Quotes of the week

The Government we have today campaigned on delivering tax cuts to the people. They said that if they were elected, they would increase after-tax pay for the squeezed middle by shifting income tax brackets.

And they won. So deliver they must.One thing this country would do well to have is a return to old-school political values. Values that see a newly elected government doing everything possible, despite the odds against it, to honour the promises it made to the electorate.

Delivery against those promises, alongside our overall wellbeing, should be the standard by which a government is judged. –  Bruce Cotterill

Restoring faith in government means that a government keeps the promises on which it was elected. It means a government that prioritises work on the things that matter most to the majority of the electorate. Those things in all likelihood are education, health, crime, transport, and equality of treatment under the law. – Bruce Cotterill

We need a government that delivers on the above while watching the cost base and ensuring that every dollar of taxpayer money spent is spent well.

The last Government prioritised reckless but headline-grabbing promises in terms of housing, poverty, crime and health. They then filled government offices with thousands of additional bureaucrats to give the impression that they were doing something. They increased taxes and borrowed millions to pay for it all. And they ultimately achieved very little.

Most of us would want the opposite.

So now we have a government with a well-publicised and transparent list of things to do, a list that is shared with the public, updated quarterly, and with items that are ticked off in a public manner along the way. They’re seeking to reduce the number of people working in government departments to get the country’s cost base down. And, they’re trying to keep their promise to reduce taxes. – Bruce Cotterill

At a time when both the media and our politicians have major issues of trust, both groups need to double down on recovering the confidence of the people. The best way to do that is for government to be transparent, to honour their promises, and for media to report their activities with accuracy and openness and without distortion. – Bruce Cotterill

We can argue that tax cuts are a stimulus, making it more difficult in an economy that’s fighting inflation. And we can argue that tax cuts rob money from worthwhile government initiatives. Both are good arguments. But we have to remember that the Government was voted in with a series of policies that included the changes to our taxes.

It’s what they promised to do. – Bruce Cotterill

Government is meant to be about the people who comprise a community rather than the politicians themselves. Tax cuts are for the people. In this case, those people will primarily be low- to middle-income earners, the people who work hard all day for modest returns. As “tax bracket creep” has evolved, these people have seen their modest pay increases subjected to increasing levels of taxation for years. These people are the Government’s “core business” and they need and deserve some relief.

Taxation should be about collecting the minimum amount of money from all taxpayers, in a manner that is fair and equitable, in order to enable the delivery of essential and desirable services, firstly for our people to prosper, and secondly, so that we play an appropriate role in the international community.

It may surprise many to learn that the Government is not in business for the various interest groups with an agenda to run or a cause to champion. More and more is being asked of our government. There are already too many things that government does that they shouldn’t. – Bruce Cotterill

Indeed, the quickest way for our Government to get back on top of matters financial is to get out of the things we shouldn’t be doing. We have government bureaucracies that get bigger and bigger every year. In this writer’s opinion, the cost of that bureaucracy is the single biggest issue facing the New Zealand economy. – Bruce Cotterill

The quest for efficiency across government will need to be a multi-term focus if we are to get our cost base back to something that is sustainable. – Bruce Cotterill

Good government is not about building bureaucracies that get bigger and more expensive every year. It is about getting outcomes for the society that government is intended to serve. Big bureaucracies fall into habits of doing business with each other. That is not how outcomes are generated. We need a better, simpler and less costly way.

Thankfully, it feels like we have a government that is focused on finding that better way. I get the impression that Luxon and Willis, despite the odds that are against them, are trying desperately hard to deliver on their promises while making government more efficient. – Bruce Cotterill

However, if we are to recover a level of trust in our parliamentary system, and the politicians who occupy the House on our behalf, those politicians must act in the interests of the people who put them there.

And that means that they must, without exception, deliver on the promises they make. – Bruce Cotterill

Ironically, the media they wanted is, in many ways, the media they got. In place of the tyrannical editors of yesteryear, advancing without fear or favour the interests of the ruling class; the New Zealand news media of today boasts a troop of enlightened journalists dedicated to expanding social justice. The challenge now, for these wise members of the academy, is to explain why the media they wanted is not what so many of its readers, listeners and viewers wanted. – Chris Trotter

All the “summits” in the world will avail their organisers nothing, if all they are willing to listen to are their own fears. – Chris Trotter

I found the term “at risk” in this connection both odd and significant. By “at risk of becoming” was meant, presumably, statistically more likely to become. It is a term taken from medical parlance: for example, doctors speak of obese people (or increasingly of “people with obesity” or even of “people living with obesity”) being at risk of becoming diabetic, or of people with high blood pressure being at risk of having a stroke or heart attack.

