Tuesday, April 5, 2011

The Problem with the Canadian Action Party

People who have taken the time to educate themselves about money are usually shocked to learn that our entire monetary system is dependent on debt. Unfortunately, their analysis stops there. If they explored the money issue further and tried to bring the current system to its logical conclusion they'd probably find themselves opposing all forms of State coercion.

Instead, these educated people have clung to their socialist roots and prescribed a band-aid solution to Canada's serious problems. The Canadian Action Party is the political arm of this movement, call it the “money as debt” or "anti-NAFTA" crowd. These people are absolutely correct about all of Canada's current issues and problems but fail to grasp basic economics – and therefore – fail at any attempt to offer logical solutions.



There are five pillars to the Canadian Action Party (CAP), and in this post I plan on dealing with these pillars. There's a more detailed version of their platform on their website, and I've incorporated some of those proposals into this post. Before I begin however, allow me to state the CAP is not just another political party. Their work fighting against the North American Union and the Corporate State is unprecedented and much appreciated. Unfortunately I can't see their solutions creating a viable alternative. The CAP fail to recognize the responsibility of the State in bringing about this form of fascism. They believe the State can be used for good, whereas the reality is, is that the State is our enemy.

1. Monetary Control - The use of our Bank of Canada in the best interest of all Canadians and to maintain and enhance sovereignty.

The CAP is one hundred percent correct in their critique of our central bank. Their analysis of the current problems with central banking, fractional reserve banking and other monetary matters is suburb and their detailed platform offers some great statistics. The problem is their solution.

Unlike the Fed south of the border, which is owned by a cartel of bankers, the BoC is owned by the Canadian government. This is where the proposed solutions start to fall apart. The CAP believe that because the Bank is nationalized, it is owned by Canadians themselves. This rests on the fallacy that "we" are the government. Perhaps I should let Murray Rothbard explain:

With the rise of democracy, the identification of the State with society has been redoubled, until it is common to hear sentiments expressed which violate virtually every tenet of reason and common sense such as, "we are the government." The useful collective term "we" has enabled an ideological camouflage to be thrown over the reality of political life. If "we are the government," then anything a government does to an individual is not only just and untyrannical but also "voluntary" on the part of the individual concerned. If the government has incurred a huge public debt which must be paid by taxing one group for the benefit of another, this reality of burden is obscured by saying that "we owe it to ourselves"; if the government conscripts a man, or throws him into jail for dissident opinion, then he is "doing it to himself" and, therefore, nothing untoward has occurred. Under this reasoning, any Jews murdered by the Nazi government were not murdered; instead, they must have "committed suicide," since they were the government (which was democratically chosen), and, therefore, anything the government did to them was voluntary on their part. One would not think it necessary to belabor this point, and yet the overwhelming bulk of the people hold this fallacy to a greater or lesser degree.


Ignoring this truth, the CAP believe that the Bank of Canada can be used to benefit Canadians by printing fiat money without debt or interest. They believe that putting politicians in charge of the central bank to fund various social services will bring about prosperity. None of this will work.

History has shown us time and time again that fiat money is a failed system. It almost always leads to runaway inflation and destroys the prosperity of the people. Although the CAP advocate moving away from debt-based monetary creation, they don't address the monopolized nature of our current monetary system. Instead of returning to private competing currencies, the CAP advocate the same monopolized system of money creation minus the debt and compound interest.

Furthermore, the CAP fail to grasp the economic benefits of free banking. They believe all banks and bank-like institutions should hold statutory reserves with the Bank of Canada.

Because the CAP would be inflating to pay for our bloated welfare state, taxes could be lowered. At least that's how the CAP describes it. They're campaigning on lower income and property taxes yet they fail to realize that an income tax is slavery once-removed and a property tax means there ain't no such thing as private property (TANSTAAPP). All taxation is theft. If it is wrong for an individual to practice "wealth redistribution" than it is wrong for an institutionalized criminal class to do so as well.

