It has been over a month, now, that New Zealanders have been in lockdown as a result of the now-global COVID-19. Interacting with friends and family as well as observing the general public by simply going outside affords one with the opportunity to gauge what New Zealanders have learnt from the
According to the Finance Minister, the government has learned that it must get New Zealanders consuming again. For we wouldn’t be New Zealanders if we weren’t acting as all good, civilised people do by existing to perpetuate the consumption-based economies of the modern era. The Finance Minister has alluded to the use of ‘Helicopter Money’ to come out of this year’s budget in order to get the plebians consuming again. The phrase Helicopter Money was, unsurprisingly, coined by Milton Friedman –
Despite what morally corrupt economic actors will tell us, New Zealand does not need Asian garbage in our shops, nor do we need their culture distorting our streets, or their workers infiltrating our institutions. For that reason we must, first and foremost, boycott China. New Zealand can – as it has in previous centuries – produce its own essential goods in order to live as a healthy group of people. However, this reality is squandered by a system which forces agricultural and industrial organisations to overproduce in order to export their products at ever-decreasing prices. This then forces producers to seek cheaper labour or offshore manufacturing, forcing New Zealanders out of jobs in their own country. As a result, we see the importation of foreign workers and a production-based economy being replaced by a consumer-based one. As such, rather than having smaller and more varied industries owned and run by New Zealanders producing for New Zealanders, we have foreign-owned groups that are competing with now-dissipating New Zealand-owned businesses which are steadily being overrun by global companies foreign to our country and our people. Instead of the nation existing in a country that is working for itself, it is now a rootless mass of individuals working for themselves under the banner of global, liberal capitalism. And now all the people, New Zealanders along with the masses of foreigners, compete with each other to get jobs in internationally-owned corporations which perpetuate the same disillusionment and degeneration. New Zealanders are left with a fractured people in an unrecognisable country, arguing over the trivial issues published by incompetent journalists in order to accompany us in our meaningless, consumption-based lives. However, this does not have to remain a reality.
The Coronavirus pandemic has given us the opportunity to reorient ourselves in a nationally-focused world. The government has learned the essential need to close as well as control borders to a greater degree. One prays for the government to realise that it is essential to have national industries owned and run by New Zealanders in order to maintain the country when the outside world is not in reach. Not only this but that it is preferable to do so in order to maintain the employ of the country’s citizenry when foreigners are not allowed in the country. As a result, any sane government will see the necessity of putting their own people before international trade and foreign relations, because rather than the pockets of financiers and international globalists being important, the wellbeing of the people is paramount. There is no New Zealand without the people of New Zealand. A new New Zealand can not be created by importing people from other continents and astroturfing global-friendly attitudes and values in order to foster an environment for an even-more-vast system of international trade. As New Zealanders, we must free ourselves from the vice of the current system. But to do so we each must move beyond the paradigmatic thought that ensures the system
Let’s take a stand against global capitalism and its associated attitudes and practices that have lead countries like China to have such influence over our government and economy. Let’s perturb international trade and support local businesses owned by our own people, choosing to boycott China. Let’s push for a government and officials who represent the people – our people – and put in self-sustainable industries that cater to New Zealanders, and not foreign powers. Let’s reacquire ways of being that don’t place material consumption and transient pleasures at the peak of life. We are not in a race to the bottom, but that is where we will be going if we maintain such dismal ways of being in life. So let’s prove foreign-minded scum like Shamubeel Eaqub and the current Finance Minister wrong and put our people first. Act in an honourable manner and put degenerative practices where they belong. Take action now.
The A-Z commentary and analyses has outdistanced all others Left and Right in NZ, as usual. I would say that ‘helicopter money’ is broadly a desirable method – if it is issued by the state debt free as banknotes and not as a debt to the banking system, calculated to meet the shortfall of money and credit relative to production, which is a result of how the present system creates and issues credit. if Done as an annual dividend rather than a one-off payout, is the National Dividend that is the basis of social credit theory. What is called QE is generally credit issued as a debt, and therefore in the long-term makes matters worse. QE as a state credit issue is required.
The problem as Mike E states is the perennial one of finding markets for manufactures – hence the old export wars of capitalism, and the opening up of third world markets to absorb production. As Mike E states the mentality of production and consumption as the basis of existence needs overthrowing. What is required is a stable state economy, not a growth economy. China adopted the growth economy of the Late West, a tread mill out of control and one form which one cannot jump from. A cordon sanitaire needs constructing around China, but the USA is hardly a better option for alignment and trade. My own preference is for an alignment with an Indo-Russian axis, a future possibility if things start to go awry in the Indo-Pacific region.
Quite. It is the attitude and motivating factors behind the hypothetical scheme are what we find disturbing. Naturally, we would not be against improving the lives of our fellow New Zealanders, but for the right reasons! Whether or not the required change in attitude is possible before it’s ‘too late’, I don’t know. Certainly, in regard to China, there is still hope.