Criminality, and ultimately all human conduct whatsoever, is here conflated with disease, and thereby becomes a disease in itself. For example, I am at high risk of going into a bookshop and buying a book. I can no more help it than can a person with a family history of, say, gout, help having a higher-than-average chance of developing gout. Statistical chances rule the world, including the human world; besides which, for me at my age to buy more books is irrational, the sign both of a compulsion and an obsession—which, as everyone knows, are diseases. The only way that these diseases can be cured is for the government to give me so many books that I will no longer feel the compulsion to buy. –  Theodore Dalrymple 

Leniency is compassionate, severity cruel: such at any rate is the presumption of the intellectual middle classes, who, perhaps feeling guilty at their own good fortune, often inherited, by comparison with the classes from which criminals are usually drawn, find in making excuses for the latter, and in proposing lenient treatment of them, a way of demonstrating their generosity of spirit. I have rarely met such a person who has taken full cognisance of the fact that most of the victims of crime, as well as the perpetrators of it, are poor—relatively, that is. Most criminals are not great travellers: they rob, burgle and assault those around them, and since in the right circumstances they will readily admit that they have committed far more crimes than they have ever been accused of (borne out by, or compatible with, the fact that the police solve only a small proportion of crimes recorded by them), it follows that leniency is not necessarily compassionate, at least not if compassion is to be measured in part by its practical results and is not simply a warm, fuzzy feeling of self-congratulation at not being ungenerously punitive. – Theodore Dalrymple 

Welcome to another war of words between the greenies and the government over changes to the Resource Management Act.

With the poor old farmers stuck in the middle, just wanting the chance to be trusted to do the right thing when it comes to protecting the environment. And that’s what I think we should be doing.

You know how people have this concept of Mother Nature and how it’s all peace and love and milk and honey and bees buzzing and gentle rivers and all of that? It’s amazing, isn’t it, how quickly all that goes out the window if the milk and honey brigade don’t like something?   – John MacDonald

But, unlike climate activists and politicians, I’m willing to accept that things aren’t black and white. Which is why I think it’s time we just trusted farmers to do the right thing and let them get on with it.  – John MacDonald

Firstly, I’ve got friends who are farmers and every time I go and see them, I can see that they just want to do the right thing. But, instead, they’ve had governments and government departments behaving like helicopter parents and watching their every move just in case they do something wrong. And that’s nuts.

And secondly, show me a farmer who wants to poo in their own nest.

They don’t. And this is where the greenies lose it. Because if they think farmers want to destroy the natural environment on their properties for short-term financial gain, then they know nothing about how it all works.

Farms are businesses, yes. But they’re also assets. And why would anyone want to do anything to damage their asset? They wouldn’t.

And that’s why I think that, instead of pulling farmers to bits, we should be trusting them to do the right thing.   – John MacDonald

And if you think the Resource Management Act is how you sort out muppets, then you might want to think again. So, we can’t do anything about the muppets.  

What we can do, though, is say to the farmers who aren’t muppets, that we trust them to do the right thing – and leave them to it.  – John MacDonald

What’s happened today will shock a lot of people, because over the last few years we’ve got used to Prime Minsters just putting up with their ministers doing a bad job or behaving badly in public.

It took forever for Hipkins or Ardern to demote the under-performers, and they suffered for it – public opinion of them was tainted.

That is clearly not how Chris Luxon operates, and it’s a good thing.

Because who doesn’t want performance from the people that we pay to run the country? – Heather du Plessis-Allan

If the state does not spend more than it collects and does not issue (money), there is no inflation. This is not magic. – Javier Milei 

Surely we didn’t miss the irony on climate change?

On the day it’s announced we have reduced our emissions now for three years in a row, so good on us, the very next day Transpower, the people who get the electricity into your lounge, tell us yet again that this Winter has issues and peak load and demand might be problematic.  – Mike Hosking

Here is a simple rule of thumb; to not have enough power in 2024 is simply not good enough and it should be seen as an abdication of responsibility. 

