Uncompetitive Hotel Cowards Looking for Mommy-Government to Come to Rescue in Newfoundland

In an all-out assault on our accommodation freedom, Hospitality Newfoundland and Labrador is appealing to government to make many voluntary lodging arrangements illegal. Authoritarian Rex Avery, the head of HNL, believes he is more of an adult than everyone else and that he needs to treat everyone as children. He doesn’t believe free people should be allowed to make voluntary choices as to where they stay on vacation, but rather he and his government goons should force people to stay where they decide. “Avery says the Newfoundland and Labrador government should follow Quebec's footsteps by making moves to fine anyone who attempts to rent out their homes as hotels.” But we live in a free country right?

Because Mr. Avery cannot actually compete and loathes the idea of a free market where he is forced to offer a compelling sales proposition, he instead relies on the force and coercion of the government to do his bidding. It’s just an old ploy that uncompetitive businesses and industries are fond of using. It goes like this:

1.       Establish a business, make some money

2.       Competition enters which is more competitive, offering either higher quality or lower prices or both

3.       Run to the government to demand protectionism to make competition illegal and refuse to innovate

4.       Claim you are just a really caring person who cares about the “health and safety” of people and you are really just a consumer advocate! Balk at any suggestion that you are pursuing selfish interests.

This is just a textbook example of businesses seeking special protections against competition. The only people better off for this arrangement is the businesses receiving this protection, never the consumer. Usually it’s the big guy trying to trample the little guy which is why governments often side with the big bully. The bully can provide campaign contributions and they are an organized and unified voting block – something very attractive to politicians.

The canard that is nearly always used is that the competition is “unsafe” or “dangerous” in some way. At least Rex Avery was somewhat honest by admitting that he is concerned about “his” industry and his revenue potential.

Let’s translate some of the stuff Mr. Avery is saying:

 

What Mr. Avery he says:	Analysis
“Airbnb is a business where it's unlicensed, they don't collect taxes, they don't pay taxes, they don't support the economy.”	I really have no idea what this even means. So unless a business is “licensed” or “pay taxes”, it doesn’t support the economy?? What is the economy in Mr. Avery’s opinion – tax collection? But Airbnb does in fact pay taxes. And what does being licensed have to do with supporting the economy? Absolutely nothing. This sentence is completely nonsensical. The “economy” is all financial interactions of people in a given area. It’s not paying taxes and being licensed.
“You may pay more but you're protected, your experience is what you'd expect and there's no hidden surprises.”	No surprises? Has Mr. Avery ever even been in a hotel? Hotels are full of surprises! Dirty bed sheets, dirty towels, bugs, poor service, overbooked rooms. What kind of dream world does Rex Avery live in to believe there are never any hidden surprises with hotels. Again, just a form of verbal advertising for the hotel industry that has no reflection on reality.   Another interesting question is how many people have had negative experiences with airbnb. They have had thousands of tenants and exchanges, yet when something bad happens like the incident recently in Calgary, the media goes berserk. Plus, even in that incident no one was actually physically hurt.
Avery said it also creates an unfair situation in which legitimate hoteliers and bed and breakfast owners, who pay taxes and help stimulate the economy, are up against tough competition.	“Legitimate” in this sense means cartelized. Paying taxes does not stimulate the economy. At most, it stimulates the government. Often it destroys the economy.
"A lot of these [hosts] that are renting these places don't understand the liability and risk they take by trying to make a quick dollar," Avery said.	They don’t understand the risk, so it should be illegal? You mean it’s impossible for someone to start a hotel without knowing the risk? That’s like saying “Some drivers don’t know the risk with driving, let’s make driving illegal!”   The “risk” is simply a matter of insurance. If someone doesn’t have sufficient insurance, then too bad, so sad, they lose their property if something happens. I don’t see why this would automatically make the industry illegal.
“by trying to make a quick dollar”	This statement is extremely patronizing and it’s really a pet peeve of mine. They act as though no one should be allowed to make any money except them and that if someone other than them tries to they are somehow sleazy lowlifes. “making a quick dollar” is also referred to as making a living. How dare Mr. Avery act as though there is something wrong with this!

