The Case Against Covid Vaccine Certificates.

One year into the coronavirus debacle and it looks like vaccine certificates are just around the corner. ‘It’s just two weeks to flatten the curve’ has mutated into various forms and has now arrived at ‘it’s just a vaccine certificate to get you into the pub’. Britons have been starved of their freedom for so long now that they are welcoming this prospect and are of the belief that ‘freedom’ means giving up part of one’s bodily autonomy to obtain certificate proof of vaccination against a virus with greater than a 99.7% survival rate.

I despair at the inability of the British public to observe the danger of vaccine certificates. Although it should come with little surprise given how readily Brits have submitted other liberties thus far. Additionally, after months of denial surrounding vaccine passports, it is the Conservative Party, the party with the purpose of conserving British values, pushing the idea. Of course, this gains unmitigated support from the media class who are all too keen to sow their narrative of fear and tighten their grasp around the British public. Keir Starmer and the Labour ‘opposition’, as with everything else, remain useless on the issue and will be there to usher the certificates in when the time comes.

Opposition to vaccine passes can be found scattered throughout the media but all attempts seem half-hearted and doused in the sentiment of someone willing to accept anything that will allow them down to the pub for a pint. The damning opposition that is needed during this defining moment in the fight between individual versus the state as hard to come by.

Vaccine certificates are a heinous attack on individual rights which must be wholeheartedly rejected, even by those who may wish to get the vaccine themselves. Vaccine certificates are simply a roundabout way of the state mandating vaccines by imposing certification requirements on basic amenities and activities, so much so that the individual’s choice is cut down to the point where they are effectively coerced into a medical procedure they may otherwise have avoided. Individuals have a right to choose and act on their own volition, free from coercion. Individuals should be free to choose whether they want to go to the cinema, the pub, the theatre, or other and should be free to do so without having to undergo a medical procedure as enforced by the state. The state is intentionally attacking these activities because they provide value; they bring happiness and cohesion amongst individuals. Without these values, life becomes so miserable and burdensome that handing over bodily autonomy to the state becomes the more appealing option.

Many cite the notion that ‘vaccine certificates are our gateway to freedom’ as if freedom means ‘endure coercion up to the point where you are left with no choice but to undergo a medical procedure still in its trial stages so you can be granted permission by the state to enjoy the pleasantries of everyday life that you enjoyed before’. Vaccine certificates are antithetical to freedom. Something that is built on a premise of coercion and diminution of choice, demanding the surrender of one’s bodily autonomy, cannot, by any means, be considered as ‘freedom’. Freedom is the barring of using force against one another, whomever the ‘other’ is. It is the fundamental requirement for you to live your life; you are an animal of the mind. To try and think whilst looking down the barrel of a gun is to stop living; it is your life in crisis. The British government have in effect pointed their gun at you and demanded your life. It is never “Just…” when force is being used against you.

Briton’s surrender to vaccine certificates sets a terrible precedent for the future. Accepting the government’s premises that vaccines and vaccines certificates are required, for a virus with over 99.7% survival rate, lays the foundations for the path to medical tyranny. Accepting these premises means the case is already made for vaccines and vaccine certificates when the next virus of the same, or greater, threat comes along, and it essentially signs the contract for repeat covid vaccinations each year. It is bewildering to see so many reciting ‘it’s just a vaccine certificate’, as if the last year of ‘it’s just two weeks to flatten the curve’ did not happen.

Vaccine certificates are proposed as digital certificates to be stored on mobile phones. This ultimately requires a centralised state database of the medical status of almost every individual in the country. This is an outright violation of privacy. It is no business whatsoever, of anyone other than the individual, and their chosen medical provider, as to whether they are vaccinated or not.

The digitalised nature of certificates raises concerns for even more sinister potentials, such as a social credit system. Many will say ‘oh that’s just a conspiracy theory. That could only happen in China, not here in the UK’. Well, rewind by just over a year and many would have said the same about state mandated lockdowns and quarantines. Now look. Nothing is off the table at this point.

Digitalised vaccine certificates can easily morph into a social credit system where behaviours are tracked and scored, and individuals may lose or gain rights or privileges as a result. In China, individual’s social behaviour can influence the rate of interest they receive on a loan, their ability to buy property, board a plane or a train, their ability to apply for certain schools or jobs and more. It is an unmitigated violation of rights, once unimaginable in the West, but quickly becoming more of a reality. Mass surveillance already exists in Britain which provides the precursory infrastructure for social credit scoring. Even if the prospect does seem unimaginable here, any advance in that direction must be unwaveringly pushed back on.

