as to qualify under whatever arbitrary rules are set?

9. Almost zero Canadians pay for the type of financial planning fee that would be rewarded by this credit. The overwhelming preference of Canadians, as clearly expressed in their market choices, is to pay for advice bundled with their investment and insurance products and management. The article itself says only 4% use the type of advice this credit would promote. If you want to promote this type of advisor compensation, go into the marketplace and make your case - don't use the coercive power of government to do it against the wishes of Canadians. In summary, there is so much wrong with this idea that it should be stopped in its tracks or rejected outright by politicians.

The cancer stories you never hear

This story makes me think of the heroes among us who work, mostly quietly, to overcome the bureaucracies of government and the endlessly tangled health care outcomes created by the thousands of controls imposed by government and their regulators, and then by the companies and professionals subject to those regulations. It seems that no matter where you live these days, the remnants of individual rights and freedoms are being eroded and the barriers between patient and medical professionals are growing.

Who among us has not witnessed a family member or friend do battle with health care bureaucracies to figure out what is wrong and how to fix it? Time is money. Time is life. Precious individual lifetimes and lives are being sacrificed to the idea that collectivist/altruist fantasies of health care are better than a system where the people with the power are the patient and the medical professional. A system that protects individual rights and never violates them. A system known as freedom and which has been branded as capitalism.

https://www.commonsense.news/p/the-cancer-stories-you-never-hear

Climate of injustice

 A response to a letter in The Low Down, Sept 14-20, 2022 titled "Together for climate justice"

I am responding to the seemingly endless demands by the La Peche Coalition for a Green New Deal to forcefully implement policies to combat the gas of life - carbon dioxide. It is sad to read so many letters based on ignorance of science, economics and most of all a proper ethical framework.

For over 20 years I have closely followed the evolution of scientific knowledge about our climate by reading many books written by eminent scientists and subject-matter experts and keeping an eye on many of the thousands of studies connected to the Earth's climate. Long ago I could tell from a broad review of the literature that climate alarmism was based on distortions, bad statistical and scientific methodology, and most of all bad ideology. The premise that the Earth is a delicate nurturer best left untouched by man's activities is contrary to the nature of human life, which is to apply reason to the challenges of survival in a naturally dangerous and deficient environment. Humans thrive only by reshaping and improving our world. I have come across thousands of studies and many basic facts of reality that directly contradict the idea that there is any kind of climate crisis and anyone who does a broad reading of the literature would easily find the same. I encourage readers to see for themselves, perhaps starting with the recent book "Fossil Future" that provides an irrefutable case and moving on from there for those who want more technical information.

Economically, fossil fuel energy presently makes up more than 80% of the world energy supply and is always the best and preferred way for poor countries to solve their problems of starvation, disease and suffering. Three billion people have less energy than a typical refrigerator and have a massive need for more energy. Alarmists almost always ignore the massive benefits of fossil fuel energy and focus only on the manageable side-effects, like focusing only on vaccine side-effects and ignoring the benefits. Wind and solar may have a small role to play in generating electricity but due to their intermittent, dilute and unreliable nature they are spectacularly unsuited for economical grid-scale power, plus require massive mining projects mostly in third world countries and dictatorships, leading to horrible pollution problems. A call to end fossil fuel energy is a call for the continuation of uman suffering for the billions of people who do not yet enjoy our level of energy capability and te mass murder of those who would lose the life-giving energy from fossil fuels we now enjoy. 

Politically, a call for a green new deal is a call for fascism, as few populations will voluntarily choose societal suicide for very long. Witness the dramatic policy reversal in the UK when it became clear that mass suffering would quickly result from the loss of reliable, cheap energy. If all state coercion and subsidies was removed from the energy market and humans were free to produce and trade, I know there would be almost no wind and solar infrastructure built and human progress would leap forward.

Ethically, the right framework is one of respect for human rights: your right to peacefully pursue your own values and to keep the product of your work. It is unethical to lie about the state of scientific knowledge in an effort to achieve power over the lives of others, unethical to call for the destruction of a safe, cheap and reliable energy system that sustains the lives of billions of people with no viable replacement in hand, unethical to cry for the use of political force against billions of innocent people trying to live in peace. The right ethical path is one towards an objective assessment of reality, the recognition of the ability of individuals to think for themselves and to produce values to trade with others and a government whose function is to protect our rights and never violate them. We have a long way to go but a move in the right direction would be a good start. It begins with every individual thinking.

A response to "The horrible possibility of a sixth extinction event"

When my news feed delivered an article titled "The horrible possibility of a sixth extinction event" written by a man who is stated to have spent the last few years writing a book on climate change I took a peek and then because the article was so heavy on politics and projections while being short on science and reason I was moved to write a short rebuttal.

