*We have created a society that assumes that we will be able to transport food to where it is needed. Yet we have a transportation system that relies on oil which in turn has to be imported. *

It is amusing to see signs on a lot of trucks saying "without trucks Australia stops".
They should have another sign that says" without diesel the trucks stop"'

Australia could easily be "self-sufficient" if people wanted to live at the level of animals, as the Greens policies would have.

In the final analysis, all the Greens have is socialism, which doesn't work. Take that away, as Labor did, and all you are left with is pretending to know what's better for people than people, unprincipled scramble for mutual plunder, corrupt pork-barrelling.

We only haven't seen worse from the Greens because they haven't been in power. The little they managed to do is the epitome of anti-human stupidity itself: http://topher.com.au/50-to-1-video-project/#prettyPhoto

It should be obvious that a state of 100% taxation would be a state of slavery; and that if the State controlled all the means of production, the result would not be a more orderly, harmonious, sustainable society, but a society of grand waste, corruption, and totalitarianism. The Greens and Labor, so far as they don't desert their own logic and principles, only represent constantly approaching closer and closer to that state of anti-social chaos.

But they seem so actively committed to invincible ignorance, that they just don't get it! They keep banging on about how "we" need a "new" way, as if they can just re-design the world at will. But all their ways are just the old failed socialist way: government will control everything! Politicians and bureaucrats will try to force other people's values on you! Any problem will be met by more force, more tax, more regulations, more bureaucracy, less freedom.

The day John and Robert LePage stop using carbon themselves is the day the rest of us can think about taking their foolish "Zero Carbon Network" seriously. We can only ponder their and the Greens' ideological fellow-travelers of the last century, and wonder how many millions of people these anti-human zealots would kill if they got into power.

JKJ:
Wow what a rogues gallery of denialists your link leads to.
I think that is a sufficient reason to ignore you from now on. Goodbye.

It really is amazing that anyone dumb enough to fall for the global warming, peak oil & other such greenie scares should manage to gain entrance to any university course.

That some of them are PhD students really shows what a low ebb our education system has fallen to.

Notice how the socialist provides no reason or evidence for his beliefs, argues by meaningless slogans, and runs away at the first sign of any challenge to show truth based on reason?

The fact of the matter is Robert, that what you believe and advocate would result in the death of thousands of millions of people if it were ever implemented. Your beliefs are anti-truth, anti-reason, anti-freedom, totalitarian and anti-human, and your being conceited about your beliefs doesn't make them true.

Certainly not the worse article I've read.

Australians are very conservative and ever since Hawke and Keating moved the ALP to the right in the 1980s, there is not a huge amount of difference between the two major parties.

The take away from the recent election is how shockingly poorly the Stable Population Party did. They polled less than .2 percent of the vote in the Senate. They made some classic mistakes such as forging ties with Numbers USA and allowing Dick Smith to set the media agenda. They also kept changing their website to fit the news agenda. But overall, it was a rejection of their right wing social engineering agenda in the name of the 'environment'. It's not people, it's consumption.

Even so, John is right in so far as one day energy prices will drive production costs higher. At the moment though, we are producing over $60 billion of foodstuffs for export per year and importing $9 billion, mainly through reciprocal trade agreements. The nation must do more to find and develop new energy sources.

Cheryl, can you provide link to Aust exporting $60 billion of food stuff.

WTO data shows $34 billion for all Aust agri exports in 2011, so I am quite interested in your claim.

"Even so, John is right in so far as one day energy prices will drive production costs higher. ..The nation must do more to find and develop new energy sources."

That's the flaw in the socialists' reasoning. Just because there is a problem of some kind, or a shortage of economic goods of some kind, does not justify the conclusion that THEREFORE "the nation" [translation: the State] must "do more".

The reason is because, in reality, doing something, anything, always has costs. The question is always whether a particular action is worth it, or whether the resources that had to be withdrawn from some other usage to fund a policy action, would have been better off being devoted to other uses chosen by voluntary and peaceful means, rather than the state's monopolistic coercion; whether society would have valued more highly those alternative uses.

