Some of the issues that a friend rattled off in support for Obama are less critical but just as important to Australia....
"Safety Nets"
- I prefer the term "charity" to safety net. Charity is always best dispersed by non-government authorities.
- Unfortunately, charities and governments have formed unhealthy relationship where they both receive funds to implement government policy at the same time as agitating for increases in their funds and greater scope for their activities.
- The level of support provided by charities should only by limited by funds freely given to them. Unfortunately, these funds are increasingly extracted by taxation rather than given freely.
- The level of support provided by government should be the minimum needed to maintain the peace where charity fails i.e. prevent significant groups from rejecting the "social contract" and disrupting or threatening society.
- A very slippery term. Remember that in our youth, many considered that all employment was by definition exploitation.
- Exploitation is a a good. We exploit opportunities. We exploit resources. etc
- Exploiting people is shameful not illegal except where another factor is involved. What is lumped under "exploitation" is often fraud, or other more serious crime and should be dealt with as such.
- As individuals, we are likely to counsel people who are being exploited (e.g. by fake "green" fads, horoscopes, Scientology, political partys etc etc etc). We are also likely to publicly warn and advise against such involvements.
- As a society, we have no business is preventing people from exercising choices to support any sort of foolishness. That way lies an ever increasing spiral of state control of anything that state considers foolish. Witness the current attempt in Australia and elsewhere to paint Scientology as less exploitative that Roman Catholicism !!
- Another slippery term. When can the state rest in the knowledge that all people have equal opportunity ? Answer: Whenever it perceives it to be so. Witness the current US Supreme Court consideration of "Affirmative Action".
- There is no such thing as equality of opportunity if you consider all aspects of the individual - genotype, phenotype to which, for humans we need to add the new ingredient of culture. the person can be "disadvantaged" in an infinity of ways in any of these areas and thus have unequal opportunity in life.
- Many states, including Australia, pay little more than lip service to the principle of "equal under the law" because it has been so whittled away by the principle of "equal opportunity". Indeed, Australia is considering a special clause in the constitution to entrench a permanent race based inequality, with the rational that it redresses a past inequality.
- There is no such thing as "equal under the law" for the same reasons that there is no such thing as "equality of opportunity" - in the case of the law there is even more emphasis on the importance of the cultural factor called "money".
- The role of the state should be limited to making laws that impose duties on parents with the rationale that they have responsibility for the production of citizens and thus the state has a crucial interest in ensuring that they exist in adequate number and are nurtured in ways that maximize that chance of them being productive. This is the central guarantee of equal opportunity and includes such state requirements as education. The mechanism of provision (i.e. state vs private) is primarily a technical issue except in extreme situations (i.e. indoctrination of religious belief, failure of state schools to teach etc).
- Where parents fail in some drastic way, then the state should intervene.
- Illness is a fascinatingly extreme example of the fact that "need" is a perception rather than a fact. The level of need for medical services is ever increasing in variety and expense as fast as new services are invented by the relevant industries. As soon as a new scanner or new drug is invented, it is desperately needed by some group and the agitation begins for it to be paid for by the community.
- The term "insurance" has little meaning here as it implies a voluntary client service relationship that does not exist in the world where insurance is collected through taxation, and even private funds obtain the overwhelming proportion of their funds from government.
- Illness is just the most costly example of he charity principle outlined above.
- Drove through Tecoma where community groups are attempting to prevent a MacDonalds store from opening. This is a classic example of the dilemma. Even though the community acknowledge that this business will be well patronised by community members, be commercially viable, will employ people, will provide food no worse that the other fast food stores adjacent, they want to impose their aesthetic and probably cultural predjudice to prevent it opening. Would these same people accept campaigning against a madrassa on the same basis fo competition and cultural incompatability ?
- Similarly, many of us like the aesthetic of the corner store, but make the overwhelming bulk of our purchases through one of the members of the food oligopoly.
- The question is fundamentally: To what level of detail do you want culture enforced rather than freely chosen ? Oligopolies and Monopolies form through actions of choice by individuals. In general, they are just another expression of the strength of a culture to choose small buisness models, farmers markets etc as a way of buying food. I do not want the choice regulated.
- There are existing laws regarding constraint of trade and threatening commercial behaviour that should prevent the worst excesses of power.
- The fundamental control should be through persuading the citizens that purchasing from a variety of sources protects their choice for the future.
All the above are issues that are far more crucial to the US that they are to us for a number of reasons such as:
- our economic situation is not as dire as the US - yet.
- they have a far higher levels of entrenched dependency in their urban subcultures that we do - so far.
- etc etc
I would have voted with the million that went for Johnson. (Note: voting for someone is a choice not an endorsement of everything they have ever said or done - as I am sure Gillard supporters must feel).