At the bottom of the article there is a list of 22 references but they are almost all links to political bodies, political documents or opinion pieces. Not one of them is a link to an observation of meaningful observations of reality in the full context. I will quote from the article and provide well-known scientific data such as you can find in the scientific literature or textbooks for each to illustrate just how far from reality are the claims made in the article and presumably the author's book.

Statement 1. "Everyone is aware of the fires and floods and dire predictions for the future."

Rebuttal 1. Awareness of news does not mean it is a fact. Since we have access to news about everywhere and everything all the time it is easy to mis-perceive reality without objective measurements to put information into context and make it knowledge. The study below clearly shows a large decrease in North American wildfires since the industrial revolution. This is due to factors such as better land management, fire detection and suppression technologies, all powered by abundant affordable and scalable fossil fuel energy.

The same goes for drought, by the way, with a steady decline over recent decades due to technologies like irrigation, fertilizers, weather forecasting and the like.

When it comes to floods, I presume the author refers to floods caused by sea level rise. In this case, like the others I will touch on, the full context includes looking at the historical record rather than models projecting doom. The graph that follows shows sea level over the last 24,000 years and highlights the effect of the end of the last glaciation that led to a sea level increase of 120 meters as most of the ice sheets covering land melted. The last few thousand years include a very gradual and steady rise, although this varies significantly depending on where the measurement is made. Tectonic plates move and collide steadily and some land masses are still rebounding from the mass of ice that pushed them down for millennia. Thanks to abundant machine energy humans can modify their shorelines and even raise buildings and cities if needed. With sea level changing slowly and steadily we have plenty of time to adapt to local changes. People in the Netherlands have managed to live below sea level for centuries and more people than ever before are choosing to build and live at the edge of the oceans.

Statement 2. The extinction of all living things is pretty well guaranteed unless our species starts acting now.

Rebuttal 2. There is literally no scientific data to support this statement and not even the biased IPCC science report makes any such assertion. In contrast, all measures of pollution and environmental damage decrease once a society reaches a sufficient level of wealth and this phenomenon is known as an Environmental Kuznets Curve. Seventy five years ago cities in the western world that were filled with air and water pollution are now far cleaner and safer and this occurs wherever freedom is allowed to grow and energy production flourishes.

Statement 3. Nature has always produced Co2 and methane, and it stored it through natural processes. This production and storage cycle was carefully balanced until we humans came along.

Rebuttal 3. This statement anthropomorphizes nature by using the word "carefully." Yes, there are many factors in balance in nature but nature, both living and inanimate is also constantly in change. Not only it is well established that the greenhouse effect of CO2 is a logarithmic one with further amounts having an ever-diminishing effect since a saturation point for the absorption of specific wavelengths is reached, the future effect of increasing Co2 is calculated to be about 0.5C. The graph that follows shows the geological history of Earth over the last 60 million years and CO2 has almost always been much, much higher than today and we can see that the correlation between CO2 and temperature is negligible. When CO2 is higher plant life flourishes and thus so does animal life. The graph shows the present CO2 level is close to a record low while there are periods of much higher CO2 and lower temperature. Over the shorter time scale of the last six hundred thousand years, Antarctic and Greenland ice core studies show that warming occurs first and CO2 level follows with an average lag of 600 years. 

Statement 4. News reports of wildfires, floods, hurricanes, droughts, melting ice fields, deaths by hyperthermia and killer pollution have become the new normal. 

Rebuttal 5. While it is true that news reports of natural disasters are the new normal, this is because we have so much more news, not because people are dying at a greater rate. In fact, it is just the opposite - and dramatically so. Deaths from extreme weather events have declined over the last hundred years - not by a factor of two or five, not even by a factor of ten, but by a factor of fifty - a 98% drop in deaths. This is due to our machine power that enables us to build resilient infrastructure, warm us of coming weather events, mobilize resources to support people at risk and rescue those in imminent danger. Deaths from cold are more than five times greater than those from heat, so a slight warming has saved lives. 

Statement 5. Once past the tipping point, global warming will keep on increasing beyond control. The eventual destruction of the Earth’s ecological systems will then eliminate the Earth’s supply of breathable air and potable water, and critically reduce habitable lands.

Rebuttal 5. There is no evidence for such a tipping point, it is pure and arbitrary speculation. Since CO2 in the atmosphere has been many times higher and no runaway warming occurred and since as pointed out above the potential impact of further CO2 is so small, this assertion is simply fear-mongering.

Statement 6. The August 2021 IPCC report stated, “Many changes due to past and future greenhouse gas emissions are irreversible for centuries to millennia, especially changes in the ocean, ice sheets and global sea level.” 

Rebuttal 6. There is no science to support this. This is a political statement and not a scientific one. For example, the graph below shows satellite data for the Antarctic since the start of the satellite era and it shows no change. Sea level was discussed above.

Statement 7. Can the human species become extinct? Why not? 

