It is fairly common these days to hear complaints about the "administrative state". Most of the complaints emanate out of the United States. The phrase refers to the burgeoning, ever growing list of rules and regulations ceaselessly promulgated by government agencies with which citizens must comply.
In New Zealand, this is not such a problem. At least not these days. It was once the case, however. There were days, particularly in the 1960's--when our economy and society was more controlled by Wellington than was the case in Eastern Europe Soviet bloc states. But New Zealand broke all that down when Roger Douglas pronounced that "there had to be a better way". In addition, there is a wonderful advantage in being in a small country. Our pollies, rulers, and bureaucrats are never far away. They are accessible. When the state does stupid things, or when bureaucracy runs amok, change and correction is possible. But this is a function more of size and a small population, than our people being wedded to limited government and maximum freedom.
Things are so much worse in the United States. The image of Jabba the Hutt, that gargantuan slug sitting upon and squashing those in his presence is not an inappropriate metaphor in the case of "the land of the free and the home of the brave."
The problem goes back to the nineteen sixties. The US Supreme Court had made a momentous ruling (the Schechter case, 1935) in which it stated that Congress could not delegate legislative and judicial powers to an agency it had created, the National Recovery Agency. But it subsequently forgot about this ruling, and began to allow Congress to delegate its law-making powers to its own bureaucratic agencies.
Whanganui River has all the rights of a person under a Treaty of Waitangi settlement passed into law today.
A neighbour came over for tea last week. She became agitated and I asked what was wrong. She was furious with our lawn. It was uneven and she had almost fallen. I apologised for my poor gardening but she insisted it had nothing to do with me. Her dispute was with the ground, which she regarded as unforgivably derelict.
My neighbour is as mad as Dr Evil's father, who would "accuse chestnuts of being lazy". Thank God she doesn't have an important job, like being an MP. Or maybe she does. Last week, our MPs unanimously passed a law declaring that the Whanganui River has all "the rights, duties and liabilities of a legal person".
Chris Finlayson, the Attorney-General, acknowledges that "some people will say it's pretty strange to give a natural resource a legal personality, but it's no stranger than family trusts, or companies, or incorporated societies".
Legal persons are of two kinds: we humans, known in law as "natural persons", and persons that are legal fictions, such as companies and countries. These fictional people solve legal problems that can arise when natural people act in groups.
On Thursday at CPAC, Trump administration chief strategist Steve Bannon outlined what he called the “three verticals” of the Trump administration, providing in essence a broad sketch of Trumpism. The first he called “national security and sovereignty.” The second was “economic nationalism.” The third was “the deconstruction of the administrative state.”
While conservatives need to wait and see what the administration means when it talks about national security and sovereignty and should oppose Bernie Sanders–like efforts to restrict the free market, we should fully embrace the administration’s expressed goal of dismantling the administrative state. Done correctly, it could be Trump’s most lasting (and valuable) legacy.
At present, the vast and bloated executive branch — existing through its alphabet soup of agencies such as the EPA, IRS, DOE, ATF, and the like — intrudes into virtually every aspect of American life. It regulates your workplace, your home, your car, and your kids’ school. It’s staffed by legions of bureaucrats who enjoy job security that private-sector employees can only dream of, and it’s granted legal authority by the Supreme Court to interpret its own governing statutes and expand the scope of its own authority. In its own spheres of influence, it often acts as legislator, prosecutor, and judge.
The following Media Release has been put out by the NZ Government:
Regulatory Reform Minister Steven Joyce and Parliamentary Under-Secretary to the Minister for Regulatory Reform, David Seymour have today introduced a bill which will get rid of 124 redundant laws from New Zealand’s legislation.
The Statutes Repeal Bill will remove 124 pieces of legislation, and parts of eight other Acts.
“Originally we had 120 laws slated for removal. That number has now increased to 124. Overall, through this bill the number of public Acts on the New Zealand law books will reduce by more than 10 per cent,” Mr Joyce says.
“An Exposure Draft was released for an eight week public consultation period, during that time 16 submissions were received proposing that various pieces of legislation were added or removed from the Bill.”
The four additional Acts found suitable for repeal include Finance Act 1991, New Zealand Stock Exchange Restructuring Act 2002, Statutes Amendment Act 1943, and Statutes Amendment Act 1944.
