Lindsay Perigo
The Politically Incorrect Show - 12/02/2001
[Music - Die Fledermaus]
Good afternoon, Kaya Oraaa & welcome to the Politically Incorrect Show on the free speech network, Radio Pacific, for Monday February 12, proudly sponsored by Neanderton Nicotine Ltd., the show that says bugger the politicians & bureaucrats & all the other bossyboot busybodies who try to run our lives with our money; that stands tall for free enterprise, achievement, profit, & excellence, against the state-worshippers in our midst; that stands above all for the most sacred thing in the universe, the liberty of the human individual.
[Music up, music down!]
One of the lowest forms of evil in my book is knowingly bestowing moral blessing on the enemies of one's values. While it's impossible to function in a mixed-up world such as ours without inadvertently, indirectly, sanctioning such enemies at times, it IS possible to avoid actively, wilfully doing so - & this is what, at minimum, we should all strive to do. With this criterion in mind, consider the following news story from last Friday's National Business Review:
"The major winners from Industry Development Minister Jim Anderton's $5.3 million splash-out on contractors & consultants to set up his Industry New Zealand Agency are Wellington companies Burleigh Evatt Ltd & Wheeler Campbell Consulting Ltd. Mr Anderton spent the $5.3 billion on outside support during the restructuring of the Ministry of the Ministry for Economic Development, & the establishment of industry New Zealand."
My concern here is not Neanderton's perfidy in doing this after he, rightly, promised to stop these consultancy gravy-trains. I wouldn't expect any better of him. My concern is that, whatever one might think of these consultancy businesses, they are private businesses. One would expect them, as such, to extol the virtues of a free marketplace. One would expect them to know that the very concept of an Industry New Zealand, & a Ministry for Economic Development, is a crock of excrement; that the way to help people wanting to set up in business is to get out of their way & stop stealing their money, not to have bureaucrats throw some of that stolen money at their own favourites. Yet here they are themselves creaming off stolen money to help the bureaucrats do precisely that. Actively, wilfully. They didn't HAVE to seek or accept this contract, but they chose to. It's amoralists like this who give the free market a bad name. I don't expect that will bother them as long as the cheques roll in. They probably pride themselves on their political connections & their political pull. But the politics of pull does not a free market make; what it DOES make is crony-phony capitalism. If one is to uphold a true free market in deed as well as word, one ought not to milk a system one knows to be wrong. To do so is profoundly immoral, & hands the free market's adversaries a weapon to beat it with.
It's all rather reminiscent of the culture of the ACT party, who balk at repealing the Resource Management Act because some of its consultancy firm backers do very nicely thank you from RMA consultancy. If you've ever wondered why the ACT party exudes such a seedy aura, this should give you some idea. It's not a free market ACT seeks, but a market monopolised by its friends & backers. Ask yourself why there remains such a rearguard enthusiasm within ACT's ranks for COMPULSORY private superannuation, with an ACT government deciding WHICH superannuation providers will be officially "approved."
Ayn Rand pointed out long ago that in any compromise with evil it is only the evil side that stands to gain. The crony-phony capitalists of this world are not a help in the battle for freedom; they are an unseemly hindrance.
So, on second thoughts, I hope that the consultancy firms employed by Neanderton will NOT point out the fallacies underpinning Industry New Zealand. Let them NOT speak with forked tongues; let them instead, as opportunistic beneficiaries of socialism, line up honestly & openly where they belong - on its side.
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