Despite their excellent criticisms of our current system, the CAP's proposed solution will only speed up the process of economic destruction. Government spending, however financed, will never replace the superiority of the free market. A continued government monopoly on currency is no solution at all.

2. Sovereignty - The ability to make laws and decisions for Canadians by Canadians.

The CAP is absolutely right in calling for the abolition of NAFTA and any other agreements made to merge North America into a union with a common currency. However, they unfairly reject all free trade agreements and promote a form of economic nationalism. Trade restrictions, particularly tariffs, benefit one group of Canadians at the expense of all Canadians.

The CAP doesn't dwell on individual sovereignty, but instead applies the term to the country as a whole, blending the State and society together as one unit. By using the Bank of Canada to print money at will, the CAP supports subsidized and nationalized housing, minimum wage laws, funding to the National Arts Council and the CBC, the military, health-care, education and municipalities, to name a few.

To collectivists, these initiatives are a God-send, especially since the funding will be purely inflationary. Unfortunately economic realities will prevent the solutions the CAP are looking for. Nationalized housing will distort the market and create an underclass of subsidized Canadians. Minimum wage laws create unemployment as some people are not worth the amount the employer is coerced into paying. Funneling wealth into “national culture” (either by taxation or inflation) ignores the fascist history behind such policies. All services provided by government must go through a bureaucracy. Unless the wealth is raised voluntarily, and therefore subject to profit-and-loss economic calculation, the resulting system is inherently bureaucratic and wealth-destroying.

3. Civil and Human Rights - The restoration and fulfillment of our rights as originally intended under our Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Canadian Constitution.

While the CAP clearly sees the growing police state and the loss of our civil liberties, they're solution still involves the State. Instead of a private-law society, they advocate the same violent justice system that got us to this place.

A few highlights from their human rights pillar details a citizen committee to oversee police, military and intelligence organization abuses. While it sounds like a great idea, and it may work for a bit, this committee is easily corruptible and inevitably will be.

Instead of a necessary overhaul of our judicial system, the CAP just want to hire more judges. A Tory-like “tough-on-crime” approach to criminals, more rehabilitation programs funded by the State, and programs to bring about greater employment. Evidently, the CAP is unaware of the economic fallacies behind full employment, or employment for the sake of employment.

Other issues in their platform include a continuation of the education bubble (by offering more student loans at low interest rates), a continuation of public education for children, funding health-care through inflation, CPP overhaul (but no elimination), wealth redistribution to “eliminate poverty”, a “family policy” that includes a number of anti-capitalist proposals and a guaranteed income (thereby creating disincentives to work and provide for oneself).

4. Parliamentary Reform - The changes needed to bring our country to a state of complete interactive democracy, for the people, by the people.

The CAP's parliamentary reform consists of mere tinkering with our democratic process. Granted, these ideas may increase the level of democracy in Canada, but as Hoppe demonstrated in his book, democracy is the God that failed.

Essentially, democracy is a system where the majority can violate the rights of the minority. A celebration of democracy is to ignore the inherent violence of the State itself. To borrow from an excellent video, let's say Phil asks Matt for $15. The money will be for a good cause, whether it be health-care, education or whatever. Matt politely declines, preferring to keep his $15 to himself. Should Phil use force against Matt to get that $15? Surely most individuals would consider that act of violence immoral. What if a group of both Phil and Matt's best friends vote and decide: yes. Yes, Phil should use force against Matt to get that $15. Is the majority right? Or is the act still immoral?

This is the case against the State. At it's very core government is just a monopoly on violence; a coercive institution that requires payment by force. Whether or not the State is a democracy or a dictatorship, benevolent or authoritarian does not change the inherent violence of the system.

5. Environment - Water, air and soil are the basis to sustain all life forms. The Canadian Action Party will not sacrifice any of these for the sake of greed or the pursuit of profit.