Unfortunately, there is a concerning readiness from private business to enforce the state’s covid edicts. Some may say: ‘Well, if a private business wants to request vaccine certificates for access, then they have every right to do so’. Whilst this may be true in a completely free market, it is delusional to think that in today’s context, private businesses exist as entities entirely separate from the state. In reality, the state has private businesses in a choke hold and are ready to cut off that last supply of oxygen they need at the slightest sign of non-compliance with covid hysteria. The state has done nothing but brainwash and bribe private businesses for the last year. It is naïve to think that all the arrangements and restrictions would be adopted in absence of state involvement. The requirement for vaccine certificates is no different. Those businesses who refuse to adopt vaccine certificates will be threatened with having their government grants, loans and assistance revoked.

Businesses should have the integrity to say no to vaccine certificates, and all other covid restrictions, upon reopening. Businesses supporting vaccine certificates are condoning the two-tiering of society where coercion acts to undermine individual choice regarding bodily autonomy. By requiring vaccine certificates, businesses are capitulating to the state and giving a nod of agreement that the state can float immoral, draconian orders, and businesses will partner with them to enforce them. Any business who opts to reopen with the requirement of vaccine passports is opting to reopen in partnership with the state and sanction the growth of covid authoritarianism. It is beyond the pale that any business should choose the side of their destroys over the side of their supports, their customers. Consumers who value their liberty should vote with their money accordingly and avoid patronising businesses who sanction the undermining of bodily autonomy.

There exists also a collusion between the state and large corporate interests which has led many to have their reservations regarding the vaccine. Many people are concerned that the likes of Bill Gates and Tony Blair are using the corporate power of their institutions to influence vaccine policy and uptake. Admittedly, some conspiracies regarding these two, and many other figureheads, are far ranging. But regardless of the extent to which one chooses to believe these, there is no question that such power, over such important issues, should not be delegated to these unelected sociopaths who seem so intent on controlling large swathes of populations on a global scale. Any effort to advance the power of these unelected despots should be resisted and reversed to allow as much power as possible to reside with the individual.

Yellow fever is often cited by apologisers as an example of where vaccine certificates already exist. But the two are not even comparable. Firstly, yellow fever certificates are required for travelling to places where the health situation is much more precarious, and hygiene and sanitisation standards trail those of the Britain. Yellow fever is distinctly more dangerous than covid, with a case fatality rate of up to 75%, which dwarfs covid’s case fatality rate of less than 1%. Additionally, research and experimentation into the yellow fever vaccine began at the turn of the 20^th century, including animal testing studies, before being released over 30 years later, in 1937. Since then, the vaccine has undergone many revisions and developments. It was not until 1982 that a finalised version of the vaccine, presumed clear of all contamination, was secured. [1] Contrastingly, the covid vaccine, is an mRNA ‘vaccine’, never used before on humans, developed in several months, with no animal testing and is still in trial stages for the first two years after human release. It is not surprising that many people are sceptical about getting the jab. Seeking to coerce people into taking this vaccine by stripping them of choice is truly abhorrent.

Moreover, the yellow fever vaccine certificate is a simple card, which is rather different to a digitalised certificate where individual’s health data is stored behind a QR code on a centralised database. The yellow fever card is only required when one wishes to travel internationally to countries that demand it. It is not required for domestic travel in Britain. Nor is it a requirement of meeting up with family, going down the pub with friends, seeing a show in the theatre or a music artist at a concert, as a covid vaccine certificate would be. The clear distinction is that the yellow fever vaccine requirement does not back an individual up to the wall so much that they are coerced into taking the vaccine if they wish to continue to enjoy the values of everyday life that were accessible little over a year ago. The covid vaccine certificate, on the other hand, seeks to do exactly that. It aims to reduce individual’s frame of choice so much that the trade-off of taking a vaccine against one’s own unhindered volition, is worth it.

Vaccine certificates are simply a roundabout way of mandating vaccines. They are an evil concept of coercive control which seek to target all that is valuable in life, with the aim of inducing fear and desperation, to the point where individuals are forced to make a medical decision at the point of a gun. Any promise of ‘freedom’ from something which first requires one’s submission is entirely illusory. Any promise of ‘freedom’ is not freedom at all, but instead the submission to compulsion and tyranny, which signs the contract for a repertoire of further abuses from the state and corporate power. Just as ‘it’s just two weeks to flatten the curve’ was not ‘just’ that, vaccine certificates will not ‘just’ be a means of accessing one’s favourite activities. It should be abundantly clear by now, to even the most naïve spectator, that the state cannot be trusted and giving concessions to them does not reward anything other than further abuses. This in mind, no matter how big the gun becomes, and how much the state threatens with it, individuals and business owners who value their bodily autonomy, their liberty, their freedom, must act with unmitigated integrity to reject this egregious attack on liberty, absolutely.

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[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2892770/

The F Word

Since Donald J. Trump entered the political scene, prior to his 2016 US Presidential success, the topic of ‘fascism’ has been hot on the tongue of political commentators and everyday spectators. For the last six years, Trump has been denounced by his opponents as a ‘fascist dictator’, with many of whom proclaiming him to be ‘literally Hitler’. This hyperbolic screeching has resonated tirelessly in the leftist echo chambers and has been emboldened by the leftist media class who could not, and still cannot, get Trump’s name out of their mouth.