The reason we don’t have enough is quite openly admitted. It’s because the renewables are not voluminous enough and not reliable enough to cover the growing demand. 

The transition hasn’t transitioned to the point where we can largely leave fossils behind. 

So, here’s the line for me. Save the planet all you want, even if it is futile given China and India aren’t as interested. But don’t get so hell bent about it that the heater isn’t on in July when its -3 degrees. That’s not a first world country and it’s not a first world approach.  – Mike Hosking

If we don’t have enough power now, how do we power EV’s? How do we power generative AI, the so-called future? It’s a future that requires 10x more power than a Google search.

Talk about cart before the horse.

When we still struggle Winter in, Winter out to do the basics we have allowed ideology to hijack reality.

That is not the future, of the future.  – Mike Hosking

My view is that the State should have nothing to do with broadcasting. The recent optics surrounding the Public Interest Journalism Fund which has given rise to the perception – I emphasise perception – that media were promoting Government messaging has done enormous damage to the media as an institution. It is best that the State cuts its ties with broadcasting in the interests of broadcasters and indeed its own interests. – David Harvey

I would put it like this: while increased wealth above a certain level is not guaranteed to increase happiness, or what is now routinely called human flourishing, attempts to limit wealth to that level are almost guaranteed to result in increased human unhappiness. –  Theodore Dalrymple

I take it that this implies that equality of opportunity is, or would be, a desirable goal: but on the contrary, it seems to me to be a terrible one, among the most terrible that could well be imagined. This is despite the fact that almost no one has a word to say against it. Equality of opportunity is as morally untouchable as grandmothers or kindness to animals. – Theodore Dalrymple

The formal equality of opportunity that we already have is the only form of it that is not inherently tyrannical. Nor is it real, actual equality of opportunity, since the life chances of people born in different circumstances are very different. This fact is not at all an argument against it, however, when one considers what real, actual equality of opportunity would entail.

In the first place, the complete absence of opportunity, provided it were evenly spread, would satisfy the demand for equality of opportunity. Perhaps it could never be entirely equal (someone would have to suppress all that opportunity, after all), but there is little doubt that, by comparison with our present situation, overall equality of opportunity would be increased by the maximal suppression of opportunity.

It is hardly to be supposed that anyone, except an aspiring totalitarian dictator, would want such a thing.  – Theodore Dalrymple

But how does inequality of opportunity arise? The first and most obvious cause is in genetic endowment. Differing genetic endowment is unfair, but not unjust. For example, I should like to have been born more handsome than I was, but there is no one I can blame for this unfortunate fact, and nothing that I can do about it. What goes for looks goes for other attributes too numerous to mention.

There is no way this genetic unfairness can be abolished, except by universal cloning to ensure that all start with the same genetic endowment. From the point of equality of opportunity, it does not matter whether that endowment is good or bad, for everyone would be in the same genetic boat. – Theodore Dalrymple

It is certainly not fair that some people are born into nurturing environments and others into the very opposite. Moreover, it is possible that if environments could be to some degree equalised, marginal differences would become more important. The only way to avoid the unfairness caused by environmental differences is to make the environment in which children are raised (now clones, of course) absolutely identical in all respects, the equivalent of a battery farm. Only thus can the famous level playing field be achieved. Such an upbringing, of course, would make North Korea seem like a school for individuality. – Theodore Dalrymple

On the other hand, it ought to be possible to provide every child with opportunity, though not equal opportunity, for example by instituting good schools that nurture talent and build character. How this is best done is a matter of trial and error, and of experience. No system will ever be so perfect that “no child will be left behind,” to use the cant phrase. But while trying to provide opportunity for every child suggests practical solutions, aiming for something impossible like equality of opportunity supplies an excellent alibi for failure to do whatever is truly possible to give every child opportunity: for what is mere opportunity as a goal when compared to equality of opportunity? Have we no ambition? – Theodore Dalrymple

I have since been crystal clear about my concerns that women are being erased in this debate, and have always been clear that women do not have, nor have ever had, a penis. – Gillian Keegan

For several years, trans activist lobby groups pushed the use of phrases such as ‘trans women are women’ as a tactic to silence debate and fair questions about how gender self-identification clashes with women’s rights.

