Zachary Young

Historically societies which have had the most amount of economic freedom - that is to say the lowest taxes - have been the most prosperous.

The government didn't build the sky scrapers, private industry did. So, the same guys who built them now. Corporations. Businesses. People trying to make an honest buck - not politicians trying to steal every dollar you make.

Telling me what I can and cannot say is absolutely limiting my freedom of expression. The real minority group is the individual - how can you claim to support minority rights but not support individual rights? The government should not be allowed to censor unpopular speech. You really don't see how this is a problem?

I think this election I may even vote liberal, although I would have to hold my nose pretty darn hard. Hudak's plan to GPS track 16,000 people (sex offenders or not) seems pretty bad to me. Obviously Hogwarts isn't worthy of consideration. Try though they might to package themselves libertarian the NDP is still clearly the party of socialism. McGuinty has been pretty bad, but Hudak might just be worse. Better than the nanny state than the police state.

I really hate taxes and the idea of wealth redistribution (not least of all because the wealth tends to get redistributed towards the people who are doing the redistributing!). Why should someone else enjoy the fruits of my labour? It doesn't make sense. I would like to see all taxes abolished.

The Canadian Human Rights Commission represents a dangerous trend in our society to censure speech and limit free expression. We should abolish this monstrosity immediately. It is a grave danger to our liberty.

The Libyan Rebels we have been helping are rounding up and murdering black people. We should not be involved in Libya. We should not be overseas at all.

Having the government control the media - fully or in part - is a terrible idea. The CBC should be privatized immediately. The programming on it is terrible anyway. Especially 'The Hour'. That has to be the worst show ever made.

I see no reason why income inequality is undesirable. Without inequality of wealth our society could not function. If the egalitarians got their way, who would build sky scrapers or other such capital intensive projects? We should be far more concerned with how we can make the poor rich, not by being obsessed by how much richer some people are than others. What is really at issue though is the justice of wealth. In particular, wealth can either be created (the means of the market) or it can be stolen (the governmental method). It is immoral to steal or redistribute wealth, so anyone who gets rich because of the government should be condemned. But those who get rich by creating wealth deserve every dime in their pockets.

I think fascism and socialism are actually fairly similar, they are both subsets of collectivism. They are both radical left wing ideologies. In terms of economic definitions fascism is the merging of state and corporate interests and socialism is state ownership of the means of production. Both fascism and socialism exist in varying degrees in Ontario and in Canada.

On the issue of the social safety net I must find myself very much in disagreement with the poster above. For one thing, it doesn't exist. Ever been dirt poor? There's no help for you and none is needed anyway. The hundreds of billions of dollars the government spends isn't going to the poor, it's going to patronage, to the inflated salaries of worthless bureaucrats, to the special interests and to the military industrial complex. Where exactly do the poor get anything from this? No, it's the poor who pay for all of this, so don't give me that safety net bullshit because I have in the past fallen below this so called safety net and there was no mighty hand of government to lift me up, but my entire life I have paid tax after tax all in the name of 'helping the poor' even when I was the poor. You people don't understand, government is just a scam, a racket, it's the largest criminal organization in this country and I for one denounce them as the highwaymen they so clearly are. In fact there is more honesty in the highway man than in the heavy hand of the state, for at least the highwayman does not lecture you about the moral necessity of his theft while he steals your purse.

Listen, I hate the CPC more than pretty much any other person I know. I disagree with them on pretty much the entire array of policy they advocate but I happen to believe that speech, especially political speech, is sacred and this includes spending money on things during elections. Yes, I am sure there are a million rules to govern exactly how someone can and cannot campaign, and I'm sure during elections these rules are broken but the rules shouldn't be there and it doesn't matter if they are broken. It is paramount that the right to free speech be preserved, ESPECIALLY WITH REGARDS TO POLITICAL SPEECH, and that includes advertising during election campaigns or any other type of sensitive speech, and anyone who politicizes the issue of speech is an enemy of freedom.