The United Kingdom had its own embrace of the fascist label around the Brexit campaign (arguably not even a left/right position), which was enduring around the same time as Trump’s campaign. If one were to show any support for the Brexit, it was almost inevitable that one would be branded a fascist, most often by the same people who classified Trump as a fascist. Often, it became impossible to engage in any nuanced debate surrounding the merits and demerits of Brexit, as discussion would be nullified by a cry of ‘fascism’.

The embrace of the fascist labelling can be attributed to the popularisation of critical race theory. Critical race theory holds that racism is the default position in society and is present in all interactions, institutions, and phenomena; understood as ‘systemic racism’. The question of ‘was there racism present in this situation?’ is substituted for ‘how did racism play out in this situation?’. The radical left has used this to attach the label of ‘fascist’ to Western Civilisation and its many attributes such as: The enlightenment, rationalism, objectivity, logic, reason, merit, value, productivity, cultural norms, equality of opportunity and even individualism.

The rightful application of ‘fascism’ has become obfuscated by the political left and has morphed into a buzzword to be thrown at right of centre opinion, as a cheap sleight of hand to avoid nuanced debate. So, the question begs, what is fascism, really?

Fascism’s official founding is recognised as when Benito Mussolini came to power in Italy, in 1922. Most succinctly it can be understood as: ‘the system of government that cartelizes the private sector, centrally plans the economy to subsidize producers, exalts the police state as the source of order, denies fundamental rights and liberties to individuals, and makes the executive state the unlimited master of society.’[1]

Generally, fascism means a ‘capitalist’ economic structure that is heavily planned and controlled by an unrestrained totalitarian. The state assumes the responsibility of making the economy work to its ‘full capacity’ for the benefit of society. Private property exists, but in name only, as the authoritarian government is the ultimate arbiter over its function; over the allocation of resources, production, labour, spending etc. This control is exercised by organising the economy on a ‘syndicalist’ model whereby the state forms producing groups by craft and professional categories. The intention is for government to sustain economic life through gargantuan spending and borrowing, running massive deficits to finance public services and infrastructure. Militarism is a major beneficiary of the monumental spending, used as a means of employing the masses, pursuing imperialism and importantly, suppressing any dissenting action or opinions to the authoritarian regime.[2]

‘Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of the state and corporate power.’

– Benito Mussolini

Fascism is routinely said to be a ‘right wing’ political philosophy, but this is misleading and assumes a false dichotomy of ‘left’ and ‘right’. To attribute fascism solely to ‘left’ or ‘right’ is to negate fascism’s defining characteristic: collectivism. Whether it is Fascism, Nazism, Communism or Socialism, collectivism serves as the murderous common denominator which demands the subjugation of the individual. Many on the left like to glaze over this reality and hold that fascism is a right-wing ideology as a tool to silence debate. However, this negates the expectation of the individual to serve and sacrifice for the overarching collective which is present in all these regimes. Moreover, Mussolini was once himself a Marxist, and many Italian Fascists came from socialist movements, which helped to set the collectivist undertones of fascism.  

‘All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state’

– Benito Mussolini

The obfuscation of what fascism is – collectivism – and emphasis on making it an issue between left and right or using it as a phrase to label anything one disapproves of, ignores where fascistic tendencies present themselves today. Today’s socioeconomic environment is wrought with fascistic behaviours which are regularly missed as a result of the obfuscation.

Evidence of fascism is most obvious today in the economy. State intervention means small businesses increasingly operate on the premise of ‘ownership without control’ and collusion between the state and big business grows greater by the day. The past year of lockdowns has brought the UK eerily close to a fascistic state as small businesses have lost their autonomy underneath the weight of the state boot. The state, not the property owner, is now the one who dictates the terms of when and how small business can operate. The small business owners may still be the owner on paper, but it is the state who is deciding when they can open, how long for, how they must have their business laid out, what precautions they must take, what activities can be permitted, how many people can be let in and so on. The small business owner owns only the deeds to his property whilst the state has become the ultimate autarky over the disposal of its goods and services.

Conversely, big businesses have prospered greatly during lockdowns as they operate largely unaffected, receiving higher demand than normal, whilst their smaller competitors are crushed by the state. Big business has been working tirelessly to repeat the state’s narrative in a bid to perpetuate lockdowns and the artificial demand they receive as a result. Moreover, a network of cronyism and conflicts of interests can be drawn between the state and those private businesses awarded the contracts for vaccines, test and trace, PPE and more. There has never been a more persistent and obvious example of the state meddling with the economy in such a way as to starve the little guy and fatten the big guy. As Rand put it, this fascistic arrangement is ‘socialism for big business’. Ironically, those who scream about the ‘rich getting richer’ and the ‘poor getting poorer’ have done nothing but champion the lockdown policies which breed this corruption and concentration of wealth.

