A Place to Stand

  When I say that our political leaders can't be entirely stupid and having been told the consequences of the Luddite policies they are pursuing must be aware of them I am sometimes asked why they would want to deliberately impoverish us.

This is from George Orwell's 1984, a book which may not be the last word in political philosophy but certainly depicts politics believable enough to have been chilling to several generations.

"From the moment when the machine first made its appearance it was clear to all thinking people that the need for human drudgery, and therefore to a great extent for human inequality, had disappeared. If the machine were used deliberately for that end, hunger, overwork, dirt, illiteracy and disease could be eliminated within a few generations. ... But it was also clear that an all-round increase in wealth threatened the destruction - indeed, in some sense was the destruction - of a hierarchical society. ... the most obvious and perhaps the most important form of inequality would already have disappeared. If it once became general, wealth would confer no distinction. ... But in practice such a society could not long remain stable. For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realise that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance. ... Ignorance is Strength"

Therefore the parasitic political nomenklatura must deliberately impoverish us, tax us, make us spend time living with pointless regulations. if they wish to continue dictating to us. Which they obviously enjoy doing.

"... If human equality is to be for ever averted -- if the High, as we have called them, are to keep their places permanently -- then the prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity."

Now is that not a description of the catastrophic warming fraud; or of the Homeland Security bureaucracy who have never found 1 terrorist; or of anti-nuclear hysteria; or of the passive smoking regulations? Passive smoking doesn't kill, forcing people to stand outside in midwinter does - the same applies to the enforcement of unnecessarily high electricity prices.

"Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is inflicting pain and humiliation. ... A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. ... If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face--for ever."

  Doom forever is specifically what the ecofascists want. They specifically believe that we are running out of conventional resources and will soon be forced back, permanently, to a medieval level of society. Yet are absolutely opposed (and desperate to invent preposterous scare stories to help them) to any new technology or discovery of new resources (eg nuclear and shale gas) that unquestionably can assure permanent wealth.

  There is no fact based dispute that we can have a society many times wealthier than we currently have any time the politicians are willing to get out of the way (or are removed). That we can have unlimited electricity at about 7% of the current cost. Inexpensive housing far better than is currently built. Low taxes because we need not pay for the vast amount of state parasitism we do. Far cheaper products of all sorts from bridges and tunnels to beer by doing without that parasitism.. None of the "global warming" restrictions should cost us a penny because there is no damaging warming - it is a deliberate lie promoted by government and its various ecofascist hangers on. and propagandists.

   Nor can there be any fact based dispute that those in power know all of this. If they thought they were doing anything useful they would be able to give coherent reasons, or at the very last reasons which, through ignorance, they thought were coherent.

“Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.”   Mark Twain

    No it is not run by imbeciles. If it were they would be willing to defend the alleged beliefs they use to steal from us. As anyone reading this for any length of time will have seen the alarmists/parasites/fascists etc simply refuse to defend their alleged opinions with anything other than insults and obscenities. They know the facts will never be stated in the media Nobody who honestly held such opinions would fear honest discussion.

    QED they don't.

  Power for most people in politics is a far stronger driver than wealth. I don't claim any personal sainthood - it is simply that my driver is to play a role in getting the human race to develop its full, literally godlike, potential in a universe in which we may be the only intelligent life. That, to me, is power on a level that Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin and Jefferson barely dreamed of - it just happens to mean I have to be committed to human wellbeing.

    Here is a comment I put on John Redwood's blog. John is clearly one of the most honest and furthest from imbecilic people in Parliament. He knows, on a fiscal basis, what is going wrong and knows CAGW is a fraud. However he is unwilling to go the last step and acknowledge the extent to which government technological Luddism impoverishes us all and could be ended. This is a comment I put in response to an article he wrote giving 5, largely, fiscal, things needed to get out of recession. John consistently puts a short answer to questions put at the end of such comments, usually correctly pointing out the error.

6 – Allow the building of as many new nuclear power plants as there is a market for, where appropriate cutting regulations or creating a legal method whereby regulations can be challenged for being more than 4 times more onerous, on a cost/benefit ratio, than those for other industries. It would take 3 years to complete the first reactor but the knowledge that electricity costs were going to drop by as much as 90% would greatly encourage investment immediately. There are other industries where government Luddism is preventing progress (eg shale gas and GM) but this is the most obvious.

7 – economist Arthur Laffer —Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Laffer argued that the best way to stimulate the economy is to have “no federal taxes at all.” http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2010/07/08/106670/laffer-taxes/

This is a variant on #3 but goes so much further that it is effectively new.

8 – X-Prizes. Put £10 billion annually into technology prizes, for example a commercial space shuttle, McCain's $300m battery prize & the $1m laboratory extension of life M=Prize. This would make Britain the world technology leader in just about everything. In a way it is a Keynesian stimulus but instead of burying money in bottles to let people dig them up it would produce activity which is inherently the most productive of any and is insufficiently rewarded because of inherent limitations of the patent system.
Does anybody doubt all of these would work?

He didn't answer to this and I have put up an ancillary

Then I take it that nobody does doubt they would work

If tried.

  We will see if there is a reply and if there is I will put it here. But the obvious fact is that he does indeed know that these and the other things I have proposed would get us not only far out of recession but into a growth rate considerably exceeding China's 10%. That we could, as individuals and as a society, end any worries about poverty of any sort.

   And knows that there is no way his party, which is the most progressive and growth orientated of all those in Parliament will go for it. Though they have promised a "relentless forensic" pursuit of growth they simply do not mean it in any way. Indeed that there is no way that it is politically allowable for even the most progressive MPs to speak on the matter.