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    No Headspace Evidence

    By
    David Leyonhjelm
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    0

    Is there a pandemic of mental illness among young people? Is almost one in two young women affected by mental illness? 

    In an opinion article in The Australian, Patrick McGorry, a celebrated psychiatrist, 2010 Australian of the Year and recipient of an Order of Australia Award for his services to youth mental health, claimed this was so.  

    McGorry quoted a paper in The Lancet Psychiatry, of which he is lead author, to argue that mental ill health in young people (defined as 12 to 25) is a silent public health crisis threatening the lives and futures of a whole generation. 

    He says youth mental health has been steadily declining over the past two decades, and suffered a major deterioration driven by the COVID-19 pandemic, the measures taken to contain it, and its aftermath. In addition, he says intergenerational wealth inequality, student debt, insecure work, unaffordable housing, climate change, and social media have contributed. 

    The prevalence of mental illness is highest among 18-24 year olds and decreases with age

    It has now “entered a dangerous phase”, he says, with a 50 per cent increase in “diagnosable mental health conditions among 16–25 year-olds since 2007” He believes governments have a responsibility to “wind back harmful policy settings and regulate powerful private forces.” 

    This will take time, he admits, and suggests a more immediate solution is to “reimagine and strengthen” the youth mental health program he pioneered known as headspace, “buttressed by a new specialised, multidisciplinary platform of community health care”.

    This is obviously a campaign for additional public funding of his pet project, a classic case of special pleading. There are hundreds like it, ranging from childhood cancer to aged care. Libertarians tend to dismiss special pleading out of hand, on the basis that it is simply a call for increased government intervention using taxpayers’ money. 

    But most people are not libertarian, and there are legitimate questions: is the situation as McGorry describes? If so, is it any business of the government, and are his solutions appropriate? 

    There is something inherently dubious about a claim that almost half of all young women are suffering from mental ill health. It is certainly not my experience. While it is true that the Covid measures were both painful and unnecessary, is the current generation more mentally fragile than the generations that experienced world wars or the threat of nuclear war? And why should fear of climate change be causing more mental ill health than Ehrlich’s predictions of an overpopulation catastrophe?  

    As for the other factors nominated by McGorry, when has it ever been different? Indeed, the only new element in his list is social media. While it is true that being abused and insulted by strangers online is new, it seems a stretch to suggest it is causing a lot more mental ill health. 

    Patrick McGorry

    What’s needed is evidence relevant to McGorry’s claims: an objective definition of “diagnosable mental health condition”, plus data on the number of cases. 

    His article in The Australian and the Lancet paper had neither. Furthermore, despite the paper being a review of multiple sources, it did not cite any data that substantiated the claims. 

    One source it listed is an Australian study, the National Study of Mental Health and Wellbeing, undertaken by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 2020-2022. It reported that 42.9% of people aged 16–85 years had experienced a mental disorder at some time in their life. However, it is entirely based on what respondents told interviewers face to face. 

    Moreover, its definition of mental disorder includes not only illnesses such as depression, psychosis and eating disorders, but also anxiety and substance abuse. In other words, if respondents indicated they felt anxious, or had overdone the substances, it was likely to be classified as mental illness.  

    Youth mental health has been steadily declining over the past two decades, and suffered a major deterioration driven by the COVID-19 pandemic

    Current understanding of mental illness is roughly where our understanding of infectious diseases was a century and a half ago – the causes are not known, and there are no cures. In many cases it cannot even be objectively defined. Almost everyone experiences anxiety in their life, but obviously not everyone characterises it as mental illness. 

    Current therapy involves talking about it (technically known as psychotherapy) and medication. These can be helpful, just as measures to reduce a fever helped with infections prior to the invention of antibiotics, but most cases recover irrespective. This is shown by the fact that the prevalence of mental illness is highest among 18-24 year olds and decreases with age. 

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    Indeed, perhaps the best treatment for most so-called mental illness among young people is time. Like pimples and adolescence, they grow out of it. Puberty blues is not merely the name of a movie. 

    What is abundantly clear is that the picture painted by McGorry cannot be substantiated. His long-term solutions are progressive claptrap, while he offers no evidence to show that his headspace project is making a difference and deserves additional government funding. Indeed, if there was such evidence it would probably attract philanthropic support.  

    If there is a sound argument for the government involving itself in youth mental health, McGorry does not offer one. It is not just libertarians who should be sceptical.

    Got something to say?

    Liberty Itch is Australia’s leading libertarian media outlet. Its stable of writers has promoted the cause of liberty and freedom across the economic and social spectrum through the publication of more than 300 quality articles.