That is the question that John and Robert never answer, and are incapable of answering, except by abandoning rational thought, and just *emoting* slogans.

It is simply invalid to assume that government can presumptively allocate scarce resources to their most optimal, most valued, most important, most urgent uses. If it were true, we could vest total power in government, and totalitarian government would be the best society *economically* speaking. It's just total nonsense, it's nothing but rank idiocy that has been disproved thousands of times over and over again, at cost of hundreds of millions of human lives. It's just wrong.

Another way we know this, is because the advocates of this idea ALWAYS rely on illogical arguments, or a double standard, or self-contradiction, as Robert just did. On the one hand they argue for government control, but at some stage denying it inconsistently with their own argument. They have nothing but mush-brained yarble-yarp.

Cheryl,:

Until you call yourself by your correct name and gender, Malcolm paddy King, I suggest that anything you say will be meaningless and we would all benefit from your absence .

As soon as I read "peak oil" I know I will be reading the musings of a left wing ideologue and not a well thought out piece of logic, and I wasn't disappointed. Nor was I surprised to see association with Malthusian ideas or "zero carbon".

The truth is the community doesn't need, nor does it want, a "revolution". It wants a steadying hand on leadership and that's what it voted for.

Anyone who thinks we can 'future proof our communities' -- or anything else -- is so evidently off with the fairies that arguing with them would appear to be pointless. There are by rough estimation well over a billion factors influencing the future of any one Australian community, and those which we have any power over at all are in a tiny minority. The notion that we can somehow seize control of all of them -- by wishing really, REALLY hard, perhaps -- is a sign of incipient megalomania.

What we need -- and, let's hope, what we've now got -- is a government pragmatic enough to adapt to new challenges as they arise, rather than trying to fit every crisis into the mould of its predefined ideologies.

Cheryl "how shockingly poorly the Stable Population Party did."

Maybe Malcolm King can shut up about them now.
New target: Palmer United Party?

"it was a rejection of their right wing social engineering agenda"

And the fall in the Labor and Greens votes were an endorsement of their left wing social engineering agenda?

Save us from ideologues.
This is an excellent article, and correctly identifies one of the greatest weaknesses of the global system; excessive transport and it's deleterious effect on the atmosphere that every human, indeed every living thing shares.
To suggest that any market philosophy has a dog in this fight is inane. A market by definition must have at least two participants. Clearly, in any situation -any threat- involving the entire human race there is no market, as there is no one or thing with which humanity trades.
We are one.
The Biosphere which every living thing on the planet depends on cannot be divided, allocated or privately owned.
Even Mises was not an anarchist. He held that governments had (some, limited) legitimate reasons for existence, including defence, maintenance of Law and order and protection of private property.
Humanity is undeniably the most dominant, most belligerent and affecting species on the planet; by these characteristics alone humanity can be said to “own” the biosphere (“we only truly own that which we can destroy”).
If the Biosphere owned by Humanity is undeniably being affected by Humanity, it becomes a legitimate government -or intragovernment- concern.
Any problem, any threat, which concerns the entire Human Race deserves to be considered objectively and pragmatically, without being bogged down by petty ideologies, left, right or any of the myriad alternates.

"Save us from ideologues."

Save us from you, Grim? Good idea!

The fact that nature imposes limitations on human action is not caused by "ideology", and it's not even a proposition that you disagree with.

"We" (undefined term apparently meaning all the human beings in the world including everyone who disagrees with Grim apparently) are not "one", and it is this bad habit of lumping billions of people into a monolithic lump in the disposition of government that is the basis of all the enormous crimes of the collectivists over the last century.

If the biosphere "cannot be divided, allocated or privately owned" then what did you eat for breakfast Grim? Not even you agree with the nonsense you are talking.

All you're doing, with your talk of "us" and "the biosphere", is pretending to talk down to everyone else from a Gods-eye point of view, alleging that, because the world exists, government power is justified: to control any and every aspect of human life, because it might affect "the biosphere". Unlimited power. This is just the same old communist sh!t sandwich in a different wrapping.

