Democracy: The Problem & New Symptom – Foetal Alcohol Syndrome.

This started as merely a marker post put up for two reasons: a) for a post I’m working on regarding Chris (The Fist) Trotter, which will be published sometime over the weekend, or next Monday, and b) as a reference point to refer back to in various online ‘debates’. It's morphed into something a bit else, although I'll start with what I had in mind from inception; the central problem with democracy:

Take the case of a social democracy that consists of just ten people: let's say four are black people, and the remaining six are white. This democracy decides to hold a plebiscite on the proposition that white people shouldn't have to work, as they have an entitlement to live off the efforts of black people, which they propose to do via the instigation of a special tax on the incomes of black people.

Guess what? The proposition is won by six votes to four. A democratically made, majority decision has just taken away the liberty of black people, all in the name of the common good of the tyranny of the majority. Now, simply take away the emoting use of ‘black people’, and exchange that for ‘taxpayer’.

Further, tied lethally to the notion of democracy as a tyranny of the majority, the welfare state has over the last seventy years proven its Achilles Heel: that politicians, wanting to be ‘caring’ and ‘compassionate’, cannot help but bribe electorates over the long term with an illusory free lunch, and that over time, social democracies will, thus, create, and ultimately procreate, enough voters to be reliant on this illusion, until the economic imperative takes its ultimate, and logical course, as it’s doing now in Europe, and the US. Meaning that what started out with the best of intentions, has ended up the Gulag of Forced Altruism, with its creeping cruelty.

Note there’s a particularly annoying branch of the Left – and please don’t infer from that I belong to the conservative Right - that arrogant, smug, patronising personality who is sooo caring, clever, and morally superior to the rest of us, such as the sanctimonious Sanctuary on this thread, who says, to use the latter’s argument against me when I used just the above argument on Imperator Fish’s blog, quote:

To me your question is a nice intellectual conceit for teenage undergraduates intoxicated at the first exposure to political philosophy and worrying themselves silly at the idea of the tyranny of the majority. So to me, If you have failed to advance from that first flush of giddy outrage to a deeper understanding of democracy that is your problem, and your loss, not mine.

It is the sort of absolutist question you often get from the intellectually immature - the rhetorical equivalent of a playground "nah nah nah so there." The great strength of democracy lies in its refusal to be weighed and measured, to provide a neat tick box solution for every problem, to excuse you from the bothersome and tiresome need for debate across numerous disciplines. Your question is nonsense, since it pre-supposes democracy is as rigid and nonsensical as your own philosophy. Democracy is a living, moving, warm blooded beast, when you yearn for a triumph of the taxidermist's art.

The smarmy arrogance in the tone of this is typical. And it all begs the question, because yes, by Rand I believe in absolutes, over the evil (im)moral relativism of the Left: this ‘is’ the problem with democracy, and it's a terminal one for the civil society based on voluntarism, the evidence and the harm of which is viewable simply by looking at the facts of reality of the world we now inhabit: watch the news every night.

And it gets worse. As I’ve written before, I am under no illusion: classical liberalism is dead; I shall never be a free man - this blog is, itself, a marker, merely serving as a warning that democracy is about to get a whole lot deeper mired in the mincer of State, because the next generation is looking to be the first truly alcohol induced one, a big enough portion of which is going to be sufficiently literally retarded and violent to drive us all further down the road to serfdom as they will be incapable of looking after themselves – or, at least, that’s what people are going to think, because they are incapable, any longer, to think anything else. Previously there has been an insurmountable philosophical barrier to attaining the freer society, over the bound one, due to Gramsci in our schools, rotting the children’s minds from within, but now this goes to its inevitable conclusion: Generation Foetal Alcohol Syndrome, born of a welfare statism that has destroyed self-responsibility and self-reliance. And the final proof of where it’s all wrong? The Left’s response to the above link of the growing incidence of foetal alcohol syndrome? To attack alcohol, the product, and ultimately, my freedom to enjoy it responsibly, rather than changing the culture drinking it. For how can they attack the cause: it’s a culture their policies have created, it just took seventy years to ferment, to the stage the bottle cap has been taken off. We are the generation that starts to pay the price.

… Chris (The Fist) Trotter, coming soon.


UPDATE 1

 Just happened on a great quotation regarding the advantage a freedom stifling statism has in a democracy:

We must understand that there is an imbalance of power in the political system of any democracy in that the forces of statism have an innate advantage over the defenders of freedom. It takes but one legislative or administrative victory for statism to succeed in guiding society on an indelible path towards dependency.  We cannot perpetuate the free-market, but we can perpetuate statism by creating inveterate dependency constituencies.  Statism enjoys the inherent advantage of self-perpetuation through its own pernicious activities that engender a continued need for the government programs.