“Many didn’t recognise the dangers of these slogans early on, including politicians who doubtless thought they were simply supporting a good cause. It takes guts to publicly change your mind. Women’s rights and the safeguarding of children are serious issues that need to be addressed with clear and accurate language. – Maya Forstater

They say that because they believe women to be less than men. A woman is "reduced" to her biology if you recognize than women are female humans, but womanhood is somehow "elevated" when men claim it for themselves. It becomes "more" because they take it away from women.

— 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐑𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐔𝐬 (@therestofus5) April 25, 2024

Dawn begins each day. Sunrise speaks to the promise of a better day. From a long-ago battlefield to this morning’s promise, we must leave this ground dedicated to making our worlds better. Then the men buried here will not have died in vain.

Yet we live in a troubled world, the worst in memory.

We have emerged from a global pandemic a more divided world. Regional instabilities and the chaos they create threaten the security of too many.

So we must all do more. Demand more. And deliver more.  – Winston Peters

You will create your own memories and draw your own lessons from being here. But we must all come together, as people and as nations, to do more to honour those who paid with their lives. 

We must protect and care for our young. We must reject and resist those who seek to conquer and control. We must always seek the path of peace. 

Then, and only then, will the men buried here not have died in vain.  –  Winston Peters

Next ANZAC day I’d like to see the news cameras get out of the cities, and come experience an ANZAC service in Dargaville, or Taihape, or Lumsden. Because regardless of nonsense in Wellington, in rural New Zealand We Will Remember Them. – Mark Cameron

Divisiveness seems to be the new aim of the game. Race, political beliefs and religion are all motivators in separating our people. People are more concerned with being correct and proving a point… This is where we can learn more from our ancestors –

They stood as brothers to fight for us. They could see the purpose greater than themselves and put aside their petty arbitrary differences. It makes me wonder what could be accomplished if we could do the same? – Jared Lasike 

We don’t address racism by pretending white people can be black, nor is ableism solved by giving able-bodied people wheelchairs, so why are women and girls supposed to applaud their male imitators, centre them in language and hand over rights their foremothers fought for? 3/X

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) April 26, 2024

We stand up that weak arguments have their say so they can be shown to be weak arguments, and strong arguments have their say so they can be shown to be strong arguments. It’s a dangerous view that free speech needs to be held back from hurting minorities. The first thing free speech does is protect the minorities.

If we’re going to live in this idea that everyone gets to have a say, that in a democracy everyone gets to participate in society equally, then we’re going to have to accept that if you disagree with someone or you consider their perspective offensive, or harmful, or belligerent, they still get a say. We have to have confidence in the fact that society as a whole can discern error from truth. –  Jonathan Ayling

If students are not resilient enough or mature enough to be able to deal in ideas – even those that they find uncomfortable – then maybe they shouldn’t be at university. – Jonathan Ayling

"Paradoxically, the mere framing of this event has surfaced a depth of feeling and a polarisation of views on how we should proceed, that has made it challenging to even schedule a conversation about how to have challenging conversations." – Vice Chancellor Nic Smith

If we have…

— 🗣 Free Speech Union ✊ (@NZFreeSpeech) April 26, 2024

No man can become a woman. We need as a progressive society to be better at allowing individuals to be socially (because it’s society that’s dictating what is traditionally male/female characteristics) to be as masculine or feminine as they like. Again humans don’t change sex. – Sharron Davies

 

“Socialism is always and everywhere an impoverishing phenomenon”

A few months after our second son died we got a phone call asking us if we would be interested in hosting an AFS student.

We were and a few months later a young Argentinean came to live with us for a year.

There is a huge element of luck in these relationships. We hit the jackpot, his family is now ours, they have all been to visit us and we have been to Argentina 11 times.

It is a fascinating and beautiful country and all the people we’ve met have been delightful.

That can’t be said for successive governments and many of its institutions. Argentina was once a very wealthy country but political and economic mismanagement has ruined that.

Last year’s election brought a new president, Javier Milei, who is determined to turn the country around.

This is a transcript of his speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos in which he speaks of the importance of freedom and the ills of socialism:

Good afternoon. Thank you very much.

Today I’m here to tell you that the Western world is in danger. And it is in danger because those who are supposed to have to defend the values of the West are co-opted by a vision of the world that inexorably leads to socialism and thereby to poverty.

Unfortunately, in recent decades, the main leaders of the Western world have abandoned the model of freedom for different versions of what we call collectivism. Some have been motivated by well-meaning individuals who are willing to help others, and others have been motivated by the wish to belong to a privileged caste.