Also, notice how CBC is acting like this incident in Calgary is the end of the world. It’s not just a one-off event, it’s the scary, demonized, terrifying “unregulated” market again! Take your children inside quick! An overpaid under-motivated government worker didn’t waltz in one day to have a quick glance around the place and another one didn’t charge a huge tax amount. So I mean obviously these places must be unimaginably horrible, practical torture chambers filled with the most disgusting and dangerous surroundings! Give me a break!

Frederick Bastiat, the famous French economist from a couple of hundred years ago once wrote a satirical essay about a fictional new law in France forcing people to never open their window shutters, especially during the day, requiring people to stay indoors during daylight hours, and other absurd measures because candle-makers couldn’t compete with the sunlight. Mr. Rex Avery and his ilk are no less absurd in what they are demanding.

Reduced Public Sector Announcement Brings out Economic Illiterates!

Some statements make you wonder if the person saying it can really be that stunned. One such comment was made today by socialist Earl McCurdy when responding, as head of the NDP, to the announcement by our broke provincial leader Paul Davis, that the public sector would be cut in the province.

 

In reaction to the proposed cuts, McCurdy’s brilliant comment was “We look ahead and we're going to have a shortage of young people in the workforce and opportunities for people as they graduate from school or post-secondary institutions is disappearing rapidly, so on all those fronts I think this is problematic.”

 

Does Mr. McCurdy honestly believe the solution to youth unemployment is just the government hiring them all? I’m guessing his solution to paying off the debt is printing more money. Hiring people for the sake of giving them a job is useless and unsustainable. You can’t just hire all the unemployed people and solve the problem. If you could, everyone would have done it already.

 

How are public sector employees paid? It’s through taxing productive activity in the economy. How can this man think he is in any way fit to be a leader? He doesn’t even understand the most rudimentary economics.

 

What we should want is more private sector jobs, because they produce wealth. Leaches don’t produce wealth, which is how the government gets money.

 

If McCurdy was right, we could instantly have 0% unemployment. We’d just have to build a pyramid or even just dig ditches and fill them back in again. Great ideas!

 

The problem with the province is not that it’s not hiring enough people in the “public” service, the problem is a lack of revenue. Saying hiring more people is the solution is like a snake eating its tail for nutrition.

 

It would be like a family running into debt because they are spending too much money, and to resolve the issue they decide to hire maids to clean the house. What sense would that make?

 

The public sector is a leech that lives off the productive activity of the rest of society. We should be trying to achieve the smallest public sector possible. Remember, public sector means expenses, private sector means revenue. No sensible person would be trying to increase their expenses.

 

I get this kind of talk at work and many other places as well. People think it’s the job of the government to hire people. Rather than seeing it as a necessary evil, they see the government as an ideal employer that would should all aspire to work for.

 

To sum it up: government = force, private = voluntary.

Natalie Mehra is a Dictator!

Natalie Mehra needs to get lost. She’s whining now about a health clinic in Corner Brook which charges between $20 and $30 for medical services that people want. She believes this activity should be illegal, even though professors have declared it is perfectly legal in our current framework.

 

How dare this small-minded dictator try to tell theoretically free people they cannot pay someone for medical care. Are we living in Canada or North Korea? The public healthcare system is a horrendous, poorly-run, ineffective mess where you wait 5-12 hours to see a doctor for a few minutes. It’s characterized by people being put on waiting lists for months or years at a time.

 

Socialism never works, but if you really love it, then you can have it. But don’t force everyone else to suffer and die in your idiotic system. A free people should be allowed to work, make money, and then use that money to better their lives. For an evil person like Natalie Mehra to say you should go to jail for this is unconscionable! She is just a control freak!