A Fishy Post from the Imperator: Farms as Dumping Grounds – Don’t Think So.

Or, sub-title: How do you turn the remainder of the South Island into a dairy farm? Answer: Vote in a Greens/Labour coalition.

Scott Yorke has had a dig at the rural community, calling New Zealand farms a 'dumping ground'.  I've grown tired of this emoting nonsense that otherwise sensible men, such as Yorke, seem to have swallowed from New Zealand’s Green theocracy, which, like Leftist state crony capitalism, doesn't stand up to the facts.

Think about this.

I see all my farming clients on their farms at least once a year: I've not seen one dumping ground. The opposite. Just this Sunday my wife and I had lunch at a friend's dairy farm under the shadow of Mt Hutt, a one hour drive through pristine countryside, and flowing rivers. After the cheesecake, and the walk to the end of the farm and back, in which not one bit of litter was visible, nor one shred of silage wrap, Farmer Friend spent the afternoon teaching me his favourite pastime; fly casting (on the lawn, note, the season doesn’t start to October). Now does anyone think he will be careless with the river ways? Why would he destroy one of the activities that gives him such joy in life? More, the majority of dairy owners, and every farm manager, live on their farms; why would they turn their homes into dumping grounds? Perhaps Scott is imputing city values onto the country? No doubt Queen Street after a Friday or Saturday night is quite the ‘dumping ground’. Finally, I'd wager there's more pressure exerted in the pub on those few farmers who fall short, than in the Environment Court.


And though Scott's post didn't mention the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), when I commented to his thread, that scheme was soon brought up, with the point made by the respondent that I must be a climate denier. Um, have I written ... Oh, yes; sick of emoting, politico-theocratic nonsense'.
 

Though for the sake of argument, despite the science on climate change being nowhere close to resolved, one way or the other, let me, regardless, hand the Greens the argument; for a moment I'll give them man-made climate change. Because they believe - as in faith, rather than facts - in man-made climate change, they want carbon trading and all livestock forced into an ETS. Okay, now I’ve given the Green camp that, explain to me, any of you, with facts and figures, how putting New Zealand’s livestock into an ETS will change the supposed global climate equation, for the ‘better’ - whatever that means - in anything other than symbolic terms?
 

 And then stand that against what can be proven. Due to over-regulation and a viciously enforced taxation in every aspect of our lives, from the RMA ramped price of land our homes sit on, many families in New Zealand are already having trouble making ends meet. The state has destroyed, utterly, free markets, and, quite apart from the philosophical issues - read my blog byline - our standard of living is being decimated. Well put livestock into an ETS and the price of protein will be finally beyond the reach of many more Kiwi families completely: if you think dairy products and meat are expensive now, wait until a callous government actually does that. Then add on top the passed on cost of a carbon tax on energy. Ironically, the families that will bear the brunt of the hardship both will cause are the Greens/Labour constituency. Though no doubt they’ll blame it on a capitalism that doesn’t exist anymore, like they always do, and the soft minds, incapable of critical thought, churned out by the state school system will swallow that, hook line and sinker, Mr Imperator Fish, instead of being able to eat the fat of the land.

Worse, when labour first published the figures that were to be imposed on livestock via the ETS, I put them into a spread sheet and ran some rough figures. Note, I no longer have that spread sheet, it was three or four computers ago, and I can no longer remember the sums, but what I can remember, clearly, was the knowledge that even a family sheep, beef or deer farm with no debt would have trouble meeting the added cost, and still provide a living, indeed, the only livestock farm activity that possibly had enough cash falling out from the bottom line was dairy. So if you want to ensure that the remaining marginal dairy land in the South Island, including, ultimately, the McKenzie Country, is converted into dairying – and I don’t want to see it either, because for economic strength we need diversity – then the best bet for this to happen will be to vote in a Greens/Labour coalition in 2014.


Before it’s too late I would ask Scott, Greens and Labour voters, and National who are still threatening the viability of farming in 2015, to look up: ‘unintended consequences’, and ‘own goal’. And perhaps get yourselves down to a farm: I've got this suspicion not many of you have been to many.

Postscript: I see Homepaddock has just put up an article on how an ETS will increase the cost of food also.

UPDATE:

Note I'm aware in the above that farmers' are price takers, however, it is inevitable that the increased cost of protein production will end up with the consumer: for example, less sheep farms will mean less supply of sheep meat which will mean increased price, etc.