Rebuttal 7. The first question is a rhetorical statement since humanity's survival is not guaranteed by nature but rather is a constant struggle against a naturally dangerous environment. The second question is a matter of mastering machine energy, since with enough energy humanity can colonize the Moon, Mars and other planetary bodies and build starships that would enable us to leave our solar system. Heavier than air flight was invented just a short time ago (when my grandmother was born) and in just a few of my grandmother's lifespans we have advanced our knowledge and machine power more than in all of prior human history. Today a SpaceX ship is close to launch that is two thousand times cheaper to operate than NASA's best effort. 

Conclusion: for every assertion of danger or doom in the article it is easy to find hard evidence of the contrary or else the statement can be seen as lacking evidence - to be an arbitrary assertion. Since the statements are so consistently wrong, we must conclude there is a strong bias present in the writer's mind. If the statements were only partly wrong or were wrong in different directions then at least we could say there has been an honest effort to discover the truth. 

Energy is life. Energy is progress. Energy is the future of human flourishing. With energy mastery all is possible. In the name of all that is good about human life we need the freedom to explore all sources of energy, to experiment, to fail, discover new methods and applications. Today, fossil fuel energy powers 80% of all humanity's energy needs and those needs are growing fast, as is fossil fuel energy. Fossil fuels provide safe, dense, flexible, industrial scale energy that powers all other industries. Nuclear energy of some type is the most likely successor but has been criminalized by pressure from environmental advocacy groups since its discovery and is unsuitable in many applications. No other substitute for fossil fuels is know today.

All proposals to stop energy progress in the name of the weather, climate or pollution ignore all the fantastic advantages of energy capabilities. Such forecasts of doom are always based on hypotheses that have been proven false or upon models that have failed to predict real-world measurements. For humanity to flourish we require thinking that is firmly rooted in observations of reality, that are objective instead of subjective or arbitrary. 

Regulators must not act now to forestall climate disaster

 The March 2022 edition of Canada's Investment Executive trade newspaper published an Editorial that was so badly done I had to comment. I sent them a letter to the editor but don't expect it will be published. Here is what I sent.

It is a disservice to the readership served by the Investment Executive that the editor promotes political IPCC climate alarmism rather than proven science on this subject. 

There are many sources if you want to learn about the state of scientific knowledge related to our climate, including the reports of the Non-Governmental International Panel On Climate Change (NIPCC), the annual “the State of the Climate” report, dozens of carefully researched books such as those by Bjorn Lomborg, Alex Epstein, Patrick Moore, Steve Koonin and of course thousands of articles from the peer-reviewed scientific literature demonstrating that the hypothesis for dangerous man-made global warming is false and the proposed political actions are destructive. The IPCC Summary For Policymakers is as far as many journalists go, and this document is not scientific but political. 

When it comes to climate-related risks, by far the greatest is that of government and regulatory interference. A perfect example of this is playing out these days with huge increases in energy prices caused by years of governments attacking the most abundant, cheap, dense, flexible and scalable energy known to man: fossil fuels. Now that the folly of relying on the Russian dictator for oil and gas is apparent and the insanity of relying on dictators in China for the minerals required for intermittent and unreliable energy sources like wind and solar is becoming apparent, economically and scientifically illiterate politicians who have threatened to “end fossil fuels,” promoted net-zero and pushed ESG are blaming high energy prices on the very businesses they have been trying to destroy. 

Human beings, left free to innovate and produce (especially in the energy field that powers all other industries) has easily and can continue to adapt even better to the historically modest changes recently seen in our climate. When coercion is used against producers and one-size-fits-all political rules are made, then risks become systemic instead of diversified. The editors of a newspaper giving voice to the investment sector should do proper due diligence instead of promoting ideas that are demonstrably false and causing great damage to human flourishing.

Lower business taxes are the moral and practical choice

Imagine a hockey game where every time you scored two goals one was taken from you (like a 50% tax rate) and given to your opponent! How hard would you work in that game? The Valley Voices column of December 9 is replete with ethical and economic errors, so for the moment I will use just one and let the reader consider that if the starting point is bad the rest of the column likely follows suit. The writer’s opening sentence labels the idea that lowering corporate taxes is a good thing as a fairy tale, so let’s evaluate this statement to see if the writer’s standard of value is human flourishing.

Why do you create a business? In order to live: to bring an idea that creates human values into reality to support and improve your life. You might have an idea that many people will value your ideas about food, housing, transportation, communication, health or entertainment, for example, so you set about creating a business to manifest your ideas. You set up a supply chain, production, marketing, sales, distribution and service - often these are just you in every role at first. You must set a price higher than your cost inputs so that you are creating net value, otherwise your business dies and no one’s life is supported. If you have enough customers who find your product is worth more to them than the money they pay you (price) then your business survives. The level of your profit is a pure function of how much value you are creating, as decided by the agreements between you and your customers. All such trade is win-win by its very definition, the most moral form of trade.

