The Measure of a Prime Minister’s Worth

I find it ironic that towards the end of a PM’s term, or before a coming election we typically hear the opposition or the non-supporting public make the comment; what has this PM done? 

I would give an A+ to any PM who did very little while he was in office.  Why would I do that?  It’s simple really.  Any world leader who “does a lot” while in office almost certainly overstepped their bounds to the detriment of our freedoms.  The overstepping is often quite subtle in this country, often hardly noticeable but that shouldn’t make it any more acceptable to us.

When we as Canadians ask what a PM did for their country we usually imply that he or she needed to create some kind of reforms, or spend money for job creation and public services.  I have started to ask, “Why do we expect that Ottawa has all the answers, and will automatically do what is best for the country?”    

If our federal government does anything, it costs money.  Let me make a correction, it costs us money.  The more a PM does, the more money he has taken from us in the form of taxes and usually spends it on a few who benefit from the new initiative.  This is called legal plunder and we should never encourage this.

The best thing for a government leader to do is to lower taxes, reduce spending and let the citizens run our own lives.  Let the federal government defend our borders, run the courts and keep police on the street.  The majority of the rest we should and can do ourselves. 

It has become a sad state of affairs when so many of the things we have an inherent right to provide for ourselves we now expect the government to provide.  I don’t understand why we insist on letting a small group of politicians make decisions that impact parts of our lives when we can decide for ourselves.  After a few years in power, how can we come to expect that a PM who has his hands in everything will make everyone happy?  Whatever the delivery package looks like, we are essentially asking him to take money from group A and give it to group B. 

Government is force, and however just it may seem, we should not allow a federal government to take and redistribute wealth, no matter what the goal or the end result.  A PM’s true worth should be judged by the level that they allow the citizens of Canada to run their own lives in the manner individuals see fit.  Let’s have the PM defend our borders, run the courts and police.  The reduced spending on services should result in reduced taxes which will usher in a new era of economic prosperity and freedom. 

My Progression (Long and probably still lacking)

As I said before, there was a time in my late teens and early 20's where I didn't care about politics and just accepted government influence in business.

In my  early 20's I was attending the University of Manitoba finishing off by B.Sc. in Agribusiness.  I remember at tax time being very frustrated that the government wasn't giving me more money on my returns, or that I couldn't deduct more.  I think I will chalk that up to immaturity at that time.  I thought everyone owed me something. 

Something changed however; there was a movement among the students that post secondary education should be a right and therefore free.  Even at that time, that statement didn't sit well with me and I couldn't agree with it.  I put myself in my parent's shoes; Why should my parents, who already pay taxes, work and have an adult living at home for nothing, have to flip the bill for a student to get free university education?  That was probably the start of my slow progression.

The next chapter involved, what turned out to be, my favorite class in my program.  The courses' title was something along the lines of Agricultural economics and trade policy.  The text book was written by James P. Houck and entitled Elements of Agricultural Trade Policies.  What was interesting about the title of the course and book is that it applied to all types of trade, not just agriculture.  It was a course on trade and economic policies.....period.
The course involved showing a lot of graphs.  Usually the first graph showed a supply/demand graph for product X and the next graph showed what happened to the demand and price of the same product after some sort of tariff, or subsidy or quota was applied.  The first graph depicted the free market, the situation we as the marketplace have put in place.  The next graph depicted government intervention, and the changes that occurred were not from a natural consequence of the marketplace, but from government force.

It didn't, and still doesn't seem right that our government would do something to change the prices we pay for goods and services....it doesn't sound like a free market to me.  From then on I have been against market protection, because it handcuffs the free citizens who wish to purchase goods and services at the best possible price.

When I entered employment I got to see government agencies involved in business firsthand, and it isn't pretty (much more on this in another post).  The amount of government involvement, and the waste of taxpayer's money is sickening, and that's just my industry (livestock feed industry).  God knows how much money they torch in other sectors.  