The doctors share some blame, for the influence they have exerted through the CMA, but in reality the politicians are to blame for having designed this ridiculous system and the public as well for buying it hook line and sinker. When cost to the end user is zero demand is going to sky high and the end result in shortages and rationing. Sadly, in the case of health care shortages and rationing mean people die, yes people die. Socialism doesn't work, it never has and it never will, it's a bad idea and the only solution is free market health care.

It comes down to this - the decision to save or spend should be entirely up the individual. You may all be little children needing the government to tell you how to spend your money but I am not and I would appreciate it if you left me out of an idiot schemes regarding my income. We don't need a public pension system and I certainly don't want to entrust my retirement to the government. I will look after it myself. Anyway I think it is fraudulent to say that we can even have a pension system considering how massively our government is in debt and how this is clearly only going to get worse in the future. It's a ponzi scheme and people my age who pay into a pension plan have absolutely zero chance of getting anything out of it. I for one do not want to spend my life paying for your excesses. Stop looking for government handouts, you lousy bums.

mostly I find it interesting that someone who identifies as such a radical can be elected to the U.S. Senate, although I wonder how often his voting record differs from that of the Democrats with whom he caucuses.

Green Party support would be even higher if the franchise was limited to only individuals wearing dred locks.

Average compensation amongst workers for the big three did reach a point which may have been nonviable but it is entirely besides the point. As spectators we should not have any sort of responsibility in deciding the nature of GM (or any other industry's) organization. That is the beauty of capitalism. Any company is free to try anything, no matter how revolutionary or absurd, in the pursuit of profit. The problem here is that we forgot companies were supposed to fail. Failure is the most beautiful aspect of capitalism. Inefficient industries cease. There is hardship, people lose their jobs, factories are retooled, even entire towns and vanish and the pain here is tangible but it is the unseen gain, the steady accumulation of capital and savings and investment that marks constant progress. What is not considered in a million quick fix schemes is the moral hazards involved. To digress back to the original topic, if I may, we could consider this question from a few different angles. First the political question. It is fairly self evident that rent seeking behaviour is the Achilles heel of our democracy. So yes, there is a critical mass point with regards to this whole mess, and yes we may very well be past it. Will anyone employed by the public sector ever vote themselves out of a job? Or think of all the families attached to those individuals.

Well there is econometrics and indeed a lot of modern economics uses mathematical models and empirical evidence to attempt to prove their point, but I reject these schools of thought in favour of the Praxeologic thought of Mises. Economics is actually a subset of praxeology, the science of human action, which begins with a simple axiom (man acts purposefully) and uses deductive logic to go from there. Personally I think an emphasis on empiricism will lead an economist astray into making Krugman like errors over policy issues such as the minimum wage. Yes, economists differ, but that doesn't mean all economists are wrong, it means some economists are wrong.