If you are able to create enough value to thrive, gradually you may hire others to divide the work and enable specialization and division of labour. You offer to pay your job candidates what you consider to be enough to attract the skilled people you want to hire. If they agree with your offer and are hired you are each making a profitable trade. Your pursuit of life goals creates job opportunities for others to bring their value creation ideas into reality to support their life goals. 

I can see five things you can do with each dollar of profit earned by your business. First, you may opt to build a cash reserve to protect your business during the inevitable hard times. This cash is on deposit at a bank, where it is immediately put to work through lending to meet the life goals of others. Second, you may pay down business debt to lower the risk to your business and again the bank will immediately lend this out to others. Third, you may invest in growing your business, thus creating even more win-win trade. Fourth, you may invest in other value-creating businesses by acquiring all or part of them. Finally, you may pay a dividend to the business owner(s) and the owner (maybe just you) will then either save it, pay down debt, make other investments or spend it through trade with other value-creators. All these choices are both moral and productive.

Corporate tax is the forcible taking of value from you as the business owner (what is seen), your employees (less money available for payroll - unseen pay and hiring that never happens), your suppliers (unseen purchases that never happen) and your customers (higher prices than otherwise). Such takings necessarily discourage all business activity, investment, hiring and growth; punishing the life-supporting creation of human values through production and trade. If this were not true then ever-higher taxes would create rising prosperity, punishing success would lead to even greater success and the type of hockey game described above would be popular.

In a free society when you build great wealth it can only be through great value creation. Some businesses that have grown during the current pandemic have been rewarded for creating great value during a difficult time. They have provided the goods and services most wanted by us just when we want them and at a price we are eager to pay. How much worse would this time be for millions of us without the incredibly fast and affordable supply chain created by Amazon? Many businesses and lives have been damaged and destroyed by the irrational dictates of our central planners, dictates that prevent us from thinking for ourselves and supporting our own lives by creating human values. Other businesses have of course benefitted from these dictates, but they are not to be condemned - the dictators are responsible.

The lower the business tax rate the more human reasoning, value creation and productive achievement can be achieved. To the small degree any type of taxation is needed it is better placed on the consumption of values than on their creation. To maximize human flourishing the most moral and practical business tax rate is zero percent.

Greta Thunberg: Emotion In The Absence Of Reason

"Rising numbers of children are being treated for "eco-anxiety", experts have been quoted in the media, as they warn parents against “terrifying” their youngsters with talk of climate catastrophe. Amidst the furor about global warming one your girl has managed to become a media darling: Greta Thunberg. Greta has started and inspired millions of students to skip school as a proteest against government inaction on "climate change."  Many words have been used to describe Greta but a few of them have struck me as more prominent.

The first is the word "hypocrite."  On this I must agree. Thunberg and her ilk are attacking the very heart of modern civilization, using huge amounts of the very energy they so despise all along the way in order to destroy it. Her so-called "carbon-free" sailboat ride across the Atlantic, when the boat crew was flown back and forth by jet plane is only one of the most prominent examples. Much more profound is her ignorance of the incredible improvements in human life thanks to the energy from fossil fuels. The International Disaster Database shows that climate related deaths are 50 times lower than a hundred years ago. Not 50% but 50 times! Further, the decline is directly related to the rise of abundant, cheap and scalable fossil fuel energy that helps us build tougher structures move away from the naturally dangerous climate when needed, forecast dangerous climate events, transport safe water and food to affected areas and so much more. The human environment is vastly improved by fossil fuel energy. Greta's life on Earth is possible only because of such energy.

"Brave" is another word used to describe Thunberg. An uneducated child who has never held a job or produced a thing tells the world to revert to the pre-industrial age of starvation, deprivation, disease, racism and death - and many people applaud her for being brave. Actual bravery would be to stand for INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS in the face of soul-destroying collectivism; stand for REASON in a world embracing mysticism and irrationality as science and fact; stand for HUMAN FLOURISHING instead of calling for human sacrifices.


"Tragedy" is another good word. This uneducated gullible child has been persuaded to adopt an anti-human zealotry that will one day place her among the ridiculed in history books. She has no knowledge of the scientific process, no knowledge of the incredible improvement in billions of human lives thanks to the very energy she decries, no knowledge of the economies and personal life goals her ideas would destroy, no knowledge of the rights of the billions of individuals she would trample and seemingly no knowledge of the horrendous history of the type of political powers she embraces.

She embodies passion and emotion in the absence of reason, action without understanding, coercion without mercy, suffering and death without true cause, a mission of salvation absent rational justification. She represents what is wrong with modern education and politics. Greta must quickly be revealed as a fraud to avoid her insanity later in life when she realizes how very immoral and anti-life was the very foundation of everything she now stands for.


Greta is the puppet of a propaganda machine and should be criticized and corrected at every opportunity to avoid the suicidal future she urges us to adopt willingly.