If you want to get rid of ideologies, you can start with your own dreary, totally failed ideology of unlimited government power based on mystic concepts of a Grand Spirit.

Besides, lets suppose that John's thought experiment were granted, okay. There's a revolution in Australia. Well according to John's and the Green's logic, this "revolution" means we should have *more* government, more taxes, more officials, more bureaucracy, more regulations which, according to you guys, are necessary for government to decide what ordinary people should be permitted to do. But that’s not a revolution: that’s more of the same!

You see the problem for you guys, is that whenever you squark "ideology!" what you're really contending is that everything is just a matter of opinion. But in reality, the scarcity of resources cannot be made to go away by forcibly re-arranging property titles. You are flatly incorrect. And we can see this is true because your collectivist arguments are self-contradictory EVERY TIME.

In response to jardine. As the author of the article I prefer to stay out of the discussion but the following comment seems to have missed the point of the piece entirely:

Well according to John's and the Green's logic, this "revolution" means we should have *more* government, more taxes, more officials, more bureaucracy, more regulations ....

For the record - the title of the piece is taken from Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France. Burke is a conservative - who wrote before the idea of right and left was invented (also a legacy of the French revolution) For those of you who remember your history you will know that what provided the initial impetus behind the French revolution was the writings of the the enlightenment: Diderot, Voltaire, Rousseau et al. They provided people with an alternative vision. The distinction I was attempting to make (and clearly did not succeed in doing) is that we do not have competing alternative visions of the future; it is not about the right or the left it is about the reality that it does not matter who we vote for as we will end up with much the same outcome.

What we end up talking about is more taxes or fewer taxes, more government regulations or fewer government regulations, big versus small government.

These questions tend to miss the point - I have no problems with taxes provided the money is spent wisely and the tax burden is shared equitably, regulations provided those regulations help us achieve a better quality of life. The size of the government does not worry me provided it is no bigger then it needs to be.

Until governments accept the responsibility of looking after the needs of this generation without compromising the capacity of future governments to look after the needs of future generations we will see the slow unravelling of the quality of life for all Australians.

If our conservative politicians were just a little more familiar with radical conservatives like Edmund Burke we just might be able to build a better future.

That's where the difference is BAYGON. You want government to hold everyones hand from cradle to the grave. That means surrendering all power & decision making to government.

Those with a bit of sense want government to create a situation that gives people opportunity to look after themselves, then get the hell out of the way, & let them get on with it.

Perhaps we are already too far down the murky corruption paved road to socialism to claw our way back. If so my grand kids will inherit a collapsing society, with nothing but turmoil to live with. As usual, socialism will collapse under the weight of expectation without obligation or responsibility.

I heard another fool planner waffling on today, about how we have to "PLAN" our future communities. What a great vehicle for corruption.

Just how much corruption can bureaucrats & politicians syphon off when they can gazette one citizens land for development, & another's for private open space.

Nothing could have caused the land in my out of the way back blocks area to go from $70,000 for half a hector, to $210,000 in just a couple of years, but for the previous government banning all future subdivision in the whole district.

Socialism breeds payola like rabbits breed kittens.

I was aware of the Burkean reference, but knowledge of that history doesn’t put you on any better footing.

Interestingly enough:
“The first leftist would not be popular in America today. That is true because the original leftists [so named because they sat on the left side of the new revolutionary Assembly] wanted to abolish government controls over industry, trade, and the professions. They wanted wages, prices, and profits to be determined by competition in a free market, and not by government decree. They were pledged to free their economy from government planning, and to remove the government-guaranteed special privileges of guilds, unions, and associations whose members were banded together to use the law to set the price of their labor or capital or product above what it would be in a free market [in other words, the Greens of modern days].
“The First Leftist”, by Dean Russell
http://mises.org/daily/3425

Baygon, you are saying, correct me if I’m wrong, that you have no problem with taxes, regulation or the size of government, provided government is wise, fair, and helps us achieve a better quality of life, and therefore *other people* are missing the point to object to it.

That is so dumb, that I’m surprised you’re not ashamed to have betrayed such complete confusion.