This fascistic control of private property has been progressing insidiously for decades and lockdowns have only acted to advance its hold. The tilt towards fascism is perpetuated by the mixed economy which tries to mix two contradictory elements: statism and freedom. The state exists as a third party in the economy that can be pressured, lobbied, and paid off to protect and grant special privileges. With each problem the state aims to fix, it creates another and with each control, regulation and quota, the ability of the private individual to control his property as he sees fit is stripped, bit by bit. It should come as no surprise that it is big business that favours this economic arrangement as they are the ones who can lobby the state for privileges that favour them and scoop up the market share of the smaller businesses who gradually find it too expensive or burdensome to operate. Observe every major concentration of power and wealth of concern today and observe how this has been made possible by the regulations and privileges at the hand of the state.  

The concentrations of power that have arisen because of the state create concerns for freedom of speech and expression. A toxic cabal now exists, amongst collectivists, the media, big tech, and the government, who feel compelled by duty to fight against what is said to be ‘misinformation’ or ‘disinformation’. This collective cabal join forces to quash the speech of those deviating from the collective narrative by using a threat of force and coercion. This bears a troubling resemblance with the ‘militant journalism’ that Mussolini suggested fascism requires, where the press works in a unified bloc for ‘the Cause’. If one were to make a collection of all the media, the state propaganda, the behaviours of big tech and the lockdown fundamentalists, and consider this in conjunction with those who have been deplatformed or cancelled for questioning covid narrative, one could easily arrive at the conclusion that this cabal and its followers are working tirelessly for the state’s covid cause. The state may not be directing this intentionally, but this societal policing of thought is the preamble for state control.   

This policing of thought extends beyond just covid as the mainstream media, big tech and the collectivists operate as one to command complete control over the political and cultural narrative. Together they exist as an extremely powerful force that suppress facts, opinions and expressions that are not in line with the narrative they wish to sow. Beyond just targeting dissenters online, or having them deplatformed, this cabal works to have individual’s entire lives pulled out from underneath them for not thinking in line with the collective. Observe this in so far as individuals losing their jobs, suffering extreme defamation, and even having their access to services such as banking or flying revoked. Livelihoods now often lie at the mercy of groups who wish to collectivise thought by cracking down on ‘wrong think’. Modern day’s institutions and corporations are all fully complicit with this and provide the muscle for this fascistic control of thought. The power of this cabal now exceeds that of the state in many instances and they have no shame in using such power to crush the individual for failing to ascribe to the collective edicts. The danger of accepting this authoritative behaviour into what is supposed to be a free society requires no explanation and must be denounced at every turn.

Rarely is fascism present in the areas where it is frivolously attributed nowadays. However, fascism today is unquestionably seeping in through the desire for an expanded state. The state has an increased propensity to collude with big business, creating greater power and wealth for both, whilst stripping the small business and the individual of theirs. Just as Mussolini would have wanted, wealth and economic power is no longer earned through voluntary exchange, where individuals trade value for value. It is instead earned by the granting of special privileges by the state, who make it impossible for smaller players to compete, even to the extent of shutting them down entirely. The result is a heinous oligarchy of the state and large corporations who sit above the private individuals and pull the strings over their freedom.

A state of complete fascism has not yet been met, but the descent into such a state will continue if the proponent of this journey is not recognised for what it is: collectivism. Collectivism is the murderous creed that has legitimised the state’s participation in the economy which has led to the oligarchic structure we live under today. Like oil and water, collectivism and freedom do not mix. There is no place whatsoever for collectivism in a society that seeks liberty and freedom. Unmitigated, unapologetic individualism is the only prescription for a society that desires to be free. A culture of individualism, underpinned by self-esteem and self-ownership, with a burning desire to roll back the state and seek its divorce from the economy entirely, is the only cure for the fascistic, collectivised culture that now bears upon us.

‘In theory socialism may wish to enhance freedom, but in practice every kind of collectivism consistently carried through must produce the characteristic features which Fascism, Nazism and Communism have in common. Totalitarianism is nothing but consistent collectivism, the ruthless execution of the principle that “the whole comes before the individual” and the direction of all members of society by a single will supposed to represent the “whole.”‘

Friedrich A. Hayek

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[1] https://mises.org/library/what-fascism-1

[2] https://mises.org/library/what-fascism

The Tories Are Not the Answer, I Know.

It is no secret that political opinions amongst millennials and gen z (zoomers) lean predominantly left and their opinions of the Conservative Party are particularly unfavourable. Much of the bitter hatred for tories amongst millennials and zoomers resonates only as point scoring rhetoric that is repeated without much understanding as to why one would truly dislike tories. Many people just know that being a tory is bad and hating tories is good and thus opt with the latter.