I’m certainly no expert in economics and finance, but this is the first time that I have heard someone mention a Stable State Economy as a potential answer to the evidently failing growth economy. So correct me if I am wrong please, but wouldn’t a Stable state economy require an overhaul of the nation’s finance and banking system to destroy the debt based value of our currency?
Your antisemitic little jab at Friedman and his “tribe” misses the mark, I’m afraid. When he coined the term “helicopter money”, he was using it as a hypothetical to illustrate a point about inflation, not as a policy proposal. The term was hijacked decades later by Keynesians and used in a manner that Friedman would never have approved of. I applaud you for at least being upfront about your antisemitism, but do you not know about Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard? Both Jews, both strong liberals, and both strong supporters of self-determination for nations and ethnic groups, including, in the case of Rothbard, the Palestinian people and their struggle against Zionist imperialism. Not to mention their hatred of central banking and the inequitable distortions and corporate hegemony that it causes. Your enemy is not the Jews. You’re falling into the same trap that leads so many to make unfair generalizations against white people.
Hi, Fred. We were referring to the ‘free market’ capitalists of the Reagan-type era, not necessarily Jews; but we agree, there is a huge overlap there.
Friedman was brought up simply to make reference to the type of individualistic (I.E. capitalists) values we are concerned about and provide a historical point of reference. As such, how the term was or was not used by Friedman and other economists is by the by because we only brought it up to illustrate our overarching point which it was associated with in this instance; and that was how helicopter money became related to the material-based, consumerist attitude toward existence that the FM has.
In fact, I think you may have misunderstood us. Regardless of the ethnoreligious group an individual may be from, we must stress that we are against the attitudes they hold if those attitudes are destructive toward traditional, perennial values as well as nations, cultures and symbols associated with those things. We will reiterate: this is true of our belief regardless of an individual holding these attitudes and practices being Jew or Gentile.
With those things having been said, we do not care for your attempt to delegitimise our concerns with your feeble attempt at slander, however meek and uninteresting it may have been. If you would like to participate in the future, we would suggest contemplating the crux of our point and discussing that instead.
Thanks.
The use of the word “tribe” struck me as more of a reference to ethnicity than to a group of economists, but if that’s not what you meant then I withdraw my allegation.
Regarding your core thesis, I agree that helicopter money is a bad idea, but not because consumption or “global capitalism” is bad. The “Asian garbage” that we cheaply import due to free trade agreements allows Kiwis to access to goods that we cannot produce as efficiently domestically. This refers to the economic concept of comparative advantage. If we could not import computer parts and clothing from Asia, then the poorer in this country would suffer the most, as their purchasing power would drop significantly. It would immediately result in a massive reduction in the wealth of New Zealand, and it would greatly hurt our exporters who would lose the overseas tariff relief that allows them to profitably sell their products to the immense demand of the global market. Ironically, it would actually harm NZ’s self-sufficiency as we would be less able to import critical capital goods that are necessary for the efficient functioning of our domestic economy.
One of the reasons that I mentioned Mises is that in his works he shows how free societies benefit all nations and peoples. He recognized the propensity of the state to infringe on both the economic and civil liberties of its subjects in order to grow its own power. To this end he was a secessionist who proposed breaking up the state into smaller and smaller states, allowing for greater self-determination. To conclude, national cohesion and prosperity do NOT require the exercise of state power.
We do not think that helicopter money is necessarily bad, but rather the motivation for giving it out in this instance.
You are thinking about this from purely a material and economic perspective. As such, you’ve misunderstood our disagreement with the attitude and associated practices.
Existing beyond base instincts and material desires along with transient pleasures are something that is unique to human capabilities. Removing this aspect of oneself by viewing existence through a purely material lens takes away those things which make humans unique. This spiritual element to humans — viewed metaphysically as a transcendent way of existing, ‘beyond the material’ — which sees us recognise our own mortality as simply part of existence and the removes the ego from the situation is in line with nature and an organic way of existing in the world.
So, to try and address your comment in a way that you can understand, this anti-materialistic way of conceptualising one’s own existence that we are referring to here does not care for your productivity, your globalised attitudes, your efficiency or your Asian garbage: if one does not exist naturally and form an organic state which exists adhering to perennial values, then one’s existence is limited to the material realm and thus antithetical to nature, making it unfit for purpose.
Although I never read much of Mises while I studied, I became quite familiar with one of his best students, F. A. Hayek, and we know the extent to which ‘liberal’ doctrine pervades their thinking. As a result, we should hardly need to mention how liberalism’s egalitarian and lacking-in-order doctrine is antithetical to nature, so I will dismiss it by saying that it leaves the state, along with the nation, open to the machiavellian attitudes and rampant degeneracy that come in societies that lack a foundation in the organic.
