Daring to question the Holocaust (and free speech)

The most interesting views are often the views that take courage to express. This is because the people who express them are likely to have questioning minds, serious interest, feel that what they have to say is important, and most notably they are expressing a view that, for all we may know, could be representative of a far more broad albeit hidden opinion.

Virtually by definition, an opinion that takes courage to express is a suppressed opinion. In principle, no honest viewpoint that is objective and constructive should take courage to express. It should be honoured on the grounds of its intent alone, regardless of whether or not it is technically right of wrong.

But we have yet to reach that perfect world, of course. Academia used to provide a safe place for free speech, but that is no more. Money and politics has the final say in nearly every modern institution.

In today's world, you can (and will) be slandered or even imprisoned for expressing certain opinions. And apparently, people's feelings can count for more than the truth, or more specifically the truth of someone's argument.

It is very sad - and wrong. If for example a Jewish man is offended by someone like David Irving's (a prior celebrated English historian, on German history) claim that the holocaust was grossly exaggerated, then all that the Jewish man should need to do is turn down the invitation to hear David Irving out. But of course it's no longer that simple.

If being offended is good enough to shut someone down, then that of course is a dangerous standard. We may go to our polling booths with no idea of what we don't know, because we weren't allowed to be told, because someone was too offended to let us hear about it.

---------------------------------------------------------

Okay. In the name of declaring my right to express an interesting view, without some dickhead calling me a Nazi, I would like to suggest a hypothesis on what could be closer to the real holocaust story. If you feel you might somehow be offended then please do not read on. As follows:

Adolf Hitler and his friends came to the conclusion that the rich Jewish elite were to blame for Germany losing the first world war, due to the Jews strategic financing of both sides of the war (or something like that). Due to deep psychological war trauma from the horrors of world war one, this spilled over to a general contempt for Jews (emotional scapegoating), which was in turn promoted to the German people via the ruling Nazi party.

Because the German people, and Nazi's, were not actually psychotic they did not believe in killing Jews indiscriminately, as a genocide. They simply wanted to kick the "trouble makers" out of Germany.

Hence, rather than putting Jews on trains, and then filling those trains with carbon monoxide so as to kill them efficiently, and then dispose of them in mass graves beside the railway line, they instead chose to put them in holding pens called concentration camps - to be relocated later, when possible. That was the "final solution".

Concentration camps were (and are) terrible places for contagious disease as you have many people living very close, and the typhus mite in particular was a major threat at the time. So on immediate arrival to the camps, the Jews were stripped, shaved, and showered. Their old clothes were burnt. The typhus mite had to be removed - totally. For later political reasons, this act of obvious compassion was presented as degradation.

But alas, in world war 2 there was siege warfare. Supply lines of food were being constantly devastated, and there were starvations happening on both the allied and German sides of the war. Naturally the Jews, then living in concentration camps, were the least respected so were the last to receive the limited food rations. The Jews starved first. Starving them was not Germany's first intent, but someone had to go without and so it was the Jews. The Germans also operated periodic cullings of the Jews via gas chambers, as it was ultimately more humane than having them painfully starve.

Ends.

Is that true? To a degree it might be. Many researchers have spoken roughly along these lines, including obviously objective, educated people whose intent was just to get to the truth (as we can respectfully presume). They have pointed out what they see as contradictions to the official holocaust story, which has driven independent investigations and some differing conclusions.

Yet, to even ask these question and make controversial assertions to test the official story, when it does not appear entirely plausible, is to make you a Nazi sympathiser and in turn a bad person in the public eye. Pathetic. It's more realistically an evil to not let the critics be heard, by those who might wish to hear them.

We do not know if they are right or wrong - and I don't. But we have the right to know if we have slandered an entire generation of Germans, making them look like monsters, to create a possibly disingenuous moral high-ground for the victors of the war. And a war whose real objective, as some have suggested, was (basically) the installation of the Berlin wall to ensure that no third reich could become powerful enough to challenge the supremacy of the British empire.

All of that could be wrong. It doesn't matter though - it's not my real point. Personally I don't care less about the holocaust (far worse has happened to humanity). However, we have every right to ask uncomfortable questions. All honest criticism is healthy, because even if it's wrong it allows us to test what we think is right, and what is right should never be accepted on dogmatic faith.

In my view, the best reason to open the file and question the holocaust, lies in the fact that it takes so much courage to do so. And it should not. So long as the intent is clean, there is no evil or dishonour in asking sincere questions - no matter what those questions might be.

Andrew Atkin

Rescuing New Zealand from the Covid-19 economic apocalypse

1. Lockdown resistance.

Well first thing's first. The level-4 Covid-19 lockdown gives us only the initial (though sizable) economic impact. The secondary effect may ultimately be worse.

Once investors understand (or believe) that another level-4 lockdown can easily happen, anytime, sooner or later, they will be highly averse to investing in New Zealand. The perceived risks of doing so become very high.

