A couple of decades ago, following Sun Tzu's advice to keep your friends close but your enemies closer, I subscribed to The Free Radical. The unofficial party rag of Lindsay Perigo's Libertarianz.
One of the most important fantasies they spread, at every opportunity, was that taxation was theft from the taxpayer. Necessary perhaps to maintain the property protection apparatus (cops, courts, prisons and the military), but to be minimised whatever the consequences.
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This notion of taxation as theft was a fringe idea, even among conservatives. Most people understood that tax is the price we pay to live in a functioning society, not a Mad Max style war of all against all. At least in the absence of a direct democratic system, where resources are fairly distributed, and communities can meet their needs without state coordination.
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Now this fringe idea of taxation as theft is being stated as fact by the Nats finance minister, Nicky NoBoats.
This demonstrates the degree to which the carpetbaggers who left Labour to found ACT have now colonised the Nats. Which is why I routinely refer to them as the NatACTs.
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"I think we would be better served if there were more 10/20/30 minute long form interviews (but fewer of them) that did go into depth. Our politicians 'front up' all the time, but have developed skills in not saying anything."
#MatthewHooten, 2026
Hmm. I'm finding myself agreeing with with Hooten again. Do I need a slap to snap me out of it?
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#PoliticalReporting #NewsMedia #BradburyGroup #WaateaNews #Rova #podcasts #NZPolitics #politics
"I don't think that our economy is 'tanking', I think what it's been is just this slow decline, where neither of the main parties - nor even many of the small ones - are prepared to confront that slow decline."
#MatthewHooten, 2026
Both can be true at once. It's tanking because we're reaching the end of our reserve tank (social capital). After decades of governments both blue and red failing to refill the main tank (ie public infrastructure and social services).
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"To confront the fact that we're no longer a wealthy country."
#MatthewHooten, 2026
I've commented on this bullshit talking point before. It's just an excuse for corporatist governments to avoid solving the problem, with policies to stop and reverse the ongoing concentration of wealth.
None of our primary wealth has left the country. It's just been hoarded and mismanaged by a few hundred oligarchs and their families.
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On this bit though, I'm back to agreeing enthusiastically;
"And that there has to be some type of break from the past, and there has to be some radical change in how we govern ourselves ..."
#MatthewHooten, 2026
I imagine Hooten and I have wildly different ideas about what radical change would look like. But maybe there's an alternative to duking it out in an adversarial system, heavily distorted as it's become by a range of outside influences.
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Strypey