Then I got another shot to my system.  About 2 years ago I was watching a special on income tax and how some are so strongly against it.  I was always just used to taxes; a necessary evil to maintain our country.  The show interviewed Texas Congressman Dr. Ron Paul and it was the first time I heard a politician talk against taxes.  I started looking him up, and I saw that this was just the tip of the iceberg.  He has been fighting large government for decades in the USA and his ideas are starting to catch on.  He ran in 2008, unsuccessfully, to get on the republican ticket.  His responses in the debates were extraordinary.  There were 10 or 11 candidates, and he was the only one that sounded different in any true sense.  Please, please do yourself a favour and search for info on him.  Use my links on the side to see what he's about.

At present, my political belief is still shaping.  There are 2 things that I struggle with that many libertarians are for; no foreign intervention, and no government involvement in education.

I have a hard time with cases like Rwanda, Bosnia or Somalia.  I would love to think that it's our obligation to help citizens out who are suffering from oppression as they were in the 1990's.  But then, why should we send our soldiers into harms way when our country wasn't attacked itself?  It's a hard point to argue in my opinion. 

I also worry about changing education into a private affair.  The higher income families would naturally put their kids in better schools b/c they can afford it, while low income families put their kids in the cheaper schools which will perform poorly (in a free market, the good, highly demanded schools will naturally charge more while poorly run, less in demand schools will charge less to fill classrooms).  If this is the case, then a vicious cycle will exist where children from poor families may not get the education they need to succeed later and break the poverty cycle.

These are two areas I have to deal with and come to peace with.  But the level of general involvement by the government in our lives is way beyond acceptable and people need to see that freedom works; it just requires taking on responsibility for your own life.

Hmm...which evil to vote for today?

A federal election will hit us before we know it (time flies) and I recently read something that really stuck with me.  Reading the platform of the Libertarian Party of Canada, I saw that they move to have a None of the Above vote included on the ballots.  Now why didn't I think of that?

We see, at every election, commercials encouraging people to vote, yet they don't want to.  More and more people just don't bother.  I have spoken to a number of people who don't vote in Federal elections because they feel like they are voting for a criminal either way...
Now they don't really think they are criminals but it shows their apathy and the fact that their vote for either of the big 3 will bring no real change.

As a citizen with conservative ideals for government, I would be more inclined to vote for the Conservative party than Liberal or NDP but I don't really want any of them in power.  Either way, my money will get taken from me and redistributed to people I don't know.  I would love to see a None of the Above vote...in fact, I'm tempted to write it in myself.

Whats better, not showing up and not speaking up at all?  Or ruining a ballot and penciling in a none of the above vote?  At least I did something...

I wonder how many more people will turn out if this is included on the ballot.  Some will never turn out due to general apathy (Dr. Ron Paul cured mine) but I believe some will turn out to voice their displeasure...

Please, stop voting for the lesser of 3 evils.  You aren't encouraging change by voting for who you think will win, there is no sense voting for the favoured side if you still can't stand them. 

A Novel Idea

I hear a lot of discussion both in Canada and also in the USA regarding how the government can improve our respective economies.  It usually resorts to the typical banter of increasing and/or changing regulations, increasing subsidies and tweaking the interest rate to help take care of us in the marketplace.  We already have a marketplace that has regulations; if they didn’t work well enough the first time, why should we believe that more tweaking is necessary? 

I have a novel idea; How about we, i.e. the marketplace, tell the government how the economy is doing?  If the economy is doing well, we will spend more.  If it’s doing poorly, we will spend less and save.  Isn’t that what the market is all about?  Finding out at which point people will buy goods and services and at which price level they will pass on the same goods?

We somehow have come to believe, through passive consent, that a few people in Ottawa know more about the economy than the rest of us, and that we need to be shielded from the realities.  I believe the time is coming when more of us will come to realize that it is perhaps the government, through constant monitoring of the marketplace that causes some of the problems. 

When the economy starts to halt a little bit, leave it alone!  Changing the interest rate only provides us with an artificially boosted economy.  It’s a “false positive”, geared to have us spend and borrow more when the market has already told us to slow down and spend less.  I am convinced, as are many others, that Government involvement through subsidies, regulations and interest rate tampering only prolongs and worsens recessions and other economic downturns.

It’s time for us, the true marketplace regulators, to say that we can take care of ourselves.  Let the “free market” be truly free.  We will spend when it’s good to spend, save when we should save and borrow when there is true opportunity for investment.

