Foreign affairs submission 7586 (Lone Ranger) 11:15 PM

I was not going to add another submission today, but this was so bizarre that I could not help myself.

Support all breastfeeding initiatives worldwide to help alleviate poverty

Foreign aid (in emergency situations and otherwise) should not include provision of infant formula - this undermines mothers' breastfeeding confidence. Third world countries view provision of infant formula as condoning its use (when, in fact, it's usually unnecessary).

Implement the WHO Code. The International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes was adopted by the World Health Assembly in 1981 as a "minimum requirement" to protect infant health and is to be implemented "in its entirety."

This is what we call a breast-driven approach to foreign relations. It is an exciting prospect that the new ambassador to Beijing would use his presentation of credentials to talk about breast feeding. Want to resolve the problems of the Middle East? Get their women to whip out their breasts more often and feed those kiddies. Stop worrying about global development issues – if only more women would breast feed, poverty would become history.

A lot of women in Africa breast feed. Guess what, all that breast milk has done stuff all to alleviate the poverty of the continent. Breast feeding will not solve problems arising from bad governance, lack of freedom and bad economics.

We certainly couldn’t accuse the author of this submission of overly complex arguments. Breast feeding is, doubtless, beneficial for babies. That said, there is still a role for formula. Once upon a time, if a new mother was not able produce milk, there were several choices – a wet nurse (for the wealthy only), gruel (not very nutritious) or death for the infant (and gruel was in most instances a death sentence anyway).

We highlight this submission because, yet again, here we have a dogmatic one-issue pontificator telling the third world what to do, to the detriment of the poor. Like DDT or GMOs, there are potential huge benefits associated with new products and technology for the world’s poor. It is both typical and patronising to have a do-gooder who has never known the pain of having a child die through want of milk or a milk substitute to write this stuff.

We note that this submission also argued that breast feeding was the answer to: enhancing productivity, population, sustainability, climate change and water, future directions for rural industries and rural communities and options for the future of indigenous Australia, to name a few. It probably cures malaria too.

Back of the envelope

• Cost: not sure, but expect it to ne high for the developing world
• Expected impact on average earnings: $0
• Expected impact on economic growth: none
• Impact on incentives: none
• Impact on government spending: mercifully minimal
• Impact on taxation: none
• Winners: one-issue zealots
• Losers: any woman who has problems breast feeding her young

Foreign affairs submission 2419 (Lone Ranger) 10:57 PM

Another foreign policy excerpt from Carpet Baggers, Nutjobs and happy Clappers"

Proposal for the 2020 joint Summer Olympic Games and Universal Exposition at Uluru…..'Expo2020lympiad Uluru'

A Joint Summer Games Olympiad and Universal Exposition…..and at a custom-built site, city, at the foot of Uluru, a third millennium earth eco-friendly site comprising of 2,000 citizens from every nation on earth, a global city-state of some 400,000 to 600,000 persons in a brave, new world 20-year experiment in governance, economics, politics, society, and the environment.

This is the major event to end all major events. Alice Springs airport will need to be expanded to cope with the “hordes” of visitors expected for this extravaganza. And not just a one off event: - an entire city with no economic purpose, and potentially no water, in the middle of the desert!

If this sounds too good to be true – we can assure you that it is. There is a good reason why there is currently not even a township at the foot of Uluru – there is nothing there except a large rock. The history of the world is full of utopian dreamers building cities which, with no real economic purpose, sucking in huge resources before declining and being abandoned – ever been to Canberra? In any case, the indigenous owners, who presumably make a very nice living creaming funds off tourists to the site, may object to a city of 400-600,000 in their backyard.

The “brave, new world” isn’t the right description for us – we thought 1984 was closer to the mark. A “global city state” implies that it will be a sovereign entity. It is one thing to use the Olympic Games as an excuse to smarten up a dumpy part of town, but quite another to then use the Olympic Village as the starting point for a new country.

So in summary, we have here a major new city with no economic raison d’être and probably no water, literally thousands of miles away from the nearest large city. Not only that, but its residents, whose key basis for selection to live at this site would be their nationality, would potentially have nothing in common – not even a common language. Sounds like a recipe for a massive white elephant, which unfortunately would have to be footed by the Australian taxpayer. There have been some examples of cosmopolitan city states being incredibly successful – but this one, unfortunately, would be no Singapore.

The back of the envelope

• Cost: $500 billion. Truthfully, we have no idea - just something with a lot of zeros
• Expected impact on average earnings: negative $500 billion. Again, we have no idea – just something with at least as many zeros
• Expected impact on economic growth: Unbelievably negative
• Impact on incentives: None that are positive, unless there is some incentive in parcelling out our national territory to establish small basket case countries
• Impact on government spending: Lots and lots
• Winners: Olympic Village project managers
• Losers: The people that dreamt this one up

Foreign affairs submission 2261 (Lone Ranger) 10:07 PM

This is an excerpt from the book that never was "Carpet Baggers, Nutjobs and Happy Clappers".