The result? Capital investment and economic growth is instead averted to more attractive countries, such as China. New Zealand's living standard may then slowly but consistently degrade. And our welfare system, including our health system and pensions, will eventually degrade along with it.

So what is the solution?

We need to establish strong mechanisms that can increase certainty that we will, most likely, never need to enact a serious economic lockdown again. To that end, we need to focus on better early detection and fast responses to a pandemic threat.

Close a border or two - not the whole world. Facilitate rapid and targeted quarantining - not economic devastation. And make the open commitment that we will never again move to a Level 4 or 3 lockdown. Again investors need to hear that.

We can look at technology. A mandatory national civil defence app (example included here) can allow us to more effectively police ourselves, and diagnose ourselves, so that controls in the future can be more surgical and permissive as opposed to draconian and costly.

One app used in Singapore, is a system that tracks and forms a history of people you have come into contact with, when and where, using bluetooth that links to other people's phones. It has been highly successful in allowing Singapore to rapidly track and isolate where the Covid-19 virus has come from.

Developing a comprehensive app--and maybe other technologies--would be invaluable to protecting investor confidence, by reducing the threat of another economically devastating lockdown. And note, every time a lockdown happens investor confidence can only get worse.

-And finally, we should look at prevention-based public health. Strong immune systems don't tend to get sick. Good sleep, diet, non-sedentary lifestyle, sun, etc. And yes, stress is the No 1 killer. Stress and depression is toxic in itself, and it's specifically what makes people abuse themselves in the first place. We can do a lot to alleviate stress in here-and-now terms, though the permanent stress imprinted from early child abuse and neglect is a tougher nut to crack.

-------------------------------------------------------

The threat of Level-4 lockdowns is just one variable that will have a major impact on investor confidence. We already have bad policy that tells people with initiative and capital to get out of New Zealand and go elsewhere. Now is the time to reform. We are going to want all the help we can get.

2. Reduce or eliminate the minimum wage. 

This is one of the best things we can do right now. It ensures the rapid reemployment of the whole workforce, which gives us as much productivity as we can get, as soon as possible. Yes there will be a perceived (though temporary) pay-cut for some people, but it's not nearly as bad as the pay-cut from being completely unemployed. I write about this in detail here.

-Probably the best practical policy, would be for central government to hand the power to set minimum wage rates over to the regions, giving different rates for different regions. Their local unemployment levels will lead to the quick adjustment of the minimums.

-Another possibility is to facilitate a freelance society, by making it very easy for anyone to work for themselves. This would probably be the most effective option. I write on this here.

-In the middle of the Level-4 shutdown we have seen the government raise the minimum wage from $17.70 to $18.90. What can I say? This is what you do when you actually want to destroy an economy.

3. Eliminate artificial urban land rationing.

What does it mean to business, when they have to pay three times the rent on premisses than normal, and only because the cost of urban land has been deliberately inflated by a factor of ten? And on top of that, add that they have to pay their staff enough to compensate inflated residential rents.

Like with the lockdown, it incentivises people to invest elsewhere as your country is then offering a bad deal. Artificial land rationing must end. We cannot afford this decades-long foolishness anymore. I speak in more detail about this here.

Of course, it will have the effect of inducing an immediate building-boom, with a cascade of positive job growth opportunities.

The included image gives my more detailed thoughts on the potential for a modern building-boom.

4. Sharing the load.

New Zealand today has low fertility, just about replacement level, because like most western nations we've made it hard and costly to have children. Clearly we need to consider how we share the load, today?

With the economic hit from the virus especially, there's a good argument to means-test pensions so that people between the ages of, say 65 and 70, may be awarded only a partial pension if they are fit to work. This is not as harsh as it might look. By means-testing pensions you are ensuring that full pensions will be available for people when they really need them.

5. Cut regulations and company taxes as much as reasonably possible.

Over-regulation and excessive taxation always hampers investment, and ultimately degrades the tax base as well as productivity growth.

New Zealand could employ the United States' highly effective policy, where regulators must remove two regulations for every one new regulation they introduce. (It's a simple way of forcing regulators to review and remove outdated junk).

6. Drastically reform institutional education.

Research has indicated that most (not all) education on the primary and secondary-school level, is inconsequential to a child's long-term education and professional achievement. What really counts, long-term, is simply child abuse and genes. I write about this here.

Complemented with the near-costless internet, we can almost eliminate institutional schooling if we so wished, and at great savings. Somewhat informal homeschooling clubs could pick up the demand. (Also note, you win the improved pandemic resistance with smaller groups of children).

We can also save massively on tertiary education, which is not only extremely inefficient (it mostly operates like the internet never happened) but too often irrelevant. We need to stop funding vanity degrees that have no appreciable productive value to our economy. The real value in so many degrees today exists mainly to signal a given level of intelligence and discipline, to a prospective employer. I have an important video on this here.