Kids skipping school to chant empty slogans and wave ridiculous signs around political hangouts

With kids around the world being encouraged by teachers to skip school to protest about global warming, many cities had their own band of anti-reason students. I thought to give them a little guidance. Ottawa, Ottawa, Montreal, Saskatchewan, BC, National Post, HuffPost Canada, Kingston

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I have been studying the subject of climate science as a personal interest for almost 20 years. There is a vast body of research including fundamental findings that proves the alarm over dangerous man-made global warming is vastly overblown and that in fact the world is becoming ever better for humanity. I am not referring to a few studies, but many hundreds, even thousands of them, published over decades of work by some of the most experienced and prominent scientists in their fields, available in the peer-reviewed literature with another such study published on average every day all year long.

For any youth interested in this subject, I encourage them to learn more about the scientific method and the various disciplines related to climate, then your minds will be at ease and you will be able to dedicate your life to creating value for yourself and others through productive work and helping humanity to flourish and progress instead of spending time lobbying scientifically ignorant politicians. There are professors right near where I live in Ottawa, at Carleton University and University of Ottawa who are experts in this and if you ever make it to their classes you will learn much more than I could explain here.

Please, read widely and weigh the research - you will find one side that tells you to stop thinking there are alternative explanations, that the science is settled, is filled with exaggerations, unwarranted extrapolations, models that are poorly constructed and have failed to forecast anything, misused statistical methods, a reversal of cause and effect, suggestions for a massive violation of individual rights and essentially a reversal of human progress since the industrial revolution, while the other side urges caution, asks you to check all your assumptions, to be thoughtful and to weigh all the evidence.

It is clear from their signs, their attributed quotes and the interview clips that the marching kids have no idea of the meaning of what they are saying. For example:

• They demonstrate their ignorance of environmental science when they say the environment is getting worse, when in fact every important measure of air, water and food pollution has been improving at a rapid rate for decades. One sign I saw said "the planet needs you to give a shit" - the sign wielder apparently is ignorant of the fact that before industrial scale energy from carbon fuels, the streets were actually full of shit and the water was polluted by it, causing plagues and death on a massive scale.
• They demonstrate their ignorance of politics by holding signs saying "change the system, not the climate" with big fists pictured (typically indicating a Marxist ideology) when in fact many countries are clearly already headed towards Marxism and the concept of a free, capitalist society is almost completely unknown and has certainly never existed.
• They demonstrate ignorance of health science when they claim people are killing others through carbon dioxide, when in fact the death rate from extreme weather events has fallen 98% since we started using carbon fuels in earnest almost a century ago; so the correlation between carbon dioxide production and deaths has an extraordinarily strong negative correlation.
• They demonstrate their ignorance of chemistry, being against the use of carbon fuels yet they wave signs made from carbon fuels, march on carbon-based and carbon made roads, wear clothing and knapsacks literally made of and with energy from carbon fuels, carry phones made of carbon fuels eagerly use an internet powered by carbon fuels, drink from bottles made with the energy of carbon fuels - the list goes on and on because 85% of world energy comes from carbon fuels.
• They demonstrate ignorance of economics because they hold signs claiming the economy is being prioritized over human life, when in fact the economy is nothing except human beings working to improve their lives through production and trade with other human beings.
• They demonstrate ignorance of history because before the industrial revolution and especially since the availability of safe, reliable, cheap energy from carbon fuels, 95% of humanity lived in abject poverty for all of history, suffered from disease, starvation and a short, brutal life while dangerous nature tried to kill them at every turn.
• They demonstrate ignorance of finance and the very meaning of wealth because they protest against the pursuit of money, clearly not understanding that money is not a goal, but rather is simply a means of recognizing and exchanging productive values like food, shelter, transportation, communication, education, health care, entertainment, etc.
• They demonstrate a hatred of human life - I saw a sign showing a skull and crossed swords saying "artist activist for the Earth" suggesting the valuing of non-human Earth above the advancement of human civilization.
• They demonstrate their ignorance of how the planet has been improved for human life, not made worse - the planet is actually greening as farmland is made more productive and so less of it is needed. A higher carbon dioxide level in the air is recovering from its historically low level and feeds hungry plants of all types, nourishing forests and shrinking deserts.

In summary, these student marchers and their supporters have no idea what they are talking about and should get back to studying reality if they hope for a good life in the future.

A pre-election proposal to cover hearing aids under government health plans

Here is another of the online discussions hosted by the Liberal Party of Ontario leading up to the 2018 election. This was rated fourth overall by participants. Again, many participants are unable to see how a political system freedom works and keep insisting that the use of force against some citizens for the supposed benefit of others is justifiable.

Cover cost of hearing aids

Hearing Aid cost are in the thousands of dollars and its considered a disability. I am only 34 years old and have genetic hearing loss. I am the manager of a long term care facility and I'm well educated but i cant afford new hearing aids and i know hundreds just like me. Soon it will prevent me from working and instead of being a contributing citizen that i can be, ill be living on disability money which i dont want. I didnt cause this hearing loss. I dont want it but i cant fix it and the one thing that can make it a little better managed cost thousands of dollars. It should be covered becuse its a health issue and it minimizes the ability to contribute to society, causes depression and enormous other cost that will be much more than the cost of the aids. Please consider. Thank you.