The more conscious amongst these demographics will suggest that the tories do not represent millennials and zoomers on the issues that are most important to them. Issues such as climate change, the NHS, the housing crisis, and the economy are some examples that millennials and zoomers consider to be neglected by the tories. From this stems an irredeemable hatred for tories amongst millennials and zoomers whereby they are firmly of the opinion that the tories are not spending or helping enough.

I also fall into the millennial demographic and share a similar disdain for the Conservative Party.  However, where millennials and zoomers think the tories are not doing enough, I think they are doing too much. The tories are far too involved in the lives of individuals, the economy and spending money that does not belong to them. This is highly immoral as it necessitates force against individuals and is highly impractical because government cannot allocate resources as efficiently. Millennials and zoomers must realise that to achieve their ideals, in a manner which is moral and efficient, they must stand for less government involvement, not more.

Climate change is of highest importance to millennials and zoomers, more so than any other demographic. They believe it is pertinent to have a government that will address the climate catastrophe full on and of course, none of them believe the tories are the party for the job. However, the tories are launching a ‘Green Industrial Revolution’ backed by £12 billion in public finances and is estimated to attract three times as much from the private sector to spur a ‘green recovery’ post covid and launch the UK to net zero by 2050.

The Green Industrial Revolution is underpinned by ten main points including a ban on combustion vehicle sales by 2030, a quadrupling of offshore wind power by 2030, 30,000 hectares of trees to be planted each year, promotion of public transport and a commitment to becoming a world-leader in emission capturing technology. Further, the revolution is claimed to create 250 thousand new jobs and maintain existing green jobs. This is the largest ever green stimulus by a UK government, and ticks many of the millennial and zoomer boxes.

However, the Green Industrial Revolution should be abandoned. Firstly, on account of its immorality and secondly on its impracticality. The Green Industrial Revolution sacrifices individuals to the collective end of net zero by 2050. Tories are sanctioning the idea that the government can use its might to redirect resources to the end of net zero, regardless of how unattainable this goal is, or at what cost it comes to the individual. Individuals are forced to make sacrifices they otherwise would not, such as paying additionally for an electric vehicle that is more expensive and less efficient than their combustion vehicle, losing part of their income to pay for 30,000 hectares of trees when they would find this money better spent on their own necessities or financing 250 thousand new green jobs whilst their own job is wiped out because it is not in line with the net zero objective. Millennials and zoomers should be aware that by forcing green agendas, the individual’s framework of choice is reduced from serving their own prosperity to serving the undefined notion of the collective. Bit by bit, the individual’s ability to choose and act as a sovereign being is diminished to the unattainable, delusional end of net zero by 2050.

This immoral use of force also breeds inefficiency when it comes to resource allocation. The government is exempt from profit and loss, so when they force resources from the private sector, they allocate them to less productive and profitable ends. So, when the tories say green projects will create x amount of revenue and x number of jobs, they do not distinguish between the seen and the unseen. For the government to create x number of jobs or x amount of revenue, they must first take the resources from the private sector where they would have been allocated more efficiently. This creates costs that are not seen, leading to a net loss of value, productivity, and prosperity, not gain. Thus, for the purpose of moral grandstanding and appealing to climate alarmists, the tories are willing to sacrifice the quality of human life in the UK to a green agenda that will be of net harm to individuals. Millennials and zoomers should instead embrace the free market which efficiently allocates resources to climate concerns whilst avoiding the use of force and sacrifice of quality of life. The 90% decline in climate deaths worldwide over the past 100 years, whilst poverty has simultaneously declined by almost 80%, is a fine illustration of this.

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Affordable housing is also high on the list of demands of millennials and zoomers. The tories entertain this by pledging a £12.2 billion investment into housing, the largest public sector investment in the last decade. £9.5 billion of this funding will be dedicated to an affordable housing programme in a bid to help people to get on the housing ladder. To aid this, Johnson plans to introduce long-term mortgages for first-time buyers who would need deposits of just 5%. This coincides nicely with the Bank of England’s record low base rate of just 0.1%, essentially making government assistance for getting on the property ladder the greatest it has ever been. One would think this would earn the tory’s praises from younger voters, especially since the number of first-time buyers has almost doubled since the tories entered Downing Street in 2010.

However, this affordable housing pledge should be treated with the same contempt as the net zero pledge, for the same moral and practical reasons. The £12.2 billion investment must come from somewhere but rarely do millennials and zoomers consider where from. It is just assumed that ‘the rich’ should foot the bill and that this is the moral thing to do. But how can this possibly be moral when there is a clear initiation of force to take from one group of individuals to provide for another group of individuals? Any act that uses force as it means cannot arrive at a moral end. Sanction should not be granted to those policies that reduce individuals to ‘means’ to be sacrificed to some collectivist end, regardless of how noble or admirable those ends may seem. Millennials and zoomers must rid themselves of the repugnant idea that the rich exist to be plundered and the less fortunate have a mortgage over the lives of those in a better position. Only individuals have the right to decide whether to help those of misfortune; an organised political system has no right, whatsoever.

