Coming soon… Daniel Barnes will explain the libertarian credentials of the Advertising Standards Authority… or not.
🙂
Monthly Archives: July 2012
What a fully Christian society would be like
I’m currently reading C. S. Lewis’s masterpiece Mere Christianity. As literature, it’s scintillating. As philosophy, it’s invigorating. As a guide to Christian living, it’s chastening.
Here’s Lewis on what a fully Christian society would be like.
… the New Testament, without going into details, gives us a pretty clear hint of what a fully Christian society would be like. Perhaps it gives us more than we can take. It tells us that there are to be no passengers or parasites: if man does not work, he ought not to eat. Every one is to work with his own hands, and what is more, every one’s work is to produce something good: there will be no manufacture of silly luxuries and then of sillier advertisements to persuade us to buy them. And there is to be no ‘swank’ or ‘side’, no putting on airs. To that extent a Christian society would be what we now call Leftist. On the other hand, it is always insisting on obedience — obedience (and outward marks of respect) from all of us to properly appointed magistrates, from children to parents, and (I am afraid this is going to be very unpopular) from wives to husbands. Thirdly, it is to be a cheerful society: full of singing and rejoicing, and regarding worry or anxiety as wrong. Courtesy is one of the Christian virtues; and the New Testament hates what it calls ‘busybodies’.
I challenge anyone reading this post to tell me that the society Lewis envisages is not vastly superior to the one we live in today.
(In the course of searching for the C. S. Lewis quote—so I didn’t have to type it all out—I came across a non-retarded atheist blog, viz. Rick Beckman. How do my co-bloggers feel about a new blogroll category, “We the Damned”? :-P)
Trained circus seals
On Facebook, a libertarian friend posts
Sue Bradford complains:
“Bennett & English begin promoting next round of welfare changes – this time, it’s drug testing of beneficiaries. No thought appears to be given to lack of adequate A & D services, consequences to personal & family health & well being if you have no income, & downstream medical, police, court, prison & other costs. All aimed at appealing to beneficiary bashing vote, again, sadly.”
If you choose to take drugs, then get done when they stay in your system, any resulting consequences are of your own doing – so deal with them like a mature adult. It’s called taking personal responsibility. How hard is this to understand?
My response? Sue Bradford is right, for once. Here’s a post from my old blog that explains why.
[Reprised from beNZylpiperazine, August 2007. Five years later, National has picked up where Labour left off and nothing much has changed.]
What is it with right-wingers and their fetish for trained circus seals?
Popular among right-wingers is the following proposed solution to the problem of welfare abuse: make welfare beneficiaries jump through hoops. Exactly which hoops it’s thought welfare beneficiaries should jump through depends on the right-winger making the proposal. What particularly irks me is the suggestion put forward here.
Shouldn’t one have to pass a urine test to get a welfare cheque because I have to pass one to earn it for them??
Please understand – I have no problem with helping people get back on their feet.
I do on the other hand have a problem with helping someone sit on their arse drinking piss & smoking dope all day.
Surely, paying people to sit on their arses drinking piss and smoking dope all day is one of the better uses of government money. But I digress. There is an obvious problem with the proposal. If you make passing a urine test a condition of eligibility for the dole, this will have the unintended consequence of inducing people to apply for the sickness benefit as alcoholics or drug addicts, where failing a urine test is a condition of eligibility.
It’s all far too reminiscent of Jenny Shipley’s failed and embarrassing 1998 Code of Social and Family Responsibility. [PDF]
The truth is, there is only one solution to the problem of welfare abuse – remove the state entirely from the provision of welfare and devolve that responsibility to voluntary charities and private insurance companies – and only one political party advocating this solution – Libertarianz. Here are a couple of ideas which may (or may not) be part of the soon-to-be-announced Libertarianz transitional social welfare policy.
First, stop treating “alcoholism” and “drug addiction” as afflictions which qualify the afflicted for the sickness benefit. Drug addiction is a lifestyle choice, not a disease.
Second, put a six month time limit on the unemployment benefit. I don’t mean that beneficiaries should cease to receive the dole after they’ve been on it six months. I mean that all unemployment beneficiaries should cease to receive the dole six months after the policy is implemented. So, if the policy were to be implemented tomorrow, the unemployment benefit would be off the WINZ menu come February next year. Six months should be ample time to find a job. Perhaps some right-wingers might offer employment opportunities for professional trained circus seals.
Stop the extradition of Richard O’Dwyer to the USA
Stop the extradition of Richard O’Dwyer to the USA
Richard O’Dwyer is a 24 year old British student at Sheffield Hallam University in the UK. He is facing extradition to the USA and up to ten years in prison, for creating a website – TVShack.net – which linked (similar to a search-engine) to places to watch TV and movies online.
O’Dwyer is not a US citizen, he’s lived in the UK all his life, his site was not hosted there, and most of his users were not from the US. America is trying to prosecute a UK citizen for an alleged crime which took place on UK soil.
The internet as a whole must not tolerate censorship in response to mere allegations of copyright infringement. As citizens we must stand up for our rights online.
When operating his site, Richard O’Dwyer always did his best to play by the rules: on the few occasions he received requests to remove content from copyright holders, he complied. His site hosted links, not copyrighted content, and these were submitted by users.
Copyright is an important institution, serving a beneficial moral and economic purpose. But that does not mean that copyright can or should be unlimited. It does not mean that we should abandon time-honoured moral and legal principles to allow endless encroachments on our civil liberties in the interests of the moguls of Hollywood.
Richard O’Dwyer is the human face of the battle between the content industry and the interests of the general public. Earlier this year, in the fight against the anti-copyright bills SOPA and PIPA, the public won its first big victory. This could be our second.
This is why I am petitioning the UK’s Home Secretary Theresa May to stop the extradition of Richard O’Dwyer. I hope you will join me.
– Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia founder
Please sign the petition.
War Ensemble
Some Sunday Slayer.