    Do you have something you’d like to say? If so, please send your contribution to editor@libertyitch.com

    Libertarianism is an Ideology, But Not a World View

    By
    Jonathan Cole
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    0

    Libertarianism is an ideology, but not a world view, according to a distinction offered by Ludwig von Mises in Human Action. A world view, Mises explains, is “an interpretation of all things,” “an explanation of all phenomena.” In short, world views “interpret the universe.” Ideology, by contrast, is a narrower concept comprising “the totality of our doctrines concerning individual conduct and social relations.” Ideologies are concerned solely with human action as it manifests in social cooperation. Religions have world views, whereas political parties have ideologies. 

    Mises observes that world views and ideologies both share a normative outlook. They do not purport merely to describe the way things are, but offer a perspective on the way things ought to be. What distinguishes a world view from an ideology is scope. Where world views have broad and diverse, even cosmic, interests and concerns, ideologies have limited interests and concerns, specifically centred around the nature, shape and fate of society. This narrower focus on society naturally lends ideologies to political action, whether in the form of party organisation, reform, lobbying, protest or rebellion, because political power is a significant lever for affecting the shape of society.

    As an ideology, libertarianism is uniquely accommodating of world view pluralism

    World views, on the other hand, because of the breadth of their concern and the extent of the phenomena they purport to explain, encompass wholistic outlooks on life. They can encompass anything from stories about the creation of the universe to dietary habits, as many religions do. Their breadth of perspective is such that they can and do incorporate and integrate views about society and politics. However, this breadth does not necessitate the action-oriented social focus of ideologies. The religious ascetic is a case in point. The ascetic withdraws entirely from society as a means of dedicating themselves completely to their world view. 

    Because ideologies, on Mises’s account, are only concerned with human action and social cooperation, they tend to “disregard the problems of metaphysics, religious dogma, the natural sciences and the technologies derived from them.” This seems to overlook the capacity of at least some religions, namely Christianity, Islam and Judaism, to involve themselves with social and political concerns. It also overlooks, or perhaps underestimated (Mises was born in 1881 and died in 1973), the way that science has more recently proved itself capable of morphing into political ideology. Still, it is undeniable that all three Abrahamic faiths constitute world views on the Misesian definition. Each has generated traditions and practices that avoid, shun or repudiate political action, proving that they are capable of existing as non-ideological world views. In the case of libertarianism, on the other hand, the Misesian distinction between world view and ideology is helpful in clarifying that it is very much an ideology, as distinct from a world view. 

    Libertarianism is concerned exclusively with society, particularly the way it is organised and governed. It possesses neither a cosmogony, nor a cosmology, distinguishing it from classical, if controversial, definitions of religion. Libertarians can, of course, mirror some of the attributes of religious adherents in their zeal, proselytising and uncompromising commitment to dogma. However, this does not make libertarianism a world view per se, nor the most ardent libertarian fanatic the adherent of a libertarian world view. 

    The truth of the matter is that libertarianism is agnostic on the fundamental questions of existence that animate religions and philosophies, and which are therefore essential to world views. These are questions best left to the conscience of individuals, as far as libertarians are concerned. Moreover, the libertarian program does not hinge on any particular answer to them. Mises, an agnostic Jew, exemplified this principle in his own life. He thought it was futile to speculate about the given facts of the universe. Instead, he was interested in analysing and understanding human action within the given parameters of existence: the means individuals employ to attain their chosen ends. He thought there was no point evaluating the ends as these were inherently a matter of subjective choice.

    Religions have world views, whereas political parties have ideologies. 

    Means, on the other hand, could be analysed objectively and evaluated concretely in terms of success and failure, i.e., an assessment of whether the chosen means realised the ends they were employed to attain. He thought the majority of political ideologies ultimately aspired to the same ends, including liberalism and socialism, namely human prosperity and wellbeing. Where they differed, and in very consequential ways, was means. Mises took little issue with the aspirational ends of socialism. He simply, and accurately, predicted that the means employed—common ownership over the means of production—would lead to the opposite outcome from that intended. Liberalism, on the other hand, in the 19th century classical European sense of the term, was in Mises’s view the only objective means of attaining the ends of human prosperity and wellbeing. By liberalism, Mises meant a social organisation that maximised individual freedom to purse personally chosen ends and means, with a minimal government in the background protecting individuals from aggression, fraud and infringement against their property rights. 