Bankruptcy Alley a 'shocking commentary' on NZ--Debt Commissioner
Matthew Theunissen is a reporter for the Herald on Sunday. (This piece documents another attempt by the Commentariat--of which we are an important part--to argue for more state intrusion to protect people from themselves. Our reporters are on task and remain zealously committed to seeing it done. At the Herald, we are proud to be making a difference.)
Liam Joyce and Alex Wood with their lunch from Burger Fuel, Lincoln Road. Photo / Michael Craig. Smart Kiwis Avoiding the Debt Trap of Fine Dining.
A NZ Debt Commissioner has dubbed a 3km stretch of road featuring more than 30 expensive fine dining restaurants as "Bankruptcy Alley". In Central Auckland, the Viaduct precinct, Vulcan Lane and O'Connell Street offers an astonishing 33 high priced restaurants, 30 of which will force patrons into even more credit card debt, such is the exorbitant cost of their meals. The remaining three have only two items on the menu, so the bankruptcy risk is not as great.
Debt Commissioner, David Impecunious described it as a "shocking commentary on our exorbitant, gratuitously wasteful, first-world country". "I
don't think it would be going too far to call it Bankruptcy Alley -
call it what it is. If it's going to be contributing to people's increased use of credit card debt, it's going to cause more financial stress, leading to more heart
attacks and strokes--and even suicides Yes, let's call it for what it is."
He said it was compounding an environment where being in debt was the norm.
The Law of God sets us free. The law of man crushes us into the gulag. What we mean by this is that the respective fruits of the Law of God versus the law of man are radically different. The law of man--at least as we know it in the West--is the law of soft-despotism. The State adds endless rules and regulations to take more and more control of our lives.
There are examples and illustrations on every hand, but here is one more, to illustrate the point yet again. In the UK, government schools have been granted the authority to search pupils' lunch boxes to ensure the food provided for them by their parents complies with state rules, regulations, and mandates. So much for the laws of privacy.
The administrative state is one which busies itself organising the lives of its citizens. Granted, there must be a certain body of administrative law. Road rules, which prevent accidents, are an excellent example. But more and more secular Western states seek to administer the lives of their citizens by means of endless administrative regulations.
Breaches of administrative law result in fines and eventual imprisonment. Note that under administrative law the "criminal" might not have done any actual harm to his neighbour's life or property. His "crime" was that he transgressed an administrative law which had been promulgated to prevent any harm to his neighbour in the first place. Administrative law is what we call "cocoon" law. It is preventative in nature and intent. But the outcome is a progressive statist tyranny, where, in the end, the only part of the human anatomy not regulated by government rules, regulations, and statutes is the rear end. For every other human function and activity there are bureaucratically promulgated rules and regulations.
According to the national anthem of the United States that country is the "land of the free and the home of the brave". But well over one hundred and fifty years ago, the United States decided that Christendom was dead, and the Age of Man was just beginning. The moot question at the time was whether there could be a secular society (with the odd, occasional reference to a Deity) which would be able to maintain the freedom from that tyranny which was the casus belli of the War of Independence.
Now the question is no longer moot. It has become obvious that when a society believes there is no higher power than man himself, collective man (the state) will construct an elaborate, comprehensive tyranny by which it will crush the citizens. Now, more than ever before, it is apt to call Americans not citizens, but subjects. The United States is no longer the "land of the free".
George Will addresses this reality in a piece published in National Review Online. He calls for the fixing of a tyranny. He has no clear solutions about how to go about dismantling this tyranny, beyond a call for it to be done. Banning the national anthem as a lie might be a startlingly good start.
The benighted Resource Management Act ("RMA") was sold to the electorate as a way to achieve economic growth in a manner consistent with responsible resource management. It has proved to be nothing of the kind. As so many legislative overreaches demonstrate, the RMA does the exact opposite to its stated intent. It has been used to stop development in its tracks while a very expensive, litigious court process inches forward, adding costs by the day.
At root, the RMA undermines property rights. What is mine is no longer mine; it is owned substantially not by the legal owner, but the "community". Others now have a property right that warrants them (via the courts) deciding when and how one's property may be deployed, exploited, and used.
Duncan Garner, writing in Stuff, excoriates the RMA, writing up just one case. It involves an RMA-meddling local council. The council is unnamed. That's deliberately done (see below). One presumes the reporting is accurate.