We’re here to tell you that collectivist experiments are never the solution to the problems that afflict the citizens of the world. Rather, they are the root cause. Do believe me: no one is in better place than us, Argentines, to testify to these two points.

Thirty five years after we adopted the model of freedom, back in 1860, we became a leading world power. And when we embraced collectivism over the course of the last 100 years, we saw how our citizens started to become systematically impoverished, and we dropped to spot number 140 globally.

But before having the discussion, it would first be important for us to take a look at the data that demonstrate why free enterprise capitalism is not just the only possible system to end world poverty, but also that it’s the only morally desirable system to achieve this.

If we look at the history of economic progress, we can see how between the year zero and the year 1800 approximately, world per capita GDP practically remained constant throughout the whole reference period.

If you look at a graph of the evolution of economic growth throughout the history of humanity, you would see a hockey stick graph, an exponential function that remained constant for 90% of the time and which was exponentially triggered starting in the 19th century.

The only exception to this history of stagnation was in the late 15th century, with the discovery of the American continent, but for this exception, throughout the whole period between the year zero and the year 1800, global per capita GDP stagnated.

Now, it’s not just that capitalism brought about an explosion in wealth from the moment it was adopted as an economic system, but also, if you look at the data, what you will see is that growth continues to accelerate throughout the whole period.

And throughout the whole period between the year zero and the year 1800, the per capita GDP growth rate remains stable at around 0.02% annually. So almost no growth. Starting in the 19th century with the Industrial Revolution, the compound annual growth rate was 0.66%. And at that rate, in order to double per capita GDP, you would need some 107 years.

Now, if you look at the period between the year 1900 and the year 1950, the growth rate accelerated to 1.66% a year. So you no longer need 107 years to double per capita GDP – but 66. And if you take the period between 1950 and the year 2000, you will see that the growth rate was 2.1%, which would mean that in only 33 years we could double the world’s per capita GDP.

This trend, far from stopping, remains well alive today. If we take the period between the years 2000 and 2023, the growth rate again accelerated to 3% a year, which means that we could double world per capita GDP in just 23 years.

That said, when you look at per capita GDP since the year 1800 until today, what you will see is that after the Industrial Revolution, global per capita GDP multiplied by over 15 times, which meant a boom in growth that lifted 90% of the global population out of poverty.

We should remember that by the year 1800, about 95% of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty. And that figure dropped to 5% by the year 2020, prior to the pandemic. The conclusion is obvious.

Far from being the cause of our problems, free trade capitalism as an economic system is the only instrument we have to end hunger, poverty and extreme poverty across our planet. The empirical evidence is unquestionable.

Therefore since there is no doubt that free enterprise capitalism is superior in productive terms, the left-wing doxa has attacked capitalism, alleging matters of morality, saying – that’s what the detractors claim – that it’s unjust. They say that capitalism is evil because it’s individualistic and that collectivism is good because it’s altruistic. Of course, with the money of others.

So they therefore advocate for social justice. But this concept, which in the developed world became fashionable in recent times, in my country has been a constant in political discourse for over 80 years. The problem is that social justice is not just, and it doesn’t contribute to general well-being.

Quite on the contrary, it’s an intrinsically unfair idea because it’s violent. It’s unjust because the state is financed through tax and taxes are collected coercively. Or can any one of us say that we voluntarily pay taxes? This means that the state is financed through coercion and that the higher the tax burden, the higher the coercion and the lower the freedom.

Those who promote social justice start with the idea that the whole economy is a pie that can be shared differently. But that pie is not a given. It’s wealth that is generated in what Israel Kirzner, for instance, calls a market discovery process.

If the goods or services offered by a business are not wanted, the business will fail unless it adapts to what the market is demanding. They will do well and produce more if they make a good quality product at an attractive price. So the market is a discovery process in which the capitalists will find the right path as they move forward.

But if the state punishes capitalists when they’re successful and gets in the way of the discovery process, they will destroy their incentives, and the consequence is that they will produce less.

The pie will be smaller, and this will harm society as a whole. Collectivism, by inhibiting these discovery processes and hindering the appropriation of discoveries, ends up binding the hands of entrepreneurs and prevents them from offering better goods and services at a better price.

So how come academia, international organisations, economic theorists and politicians demonise an economic system that has not only lifted 90% of the world’s population out of extreme poverty but has continued to do this faster and faster?