    Mises typified the world view agnosticism that is characteristic of libertarianism today. He was as uncompromising a defender of individual freedoms, private property and free markets as anyone (famously so). But he was genuinely open and agnostic on the great existential questions that occupy the human mind and heart. The stridency of his views about social and political means was matched by a tolerance for all manner of diverse world views, at least as their teaching pertained to the origin and nature of the universe, and the myriad ends that humans are free to pursue. 

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    The world view flexibility of libertarianism is evident today in the way that it is embraced by religious believers and atheists alike, not to mention agnostics like Mises. As an ideology, libertarianism is uniquely accommodating of world view pluralism. It is possible for individuals with clashing and mutually incompatible world views (Christians and atheists, for example) to unite around the cause of a libertarian ideology. World view pluralism is simply the by-product of the libertarian ideological commitment to a social order that permits individuals to pursue their own diverse ends. The freedoms libertarians wish to secure and safeguard for all individuals to develop their own world views is one of the unheralded virtues of their ideology.

    Got something to say?

    Liberty Itch is Australia’s leading libertarian media outlet.

    Its stable of writers has promoted the cause of liberty and freedom across

    the economic and social spectrum through the publication of more than 300 quality articles.

    Do you have something you’d like to say? If so, please send your contribution to editor@libertyitch.com

    Can libertarianism become a brand in Australia?

    By
    Jonathan Cole
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    0

    Dean Russell, a staff member at The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), was the first to propose that America’s classical liberals and individualists rebrand themselves as “libertarians.” In an article published by FEE in 1955, Russell wrote: “Let those of us who love liberty trade-mark and reserve for our use the good and honourable word ‘libertarian.’” 

    That good and honourable term was actually coined, or at least first used in print, by William Belsham in 1789. At that time, and until its political repurposing by Russell, it denoted a distinct philosophical school in the context of debates about free will. The opponents of philosophical libertarians then were necessitarians.

    The context for Russell’s proposal was the perversion of the term “liberal” in the American political context at the hands of big government New Deal interventionists. This development led to the rather awkward, and unusual, situation of political opponents using exactly the same language to define themselves. The libertarian rebrand was, if nothing else, an admission of defeat: the term “liberal” had been irredeemably corrupted in the eyes of American liberals who identified with the tradition of nineteenth century liberalism and the principles of the American revolution. Yet, it proved to be wildly successful and is now in wide usage by America’s liberty lovers in all their diversity and eccentricity. Indeed, there now exists a robust “libertarian” ecosystem in America, replete with think tanks, academics, journalists, magazines, personalities, the odd celebrity and a political party to boot.

    The truth is that the liberalism rebranded libertarianism in America, and only belatedly in Australia

    However, this linguistic turn, which proved so successful in the American context, has struggled to find relevance and application in other contexts like Australia. Here, “liberal” has stubbornly retained its nineteenth century brand connotations, if not its genuine ideological content. Thanks to the dominance of the Liberal Party as the right-hand pole in Australia’s bipolar political contest, the term “liberal” continues to evoke in the minds of many political consumers something right of centre, as amorphous, incoherent and ill-defined as that may be. This brand phenomenon has served as a bulwark against the kind of leftward semantic evolution that the term “liberal” underwent in early twentieth century America. 

    Moreover, the most ambitious among those who now embrace the term “conservative” to describe their political identity still find the Liberal Party of Australia to be the most conducive vehicle for political influence, notwithstanding pressures and temptations from Australia’s motley collection of right-wing populist minor parties. As such, Australia’s Liberal Party boasts an influential conservative wing, described routinely in left-friendly media outlets as the “hard right” or “far right.” This association of the term “conservative” with “liberal,” let alone “hard right” with “liberal,” is an association that simply does not exist in the American political market. It is a peculiar distinctive of the Australian political landscape, a quirk, as it were. It does, however, provide yet further explanation for why the term “liberal” has resisted its American descent into the semantics of liberal progressivism, at least in the minds of the public, and through them the political vernacular of Australia 

    The term “liberal” had been irredeemably corrupted in the eyes of American liberals

    The fact that Australia’s most successful libertarian party was founded under the name Liberal Democrats in 2001 and only changed its name to the Libertarian party in 2023 speaks volumes about the fortunes of the term “liberal” in Australia (there were legal reasons to change the name). It speaks, on the one hand, to the classical liberal connotations of the term in Australia of 2001, the golden age of Howard’s Broad Church, with its putative synthesis of Millian liberalism and Burkean conservativism. Its name change, on the other hand, in an era in which so-called “moderate” liberals in the Liberal Party stand for woke-lite social policy and a slightly less interventionist economic policy than the Australian Labor Party, signals the final severance of the conjunction “classical” and “liberal in the Australian context, more than 200 years after it arrived in the Australian continent with European settlement, and 68 years after a libertarian rebrand in America. 