1. Comment

   Kiara (@kiarasexton) 1 year ago

   I have a family member who needs special advanced hearing aids that cost a few thousand dollars. This is prohibitively expensive and she loses a great deal of sleep over this cost. It breaks my heart how much stress it causes her, because without them, she is without access to community services, interaction with family and friends, and entertainment. Life shuts down quickly without these things. I believe hearing aids should be funded by the health care system. For those who need them, they are critical.

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2. Comment

   Lloyd Le Blanc (@lloyd.le.blanc) 1 year ago

   Actually the problem is how the current program is administered.
   The Ontario Government currently pay $500.00 for each hearing aid.
   The problem is that this is paid to the hearing aid provider company.They then can charge whatever they want on top of that as they are already assured that much profit .When you go in for a test they have you sign a " waiver " that directs the government money to them.Saw a report that it cost $ 65.00 to make a hearing aid.
   At Costco the money goes to the patient and you should check their prices and no I do not work for them.

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   1. Comment

      Community Member (Idea Submitter)1 year ago

      @lloyd.le.blanc You are right! THis $1000 towards two hearing aids do not even help. I had 2 hearing aids made in alberta for a certain amount. Here, very similar ones are about $1800 more for 2 so whats the use of the $1000 covered? Its just added on the top of the cost and the consumer pays the same amount no matter what. poorly planned. Just makes the companies rich and patients poor.

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3. Comment

   John Delbert Hamilton (@johndelberthamilton) 1 year ago

   Yes cost of hearing aids need to be covered under OHIP 100% , all models.

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   1. Comment

      Community Member (Idea Submitter)1 year ago

      @johndelberthamilton Absolutely!!

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4. Comment

   You 1 year ago

   Not a good idea. When people claim their need constitutes a command over other people's lives a society of dog eat dog is created and the best lobbyists divide the loot. Competiting for control over other people's money by claiming greater need is called socialism, and it has destroyed societies to the degree it has been implemented. It sets neighbor against neighbor and fuels envy and hatred. 
   
   Hearing aids exist because innovators were free to create, sell, profit, reinvest and improve their products, all competing for the preference of consumers. If you want to kill a product and stop innovation in it's tracks, get government to control it. Today's hearing aids are a hundred times better than those of a few decades ago and get better and cost less and less per functionality delivered. 
   
   Price differences between provinces must be because government has interfered in the market, else competition would drive prices to a similar level very quickly. When a product can be made profitably it attracts capital and competition, which then drives prices down and quality up until the rate of profit normalizes. Only the power of the state can block this process. For the sake of ll who want better hearing aids, we must insist that government not interfere in our marketplace.

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5. Comment

   Lloyd Le Blanc (@lloyd.le.blanc) 1 year ago

   Helping each other is not socialism.This should come naturally to all and not ,as by example the so called " American dream which in my opinion is dog eat dog in an attempt to acquire as much "stuff" as possible by stepping on whoever you have to.This attitude seems to have seeped into Canadian society and that is not what I and many others want.
   
   This discussion is not about market economy.It's about the flawed support payment system at the Ontario government level and it is an easy fix.Give the money to the individual needing and buying the hearing aid after which they can go shopping for the best price.Today's hearing aids are now all digital and the basic difference in them is minimal.Just bells & whistles.I spent 30 years in the commercial radio business and a hearing aid has the same technology.

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   1. Comment

      James Dekker (@dprime) 1 year ago

      @lloyd.le.blanc but people are being forced to help others. That's socialism. When people donate money, that's giving of free will. There is a huge difference. Removing the overhead of all the administration costs is a much better solution. So much money is wasted on bureaucracy and administration. Ask Haiti how many houses the Red Cross built for them. Most of the money went to administration fees, which doesn't help anyone. A better solution would be to find people in need and support them personally rather then the wasted money from taxes.
      I believe that David McGruer's point was that government is not necessarily the best solution to the problem. But that the government has caused an inflated cost to medical health.
      Maybe a better solution would be a tax deduction. Which is already incorporated into our taxes.

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6. Comment

   James Dekker (@dprime) 1 year ago (Last edited by James Dekker 1 year ago)

   I agree those with disabilities need financial help. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't ODSP pay for dental and medical on top of the monthly support? There is also the Trillium Health for lower income families. http://health.gov.on.ca/en/pro/programs/drugs/funded_drug/fund_trillium.aspx Maybe the problem is the lack of information provided to people? And maybe some updates to dollar amounts for the Trillium Health needs to change with the minimum wage inflation.

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   1. Comment

      Lloyd Le Blanc (@lloyd.le.blanc) 1 year ago

      @dprime Wrong link as this Trillium health is an american group based in Rochester NY ????