 

Look at the free market in other things, we never see a shortage. There is no shortage of big macs or Toyota cars, but medical care? We have one of the worst systems in the world. It’s terrible and a human rights violation. But to have the gall to think you can stick a gun to someone’s head and tell them they cannot take care of themselves or their family members is outright appalling.

 

Her objection can be explained plainly and simply: envy. Nothing else. She is deathly afraid that a “rich” person could afford medical care and not be subjected to the house of horrors known as “public health care”. I guess having an extra $20-$30 to take care of yourself makes you rich. I don’t how these people can sleep at night or look at themselves in the mirror. Get away from me! I don’t want you around!

 

Again, I go back to my example. What if someone works really hard to have some extra money to take care of themselves or a family member if necessary. They do overtime, they work hard, the whole nine yards. Then one day they want to use this money for medical care. Then this idiot pinhead Natalie Mehra declares that “no I don’t think you should be allowed to do that”. WHO ARE YOU? Are you God? Do you feel qualified to tell everyone in the world what to do and how to live? Do you have the right to stick a loaded gun to my head to force me to act however you want? Go away from me you control freak!

 

These immoral people need to be stopped!

Private healthcare in Canada - Newfoundland specifically

Alright, so I saw this article about a nurse practitioner in NL who is offering private medical services. Of course, her services are affordable, fast, easy and convenient. So obviously a lot of people are complaining – could this be opening us up to private healthcare? I HOPE SO! But instead of embracing this, she insists her private healthcare will not lead to a general privatization of the healthcare industry.

 

Do you know another word for private? It’s voluntary. And another word for “public” is forced. Canada and especially Newfoundland has a total garbage healthcare system. People go in to the emergency room and routinely wait 8, 9, 10 hours or more just for a basic visit. The doctor swings around and sees them for 5 minutes or less, throws some pills at them and tells them to go home.

 

People routinely complain about the horrible wait times, lack of doctors, terrible service, but then to suggest some people with enough money be allowed to pay for their own healthcare, people react with horror. It’s like they think because they have crap healthcare, everyone should have it. What an envious position.

 

When I say “allowed”, I literally mean it. Imagine I work really hard every day to save up money in case I need it. One day I, or a loved one, becomes ill. It’s a terrible situation but at least I saved up several thousand dollars to obtain quality healthcare. But then I find out if I pay for healthcare myself, I will be sent to prison. And if a doctor provides this service, he’ll be arrested. In desperation I go to the public hospital only to find out it will take 6-12 months before a doctor can see my loved one. They might live, they might die, oh well we’re all in this together.

 

I would be allowed to use the money to buy twinkies or a sports car or a nice house, but literally saving someone’s life, that’s illegal.

 

The sad part is you have no control over your own healthcare. Instead, it’s rationed out at the whims of politicians and taxpayers. If greedy and envious taxpayers don’t want you to be allowed to pay for healthcare they won’t let you.

 

Some people retort that you could always just go to the States or some other country. Yes, and I retort back to them that slaves could escape through the underground railway. That doesn’t make slavery right. Why should some dumb ass politician have the right to tell me where I can spend my money? Fundamentally this has nothing to do with effectiveness, it has to do with morality. If a politician can dictate if and how you can take care of yourself, we’ve stopped living in a free society. We now live in a dictatorship.

 

Also, as far as I know, Canada is the only country in the world where it is illegal to purchase private healthcare. Even in countries with a public healthcare system, they pay much less for much more service. And most countries do not make it illegal to take care of yourself voluntarily.

 

In the 1800s the US had a completely free medical system – free in the sense of free people, you had the freedom to receive medical attention from anyone you wanted and to buy any medication you wanted. They were known for having the best medical system in the world. And please don’t make the mistake of thinking the US healthcare system is “free market” now. It’s almost as bad as Canada. But at least you don’t go to jail for entering into a voluntary exchange for services.