Thanks to free trade capitalism, the world is now living its best moment. Never in all of mankind or humanity’s history has there been a time of more prosperity than today. This is true for all. The world of today has more freedom, is rich, more peaceful and prosperous. This is particularly true for countries that have more economic freedom and respect the property rights of individuals.

Countries that have more freedom are 12 times richer than those that are repressed. The lowest percentile in free countries is better off than 90% of the population in repressed countries. Poverty is 25 times lower and extreme poverty is 50 times lower. And citizens in free countries live 25% longer than citizens in repressed countries.

Now what is it that we mean when we talk about libertarianism? And let me quote the words of the greatest authority on freedom in Argentina, Professor Alberto Benegas Lynch Jr, who says that libertarianism is the unrestricted respect for the life project of others based on the principle of non-aggression, in defence of the right to life, liberty and property.

Its fundamental institutions are private property, markets free from state intervention, free competition, and the division of labour and social cooperation, in which success is achieved only by serving others with goods of better quality or at a better price.

In other words, capitalist successful business people are social benefactors who, far from appropriating the wealth of others, contribute to the general well-being. Ultimately, a successful entrepreneur is a hero.

And this is the model that we are advocating for the Argentina of the future. A model based on the fundamental principle of libertarianism. The defence of life, of freedom and of property.

Now, if the free enterprise, capitalism and economic freedom have proven to be extraordinary instruments to end poverty in the world, and we are now at the best time in the history of humanity, it is worth asking why I say that the West is in danger.

And I say this precisely because in countries that should defend the values of the free market, private property and the other institutions of libertarianism, sectors of the political and economic establishment are undermining the foundations of libertarianism, opening up the doors to socialism and potentially condemning us to poverty, misery and stagnation.

It should never be forgotten that socialism is always and everywhere an impoverishing phenomenon that has failed in all countries where it’s been tried out. It’s been a failure economically, socially, culturally and it also murdered over 100 million human beings.

The essential problem of the West today is not just that we need to come to grips with those who, even after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the overwhelming empirical evidence, continue to advocate for impoverishing socialism.

But there’s also our own leaders, thinkers and academics who are relying on a misguided theoretical framework to undermine the fundamentals of the system that has given us the greatest expansion of wealth and prosperity in our history.

The theoretical framework to which I refer is that of Neoclassical economic theory, which designs a set of instruments that, unwillingly or without meaning to, end up serving intervention by the state, socialism and social degradation.

The problem with Neoclassicals is that the model they fell in love with does not map reality, so they put down their mistakes to supposed market failures rather than reviewing the premises of the model.

Under the pretext of a supposed market failure, regulations are introduced. These regulations create distortions in the price system, prevent economic calculus, and therefore also prevent saving, investment and growth.

This problem lies mainly in the fact that not even supposed libertarian economists understand what the market is because if they did understand, it would quickly be seen that it’s impossible for there to be market failures.

The market is not a mere graph describing a curve of supply and demand. The market is a mechanism for social cooperation, where you voluntarily exchange ownership rights. Therefore based on this definition, talking about a market failure is an oxymoron. There are no market failures.

If transactions are voluntary, the only context in which there can be market failure is if there is coercion and the only one that is able to coerce generally is the state, which holds a monopoly on violence.

Consequently, if someone considers that there is a market failure, I would suggest that they check to see if there is state intervention involved. And if they find that that’s not the case, I would suggest that they check again, because obviously there’s a mistake. Market failures do not exist.

An example of the so-called market failures described by the Neoclassicals is the concentrated structure of the economy. From the year 1800 onwards, with the population multiplying by 8 or 9 times, per capita GDP grew by over 15 times, so there were growing returns which took extreme poverty from 95% to 5%.

However, the presence of growing returns involves concentrated structures, what we would call a monopoly. How come, then, something that has generated so much well-being for the Neoclassical theory is a market failure?

Neoclassical economists think outside of the box. When the model fails, you shouldn’t get angry with reality but rather with a model and change it. The dilemma faced by the Neoclassical model is that they say they wish to perfect the function of the market by attacking what they consider to be failures. But in so doing, they don’t just open up the doors to socialism but also go against economic growth.

For example, regulating monopolies, destroying their profits and destroying growing returns would automatically destroy economic growth.