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      James Dekker (@dprime) 1 year ago

      @lloyd.le.blanc fixed thanks 

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7. Comment

   Al (@fishinlad) 1 year ago

   I disagree with the notion that competition will drive prices to a more affordable level. There are significant barriers to entry into this industry. There is insufficient competition. I'm certainly not suggesting that there is any price fixing going on, but current prices are outrageous. I am currently pricing hearing aids for both my wife and myself. Our total cost will be in the low five figures. We can afford the outlay, but I am well aware that many others cannot. Loss of hearing can be a dangerous situation and I support this suggestion.

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      You 1 year ago

      @fishinlad Competition in every field drives prices lower. Just look at how vastly superior today's hearing aids are compared to just ten or twenty years ago. Dollar for dollar, you get so much more today than ever before. Central controls make things expensive. Freedom makes them cheap.

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   2. Comment

      Lloyd Le Blanc (@lloyd.le.blanc) 1 year ago

      @davemcgruer The issue is not a discussion on the free market or competition.The issue is to make over priced hearing aids price competitive.Hearing aids have always been over priced.I worked in the radio communication industry and a hearing aid is a very basic transceiver.With the advent of computer chips that improved every aspect of hearing aids and making them very efficient and small.You would think that this would have reduced costs.No instead they have gone up.One of the reasons for this is the lack of competition at the retail or dispensing point.In Ontario the Government gives $ 500.00 per hearing aid to anyone who gets a hearing aid.However when you go to a clinic and they have you sign a form, that few read, you are authorizing them to collect the $ 500.00 per aid for themselves.Th pricing has nothing to do with the cost of the technology as the estimated cost of making a hearing aid is $ 65.00 and they charge thousands.So whatever they charge the patient add $ 500.00 per hearing aid to the clinic's profit.Check the prices at Costco, that are comparatively low and the patient ( customer) gets the Government money.

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   3. Comment

      Al (@fishinlad) 1 year ago

      @davemcgruer I don't disagree that complete freedom tends to lower prices to the point that a "normal" rate of return is earned by all firms in the industry. In the hearing aid industry there are six major producers. This is an oligopolistic marketplace with significant barriers to entry. So freedom in the marketplace is not complete and in cases like this prices tend to be higher than they would be if the market was truly competitive and the six major players earn "extraordinary" profits as a result. I am not suggesting that there is any price collusion between the firms but, simply put, they are under insufficient competitive pressure to drive prices lower and government intervention (as distasteful as this may sound to some) is one way to regulate profits for the benefit of the society. Many simply cannot afford these high costs and the sense of hearing is fundamental to survival--hearing loss is dangerous. In monopoly and oligopoly situations firms have pricing power and they use it--I would too!

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      You 1 year ago

      @fishinlad The proper response when profit margins are high is to enter into competition with the existing producers and undercut them. This is the market process that normalizes profits back to the average. Using the force of the state to attack businesses is not a moral response as it entrenches the oligopoly you reference, discourages competition and innovation and punishes the most successful producers. If government subsidies distort the market - as the must do - the correct response is to get subsidies withdrawn. If Costco is a better place to buy the devices then people may choose to go there, which will then force others to lower their prices and innovate to compete. There is not a single thing special or unique to the hearing aid business that mandates the intervention of government force, since no one's rights are being violated if the market is free.

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      Al (@fishinlad) 1 year ago

      @davemcgruer Good morning David: When profits in an industry are extraordinary, that attracts new competition. When there are significant barriers to entry (capital costs, legal, patents, technical knowledge, dominant existing firms, etc.) as may exist in the hearing aid industry, insurance, banking and others competition will not reach levels of competition that will drive prices to optimum levels (ie. levels that would allow a "normal" rate of return. There is insurance fraud out there--some from policyholders and some from insurance companies. Oligopolistic behaviour distorts competitive forces that would be generated by the "animal spirits" in a competitive environment. The market is not free--oligopoly firms see to that. The proper response, indeed the moral response is effective government intervention as is done with regulated monopolies and with regulated oligopolies. Monopsony vs monopoly--a single seller has pricing power and a single buyer can deal with it. Government is not all bad and the free market is not all good. We have to be thoughtful about situations like human hearing and the affordability of it. Anyway David, I enjoy your views, I am a free enterpriser too, scratch out my living that way, but I also see a need for intervention in critical areas when dominant firms make life difficult for people who cannot afford critical needs.

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   6. Comment

      You 1 year ago

      @fishinlad You bring up many issues, thank you for providing some thoughtful ones worthy of more discussion. Far too many of the ideas and comments here are relatively superficial and involve an arbitrary taking of money from some people to give to others. I'll try to address a few key points. 
      
