Taking up the cudgels again in 2014 in defence of individual rights

I have had a very relaxing start to the year, partaking of some great weather, wonderful sights, delicious food and fine wines in some of New Zealand's most beautiful holiday spots. The relaxation was undoubtedly enhanced by confining my holiday reading to some excellent books (Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch and Bill Bryson's One Summer stand out) and consuming as little of the execrable mainstream media as possible. But it is time to return to the challenges that will face us in 2014.

In New Zealand, the Government led by John Key seems to be determined to pursue a political agenda that is as secretive, and frankly as corrupt, as ever. Key and his coalition of right-of-centre hypocrites and and racial determinists will continue to expand the power of the state and debase the rights of some New Zealanders in order to retain power.

Late in 2013 it the Key Government introduced a bill to enable the nefarious US FATCA regime, which I have blogged on before. FATCA treats any New Zealander with the misfortune of being born in the United States, or even born here to American parents, as "United States taxpayers that are resident in New Zealand." The Government acknowledges that the proposed law explicitly overrides the Privacy Act, Human Rights Act and New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. To what purpose does it treat some New Zealanders as non-citizens? It is to enforce a US taxation regime that is one-sided, unique in the world and inconsistent with OECD model taxation agreements. This analysis on the New Zealand legislation from the Isaac Brock Society sets out the issues in more detail.

Another nefarious piece of legislation the Key Government introduced in late 2013 is the Treaty of Waitangi settlement bill that gives redress to the Ngati Toa tribe for alleged wrongs committed against the tribe by the Crown in the early 19th Century. These Maori grievance settlements have become more and more outrageous over time, establishing two classes of citizenship in New Zealand - a privileged Maori tribal citizenship and lesser rights for the rest of us - but this one really takes the cake. Ngati Toa was the tribe of chief Te Rauparaha who committed what can only be described as genocide against other Maori tribes in his violent rampage through the North Island and top of the South Island in the 1820s and 1830s. British forces intervened against Te Rauparaha and his nephew Te Rangihaeata in the late 1830s and 1840s, stopping their horrific attacks against other Maori tribes and European settlers. Giving compensation to Ngati Toa today for the actions of British forces is like giving compensation to Bosnian Serbs for what happened at Srebrenica in the 1990s. Former Maori Treaty claim researcher John Robinson provides background and opinion on this claim in this article.

In the United States the Obamacare legislation is being shown up for the disaster some people always knew it would be, with even former supporters shocked to discover the huge cost increases that it is imposing and President Obama being exposed as having lied through his teeth when he said Americans would be able to keep their existing healthcare plan. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy said the legislation would "change the relationship between the government and the individual in a profound way." He meant that socialised medicine makes citizens dependent on the state in a way that Americans have traditionally not been, and he is being proved right.

On the positive side in America, President Obama has said he will rein back the extent of spying on citizens and foreign leaders that were exposed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Many commentators have said the president's pledge does not go far enough and have expressed scepticism about whether there will be any meaningful change. Obama has pursued more prosecutions under the Espionage Act than all other presidents combined, so people are right to be cynical about his intentions.

So as much as I enjoyed my holiday and have been slow to take up the cudgels again in defence of freedom, I am mindful of Thomas Jefferson's (or Edmund Burke's similar) saying, "All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent."

As Shakespeare said, "Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more..."

Governments are useless at most everything

It has been amusing, if somewhat predictable, watching the unravelling of the 'Obamacare' healthcare legislation in America. The US Government spent $200m on a health insurance website that doesn't work, but that is the least of the problems. The penny has finally dropped for most Americans that their existing health insurance plans will have to be abandoned and a more expensive scheme purchased, giving the lie to the name of the legislation, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

The British National Health Service is held up by Britons and by all advocates of socialised medicine worldwide as the exemplar for state-run healthcare, even to the extent of it being the centrepiece of the London Olympics opening ceremony (in a disgusting misappropriation of the supposedly politically-neutral Olympics for political ends). God knows why - as this Forbes article reports, you are 88% more likely to die of breast cancer in the UK than in America and less likely to survive all other major forms of cancer. So, why would Americans want to give up private medicine for socialised medicine?

In my consulting business in recent years I've been doing a lot of work for the New Zealand Government, much of it quite important stuff in terms of delivery of the Government's main policy initiatives. I work for government because Wellington, my home town, does not have much of a private sector any longer (and I've blogged on Wellington's economic situation before). In my work I see many public servants who are dedicated to their work and who genuinely strive to serve the public to the best of their ability. But I see a great deal of incompetence too - monumental computer systems failures like the Obamacare website, construction projects that produce buildings that are faulty from the day they are finished and ships that can't serve the purpose for which they are acquired.

The problem is that some of those who work in government believe that there is no limit to their role and moral mandate, that they can poke their noses into any area of citizens' lives that they see fit.  Any problem, be it social, economic, scientific or environmental is not so daunting that our elected representatives and unelected officials don't think they can fix it. Never mind that they have no expertise in the field concerned - there is always some patsy 'expert' (usually an academic with no practical experience of the subject) ready to support their view that the problem can be fixed by more government interference in citizens' lives.

The truth is that government can never compete with the market in terms of providing solutions to human problems. The reason for this is obvious - the market is the collective result of millions of people applying their knowledge to achieve individual goals, whereas even in the largest government agencies there can be only ever a fraction of the effort and wisdom applied to the problem. The market will always beat the bureaucrat and those who work in government should have the humility to accept this.