The best way to protect and sustain clean water, air and soil is through profit-motive. For a party concerned with money, banking and the economy, the fact that they blame environmental problems on “greed” and “profit” rather than the government's failure to protect private property rights reveals the CAP's socialist roots.

Like the major political parties, the CAP proposes having the State divert resources toward finding alternative energy solutions to depleting oil reserves. The free market provides a rational price system to allocate scarce resources resulting in far more efficiency than bureaucratic central planning. The prospects of CAP's proposal achieving the desired effects is virtually nil. As history has shown, socialism always fails.

Most environmental problems fall under what is called the tragedy of the commons. When private property rights are not enforced or non-existent at all, people tend to treat the good as if it were unlimited. For example, the destruction of our forests is precisely because the State owns the property for the “common good.” Leasing the land to lumber companies creates disincentives for the company to reseed and replant. Because the lease is short-term, the company only has to worry about short-term profit. If they owned the land an incentive would arise to make sure the land stays profitable for years to come (i.e. replanting trees). Instead, the CAP advocates banning clear-cutting.

The same issue goes with the fishing sector. This time the CAP wants to put together a coalition of fishermen and listen to their ideas. Unless the majority of the fishermen advocate private property rights in the water, issues like overfishing will never resolve themselves. Cows represent a great example of the success of private property rights. Cows, unlike fish, have never come close to extinction.

To borrow a metaphor from Walter Block, imagine a giant bowl of soda with thirty straws. A group of children are brought in and told that this soda belongs to all of them, or rather, the soda is “commonly owned.” The kids would jump at those straws and drink themselves silly, barely pausing to take a breath. However, if instead of the giant bowl, there are thirty cans of soda and each kid gets their own can, the children would be far more conservative with their drinking. They could sip away at it at their own pace because the soda belonged to them individually.

Environmental problems involving air pollution result from a lack of enforcement of property rights. Again, using examples popularized by Walter Block, let's say your neighbour dropped a bunch of garbage on your front lawn. Obviously, you could take him to court over this blatant violation of property rights. So instead, let's say your neighbour burns his garbage and the pollution travels across your property and you breathe it in. The same violations apply, yet now you'll have a harder time trying to sue your neighbour. By refusing to protect property rights to their fullest extent, the State has created incentives for individuals to never bear the costs of pollution. Imagine how different industry would have developed if polluters had an incentive to keep pollution to a minimum.

If the CAP wants to protect the environment, their first step should be protecting private property rights and privatizing land, air and water that is currently under the “common good” clause.

Other aspects of their environmental pillar include subsidizes to farmers (that actually hurt everyone in the long-run, including the farmer), funding to various scientific studies and the creation of an electric car industry. All of which are wealth-destroying bureaucratic projects better left to the private sector, where wealth is created and consumer satisfaction is guaranteed.

A highlight of the CAP's environmental policy is the investigation of chemtrails, or airplane contrails that are producing artificial clouds that are affecting human health and changing the climate. Despite my criticisms of the CAP, I must applaud this initiative to get to the bottom of what these things really are. Unfortunately I think a citizens committee is corruptible and biased, as well any key documentation is probably held in secret by the US government. Unfortunately any solutions to chemtrails, 9/11 truth, intentional poisoning of vaccines and other issues usually considered a “conspiracy theory” will come from mass movements or revolution. Not government policy.


And that's the essence of the Canadian Action Party - influencing change by government policy. A recognition that the State and society are two very different things, and that the former is the enemy of the individual is missing from the CAP's platform. Since all of their solutions revolve around printing fiat money or taxation (i.e. theft), it's hard to see how their solutions are solutions at all. Granted, they oppose the Corporatocracy, but they continue to admire democracy and government. Until they grasp basic economics and bring government to its logical conclusion, their policies will continue to be just another form of State coercion and the denial of individual sovereignty.

6 comments:

  1. Have you read any Ostrom, she won a Nobel award for her work on the tragedy of the commons, take a look!

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  2. I've heard of her, but never read her. I'll check her out, thanks!