There are two fatal flaws in that line of thinking. Firstly, let’s suppose that you had some rational criterion by which you were able to identify when government actions are wise, fair or pragmatic, as opposed to foolish, unjust or wasteful. And let’s suppose that everyone else in the world agrees with you. Then it still wouldn’t be “missing the point” for anyone to object to governmental actions for deviating from that standard, would it? It would be right on point, wouldn’t it?

Secondly, the entire issue is precisely that the apologists for big government have shown themselves completely incapable of answering the radical critique of the libertarians, which shows categorically that apologists for government do not have, and are not capable of having, a rational criterion for deciding whether or not the actions of government are wise, fair and pragmatic. This is not, as the leftists mistakenly think, a question of mere differing opinions. It is just empty-headed sloganeering to think that this is a problem of “ideology”.

The issue is whether government action is capable of satisfying the intended values of its intended consumers EVEN IN ITS OWN TERMS.

For example, when we ask you to provide a rational criterion for whether taxes are spent wisely or not - not in terms of your arbitrary opinion mind, but *in terms of the evaluations of the intended consumers of government’s services, versus the values that were sacrificed to satisfy them* - you are in a world of conceptual difficulty. If you are honest, you will admit straight up that you can’t do it. But if you can … what is it?

You have no problems “if the tax burden is shared equitably”. But supply the rational criterion by which you decide whether it is or not, and again you find yourself in a world of conceptual difficulty. Again the problem is not just differing opinions. Nor is it the inability to square any theory of a just tax with the fact that tax is, in fact and law, a coerced confiscation. The problem is that the formulation of a just criterion is never able to escape the fatal flaw of self-contradiction. Go ahead: try floating one and I'll show you.

Again, you have no problem with regulations if they “help us achieve a better quality of life”. Well the Greens and Grim aren’t happy with that. They want to make sure that government action does not compromise the equal chance of future generations of having an equally good life; and that’s a different proposition altogether.

But either way, whether we accept your standard or theirs, when we ask you, or them, to identify the rational criterion by which you know whether a given resource should be consumed now or conserved for the future, they are at a loss to identify how they know, and why they assert, that governmental action is justified at all, in their own terms.

This is not some kind of strange coincidence. We are looking at a rational demonstration that all species of socialism are internally vacuous and self-contradictory. But if not, then what are the answers to my questions?

Thus even if conservative politicians were more familiar with radical conservatives like Edmund Burke, it wouldn’t put the apologists for government in any better position, let alone the laughable suggestion that the Greens have a better intuitive understanding of how to solve the problem as you, or they, have framed it.

Both in terms of fairness and in terms of helping us achieve a better quality of life, you would have been much better off reasoning thus: “since all kinds of socialists – however called - are unable to rationally justify their claims in favour of the beneficence of government power in allocating scarce resources to their most valued ends, if all kinds of socialists *especially the Greens* were just a little more familiar with the theories that rationally prove them unanswerably wrong, and which correctly explain the principles of human society, we just might be able to build a better future.”

Oh dear, I forgot that in Peter Wing Ah Jardine K Hume's world, only those who disagree with him have “ideologies”.
This is on the same mature level as those who reckon only white people can be racists, and Aussies are unique in the world for being the only ones able to speak English with no trace of an accent.
Since you clearly know me better than I know myself Peter K, perhaps you'd care to enunciate my ideology?
The only authority I have mentioned so far in this thread is Mises. Are you accusing me of being a Classical Liberal, or a right wing Libertarian?
I certainly agree with Mises on the matter of economic calculation (with one qualification) and I also share his views on Government:

“A famous, very often quoted phrase says: “That government is best, which governs least.” I do not believe this to be a correct description of the functions of a good government. Government ought to do all the things for which it is needed and for which it was established. Government ought to protect the individuals within the country against the violent and fraudulent attacks of gangsters, and it should defend the country against foreign enemies. These are the functions of government within a free system, within the system of the market economy.” Mises.

“Government as such,” he (Mises) declared, “is not only not an evil, but the most necessary and beneficial institution, as without it no lasting social cooperation and no civilization could be developed and preserved.” Mises understood that a strong but limited government, far from suffocating its citizens, enables them to be productive and free.”