High on Freedom

Why start with a simple topic?  I might as well go for a home run with a controversial topic off the get-go.  This is a piece I wrote a while ago and it is a perfect place to start questioning the role that government has taken on for us.

I’m taking what is generally the unpopular stance.  I think it’s time we start to think about the war on drugs.  I’m also not just talking about marijuana, I mean all of them.

My first objection to the war on drugs is that the government calls it exactly that, a war.  Government usually, in times of war, takes extra liberties that often intrude on our lives.  In the case of a war on drugs, our government is waging a war against its own people.  

My next objection is the best reason to legalize drug use.  It is simply not the government’s job to regulate, criminalize and punish people for their personal habits.  In my opinion, there is no justification, no matter how tragic drug use is, for the government to force people to change personal habits.  This is coming from a man who has never had a single puff from a marijuana joint.  The government should not, and does not have a right to criminalize a person’s beliefs and habits regardless of how morally questionable the activity is as long as no one is on the receiving end of a crime.

To show a certain level of government hypocrisy, cigarettes and alcohol, by far the most common drugs in use, are taxed for revenue by government and some provinces (mine included) have monopoly control on the sale of liquor.  In fact, I have the right to get completely blind, stumbling drunk, as long as I don’t harm anyone.  That is exactly the way it should be for any country that is free.

I do not approve of drug use and I would ask anyone who is a user to look long and hard at how it is affecting them.  I just don’t think it should be considered a crime when so many things we do can be considered detrimental to us and our families.  It’s a moral issue, not a criminal issue, and should be dealt with through community involvement and other organizations who want to help these people.

Taxpayer’s money should not be used to fight a war that we simply can not win.  When you criminalize something that people want you create a black market and unbelievable profits.  Al Capone didn’t build his empire when alcohol was legal; he did it during the prohibition.  The war on drugs has made drugs expensive, and has provided profits for dealers.  You can bust one car load of drugs but there are 10 more behind it because there will always be people who are ready to profit from it.

My third point, is that the war on drugs also creates secondary crime.  The drug profits are a surefire way to finance gangs who use violence to keep their turf to themselves.  How many heavy drug users resort to prostitution as a way to pay for their drugs?  We all know the answer.  Addicts look to desperate measures to get enough money for their next hit. 

This secondary crime creates criminals even though the drugs they are after should not be illegal.  How full are the prisons in Canada?  I would like to know how many of the prisoners are there for drug, and secondary crime related cases.  Perhaps legalizing drugs would reduce the secondary crime and keep the people in prison who really need to be there for their full terms. 

I, like most, hate the idea of people using drugs.  But lets allow these people to search for help without feeling like they are criminals and we can perhaps reduce the incidence of the offshoot crime that results from the black market trade of drugs.  It’s clear that the war will not end, no matter how much taxpayer money we throw at the problem.

It Begins....

I started this blog to put into words my thoughts and beliefs about politics and the things our leaders do that change our lives.

I grew up in Winnipeg and went through my teen years and my early 20's with no interest in politics.  Something changed however, when I graduated from University and started working in the private sector.  I always had some thoughts in regards to economics and politics but never anything I would say out loud.  My thoughts were brewing but I needed a catalyst to spark my emotion and cure my apathy.  

About 2 years ago, that catalyst arrived in the name of Texas congressman, Dr. Ron Paul.

I had and still have never seen a politician speak his mind based solely on principle, without pause for vote consideration and in such a simple, logical way.  Please find out who he is, reads his book, The Revolution: A Manifesto and prepare to have your mind blown.

My thoughts, commentary and ideas will be targeted to Canadian politics and life but these issues cross all borders, and I will certainly give my 2 cents about the U.S, a country that has such an affect on us and the world. 

I hope to be able to encourage people to think about the issues that affect them, encourage debate and accomplish my goal of putting my political thought and general thoughts in regards to freedom on paper.

I believe in freedom, and that it should be extended to us as individuals.  Some will make poor choices with the freedom given to them, but most will cherish it and use it wisely.  Regulating "the many" to save us from "the few" is not the solution in my opinion and I hope to convince others of the same as we go along.