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  3. MISANDRY.March 26,2012 No political party anywhere in the industrialized west will strongly address the reality about the too many disenfranchised men.
    And it is because of misandry in the media, government policy and the family court that Canadian men are increasingly becoming emasculated so that the few men in power can have complete control.
    The feminist agenda is the most powerful tool used by the most powerful men to mislead women and destroy any male competition resulting in a terrible gender divide that is the principal cause of the increase of family breakdown, young males in prison, sexually transmitted disease, economic hardship, loneliness and isolation.
    New immigrants who tend to work as family units enjoy the benefits of living in Canada and notice the weakness in our society where men and women are in constant and direct competition with each other.
    The too many effeminate men and hyper-masculine women in Canada are a product of the broader public's acceptance of gender bending, a behaviour that is viewed by most newcomers as a result of cultural manifestations through social engineering that is for the most part acquired and not inherent.
    If misogyny is wrong then so should misandry be. Misandry, a word of several thousand years is rare in most dictionaries of today, computer programs and human rights based literature.
    Though true in some cases, rhetoric- poisonous rhetoric...“For thousands of years women have been abused by men. All men? How infantile! Why not just say, “Man Bad-Woman Good." In all fairness, let us not then forget; “for thousands of year’s men have been the sole providers of large families, victims of the battle field and principal targets of oppressive governments.
    In conclusion; if one in one thousand men will jump in front of a bullet to save a woman, how many women are capable of the same?
    johnelis@ymail.com

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  4. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  5. An interesting misunderstanding of the Canadian Action Party Caleb, very interesting.

    It seems to me that almost all your arguments are based on the present politicians in Canada, who do not in anyway represent those who foolishly elected them believing that they - or their puppet leader - would be better than the previous puppet(s). Of course this is a fallacy because the leader of the winning, or losing, parties will demand total loyalty to their masters, and will not tolerate any "free voting".
    So what if that was to change? Do you dare to consider that?

    You mention inflation as being the inevitable result of using the Bank of Canada, well how much inflation was there between 1939 and 1074? How did it compare with those countries under the control of the IMF and eventually the BIS?
    Basel 1,11 ands 111 are banking agreements not country to country agreements, and Gerald Bouey had no mandate to sign us - or the BOC - to any of them.
    If socialism means promoting all people to be independent of governmental handouts then we are guilty. In our eyes all people are equal and deserve equal treatment both by governments and the courts.

    The "free market" has not and will not do what you suggest it could and should simply because it doesn't need to. For example, the price of oil fell to about $40 a barrel and the price at the Victoria pumps went down about 3c per liter...It is now back to where it was when oil was over $100 per barrel. How does that indicate to you that the free market even exists never mind being of any value to the ordinary consumer.

    Parliamentary reform will never happen as long as we elect a leader of a party rather than his/her opposition instead of an MP who will not be bound by party dictates. That is what we want to change, and that is why Trudeau is too scared to alter the election process. Your whole argument seems to be based on the current model of politicians who are, generally, useless slaves to their party leader and his/her masters.

    To throw some quotes at you Caleb:
    Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
    Albert Einstein

    However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.
    Winston Churchill

    “Once a nation parts with the control of its currency and credit, it matters not who makes the nation’s laws. Usury, once in control, will wreck any nation.
    Until the control of the issue of currency and credit is restored to government and recognized as its most sacred responsibility, all talk of Sovereignty of parliament and of democracy is futile”
    William Lyon MacKenzie King

    "Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes it's laws" — Mayer Amschel Bauer Rothschild

    This is fun even if it falls on deaf ears or eyes, and our ideas at CAP are to be positive not negative.

    Jeremy Arney

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    1. Yeahhh! Jeremy. We don't tell history well, and political/social thought hardly at all. Now let's see... how can I get all that on my i-phone? I can't? Then I'll ignore it? I wonder what is on Netflix?

      David M Foster

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