“Baygon, you are saying, correct me if I’m wrong, that you have no problem with taxes, regulation or the size of government, provided government is wise, fair, and helps us achieve a better quality of life, and therefore *other people* are missing the point to object to it.”
“That is so dumb, that I’m surprised you’re not ashamed to have betrayed such complete confusion.”

And yet, that's pretty much exactly what Mises said. You think Mises was dumb?

Who owned the air you were breathing as you ate your breakfast, Jardine Wing Ah? (hint; Google “Caesar's breath”). If you believe the atmosphere is divisible and the air in your home belongs to you and you alone, I suggest you lock all your doors and windows and keep it to yourself and see how you go.
Foreign governments all over the world are polluting the air I breathe. Do I not -according to Mises- have a right to demand my government protect me from these “foreign incursions”?
When I say “we are one” I am of course referring to the Human species. Are you not a member of this species?
Do you deny that all people should take responsibility for their actions?
Do you deny that -as a species- we affect the biosphere in ways we cannot (currently, accurately) predict?
Do you deny that all people living in a community (state, nation) should bear some responsibility to others in the community?
Do you believe that if one sector of a community decides to conduct an experiment, which they cannot accurately predict the consequences of and which could adversely affect everyone in the community, they should have the right to do so?
Without consulting the rest of the community?
Do you deny that parents should protect and nurture their children, and try to offer them the best possible future?

“perhaps you'd care to enunciate my ideology”

I always put forward the arguments for liberty, so to the extent you have ever joined issue with me, you’ve been arguing for aggression to violate the person or property of others, because that’s what I always oppose. I’ve been showing how it’s morally and economically false, irrational and self-contradictory. If you can cite an example where that was not the case, I’ll apologise.

You said “Save us from ideologues” and I took that, correct me if I’m wrong, to be a reference to my post critiquing John’s assumption that, if modern-day conservatives understood radical conservatives like Burke better, they might be more inclined to agree with governmental action, especially on environmental issues.

As I have shown, the fact that nature imposes limits on human action is not caused by “ideology”, and the original economic problem – of scarce resources and opportunity costs - cannot be conjured away by political forced redistributions of property titles.

Do you deny that?

“I certainly agree with Mises on the matter of economic calculation…”

Bravo.

“ (with one qualification) “

and what is that pray?

(…)

“And yet, that's pretty much exactly what Mises said.”

No it’s not. Mises wasn’t saying, as Bagyon did, that he has “no problem with taxes, regulation or the size of government, provided government is wise, fair, and helps us achieve a better quality of life”, because Baygon didn’t give any rational principle by which those criteria could be objectively known, or limited.

Mises did: it’s limited by the primacy of the rights to freedom from aggression against person and property.

Mises’ conception of “the things for which government is needed and for which it was established” … “within a free system, within the system of the market economy” so far as I understand it, is that the use of government’s coercive apparatus is justified to protect its subjects from aggressive incursions against their rights of person and property; and no more than that.

So Mises’ is a strictly limited conception of the legitimacy of government, whereas Baygon’s is open-ended.

(cont.)
Baygon’s would justify coercive aggressions against person and property, so long as the proponents satisfied themselves that what they were doing was “wise”, or “equitable” and “helps us achieve a better quality of life” (confusing “us” with those whom he would violate).

Baygon’s would permit looting A to satisfy B. It would permit coercive socialism to the nth degree, limited only by his own arbitrary opinion of what was wise or equitable, no matter how much it violated other people’s person or property.

Mises’ wouldn’t. Mises, like me, would only permit government power strictly limited to suppressing force- or fraud-based incursions against person and property. This would rule out over fifty percent of modern western governmental activity; Baygon’s would permit even more totalitarian socialism. That’s what the argument’s about.

* * *

“Who owned the air you were breathing as you ate your breakfast…”?
Before I breathed it in, no-one. When I breathed it in, me. After I breathed it out, no-one again.

“(hint; Google “Caesar's breath”).”

