The Twenty Fourth Month

This has been a very good month with my best day ever, although I just cannot seem to get over that 2000 mark. This has also been my third best month, only missing out on being the second best by 3 visits.

My best day, by far was the 22nd February when I had 459 visitors, my next best day was the 26th February when I had 128. Thats a great number, but 459 is outstanding. Bizarrely I think they came to read a particular article The tragedy of the Euro, but hardly anyone clicked on it, so instead of being one of the most read articles on my site, it has officially been read only 32 times.

My worst day, which shocked me as much as my best day would a few days later, was the 18th February when I had 15 visitors, just to show you how low that is, my second worst day was the 21st February when I had 31 visitors.

I also had big visitor numbers from Germany, Romania and the United States, over 100 visits from each in one day, although not the same day.

11th February - 11th March

Entry	Pageviews
United States	660
Australia	305
Germany	210
Romania	117
United Kingdom	86
Russia	78
France	55
Netherlands	44
Ukraine	43
Canada	30

11th January - 11th February

Entry	Pageviews
United States	728
Australia	283
United Kingdom	91
France	68
Netherlands	40
Ukraine	38
Romania	33
Germany	26
Japan	26
Canada	25

Australia is up, Germany is 9 times what it was last month, Romania is up by 3 1/2 times. The Netherlands is higher as are the Ukraine and Canada.

Russia has made a big jump into 6th place from outside the Top 10.

The United States is down, although I had around 100 come on today, if not for them it would be even lower. The United Kingdom is slightly lower and France is lower.

I have also received visitors from the following countries Denmark, Finland, Switzerland, Austria, Spain, Poland, Czech Republic,  Slovenia, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, U.A.E., Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Algeria, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, New Zealand, Fiji, Brazil, Venezuela

Mark Moncrieff

Industrial Relations and Conservatism

The second Monday in March is called Labour Day here in Victoria and it marks the first time in the world that the 8 hour day was introduced. In 1856 stonemasons were quite busy in the Colony of Victoria, building a University, a Treasury building and Parliament House. Since they were in such demand they went on strike and demanded an 8 hour day, instead of a 12 hour day. As they were in such demand they won very quickly and the 8 hour day became law for stonemasons. Why 8 hours? 8 hours work, 8 hours rest, 8 hours sleep. Over the next fifty years the 8 hour day spread to all workers in Victoria, across Australia and around the world. So I thought today would be a good time to write about Industrial Relations.

Industrial Relations is about how management and workers come to an agreement about pay and working conditions. In many places that is undertaken by Unions, management and by the Government and it relates to entire industries. All Transport workers, all teachers, all stonemasons. But a Traditional Conservative approach to Industrial Relations would be different. Firstly we regard each business as distinct, as its own economic unit. Secondly we believe that workers and management are both vital to the success of a business. Without the business then there are no jobs and without the workers there is no business. They are mutually dependent upon each other.

Furthermore we believe in Free Enterprise, in healthy competition between businesses in regards to such things as the pricing, quality and quantity of goods and services. However we do not regard the often adversarial attitude between Unions and management to be either healthy or beneficial. Instead the financial status of each business should be ascertained and all wages and other financial conditions should be decided based on the financial ability of the business to pay. Today the ability of the business to pay is rarely considered.

What Traditional Conservatives want is too, as best as possible, protect the interests of both owners and workers. We want competent businesses to remain ongoing concerns and we want workers to enjoy working in a stable economic environment. Workers should expect a safe working environment, decency and dignity in the work place and a living wage. Owners and management should expect to be allowed to manage their business within reasonable constraints. In each Industry there would need to be "model" work agreements, that provided the basic non-negotiable items regarding safety and other issues of concern to well being and decency. But if a business is highly profitable, then the workers should be rewarded for that, not only certain levels of the company, but all workers. But if a business is not profitable than there should be an option for the workers to take a pay cut in return for keeping their jobs.

So what would stop an employer from exploiting this to cut workers wages? Each business is regarded as being its own economic unit and the financial status of each business would be known to all involved in any negotiations. Furthermore the owner or management are as involved in this as the workers, if the workers cannot be paid then neither would anyone else be. Remember mutually dependent. The owner takes the bigger risk and if all goes well gains the greatest reward. But that should never be at the expense of their workers. They should protect their workers just like any other asset.

25% either way would be reasonable, up to 25% as a bonus in good times and up to a maximum of 25% pay cut in bad times. Both management and workers would have to agree to a pay cut and that would include everyone who works for the business, including the owner or shareholders. Unions could still play a part in these negotiations as this not about destroying or usurping the place of Unions. It is the class warfare that is so large a part of current Industrial Relations that we object too.