 

I think when you live in a country where you can buy a million dollars worth of candy, but can’t spend even one extra dollar on healthcare unless you are specifically allowed, you’ve ceased living in a free country.

 

Article: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/nurse-practitioner-says-some-people-happy-to-pay-for-health-care-1.3041952

Grow Up Cry-Baby Farmers!

So some wheat farmers in Canada are whining because they have to face competition. Remember this means lower prices for all Canadians who consume wheat, but some people in the wheat business are complaining because they no longer have a monopoly with their inflated prices.

 

This is one of the areas for which I applaud Stephen Harper the most – the eradication of the Wheat Board – a soviet-style monopoly and price control mechanism which caused dramatically overpriced wheat for everyone. Sure it benefitted a handful of farmers, but at the expense of everyone else.

 

So now this group of cry-babies is trying to sue the government for $17 million, oops, my mistake, it’s actually $17 BILLION. That’s their loses? If they actually think they’ve lost $17 billion dollars, another way to look at this is buyers of their product saved $17 billion.

 

I can’t say I know everything about this whole issue. I just know it’s a widely-practiced strategy for large industries to try to have a monopoly so that they need not face competition. It makes the act of buying wheat away from this monopoly a crime. It’s an immoral act of force. I’m glad the government got rid of it. Now it’s time to get rid of all the other government monopolies!

 

Article here: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/supreme-court-won-t-hear-farmers-appeal-of-17b-wheat-board-lawsuit-1.3026578

Non-libertarian Linear Thinking

If you look at mainstream criticism of most issues, there is a lot of very linear thinking in the process which does not take into account the real complex nature of the world. Headlines and news stories often do not take into account these complexities and either explicitly state their linear thinking or imply it. Examples might include:

 

-          There is currently only a handful of regulations when it comes to the production of orange juice. No national agency is in charge of verifying the contents of each carton of juice. Companies could place any number of products in their juice and still call it orange juice including water, apple juice, flour, even insects!

 

-          Amazingly car companies have few regulations when it comes to fuel economy. Most cars achieve 30 miles per gallon, however a company could produce a car that only achieves 5 miles per gallon, and this would still be legal. There are currently no laws in the works to make this illegal.

 

-          Bank machines remain completely unregulated. Companies could charge $25 per transaction, even though costs are estimated at between $0.50-$0.75 for the company.

 

-          Without minimum wage, companies could pay as little as $0.01 per hour to employees. In fact, many fear removing the minimum wage law would create a handful of super-billionaires who live in a world of total abject poverty.

 

Most of the time, these articles don’t even bother to mention the possible consequences of a lack of regulation or laws, etc. They just state it as obvious. For example, they will just say “this industry is completely unregulated”, implying that because there isn’t some magical level of regulation, the industry will create negative outcomes. Basically this is called begging the question – taking for granted a hypothesis that should be first proven.

 

The problem with the above assertions is that they are taken for granted without considering other effects. For instance, competition. In a competitive market, an orange juice company could put one drop of juice in a carton of water and call it juice, but then Tropicana will come along with a much better juice and everyone will buy it instead.

 

Same goes for bank machines. People have choices, they can choose to go elsewhere if the price is too high. If ATMs all charged $10, people would just go to their own bank to get money.

 

The theory about a low minimum wage is easily demonstrated to be false by the fact that 90% of workers get above minimum wage. Legally there is nothing stopping companies from giving people more than minimum wage, but it happens anyway. The people who write these articles never ask why this happens. It’s funny how their theory, which exists only in their minds and not in the real world, has more influence on them than what they observe.

 

I guess this is how the “theory” of Marxism can continue to exist despite so much real world evidence that it’s a horrible system.