Other articles published Mike E on this site may offer reiterations of those things mentioned above. Aside from that, we recommend reading Julius Evola’s work on universal traditions, Yockey’s Imperium and Spengler’s essays on Prussian Socialism, and, of course, Kerry Bolton’s own interpretations of those ideas in the abovementioned works.
The dialogue with Fred is interesting insofar as it reiterates that the distance between the traditionalist right and libertarianism is as far removed as the former is from Marxism, if not more so since Marxism itself arose from the same Zeitgeist as Free Trade doctrine, which Marx supported as part of the historical dialect towards internationalization (globalization).
When ex-Critical Theorist academic eminence Professor Charles Lasch tried to find genuine conservatism in the USA during the late 1960s (having concluded that the Left had become irrelevant) he could not do so, because he could only see ‘false conservatism’ (as he called it) which had sold out like the Left to materialism and had become anti-traditional, particularly in regard to the family, again like the Left.
It took the rise of the European New Right and more recently indentitarianism, to return the Right to its traditional roots, which are intrinsically anti-capitalist.
In regard to ‘tribe’, the international oligarchy has retribalised around what Carlyle and Rex Fairburn called the ‘cash nexus’. Whether billionaires of WASP, Jewish or Chinese background, they form a new entity with a common outlook and aims. Soros is a good example; born Jewish but thoroughly secularized and not necessarily sympathetic to Zionism.
In regard to the limitation of State power, Fred has a point, however one does not have to resort to libertarianism. The notion of the organic community comprising constituent parts operating in semi-autonomous manner without recourse to state centralization, is the basis of the traditional social order based around freedom of group association (e.g. guilds, city-states), as distinct from social fracture, ushered by Jacobinism when it for example, banned the guilds. This is what Evola sought to revive, and it is also the basis of the Catholic doctrine of ‘subsidiary’.
Just to add on to what you mentioned in the first paragraph: it’s funny that the immediate response of such people is so very meme-like. It is an economic version of the political analysis of the Right by the likes of Paul Spoonley.
Thanks for your rather knowledgeable contribution anyway.
Mike
Looking at sundry papers by Spoonley it seems that behind the public rhetoric about ideals the rationale is that of economic globalization.
I’m not very familiar with your works Mr Bolton so I’m not exactly sure what your ideal type of polity is. Unlike Marx, I don’t have a dialectical view of history. I suspect that you and Action Zealandia do however, although it seems to be a more idealist dialectic, as opposed to a Marxist materialistic dialectic. Both the modern far-left and far-right have strong Hegelian connections. My view as a libertarian is derived from Ludvig von Mises and Murray Rothbard, who were both anti-Hegelian, because they saw all branches of it to be heavily statist. I’m a principled libertarian (an anarcho-capitalist) and I don’t view this to be either right-wing or left-wing, although it is often called “right-libertarianism”. I’m culturally conservative, but I don’t believe that I, nor anyone else, has the moral right to enforce, through violence or the threat thereof, our views on drug use or promiscuity or any other kind of “degeneracy”, so to speak. Not when individuals choose voluntarily to engage in these activities. They punish themselves, and to the degree that their self-destructive activities infringe on the person or property of anyone else, they become legally liable for that in a free society.
But what interests me about the far-right is how many of its goals could be achieved peacefully within a libertarian society. In a free society, there would be no anti-discrimination laws forcing anyone to hire, do business with or rent property to anyone they don’t want to. This would allow ethnic groups to form their own homogeneous communities, even covenental communities if entered into through contract. And none of this requires that freedom of exchange and its plenitude of productivity be restricted. Hans-Hermann Hoppe is the leading thinker in this area. I would be curious to know what you think about these types of libertarian syntheses with “traditional right” thought. Lew Rockwell coined the term “paleolibertarianism” to describe this type of thinking.
Fred
The aim of the Right is in sociological terms the reconstruction of the Gemeinschafft organic social community where the individual achieves self-realisation through service to the social totality as distinct from the ideal of the social contract of both classical liberalism and the Left, which does ultimately result in statist excesses when it fails. The best description of how the Right would organise society is I think to be found in the Papal encyclical rerum novarum. Since every individual is considered as being part of the organic community, each serving the other – all for one, one for all – the actions of any one individual impact on more than just himself or those immediately around him, but interconnect with society. How the individual perceives himself in relation to the rest of society involved the epoch of culture in which he lives. Marx’s interpretation of Hegel is quite different from that of the Right. You are correct in supposing that the Right is derived from the Idealist tradition. However, the Right sees history primarily in organic terms as an ebb and flow, rather than as a progressive darwinian tapeworm with an ‘end of history’ once capitalism or communism is achieved. Our historians include Spengler, Vico, Carlyle, Evola, and one I think can draw from those of other cultures such as Ibn Khaldun.