Upon Hope Blog - A Traditional Conservative Future
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Ending Unemployment and Immigration

I was thinking today about our aging population, specifically Australia, but then I realized that this really applied to nearly every Western country. If the average age of the population is increasing and a great deal of that is at or near retirement age then a large number of jobs open up. Not just the jobs that those people once held and that are now available, but also jobs to look after and care for them. Western Governments have been fretting about this problem for decades, how will a smaller tax base pay for so many retired people?

But then I thought how can we have unemployment, let alone mass unemployment, if we have an aging population? If more people are leaving the labour market than are entering it, then shouldn't that mean mass unemployment is at an end? Yes it should, but I think you already know the problem, the problem is mass immigration. Because there is no such thing as infinity jobs, jobs are finite, that number may go up or down but it is never unlimited. Mass immigration stops the the unemployed from getting jobs because it turns the labour market from a closed system into a open system.

In times past you could only employ people in your local area, no matter what the job was. Only very specific jobs didn't apply to that closed system, soldiers, sailors, Priests, travelling salesmen, that kind of job. But all other jobs were part of a closed system. Now with mass immigration it means that we live in an open system, whereby people from all over the world are now competing with you for local jobs. This is one of Right-Liberalisms great dreams, the free movement of labour. In theory its great for business, but it sure ain't great for the locals, not even in theory.

Of course mass unemployment should cancel out mass immigration, after all if a country has mass unemployment why would it allow mass immigration? But that hasn't happened, instead since the 1970's nearly every Western country has had mass unemployment and mass immigration. The argument goes that its good for the economy, that more people produces more money and more employment and thats true, sort of. There is more money and there are more jobs, if you have more people you need more police, teachers, labours etc., now the question is who gets those jobs? The locals or the imports? It turns out that a lot of those jobs in every country go to the new comers, and the locals miss out. The same goes for the money, thats why groups of people you rarely if ever saw a decade or two ago you now see living in nice houses and driving nice cars.

Doesn't this turn the entire concept of nations and citizenship on its head? Shouldn't the nation exist to look after its own citizens? The answer to both is yes. But it gets worse.

Unemployment is both a social and an economic evil, it destroys lives. It stops the formation of families, it encourages loneliness, it stops people from having a future, it stops the purchasing of houses and cars and all manner of goods, it stops savings and it encourages anti-social behavour in some people, particularly when unemployment is commonplace. And all of this at the taxpayers expense, Unemployment benefits, subsidized housing and health care, police, courts, social workers all paid for by the generous taxpayer. And all for the benefit of business and people who weren't born here.

The normal response of the Government is to blame the individual, if the unemployed wanted a job they can get one, it both exalts and blames the individual. If the individual was better, smarter, better looking then they wouldn't be in this mess. Fix yourself up and you'll be alright. They never accept that the system that they created caused any problems, that making employment an open system is bad for the locals is ignored, because its all about the individual. 

So if the population is aging and more people are leaving the labour market then are entering it, unemployment should vanish. Or at least be seriously curtailed. The only fly in the ointment is mass immigration. If mass immigration is ended than the open system reverts to being a closed system. Locals get jobs, they get money, they gain a future, they no longer need the assistance of the taxpayer, they can buy things and support themselves. Much anti-social behavour ends for the simply reason that people don't have time to be as anti-social, they have jobs.

It is hard to think of a single person in Australia who would be worse off if mass immigration ended and mass unemployment ended. It fixes social problems as well as economic problems, it provides the Government with more tax revenue, it frees up money from the budget (in Australia thats close to $A10 Billion) meaning the Government has even more tax revenue, which could either be spent on the aging population or given as tax cuts. Ending mass immigration, ends mass unemployment!

Upon Hope Blog - A Traditional Conservative Future
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Some Link Love III

Its been quite a while since I last did some link love, so here is some recent, very good links.


Liberal Myths About Non-Liberals
http://ex-army.blogspot.com.au/2015/02/liberal-myths-about-non-liberals.html


Liberalism - An Introduction
http://ironink.org/2015/02/liberalism-an-introduction/comment-page-1/#comment-176246


Why it's worthwhile for Conservatives to keep fighting
http://anotherpoliticallyincorrectblog.blogspot.com.au/2015/02/why-its-worthwhile-for-conservatives-to.html#comment-form


In fact you should read everything Mr.Doom has written for February, excellent stuff!
http://anotherpoliticallyincorrectblog.blogspot.com.au/


Women's Worst Enemy
https://whatswrongwithequalrights.wordpress.com/2015/02/28/womans-worst-enemy/


#GamerGate: the last redoubt (Particularly the four F's for Victory- rude but accurate)
http://voxday.blogspot.com.au/2015/02/gamergate-last-redoubt.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+blogspot/voxpopoli+(Vox+Popoli)


The Real Luxury
http://athriftyhomemaker.blogspot.com.au/2015/02/the-real-luxury.html


Enjoy!