And yet the biggest opponents of the war on drugs, libertarians, are also the biggest advocates of capitalism. Something isn't consistent in your world view brah. Actually public education means the poor and the middle class are FORCED to use the public schools. You see the wealthy and the powerful can afford to pay for both the public school system, through property taxes, as well as having their children educated in private schools. Now I've never been to a private school and I doubt they are significantly better because they are forced to use the same curriculum but I do imagine they ARE better, but the poor cannot access these because they have already been forced to pay for public schools. Anyway you would be much better served by dropping out and getting a job than going through our education system in my opinion. Working for a living is what really teaches you about life, responsibility, getting ahead and winning the class war. I am not a member of the Conservative Party and I think you are wrong to imply that the conservative party advocates capitalism. All major political parties everywhere advocate the expanse of government power. Look at what Stephen Harper has done as prime minister. Government spending has gone up. We are currently at war. Randoulph Bourne once wrote that war is the health of the state. Nothing is less capitalist, nothing is more pro government than waging an aggressive war of conquest in a foreign country. And let us not forget that the left wing political parties in this country are not against prohibition. They might make mild and pathetic over turns towards decriminalization (the effective status quo already) but what you need to understand is that there is only one political party in this country. The conservatives, NDP and liberals are all exactly the same. They might have different rhetoric but in terms of policy they all advocate for expanding the size and scope of government. None of them want to roll back the state, certainly not when they are in power. You cannot balance socialism and capitalism, nor should you want to. The state ownership of the means of production is a bad idea. Look at the history of the 20th century! Look what has happened to socialist societies. We are talking about the enslavement of millions, about death camps and the complete devastation of societies. This is what you advocate as a happy medium? Perhaps we will only send a few million to the gulags instead of tens of millions? Socialism is a half baked idea, one that must be opposed vigorously and without fail. As for 'too much wealth' in the hands of too few - you must ask where does this wealth come from? If this is wealth that was created, should it not belong to the person who created it? What right do you have to wealth you had no part in creating? You seem to be motivated simply by jealousy here. The world owes you nothing and you should accept this fact. Simply because you were born into this world? There is nothing special about you, you're not a magnificient snowflake, you got lucky to be born into this country now make something of yourself or leave us alone, but don't imagine that what we have created you should deserve. If you want to sit on a couch playing video games and getting high all day, that's fine, but don't do it on my dime buster. The socialist NDP do not advocate personal freedom because they advocate against economic freedom. In no measure can any sort of freedom exist absent economic freedom. Without the right to own property, to do as you please in your own castle, with the money you make, what other right is important? The NDP have nearly ruined our society. You do realize it was only a few decades ago they were supporting the outright nationalization of heavy industry right? That if we had gone with them our nation would be another soviet union? Of course even the idiots in that political party have long since abandoned that rhetoric, but none the less the beliefs remain, they have just learned to lie about them. This is a political party which advocates communism, they are worthy of contempt and ridicule and nothing more. Now you are correct that the conservatives are authoritarian and advocate the warfare / police state. Politics is a little more complicated than the simple idea of left and right. Conservatism is not capitalism. I am not an advocate of the establishment right, I advocate for the private ownership of the means of production, for the freedom of everyone in our society, I couldn`t care less about elections and which politician lies slightly less than the rest. I care about freedom. I care about liberty.

Can you imagine how cheap gas would be if we didn't tax the tar out of it? Or if we didn't bow down to environmentalist lobbies that have an anti-energy agenda? Apparently even the windmills aren't okay with them because they disrupt the migratory patterns of birds! Get real folks - this is the 21st century. I personally am a bit of a minimalist. I don't drive a car, I try not to consume a lot of things, but people seem to enjoy living the life styles they do and there's nothing wrong with that, but that means we have huge energy needs and we need to allow the market to supply these needs. Get rid of the taxes and regulations involved here, let the market does what it does best and let's stop bending the gas consumers over at the pump. Gas prices would probably be half what they are currently if not less if it weren't for the government and high taxes and regulations involved here, to say nothing of the idiocy of ethanol and other foolish subsidies towards alternative energies. Eventually we may need to move away from fossil fuels, but it should be the market which decides which other form of energy is efficient, not lobbyists and politicians who are a little more interested in their re-election than which fuel actually makes economic sense.

Excuse me for using economic theory to inform my opinions, maybe I should just pull things out of my ass like everyone else?