Streamlining tertiary education also gets the young out of (worthless) education and into work sooner. So it gives us not only reduced costs, but higher productivity.

7. Driverless technology.

Waymo is testing a driverless taxi service today, without safety drivers. Soon they will obtain a proven safety record in true driverless mode, making driverless taxis widely deployable.

As much as any other country, New Zealand has an enormous amount to gain from this revolutionary technology. This is a long story but I would like to link a 5 minute video here. We need to look seriously at this new opportunity as it can do so much for New Zealand in particular.

8. Invest in working from home.

People are often surprised at how much more they can get done, with less mistakes, working from home (no parasitic distractions and it's often more socially comfortable). Obviously telecommuting is far more efficient than commuting.

To enhance this efficiency gain, we can investigate how homeworking can be facilitated better, using or developing various new technologies. Technology supporting telepresence is expanding rapidly.

-------------------------------------------------------

If we moved in my direction, New Zealand would become extremely prosperous, with or without the legacy of the Covid-19 shutdown. And prosperity means buying new and better houses for $300,000, not $600,000, and working 35 hours a week, not 55 hours a week, to pay for them.

If you think my ideas will induce vast job losses, then please understand that it does not work that way. If people are not paying for bloated education, painful work commutes, and crazy land rents, etc, then they can and will spend their money on other things. And that liberated demand leads to liberated supply - and new jobs to support that new supply. That's how economic development works and always has worked.

We should always target efficiency, especially now in this new age of the pandemic economic kill-switch that can, potentially, take countries such as New Zealand back to the third world - if governments go too crazy every time a virus hits.

My suggestions are about building real resilience - and on every level.

Andrew Atkin

-------------------------------------------------------

Further thinking: 20 - 06 - 2020:

Why stop colonisation in such an underpopulated country?

The morbid Foolishness of raising the Minimum Wage

Well the New Zealand government has just raised the minimum wage to from $17.70 to $18.90, right in the middle of the economically devastating level-4 Covid-19 shut down. But more on that later...

Raising the minimum wage looks like you're doing god's work, until you look at how markets work.

Firstly, if you're on a minimum wage and you are employed, then that means your employer is on-selling your labour for a couple of dollars more than the minimum wage. Of course, if he doesn't profit from you, he would not employ you. So take this scenario...

If your employer can employ you for $17 an hour, and on-sell your productivity for say $27 an hour, then he's doing well and making good money from you. But for how long? Others will want to move into town and compete to get some of that high-profit cheap-labour booty for themselves. So naturally, your employer soon has to compete with other employers to hold onto you. Soon, you're working for the other guy for $22 an hour, as the other guy compromised some profit to win you over and staff his business. (In time, all businesses working in competitive environments are forced to operate on tight margins).

My point? If you're employed on a minimum wage of say $17 an hour, then even without creating legal minimums you would, in good time, have been employed for $17 an hour (at least). The natural market minimum would dictate your wage, regardless.

So what do minimum wages really do?

They stop people who are say slow, disabled, low-skilled (or whatever) from selling their labour for maybe $10 an hour, for if their productivity could only justify $10 an hour to a given employer. In turn they are forced into unemployment.

So why is it that we have introduced such a foolish system of legal minimum wages, in New Zealand? Especially considering that, historically, very prosperous nations like Germany have never introduced them nor seen the need for them?

The answer of course is votes. Most people will only see the promise of wage inflation and that's as far as they will look. Milton Friedman, possibly the most internationally celebrated economist from the last century, has a good explanation as well (see the 3 minute video below).

It's noteworthy that the New Zealand Labour party is part-owned and controlled by New Zealand unions. Minimum wage laws function as a protectionist system to protect some union members from lower-paid competition, that could in turn threaten to drive down the union members' wages. Though ultimately, as I previously showed, minimum wage laws can only do that in the short term. The final result is a lose-lose for everyone. But alas, perception is politics.

In politics, what you know means nothing - what people believe means everything.

A minimum wage hike is the last thing New Zealand needs right now. We need to collapse the minimum wage, to ensure that our economy gets back to work as soon as possible, to recover from this massive debt (and recession) that the covid-19 shut-down will (and has) induced.

Further, a minimum wage makes no sense in New Zealand in any circumstance, due to the nations highly comprehensive welfare system. All we're doing is killing opportunity, especially within the regions where the market minimum falls way below the legislated minimum, in turn guaranteeing high unemployment within those low-production areas.

-Oh, there's another black twist to it. The vast majority of minimum wage earners are renters. New Zealand has a severe housing shortage, so this minimum wage increase will be handed over to the landlords in practice, as the across-the-board wage increase empowers landlords to competitivity raise rents. Hence it's not even a temporary handout to the most needy - it's a handout to landlords. Again, perception is politics. So our politicians do it anyway.