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Liberalism and the Mutually Exclusive Argument

I have found over the years that when I am speaking to someone on certain topics I'm waiting to see what direction they attack from. Not physically of course, but verbally. In any discussion you will hear arguments that are made to change your opinion and that is how it should be. But I have noticed that often Liberals or those pushing a Liberal agenda, sometimes in ignorance of that fact, will use two mutually exclusive arguments.

A mutually exclusive argument is where more than one idea is being pushed, but if one of them is true then it makes the other argument null and void. For example I might argue that the Moon is made of rock or I may argue that the Moon is made of cheese. The Moon may, at least theoretically, be made of either  rock or cheese, but it cannot be made of both. So when I argue that the Moon is both made of rock and cheese that is a mutually exclusive argument. One might be true, the other might be true but they cannot both be true.

But you will hear Liberals and others on the broad Left often argue their case with mutually exclusive arguments.

Feminists will be heard to argue that there is no real difference between men and women, in other words men and women are equal. But you are just as likely to hear them argue that men oppress women and women need to gain equality with men. These are mutually exclusive arguments. If men and women are equal then it is impossible for men to oppress women because such oppression would prove that men and women were not equal. If there is no difference between the sexes then there is no such thing as womens rights or womens issues because quite simply apart from biology there is no such thing as women, or men for that matter. It works in reverse as well, if men do oppress women then women cannot be equal to men, its that simple. Two completely contrary ideas being pushed to argue the for the same cause.

We hear it in arguments about Global Warming, the world is hotter than it was in the past and then half a minute later if we don't do something now the world will get hotter. They are mutually exclusive, one may be true or the other may be true but both cannot be true. We cannot be at war and going to be at war, we either are at war or we are not. We are either in the middle of an environmental catastrophe or we will be, but we cannot be in it now and about to be in it.

The Left Liberals are very good at this mutually exclusive argument, they like to argue that we shouldn't be held back by old fashioned outdated ideas and then to argue that there is nothing new about this, people have been doing this since Moses was a boy. If a couple aren't getting along then they should divorce, someone argues that marriage is sacred and the Left Liberal argues back that you shouldn't be so old fashioned. Then when someone argues that allowing anyone and everyone to divorce is a dangerous new idea, they argue that its a very old idea, Henry the VIII got divorced you know, its been going on for a long time.

They also like the obscure exception. Having sex with children is wrong most people would argue, but the Left Liberal will say "ohhh but this obscure tribe has sex with their children and they've been around for thousands of years!". Then that obscure exception is treated as if its not an exception, as if it is the accepted norm. As the late Lawrence Auster wrote "Christians say in the name of Christ, Muslims say in the name of Allah, Liberals say studies have shown.". When these studies are investigated you find out the tribe consisted of 30 people who no body knows how long they have really existed as a people for and that its nearly impossible to work out if the claim was true, embellished or a lie. But these obscure exceptions are used just as the mutually exclusive argument is, not as a tool of logic but as a tool of deception.

When you find yourself having one of these discussions remember to look out for the mutually exclusive argument. You might not win over the Liberal, but you might get the person next to them thinking and thats a win.

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The Tragedy of the Euro

The Euro, a single European wide currency, was introduced with great optimism by the European Union. It was a great step forward for Liberalism as here was one of the freedoms it wanted, the freedom of money to move between countries unrestricted. In unison with the freedom of movement of labour (people) between countries and of goods. It was a great achievement for economic Liberalism.

They said it would bring people closer together, that it would increase trade and create a richer Europe. And for a time that seemed to be true. Trade did increase and Europe as a whole did get richer. But it wasn't evenly spread, with some countries gaining much more than others. But overall most people, and their leaders, were happy with the Euro.

It gave different advantages to rich and poor countries. Most rich countries had a high rate of exchange for their currency. Most poor countries had a bad rate of exchange for their currencies. The Euro changed that because each country, whether rich or poor, now had the same currency and therefor the same exchange rate. It made business and travel within the Eurozone much easier.  It also had advantages outside of the Eurozone, countries that had high exchange rates such as Germany for example, now had a much lower exchange rate. This meant it was cheaper to buy goods made in Germany, so German exports increased. It also encouraged Germans to spend their money within Germany, as it was now more expensive to buy from other countries than it had been before the introduction of the Euro. Over time as the exports made Germany richer that wasn't as obvious as it was at the start. For Germany the Euro was a great thing.