When confronted with the failure of a socialist system, advocates often attempt to place the blame on the managers in charge. Ludwig von Mises in his landmark work 'Socialism' laid out the case succinctly. In the absence of a price structure it is impossible to achieve accurate economic calculation. That is to say that bureaucrats can never replace the role of entrepreneur in the economy. They simply will never be able. The problem with our health care is systemic, you cannot simply replace the people in charge and expect things to work better because no one can do by fiat what the market does. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Things cost money. You cannot avoid this fact by putting this institution named government in the middle of an extremely complicated market, all you are going to do is introduce massive inefficiencies and distortions of the market which will drive price up and quality down. Take for example this idea of making health care zero cost to the end user. Well what is going to be the natural result of this? It is going to drive up demand. When price is zero demand is infinite. And politicans respond to us "well don't be so greedy and stop using health care!!". This is the solution of bureaucrats. An entrepreneur looks at a spike in demand as an opportunity to make some money and gets busy implementing solutions, but bureaucrats respond by RATIONING THE SERVICE. THIS MEANS PEOPLE DIE. There is nothing unique about the health care market that makes it more suited for socialism than any other. Capitalism is the only answer. So long as we have a socialist system costs will skyrocket, quality will decline and people will die relative to what would exist in a free market system. Of course owing to technologies developed in freer markets and general increases in standard of living owing to the productive efforts of a great many people our health care system will continue to improve, but if you could only understand what could be without the leviathon ruining everything, what a free society could look like, you would cry yourself to sleep understanding the harm that has been done by the state.

Ever been 'educated' in a public school? They aren't so hot. It's just not a system that is designed towards unleashing the creative capacity innate in every human being. You are supposed to sit down and shut up and listen to some idiot who doesn't have what it takes to make it in the real world go over a curriculum that no one cares about. It is learning by rote, mere regurgitation. It dumbs us down and makes us obedient, which is fine if you want to live in a top down hierarchical society but if what you want is a society full of free and independent individuals, all using their mind and bodies to improve their own situation and inadvertently serving the collective good it's probably not ideal. I want roads, I want education, I want electricity and health care, I don't think the government provides telephone service currently but it's a good thing. I just happen to disagree with you on the mechanism through which these services should be provided. It's like the old joke in the soviet union. Two babishkas are waiting in a bread line for three hours to receive their moldy rye and one says to the other "isn't it terrible, waiting for hours in line like this?" and the other replies "yes, but think about how bad it is in America where the government doesn't give out bread at all!". There is a misconception that just because the government currently does something this is the only way it can be done. That's just not true. Just because there is no cost to the end user for these services doesn't mean there is no cost... can you imagine how powerful and productive our society would be if there wasn't literally hundreds of billions of dollars in government waste? If over paid bureaucrats didn't receive six figure salaries to sit on their asses? If lucrative government contracts, all of which are paid for by taxpayers, weren't awarded based on the idea of patronage? Can you imagine how amazing our society could be if we were truly free? Socialism doesn't work. This is the history of the 20th century. South Korea's economy is 40x that of North Korea for a reason. If you look at Eastern Europe now you see the biggest advocates of capitalism and liberty, because they understand what living in a country where the government does everything means. You need to make a choice - either support government ownership of the means of production, either support socialism, communism, collectivism and all the evils that this system of government entails, or become an advocate of liberty and capitalism and join in the good fight. There is no third option, no middle of the road, their is slavery and tyranny on one side and freedom and liberty on the other. The end result of the interventionist state, of this sort of mixed market economy we have currently is socialism, Ludwig von Mises pointed out, and he was as right about that as he was about anything else. The war on drugs is an obvious example of harmful government policy, and opposition to this war is important mostly because it is a great example of how every other form of government policy is also harmful. It's just that the war on drugs is the most obvious. You have woken up to the damage done by the state in one area of society, probably because you are a pot head (nothing wrong with that, I used to smoke a lot of herb myself) but it's time to wake up to the rest. The government really and truly is evil, and it's an evil that most be opposed vigorously.

Personality wise, I like the guy. He's honest and tries hard. Of course he's wrong about everything, but Hudak would be as well. Naturally I would never vote for him, but I could see him winning another election.

You know, one of these days you looters will have chased off everyone who knows how to do anything and all you pathetic thieves will starve to death or freeze in the cold, unable to procure even a sandwich or heating oil.