This moral degeneracy also does nothing to address the fact that government involvement in the housing market is precisely why many individuals find it so hard to get on the ladder. The problem stems primarily from the Bank of England’s record low interest rate of 0.1% which is kept low to finance government spending sprees. The low interest rate increases the value of future income from owning a house, leading to banks increasing their lending and borrowers taking on more debt, which in turn bids up the price of housing. This is exacerbated by stringent government regulation which strangles the supply of housing whilst demand is run up with fiscal incentives such as 5% down mortgages. Resultingly, the average house price has almost doubled, from 3.7 times the average annual salary in 1997, to almost 8 times the average annual salary in 2017.

The tories shouting about affordable housing is simply smoke and mirrors to hide the fact that government is the reason housing is so expensive in the first place. If millennials and zoomers are truly interested in making housing affordable and not just standing on empty moral platitudes, they should look to market. Ultimately, the root of the problem, the Bank of England, needs to be dissolved so interest rates (the price of money), can return to a natural rate. However, this is a monumental task, and its discussion is beyond the scope of this post. What is important to know is that a natural interest rate is crucial for the correct function of supply and demand and resource allocation. Without this crucial component, distortions will exist in the housing market which will keep affordable housing out of reach for millennials and zoomers. Beyond interest rates, liberating the housing market would reduce costs by eliminating overly stringent building regulation and supply constricting land restrictions. The pent-up demand for housing would quickly be satisfied by enterprising developers if only the government removed themselves from the market so the appropriate market conditions could exist.

Inseparably close to the heart of millennials and zoomers, as well as the UK population at large, is the sacred NHS. It is said to be a first-rate healthcare system, the UK’s proudest achievement and envied worldwide. Naturally, this makes it the area where the tories are held in the highest contempt as they are said to be the evil party who will sell it off at any opportunity after crippling it with austerity for years. This is not completely unfounded as the tory’s healthcare budget has grown at a slower average rate, 1.4%, compared to the average 3.7% since the NHS was founded. Although besides this, the tories do not do nearly a good enough job of living up to their reputation of defunding the NHS.

Healthcare spending as a % of GDP has been highest during the last ten years of tory government than any other time in history. Nominal spending has grown each year making 2020 the largest ever healthcare spend by a UK government and 2021 is set to top it again. The 2021 health budget is set at £201.7 billion. Compared to 2019’s budget of £148.8 billion, that is a staggering increase of approximately £145 million per day. Although £51.9 billion of this spending is covid-19 funding, when an extra £145 million is being spent per day, can it still be said with conviction that the tories are not spending enough on the NHS? And despite this gargantuan increase in spending, the NHS has had one of its worst years in history, as evidenced by the fact the UK is still locked down to save the sacred beast.

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The issue is not the tory’s NHS budget, but instead the fact that the NHS is almost a complete state monopoly which by its very nature is immoral and impractical. Its immorality and impracticality are bolstered by its sacred status that exempts it from being questioned or criticised without an ensuing attack from its cult like following. The sacred worship of the NHS means individuals hm are expected to sacrifice for it without question, as observed in the last year of covid hysteria. Individuals must give up their life and everything precious to save ‘our’ sacred NHS. One is considered a monster to refuse. Clearly, this is an initiation of force whereby individual’s right to life has become contingent on the capacity of the NHS.

Moreover, every tax paying individual is forced to pay for this racket, whether they use its services or not. It does not matter how poorly the NHS performs, or how much it runs over budget, the taxpayer will always be on the hook for it. This infinite sacrifice of the individual to the NHS is grounded in the collectivist notion that healthcare exists as a right. However, this cannot be true as healthcare is a service which requires action from other individuals, or a group of individuals (positive right). If one is to say they have a right to healthcare, then it must hold that they have a claim over the individuals who produce healthcare. But no individual has this claim over another. One cannot force an individual to serve their ‘right’ to healthcare as it would first involve violating the provider’s property rights (negative right); the right to their own mind, body, and labour, and who to contract it to. Sadly, the NHS is built on the premise that healthcare is a right, so it does not matter how high costs soar, or how low services plummet, the individual taxpayer is there to be thrown into the furnace to keep the flame of ‘free healthcare’ burning.

It must also be asked why millennials and zoomers are okay with the government having a monopoly on healthcare? If this were a private enterprise with a market share as dominant as the NHS, the outcries would be never ending. But somehow, when it is the government monopolising the market, it ought to be monopolised more! Yet this is precisely the reason the NHS provides such a substandard service that individuals must constantly sacrifice to. The government’s exemption from profit and loss, and the lack of competition in the marketplace, means there is no incentive for the NHS to be improved. It can exist indefinitely without the fear of losing its market share as would happen to a private provider in a free market. A free, competitive market is essential for ensuring healthcare costs decrease whilst quality rises.