But poor countries also benefited as overnight it made them rich, just as Germany's exchange rate had lowered, so theirs had gone up. Now they had more purchasing power, they could buy more things and everything they owned was now worth more than it had been yesterday. It encouraged economic growth as people had confidence that the future was better than today, and today was already better than yesterday had been. This confidence encouraged borrowing to buy the things that were now in reach, by people, businesses and by Government. It encouraged banks to loan money. If these things had been spent on building the future maybe things would have gone differently. But instead much of this borrowing was on living now with little thought to the future.

It highlights a major flaw in Liberal economics, it understands that economic growth is good, however it regards all growth as good. It also sees economic activity as good, but it doesn't pay much attention to what that activity is or if it is useful or not. Much of the economic activity and growth within Germany was productive, but the same could not be said for most countries in the Eurozone. Greece for example spent money it didn't have to finance things it wanted and that activity has now come back to haunt it. But most economists treated both countries the same.

In fact one of the great ambitions of the European Union is to make each European country the same as all the others. To use economics to homogenize Europe into one economy, where doing business is the same regardless of country. But to do that not only must each countries currency be the same, but its business laws and its standard of living must be the same. That is why nearly everyone involved in the Euro was happy for this growth to be spent on economically unproductive social programs. It was an attempt to use Capitalism to finance Socialism. Socialism whether used in the Soviet Union or the European Union or anywhere else, doesn't work for a very simple reason. It takes wealth from productive areas of the economy and spends it on unproductive areas. And when it doesn't work that is often perversely seen as proof that not enough has been spent, so even more wealth is then spent on the unproductive areas. Over time it destroys wealth permanently.

When Greece could no longer pay its debt, it was offered a way out, more debt in exchange for an austerity program. When Greece got into trouble it wasn't treated as a part of an integrated Eurozone, no it was treated as a distinct problem. But Liberal economics still ruled, the way to get out of debt was to give Greece more debt. It's never worked in the past but that didn't deter anyone.

It is now clear that Greece lied to get into the Euro and the rest of Europe was happy to believe the lies, even grateful that it was lied too. Now that has come back to bite everyone involved. Greece should not have been allowed to join the Euro, but it was. Greece now doesn't want to continue the austerity program, it doesn't want to pay back the debt and the Eurozone doesn't want to continue loaning money to Greece. But I believe that they all will continue. It would be better if Greece left the Euro and went back to the Drachma. Greece has a long and ignoble history of economic mismanagement and I sadly don't see that ending either. That means that further loans may make things worse not better.

When this happens again and it will, how will Europe pay for it? Nearly every country is running a deficit. This is a tragedy happening right now before our eyes and I don't see a happy ending.

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Australia, more people, less Australians

Australia's current population is 23,000,000 and of those 17,000,000 were born in Australia, that means that 6,000,000 were not. 6,000,000 was Australia's entire population in 1925.

Here I present evidence from the Australian Bureau of Statistics Australian Historical Population Statistics, if you wish to do your own research just download the Migration file, then look at Tab 7.1.

The file goes back to 1925, so the 1920's are only half a decade, you will also notice that more people left Australia in the 1930's than arrived due to the severity of the economic depression. The 1940's is really the last 3 years, before that more people left than arrived. Migration has gone up and down, sometimes quite dramatically since 1950, the lowest by a long way was 13,515 in 1975, the highest was 315,687 in 2008, both years Labor was in power.

1925-29 = 170,396

1930-39 = -2,563

1940-49 = 219,236

1950-59 = 896,450

1960-69 = 971,577

1970-79 = 684,544

1980-89 = 1,079,878

1990-99 = 790,187

2000-09 = 1,700,343

2010 = 172,038

You will notice that the first decade of this century saw nearly as many immigrants as the 1980's and 1990's combined, 1,700,000.

Lets look at it another way, by each quarter century (25 year) period

1925-50 = 387,069

1951-75 = 2,334,539

1976-00 = 2,088,097

2001-10 =1,872,381 (at this rate by 2025 there will be 4,255,411)

According to Characteristics of Recent Migration, November 2013, Australia's population over the age of 15 is 18,295,900.

Australian born 12,474,300 (68%)

Foreign born 5,821,600 (32%)

In 2013 10% of Australia's population aged over 15, 1,821,100 of them, had been here 10 years or less. And each year it continues.

Now lets look at it a 3rd way, by political parties since 1945 when the Department of Immigration was formed. Governments don't change on the 1st January, so I will count the last year of a Government as fully theirs. The next full year will be the next parties. For example in 1949 Labor lost Government to the Liberals, 1949 is counted as all Labor, 1950 as all Liberal.

Total Immigrants between 1945-2010 = 4,542,684

Australian Labor Party

2,320,906

Total years in office between 1945-2010 = 24 years

Liberal Party&Country/National Party

2,221,778

Total years in office between 1945-2010 = 41 years

Labor is worse, but the Liberals aren't innocent by any means. This needs to stop!

Both major political parties are making Australians a minority in our own country!


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