10% tax on both sides of all international transactions and printing of an internationally transferable currency, to bring in $2 trillion per year to fund international military [NATO] aid [United Nations], Including a small amount of welfare provided to any person in the world becoming sterile by injection [Gonex].

A 10 per cent tax on both sides of an international transaction is what we call (a) tariffs for the importing country and (b) export taxes for the exporting country. The effect of these taxes would be to decrease international trade and make imported goods more expensive, thereby making all people in all countries worse off.

This would be problematic, as we would need every cent we could get to pay for the “$2 trillion per year to fund international military [NATO] aid [United Nations]”. $2 trillion would buy a lot of international armed forces. But what would they do? Who would the enemy be? Some of us are still quite attached to the idea that the military is answerable to, and takes orders from, elected Governments, at least in democratic nations. Last time we checked, NATO was not a democratic nation state. Who would control it? We suspect that the Chinese may be less than enthusiastic about NATO control over a world army partly funded by their own taxes.

In any case, “international armies” have not exactly got a great track record. Heard of the UN army raping the unfortunate women of Darfur? Is that what our $2 trillion would pay for? What about the UN “peace keeping mission” (we use the term loosely) in Bosnia? The Bosnians would have been better off arming themselves with pitch forks than relying on the UN.

And where did the sterilisation comment come from? Who funds the “small welfare payment”? If I have 10 kids and then get sterilised, do I get a payment? Half the nations on earth now have below replacement fertility – we should be offering to pay anyone who will churn out a kid or two, not sterilise them. Still, if sterilisation is going to attract a payment, it is a shame that the mother of this submission’s author did not think of this option prior to having children.

Back of the envelope:

• Cost: $2 trillion (at a minimum). Pricey, given that this is around 2.5 times the size of Australia’s GDP
• Expected impact on average earnings: Negative
• Expected impact on economic growth: Complete disaster
• Impact on incentives: Negative
• Impact on government spending: We would need to print money 24/7
• Impact on taxation: See all of the above
• Winners: A handful of meglomaniacs at NATO
• Losers: Every man, women and child living in Australia

Introduction to "Australia's future in the world" - submissions from Australia 2020 (Lone Ranger) 9:21 PM

I wrote this last year, but much of its is still current. I suspect now with the election of president-prophet-godhead Obama, the anti-americanism would be somewhat toned down if 2020 was held today. I will post some reviews of individual submisison shortly.

Australia's future in the world

While there are exceptions, many of the submissions about Australia’s future in the world were variations of a series of common themes:

More power to multilateral institutions - there is a touchingly naïve but also worrying assumption in most submissions that world peace will be realised and global poverty ended simply by giving more power to the United Nations and other multilateral organisations. It is as if the prosperity and freedom we have known is somehow unrelated to the nation State, or to the culture and values of the West. The fact that nearly everything the UN has ever tried has ended in failure is irrelevant – we just have not given enough of our money and sovereignty over to this unelected world body. Even worse is the assumption that the UN is somehow a superior way of promoting human rights. In 2009, the UN Human Rights Council will include paragons of freedom such as China, Cuba, Russia and Saudi Arabia, which represent some of the most brutal, arbitrary and undemocratic regimes on earth – do we really want to entrust future freedoms to nations such as these?

But perhaps that is the point – the people that promote human rights are quite happy to trample over your rights and mine if it gets in the way of achieving what they want.

Another key theme is that Australia should give lots more overseas aid. Where this money is to come from is never specified, nor how it would be used, other than motherhood statements around “eliminating poverty” or “education” or “feeding the poor”. Never mind that welfare dependency – whether at an individual or national level – is equally crippling to the capacity to look after oneself. Never mind that Australian taxpayers would impoverish themselves sending money to all and sundry overseas. Never mind that hundreds of billions of dollars of global assistance have been poured into the third world for decades with no effect on production, productivity and freedom.

One of the most bizarre themes is the need for Australians to learn foreign languages, thus promoting world peace. This reasoning is hopelessly misguided – countries will seek to promote their national interests, regardless of how fluent their citizens are in the languages of others. After all, even if, by learning a foreign language you “understand” foreigners better, it does not automatically follow that you will therefore agree with their perspectives. Even if I was to learn Farsi, wI dount that I would support the nuking of Israel, for instance.

Of course, given the leanings of most submission authors, there was a strong current of anti-americanism. Actually, anti-americanism doesn’t quite describe the level of contempt in some submissions. Neither Americans nor the US Government are perfect – far from it – but the current American led global order has been far more benign than many others. Even if you disagree with this statement, the idea that somehow China would provide more warm, fuzzy international leadership than the US is delusional.

To sum up, the level of naivety about international relations and the true drivers of national interest are both amusing and scary. The desire for more international Government, more foreign aid, more bureaucracy was typical.