      Barriers to entry are a natural part of an advancing society. Before all the wonderful technologies we have, there were virtually no markets and thus few barriers. Legal barriers should only exist to protect objective rights such as intellectual property. Patents exist to protect intellectual property and without patents there would be far less innovation and human progress - they are an objectively vital part of modern human civilization. Technical knowledge is not a barrier since essentially all the knowledge of humanity is available at our beck and call, thanks to patents, intellectual property law and more specifically laws that protect individual rights including property of all sorts. A dominant existing firm is not a barrier because if a firm is dominant then it has proven to provide the greatest value to consumers - created the greatest value in society - else it would not be dominant.
      
      It is important to realize that the existing firms are under constant pressure from all sides, both within existing product lines and from without. For example, Apple could decide to enter the market at any time and might quickly dominate, so other firms must be on their toes not only to existing competitors but all possible competitors. Just to maintain a strong market share requires constant thinking and innovation.Just imagine you are an existing hearing aid company and you decide to close your research and development department to make more money by reducing costs. How long would it take before you not only lost market share but drained all your capital and were out of business? Perhaps a few years? If you tried, you could come up with a dozen mechanisms of the free market that make such a decision extremely unlikely and cause instead the company to constantly strive for improved products and services. 
      
      Government is not all bad, I never said that. Government is essential for a free society, to define and protect the rights of its citizens. When it strays beyond that it has begun to infringe or even violate the rights of its citizens, and this is where is becomes a bad force in society. A monopoly by force can never be a good in society, and this is what is meant by regulated monopolies. In fact, there is no such thing as a real monopoly except by government force. Yes, there may be a dominant player, even up to 95% market share, but as I have shown there is the constant threat of new competitors fro all sides, including substitution for existing solutions, just as streaming services have totally overturned the long established oligopoly in television and prompted massive innovation just to survive as a going business concern. Imagine if government had regulated the internet as a public utility from its birth - we would still be hearing the beeping and buzzing noises of a modem as tiny little bits of data crawled slowly through copper lines.
      
      In contrast, freedom is an unalloyed good - not that all outcomes will be perfect or even optimal for all people, but rather that freedom provides the proper moral framework for human beings and the very best possibility of social, cultural and technological advancements. If a freely acting person violates the rights of another, we absolutely need government to adjudicate and punish as justice requires.

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8. Comment

   Gordon Crann (@gordon) 1 year ago

   The major producers of hearing aids have huge profit margins due mainly to insufficient competition. The high initial capital cost to purchase a high-quality hearing aid is made worse through the high ongoing cost of hearing aid batteries. There are affordable, high-quality hearing aids with solar-rechargeable batteries being designed and produced by deaf people themselves through the internationally-award winning social enterprise Solar Ear, for further information see its website: http://solarear.com.br/
   
   The Ontario Government should be encouraging the development of a Solar Ear, social enterprise affiliate providing jobs to deaf people in Ontario - not further subsidizing the huge profit margins of the producers of overpriced hearing aids. A Solar Ear, social enterprise affiliate located in Ontario would be able to serve the deaf market not only in Ontario, but in all of Central and Eastern Canada plus the Eastern USA, thereby providing affordable, high quality hearing aids to our deaf community, as well as jobs for our deaf people, and an increase in economic development and trade for Ontario.

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      You 1 year ago

      @gordon I'm happy to hear of all initiatives to develop improved technology in hearing aids. I applaud the collaboration of deaf people to create a new business model that may end up with a strong market share. That is competition. Anyone and everyone should be free to put their best effort into the competition for consumer choices. For those who complain of a lack of competition we must ask "who is preventing the competition?" In all cases, it will come back to regulation and government. Sure, there are obstacles to competing with a large, successful company, but these are natural, healthy, organic and constantly under challenge from all sides. In a free market no company is safe from competitive forces as even a small company with great innovation can capture a large product market share for a while, until more competition makes then irrelevant too. Since we do not have a free market it can be hard to conceive, but it is the right direction to move towards in Ontario.

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9. Comment

   Don Bunsen (@doctorb) 1 year ago

   I fail to understand why hearing aids are so expensive in the first place - there must be a way of bringing the cost down and having this brought under the public sector instead of private clinics selling them.

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   1. Comment

      You 1 year ago

      @doctorb Doing what you suggest and socializing hearing aid production would cause them to stagnate and tend to make their production more expensive, not less. Who says they are expensive A hearing aid today that you can buy for a thousand bucks would have cost a million or in truth would not have been available for any price on Earth just twenty years ago. It is thanks to the innovation made possible by reinvesting profits that steady improvement is made possible in any product, including hearing aids. There is nothing about hearing aids that makes them exempt from the laws of economics.

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   2. Comment

      Don Bunsen (@doctorb) 1 year ago

      @davemcgruer - most hearing aids are marketed to all of north america if not to a world wide market - but we see with drug prices and drug companies that governments can essentially buy in bulk and a lot of the cost is not in manufacturing but in the marketing and distribution and the middle men - i mean, just look at the technology in cell phones and how little it actually costs to manufacture them.