    The Liberal Party is now constituted by incompatible liberal progressives and conservatives, neither of whom show any real interest in advancing the classical liberal cause. While an uneasy truce prevails following the sectarian civil war of the immediate past, they now inhabit a rather unhappy marriage of convenience. They sleep in separate bedrooms, but stay together for the sake of the kids, in this case the chance at electoral success. Meanwhile, Australia’s classical liberals have deserted the Liberal Party and thrown in their lot with Australia’s radical liberals to embrace, albeit with some consternation and anxiety, the label “libertarian.”

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    The challenge confronting Australia’s nascent libertarian movement, now that it has finally parted ways with the term “liberal,” is to galvanise Australia’s small but passionate band of liberty lovers around a term that is foreign to the Australian political lexicon. More challenging still, there is the task of cultivating a libertarian constituency that prizes and prioritises individual freedom, property rights, unhampered markets, limited government and peaceful international relations in a country whose founding mythos and national identity are not centred around the concept of liberty, as they are in America. The truth is that the liberalism rebranded libertarianism in America, and only belatedly in Australia, are different species of the genus “liberalism,” each with their own distinct origins, political histories and intellectual development. All political ideologies face a temptation in the Australian context to simply ape and regurgitate the loud, exciting and flamboyant political ideas and innovations that inevitably flow downstream from America to Australia. This is a particular temptation for Australia’s right-wing heirs of the liberal tradition who have recently chosen to embrace the language of the much more highly developed and institutionalised ecosystem in America. If libertarianism is to have any future at all in Australia, it will need to take inspiration from the best that American libertarianism has to offer and adapt, refine and develop it for the unique socio-political environment of Australia. 

    Smoke ‘Em If You Got ‘Em

    By
    James Hol
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    0

    For those of us who still occasionally like to check in on what the mainstream media is doing, there has been a topic that has got chins wagging and jowls flapping lately: “the tobacco wars”. 

    While the mainstream media, in typical fashion, has sensationalised the story, it is true that black and grey market tobacco is abundant in the community.

    BLACK, WHITE AND GREY

    As a (recently quit) smoker, I see it everywhere. My smoker friends brag about the newest place they discovered, with even cheaper prices, while they pull a cigarette out of their fully branded pack. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I saw a drab-brown (plain packaging) pack of cigarettes. And I wouldn’t be much of a libertarian if I didn’t confess that I haven’t bought a pack of cigarettes through a shop compelled to display a “retail tobacco merchant license” in well over a year.

    The obvious appeal of black and grey market tobacco is the near-two-thirds savings. I can buy a 20-pack of Marlboro Reds for under $20, while an authorised tobacco merchant is selling the same pack for over $50 (which I had to look up because it has been that long). And as more shopfronts pop up, the price is pushed down – a testament to the free market. 

    Anybody serious about removing the illicit tobacco market

    Even your poorest friends can afford to smoke chop-chop, illegally grown roll-your-own tobacco, at 50c per gram – a sixth of the price compared to roll-your-own tobacco in the authorised market.

    ALL IS FAIR IN LOVE AND WAR

    Despite the fact that, I would guess, most smokers are paying less for cigarettes than they have in over a decade, there are serious concerns that accompany a rising illicit market for an addictive product. Bikies and organised crime groups are starting to muscle in on the market, aggressively extorting tobacco merchants (as opposed to the more passive extortion of tobacco tax) and violently vandalising competitors.

    Stories of tobacco shops being vandalised and torched are becoming a near-weekly occurrence. And while I have little sympathy for organised criminals, it is not only criminals being affected: legitimate tobacco merchants are in their crosshairs and innocent victims are inevitably caught in the blaze. So week-in and week-out, the mainstream media trots out some new “expert” on the matter who declares another hair-brained measure will solve this problem once and for all.

    One of the more popular new measures being touted is to implement a licensing system to regulate tobacco merchants, similar to booze. The one problem with that is it already exists and has done precisely nothing to stem the flow of illicit tobacco. In South Australia, where I live, we have a had a tobacco merchant licensing system for as long as I have been a smoker (15 years) and illegal tobacco – and the organised crime that comes with it – is thriving.