However, faced with the theoretical demonstration that state intervention is harmful – and the empirical evidence that it has failed couldn’t have been otherwise – the solution proposed by collectivists is not greater freedom but rather greater regulation, which creates a downward spiral of regulations until we are all poorer and our lives depend on a bureaucrat sitting in a luxury office.

Given the dismal failure of collectivist models and the undeniable advances in the free world, socialists were forced to change their agenda: they left behind the class struggle based on the economic system and replaced this with other supposed social conflicts, which are just as harmful to life and to economic growth.

The first of these new battles was the ridiculous and unnatural fight between man and woman. Libertarianism already provides for equality of the sexes. The cornerstone of our creed is that all humans are created equal and that we all have the same inalienable rights granted by the Creator, including life, freedom and ownership.

All that the radical feminism agenda has led to is greater state intervention to hinder economic process, giving jobs to bureaucrats who have not contributed anything to society. Examples are ministries of women or international organisations devoted to promoting this agenda.

Another conflict presented by socialists is that of humans against nature, claiming that we human beings damage a planet which should be protected at all costs, even going as far as advocating for population control mechanisms or the abortion agenda.

Unfortunately, these harmful ideas have taken a stronghold in our society. Neo-Marxists have managed to co-opt the common sense of the Western world, and this they have achieved by appropriating the media, culture, universities and also international organisations.

The latter case is the most serious one, probably because these are institutions that have enormous influence on the political and economic decisions of their member states.

Fortunately there’s more and more of us who are daring to make our voices heard, because we see that if we don’t truly and decisively fight against these ideas, the only possible fate is for us to have increasing levels of state regulation, socialism, poverty and less freedom, and therefore, worse standards of living.

The West has unfortunately already started to go along this path. I know, to many it may sound ridiculous to suggest that the West has turned to socialism, but it’s only ridiculous if you only limit yourself to the traditional economic definition of socialism, which says that it’s an economic system where the state owns the means of production. This definition in my view, should be updated in the light of current circumstances.

Today, states don’t need to directly control the means of production to control every aspect of the lives of individuals. With tools such as printing money, debt, subsidies, controlling the interest rate, price controls, and regulations to correct so-called market failures, they can control the lives and fates of millions of individuals.

This is how we come to the point where, by using different names or guises, a good deal of the generally accepted ideologies in most Western countries are collectivist variants, whether they proclaim to be openly communist, fascist, socialist, social democrats, national socialists, Christian democrats, neo-Keynesians, progressives, populists, nationalists or globalists.

Ultimately, there are no major differences. They all say that the state should steer all aspects of the lives of individuals. They all defend a model contrary to the one that led humanity to the most spectacular progress in its history.

We have come here today to invite the Western world to get back on the path to prosperity. Economic freedom, limited government and unlimited respect for private property are essential elements for economic growth. The impoverishment produced by collectivism is not a fantasy, nor is it an inescapable fate. It’s a reality that we Argentines know very well.

We have lived through this. We have been through this because, as I said earlier, ever since we decided to abandon the model of freedom that had made us rich, we have been caught up in a downward spiral – a spiral by which we are poorer and poorer, day by day.

This is something we have lived through and we are here to warn you about what can happen if countries in the Western world, that became rich through the model of freedom, stay on this path of servitude.

The case of Argentina is an empirical demonstration that no matter how rich you may be, how much you may have in terms of natural resources, how skilled your population may be, how educated, or how many bars of gold you may have in the central bank – if measures are adopted that hinder the free functioning of markets, competition, price systems, trade and ownership of private property, the only possible fate is poverty.

Therefore, in conclusion, I would like to leave a message for all business people here and those who are not here in person but are following from around the world.

Do not be intimidated by the political caste or by parasites who live off the state. Do not surrender to a political class that only wants to stay in power and retain its privileges. You are social benefactors. You are heroes. You are the creators of the most extraordinary period of prosperity we’ve ever seen.

Let no one tell you that your ambition is immoral. If you make money, it’s because you offer a better product at a better price, thereby contributing to general wellbeing.

Do not surrender to the advance of the state. The state is not the solution. The state is the problem itself. You are the true protagonists of this story and rest assured that as from today, Argentina is your staunch and unconditional ally.

Thank you very much and long live freedom!

HIs message  . . if measures are adopted that hinder the free functioning of markets, competition, price systems, trade and ownership of private property, the only possible fate is poverty. . .  is one that all governments should heed.