"YOU ARE A SLAVE - Don't Dare Think Otherwise!" Declares Populous of Indiana

Starting from a misunderstanding of true rights, many activists in Indiana are upset at a law which would allow businesses to choose their customers. This case needs to be broken down for most because of how we’ve been brainwashed to think about freedom. Freed…free….what? Yes, freedom, a word that has nearly been banned in modern culture.

 

Indiana governor Mike Pence enacted a religious freedom bill which says individuals and businesses can refuse to do business with certain individuals on religious grounds. The only group that really matters in society of course is the LGBT community so naturally the bill is called “anti-gay”.

 

The reason it’s anti-gay is that it allows businesses to assault gay people and to imprison them against their will once their sexual preference is discovered. Oops – my bad, I was thinking about actual rights violations. Silly me. In actual fact, this law allows businesses to choose not to perform work for someone they don’t want to.

 

Now to most people who are not liberty-minded, this is a terrible injustice which needs to be corrected. The opposite is actually true. If you’re still reading, you’re probably not liberty-minded, but let’s break it down nonetheless.

 

Free individuals should be allowed to choose the work they do. Forcing them to do work which is morally offensive to them against their will is a form of slavery. It is the claim that you own the labour of another person despite the fact they do not want to provide it. If I design websites and a gay group wants me to create a page featuring lurid pictures and information about gay sexual activities and I refuse, does this make me a bigot? No, it means I have free choice of the work I do, and I choose not to partake in that form of work.

 

Dozens of businesses have been shut down because the owners did not want to bake a cake or perform some other form of activity they found morally offensive.

 

To those still not convinced, imagine the opposite. Imagine a white supremacist group approaching a black-owned printing company and asking them to print flyers proclaiming the racial superiority of whites. Would we consider the business racist or bigoted for not complying? I doubt it.

 

But this shouldn’t be about religious liberty, it should be just about liberty in general. How dare someone tell me or anyone else they are FORCED to worked against their will for someone else. Aren’t we free people? If I don’t like someone’s breath, I should have the right to refuse to work with them. Similarly if a bottled water company wants me to design their site but I’m a staunch environmentalist, I should have the right to refuse because I think water bottles are bad for the environment. It really doesn’t matter the reason. The same goes for a business. If someone starts up a business, they own that business. People work there voluntarily as employees and thus are contractually obligated to carry out the wishes of the employer. If they do not want to, they can quit. Everything is voluntary.

 

Never do I hear the argument that because a small cake shop refuses to bake a cake for a gay wedding or because a private bed and breakfast refuses to rent its property to an unmarried couple for the night, these customers will be unable to receive this service anywhere. That’s not the issue. If a business refuses service to you, go elsewhere. I guarantee you someone wants your business. With all the gay activist groups out there, I’m sure having a cake baked isn’t a big deal. And even if you cannot find a single store anywhere that will provide this service, tough. That still doesn’t justify involuntary servitude, aka slavery. I might want any number of services which are not available and I just have to live with that, I don’t stick a gun to someone’s head and demand they provide it or else I will heavily fine them, shut down their business, or jail them.

 

I don’t know why people can’t just, I don’t know, walk away? You walk into a business, they say no thanks we won’t serve you, why don’t you just go to another business. A business which turns everyone away will soon lose any competitive advantage.

 

Another great question is why would a gay couple demand that an anti-gay marriage shop bake them a gay marriage cake? Why would they insist on giving this store their money? This boggles my mind. They should immediately bring their business elsewhere. The reason is they don’t care if this particular shop bakes their cake, they just want to force businesses to accept them.

 

Some people will say but what if there was a store that said “no blacks allowed”? Should they be allowed to stay in business? My answer is yes for the reasons above. Freedom is a natural human right and people should be free to do business with whomever they choose. If someone wants to have a store for blacks only, so be it. I will go elsewhere. I won’t demand that the Black Panthers accept me anymore than a black man will demand the KKK accept him. To force anyone to do work against their will is a form of slavery and I’m pretty sure most people are against slavery.