    Even your poorest friends can afford to smoke chop-chop, illegally grown roll-your-own tobacco

    STATING THE OBVIOUS

    At the risk of sounding like another idiot who has the solution for this problem once and for all, there is actually an incredibly obvious solution to this problem: lower the price of cigarettes. There is only one way for those “evil”, “scary” big tobacco companies to sell their products at a loss and for merchants to make pennies on the dollar: abolish (or at least significantly reduce) tobacco tax. Well over half the price of the average pack of cigarettes or pouch of roll-your-own tobacco goes to the government in tobacco excise alone. Tobacco, like petrol, is also double-dipped on tax with an additional 10 per cent of GST.

    So while even someone with a cursory understanding of economics knows the only way to combat this problem is to compete on price – especially in a market where almost all forms of non-price competition have been outlawed – the obvious remains unspoken. To even suggest we use the only realistic solution to combat the illicit tobacco market, while also removing the most regressive tax in Australian history, is complete heresy.

    UP IN SMOKE

    Instead, we’ll pile on more regulations, evaporating the few legitimate tobacco merchants left, and “crackdown” on illicit tobacco, as governments continuously claim to do for no avail. We have known for a long time now that prohibition never works, and now we know that a surreptitious prohibition, via ever-increasing prices, achieves the same result.

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    Anybody serious about removing the illicit tobacco market, preventing organised crime from gaining a foothold in another industry and legitimately saving the lives of those caught in the collateral damage, knows the answer to this problem. Now it’s time to say it out loud.

    The Art of the Deal

    By
    James Hol
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    1

    US Libertarians met for their National Convention in Washington DC late last month, where they heard from a range of speakers and selected their presidential candidate. However, this was unlike any other Libertarian National Convention – in fact, it was unlike any prior political party convention in US history.

    MAKE AMERICA LIBERTARIAN AGAIN

    The headline speaker for the Libertarian National Convention was the 45th President of the United States and presumptive Republican nominee for the 2024 Presidential Election, Donald Trump. Never before in US history has a rival political candidate addressed a political party convention.

    While much of the Trump-hating media described the speech as being met with a chorus of booing and heckling, that was not entirely accurate. While Trump certainly faced one of his most hostile crowds, there were several points where he managed to draw cheers from the libertarians. One of those moments probably marks the biggest political win for libertarians in history.

    US Libertarians have their biggest opportunity to meaningfully influence the political landscape, ironically by running fewer candidates.

    THE THREE PERCENT

    During his speech, Trump gave Libertarians an ultimatum: continue wining a meaningless three percent of the vote or join me and win together. Along with promising to free Ross Ulbricht, the founder and operator of Silk Road, Trump pledged to appoint libertarians to his cabinet and senior positions of government. And while there are genuine questions regarding the trustworthiness of Trump’s word, he is absolutely right.

    The Libertarian Party, particularly within the US electoral system, will never win a single meaningful election. In over 20 years, the Libertarians have only won one of the possible 8,161 seats available in any federal, state or territorial congress. Having libertarians in Trump’s cabinet and senior levels of government would be a far more politically successful outcome for Libertarians than anything the Party has ever been able to achieve in its 53-year history.

    The “The Party of Principle” needs to consider whether it is time to start putting principles over partisanship and accept that sometimes supporting someone else is the greatest force for liberty.

    Trump pledged to appoint libertarians to his cabinet and senior positions of government.

    THE PARTY OF PRINCIPLE

    Unfortunately, most of those in the room that day missed the boat, choosing to boo the former President for no other reason than that he is a former President and has an “R” next to his name. While I understand being derisive when non-libertarian policies are advocated at a Libertarian Convention, booing Trump for merely entering the room and approaching the podium is simply childish. Never have I been more embarrassed to be a libertarian.

    Instead of embracing Trump’s offer, the Libertarians decided to nominate Chase Oliver: someone who publicly gushed over his favourite type of mask and virtue-signalled about how COVID-safe his family’s Thanksgiving dinner was. With a woke candidate, as well as Robert F. Kennedy Jr siphoning the protest vote, the Libertarian Party, faces an existential crisis. When Trump asked whether Libertarians would continue to be happy with three percent of the vote, he was being generous: the Libertarian Party will be lucky to achieve even one percent of the vote in this presidential race.

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    TAKING THE L

    US Libertarians have their biggest opportunity to meaningfully influence the political landscape, ironically by running fewer candidates. Hopefully those within the Libertarian Party – and the “small-L” libertarians – can put their pride aside and see where this opportunity truly lies: alliances and influence.


    Libertarians (both big and small-L) need to decide what matters more to them: clinging on to a meaningless three percent of the presidential vote (if they’re lucky) or having libertarians in the White House and senior government positions. It seems like an obvious choice to me.

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