Consider it Googled. Can’t see the relevance. Caesar’s property right in his breath is extinct. My appropriating it from its unowned state in nature does not aggress against his person or property.

If I used force to appropriate air from someone’s lungs, then you would have a point.

“If you believe the atmosphere is divisible and the air in your home belongs to you and you alone, I suggest you lock all your doors and windows and keep it to yourself and see how you go.”

No need. What would that prove? You have not made any point against the classical liberal conception of either property or government.

“Foreign governments all over the world are polluting the air I breathe.”

Can’t see you proving that on the balance of probabilities. But let’s just suppose you’re right for the sake of argument.

“Do I not -according to Mises- have a right to demand my government protect me from these “foreign incursions”?”

Only if their actions constitute aggression against your personal or property rights. I don’t think they do.

But certainly they could. When polluters damage enjoyment of one’s personal or property rights, then that is a justification of governmental action to defend them, according to the classical liberal view.

“When I say “we are one” I am of course referring to the Human species [snip sarcasm]"

The fact that we are human, does not justify the meaningless, metaphysical, false, and pointless assertion that we are “one”. If you and I were one, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, would we?

“We” aren’t one. We are seven billion, and each has his own values and interests which are sometimes in harmony, sometimes in conflict with others’.

The idea that human existence ipso facto justifies violent aggression against person or property is confused, self-contradictory, and unjustified.

“Do you deny that all people should take responsibility for their actions?’
I agree up to a certain point. They are morally and should be legally responsible not to aggress against the person or property of others, and the use of coercion is justified to constrain them to if necessary.

However if they are not aggressing against the person or property of others, then I deny there is any moral or legal justification to force them to sacrifice their values for others’. For example when you buy butter, you adversely affect the interests of other butter producers. Should you be “responsible” for that? Not necessarily. Voluntary responsibility – fine.

But I deny that any use of force – including law or policy - is justified to aggress against the person or property of you, or your preferred butter-maker, or anyone else so as to favour the butter-makers you don’t prefer, even though you have adversely affected them by your deliberate actions.

It is fake moral superiority to pretend a social motive that is to be implemented by unprovoked aggression against others: thus all political socialism is ethically fraudulent.

“Do you deny that - as a species- we affect the biosphere in ways we cannot (currently, accurately) predict?”

No. I deny that you represent the species, or anyone who disagrees with you.

(cont.)

And I deny that force is justified to restrict people’s freedom unless their actions are aggressing against the person or property of others.

“Do you deny that all people living in a community (state, nation) should bear some responsibility to others in the community?”

No. But that doesn’t amount to a blank warrant for unlimited government power to threaten to attack or cage people for anything it feels like so long as the aggressors declare their own actions “wise” or “equitable”. Aggression against the person or property of others remains wrong, EVEN IF it’s the State doing it.

“Do you believe that if one sector of a community decides to conduct an experiment… they should have the right to do so?”

In general, yes. The limiting factor is whether their actions involve aggressing against the person or property of others. If they do, then no. And force – including law – is justified to stop them or require restitution.

But the starting point is a presumption in favour of liberty, not against. We don’t presume everything should be illegal unless you beg for a corporate monopolist of aggressive violence to arbitrarily decide to permit you when your actions do not aggress against the person or property of others.

That’s the general issue!

“Do you deny that parents should protect and nurture their children…”

No.

“…and try to offer them the best possible future?”

No, PROVIDED THAT they don’t try by offering aggressive violations against the person or property of others.

This rules out at least 50 percent of the current activities of governments in the western world which are based on socialism and therefore threatening to imprison government’s subjects, in order to fund it.

This is the bit the socialists always ignore, would like to pretend doesn’t exist, and have no answer to when it is raised but endless self-contradictions.

So Grim: what is the rational criterion by which the State knows whether a given resource should be consumed now or in the future, on the basis that all humans are “one”?

Is it true that Jardine M Jardine swallowed an Irish version of Encyclopedia Brittanica in his infancy and ever since has astonished child psychologists and clerics with his ability to waffle and fulminate ponderously and obscurely?

Just askin'!

David G
We are amazed at the cogency of your argument for government's wisdom and capacity.