The retort to this is that people would be left without healthcare in a free market as they would not be able to afford it. Whilst this is somewhat true, as there will always be some people unable to receive healthcare whatever the system, it true that the number of people unable to afford healthcare in a free market would be significantly less than the number who do not receive the healthcare they apparently have a ‘right’ to due to NHS waiting times, cancelled treatments, lack of beds, poor service, misdiagnosis and more. Moreover, a free market, unburdened by red tape and regulation, opens the potential for private charity to provide for those that are truly unable to afford their own healthcare. However, the market’s efficacy in driving down costs would keep the need for private charity low. The unhampered market, free from regulation and controls would reduce costs, allow supply to match demand and improve the quality of service through competition and innovative solutions. Millennials and zoomers may suggest that healthcare is ‘too important to be left to the market’, but the opposite proves to be true: healthcare is too important to be left to the government.

Considering what has been presented above, it can be said that the tories represent the interests of millennials and zoomers more than they are given credit for. The tories, with their inability to defend free markets morally, and their unwillingness to defend them practically, routinely pursue statist policies that use big government spending as a supposed ailment to many of the socioeconomic problems that millennials and zoomers are concerned about. This can be seen to be true when it comes to climate change, housing, the NHS, and other concerns not mentioned here. But the issue with millennials and zoomers, and the left in general, is that no amount of spending will ever be enough. They have an insatiable demand for bigger government and bigger spending with no awareness of the futility of these means.

As demonstrated above, the issue does not lie with the tories, per se, or the size of budgets, or spending. The problem is government in and of itself. Millennials and zoomers, who wish to be the great moralists of our time, must understand that government is immoral as all its actions are predicated on the use of force. Public projects such as those mentioned above and many more championed by society at large, are all egregious rights violations built on the premise of sacrificing one individual, or group of individuals to another, for some ‘greater good’. This collectivised code of ethics rots the foundations of healthy society as it substitutes voluntary exchange by individuals for forced exchange by brutes.

Government’s ability to use force to steal resources from the private market, whilst being exempt from profit and loss, leads to government creating more problems than it solves as it finds itself unable to allocate resources efficiently. As such, the government is left continuously chasing its tail, trying to solve the problems it created. All of which comes at a cost to individuals who are plundered to pay for the government’s incompetence whilst their quality of life is quietly diminished by resource misallocation.

Free markets provide a solution by rewarding what is moral and valuable whilst punishing that which is immoral and wasteful. Millennials and zoomers must turn their disdain for the tories into disdain for government in general and demanding the tories, or any other party do more and spend more. Instead, they must demand that they get out the way completely. Millennials and zoomers, if they are serious about morality and advancing human prosperity, must become unapologetic advocates of laissez-faire capitalism, the only moral and practical economic arrangement available to man.

Complacency Killed the Cowards.

The old English proverb ‘curiosity killed the cat’ is a phrase widely understood and thrown around when people dare to be more inquisitive than they ought to be. Most of us will have had this phrase positioned at us when digging too deeply into inconvenient facts or dissenting from allowable opinion. Well, in 2020, and carrying into 2021, I think the opposite can said to be true. A more accurate revision of this proverb, more befitting to the past year of covid authoritarianism, is: ‘complacency killed the cowards’.

The end of January marks the one -year anniversary of covid restrictions and the end of March will mark the one-year anniversary of lockdowns and ‘two weeks to flatten the curve’. Not only is there no sign of this assault on liberty easing, but there are instead signs of it somehow becoming more restrictive and more oppressive.  The prospect of further restrictions comes as a shock to many. How could we lockdown for ten months to ‘flatten the curve’ or ‘control the spread’ and be in a worse position than where we started?  However, for those of us who understand the state’s lust for power and its reluctance, or sheer unwillingness, to return power once granted, this comes as no surprise.

‘It is just two weeks’, ‘It is just to flatten the curve’, ‘it is just to save the NHS’, ‘it is just until the R number is below one’, ‘it is just a mask’. These year-old platitudes still echo today and have just as little meaning as they did this time last year. Yet people still buy into them. People still regurgitate them as if they really are ‘just’ what the government says they are, despite being proven time and time again that no matter how much sacrifice is made to these platitudes, there remains no end in sight.

So why on earth does the complacency remain? People simply sit back, accept oppression, and convince themselves the state will not abuse its power and will restore rights when it is ‘safe’ to do so.

In the past week alone there have been multiple instances of the police, the state’s henchmen, using powers granted to them under the Coronavirus Act 2020 to charge and arrest people participating in harmless activities that are now considered offences. In Aberdeen, Scotland a disturbing video circulated where police forced entry into a family home, against the will of the property owner and proceeded to tackle the owner and her teenage daughter to the ground. Other footage appeared from Bournemouth, England where two women were arrested by groups of officers for walking along the beach front. Additionally, another two women were charged in Derbyshire after driving to meet for a walk around a reservoir, five miles from their homes.   

Basic acts of living have now become criminalised under the Coronavirus Act and instances of the police aggressing on innocent individuals are becoming more frequent. But where is the outrage? People are complacent enough to think this is appropriate in light of a ‘killer virus’ or are too cowardly to speak against the covid narrative in case they are accused of killing granny.

The cowardly silence in the face of true oppression, where the state has criminalised living and deemed every individual as sick until proven healthy, is in stark contrast with the Black Lives Matter activism that swept through the UK in the summer of 2020.

Although the epicentre of BLM outrage was in the USA, almost 4000 miles from the UK, the prevalent issues were quickly imported to the UK as thousands of millennials voiced their contempt for racial injustice and police brutality. Many took to the streets to protest the ‘systemic racism’ apparently prevalent in the UK and felt justified in defacing monuments, pulling down statues and bullying the police, and others, into taking the knee to repent for their complicity in racism. ‘Blackout Tuesday’ swept across Instagram where thousands of people, predominately millennials, shared a black square to represent their stance against racial injustice. Many then went on to bombard social media with posts imbued in critical race theory that implored people to ‘educate’ themselves against their ‘white guilt’ and complicity in racism for the grave crime of being white.

The prevalence of systemic racism in the UK can be debated but that is not what is important here. What is important is the speed and the volume at which millennials jumped on the issue of racist oppression to parade their contempt for injustice and display their moral worthiness on social media. Yet, when the almost every individual in Britain, regardless of ethnicity, skin tone, sex, or any other immutable characteristic has been oppressed at the hand of the state for nearly a year, there is not a word to be heard from these moral exemplars.

Oppression from covid authoritarianism is blatant and right before our eyes. You cannot visit your friends and family or your elderly relatives who have sat lonely for months. You cannot exercise for too long outside, or too far away from your home, without the risk of a criminal charges. You cannot open your shop or run your business. If you are allowed, you must adhere to stringer covid regulations. You cannot access the healthcare functions normally available to you, that you pay for via taxation. You cannot engage in anything that provides you social cohesion or joy. You cannot do anything that makes life living and that makes your life yours.

The misery and suffering from this vicious attack on liberties is widespread and indiscriminate. From your own account, to your family, your neighbour, the small business owner down the street; all are feeling the hurt as the noose tightens in the name of covid.

Despite the evident suffering all around, people are willing to sit idly by and watch as the true oppressor, the state, revokes more and more of our liberties. The individual is crushed by the everlasting, undefined notion of ‘the common good’. Individuals are sacrificed because that is what is necessary for ‘flattening the curve’, ‘saving the NHS’, getting the ‘R number below one’ or whatever other platitude is religiously recited.

What has become evident is that people are either too naive to understand why the state having the power to lockdown individuals is so dangerous or they only care about oppression when it allows them to self-aggrandise on social media to appear ‘moral’. Whatever the reason may be, the complacency towards the largest state power grab and attack on liberty that we will likely experience in our life needs to end.

The time for individuals to vehemently rally against this mass oppression is well overdue. Whether you refuse to do it because you think things will just get better on their own or because it is not a trendy talking point like other activism; you are acting like a coward. Your complacency in the face of the largest state power grab you will likely ever witness is walking you headfirst into authoritarianism from which your individual rights may never return. Every time you recite the covid narrative for fear of going against the grain, every time you reluctantly nod in agreement that we need lockdowns, every time you obediently put on that mask because the government fooled you into thinking it works, every time you capitulate to what you know to be wrong, you add another cog to the covid oppression machine.

The complacency is already killing you. Can you honestly say that you are living right now? That living is just ‘avoiding death’?  That your life will be returned without a fight? Your complacency is a nod in agreement that the government has a claim on your life whenever there is a ‘crisis’. Your complacency is the admittance that your right to life is conditional on the prevalence of covid, hospitalisation rate or frequency of death. Your complacency is acceptance that your life is fodder to be sacrificed to the ‘common good’. Your complacency must end if you want your life back. Brutes who make claim on your life do not have the moral high ground. Your life if yours and you have every right to it. End the complacency and claim what you know is yours.

“There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. The man who is wrong still retains some respect for truth, if only by accepting the responsibility of choice. But the man in the middle is the knave who blanks out the truth in order to pretend that no choice or values exist, who is willing to sit out the course of any battle, willing to cash in on the blood of the innocent or to crawl on his belly to the guilty, who dispenses justice by condemning both the robber and the robbed to jail, who solves conflicts by ordering the thinker and the fool to meet each other halfway. In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit. In that transfusion of blood which drains the good to feed the evil, the compromise is the transmitting rubber tube.” – Ayn Rand