Capacity

Capacity: actual or potential ability to perform, yield, or withstand


I hear a lot about the ills of society these days and naturally this discourse tends to focus on the underprivileged which makes sense. Inevitably these underprivileged folk share some things in common and in particular they suffer from some “disability” which prevents them from getting on in society. I am using the word disability in a very wide sense such as a lack of education or skills as well as a physical or mental disability.

So here is a little thought experiment.

Think of a nomadic hunter gatherer tribe of say 20 odd people, basically a family unit making its way in the world as best it can. This is the human reality not so long ago (in a geological time frame). As the tribe hunts game and the like it will experience the usual tribulations of life such as some members aging to a point where they cannot hunt effectively or one of the tribe might get injured in a hunt and some of the 20 might be infants who can’t contribute to food gathering.

These “unproductive” members of the tribe will be supported by the rest and life will be fine. However for the sake of argument let’s assume you need at least 10 hunters out of 20 to make the system work ie each hunter can support one other person. This is what I am referring to as the Capacity of the tribe.

What would happen to the tribe if there were only 8 hunters and 12 young old or weak members? Not sure but it is bound to be bad for at least 4 members of the 12 to bring things into balance. If nothing changed then presumably all the tribe would slowly weaken and everyone would die in the long run.

So what?

Well all groups have a carrying capacity even our really complex industrialised societies. It is not so easy to see but it must still be there after all as nothing has really changed from the tribe days in terms of providing enough resources for all.

But I have never heard a conversation about whether or not we can “afford” the numbers of disabled persons that we carry in society. To be truthful I am not even sure how you would work it out and I know that the idea will seem a bit icky to some people because in the brutal world of our ancient ancestors some or all of the 4 would have been left to die and you could infer that is my idea for dealing with our disadvantaged (which it is not).

This idea potentially matters because let’s just assume the number works out to be 40% of society needs to be productive to support the other 60%. Let’s further assume that we currently sit at 62% unproductive. (there are a lot of kids and older folk out there) Then any attempt to fix the problem that does not address this issue is doomed to failure so it is important that we know.

The current solutions all really boil down to have the rich give some of their surplus to the poor. In comes in various packages but this is the central idea nine times out of ten. However if we are beyond capacity this will result in the death of the total tribe.

In NZ in 2006 (the latest census figures I could easily find) the population was just over 4M and the number of people in full time work was 1.4M so the 35% of the population supports the remainder. (yes I know part time work etc. but it isn’t going to get past 40% ) Bet you thought it was more than that.

Pugilism

“On 6 January 1681, the first recorded boxing match took place in Britain when Christopher Monck, 2nd Duke of Albemarle (and later Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica) engineered a bout between his butler and his butcher with the latter winning the prize.” Wikipedia

That about sums it up really, an upper class gent organising a bout of fighting presumably for the entertainment of his rich chums between a couple of the “servants” (read lower classes)

And it continues to be that way till this day. As a generally rule the backgrounds and education standards of a lot of boxers don’t appear to be that great. Sure some of them earn a lot of money but probably less than the promoters and they do it by putting themselves in harms way.


Does this look like a good time?

 I don’t understand boxing, amateur or professional. I do know the rules and I am not squeamish about it and I am not calling for it to be banned, (live and let die as always) but why anyone would participate and or be that interested in watching is beyond me. It is a version of the roman gladiators and I think as a society we should be over that by now. Boxing remains a signpost to the work we need to do to improve our thinking skills.

OK so boxing is not the only way to get injured at work and there are other dangerous jobs, bomb disposal springs to mind. But assuming you have a safe desk job etc why would you sign up for a spot of danger time?

So with that in mind what is with the current popularity of “celebrity” boxing matches. On the front page of the newspaper today are some pictures of some blokes from around the town punching each other in the face (well in truth one puncher one face owner per picture but you get the idea).

As a lawyer or CEO around town why would you sign up for this? It can’t possibly be a good time, it isn’t even dignified and surely in our modern society the promotion of generalised violence is not a good idea and these people should “know better”

The proceeds do go to charity but still a strange way to raise funds.

Now if one of the fighters was a local figure that I didn’t like and the opponent was a trained boxer now that might be interesting......

And all the boards did shrink…

So now Maori own all the water in NZ or at least that is what they are trying to assert in the face of the government trying to privatise state owned electricity companies.

So in truth this is the nub of the problem, “they” don’t like the sale of these state assets. Who “they” are is a point likely open to debate, but what we do know is that by and large Maori (as a group) have been left voting for many decades (although there appears to be a shift in this) and the “left” (another handy generalisation) in the form of the Labour and Green parties don’t like the sale of these assets either.

The National party (slightly right wing) claims it has a mandate to sell these assets because it told everyone at the last election that it was going to do it. Likewise Labour campaigned hard on this matter as an evil idea that would ruin the country. National won in an MMP landslide (more like a small trickle of pebbles but that is what you get in MMP) and Labour suffered its worst defeat ever (I think, certainly in the running for the ever award) This does rather seem to support Nationals position.

But enough with the politics, is it a rational idea? Tough to know from where I sit because I don’t have all the information that Treasury does, however what I do know is how this would work for me as an individual.

Assume my income had declined by a good chunk for some reason (say 20%) but instead of stopping spending I decided to borrow some money and truck on with my current lifestyle. I am hoping to get a pay rise sometime soon so I can fix this problem. After a while the debt starts to mount up and the interest costs are getting pretty big. Now I am worried that the pay rise might be a while coming and I might not be able to pay off the debt.

Good news I have some investments (in a power company) that produces a good steady dividend, problem solved all I need to do is……..

Well that’s the point isn’t it, what do you do? In a normal rational household you would look at your dividend and see that it is say $1200 per annum and the shares are worth $27,000. You have now racked up $50,000 of debt at 7% (personal loans are really expensive) A quick calculation shows that reducing your debt by 27,000 saves you $1,890 per year in interest. You would be better off selling the shares than continuing to borrow to invest. Simple right?

Same answer for the government even though the sums are a bit more complicated as we would in truth be comparing the expected present value of the future stream of dividends versus the expected present value of the expected borrowing costs. (I think) And with the scale of government this can get complicated.

But actually this is not really a guessing game, roughly speaking Treasury knows the answer to this problem and I am assuming the advice they are giving is to sell.

Now in the face of presumably logical advice from Treasury and an election mandate a group of unelected (potentially unrepresentative) people are trying to use the Treaty to prevent government policy. Is that right?

Presbyterian Gays

Why do churches have a problem with gay people?


The Presbyterian Church here in NZ is currently considering the “issue” of gay marriage, or same sex union to give it the politically correct title they are using.

It is simple, either gay people are people (it’s sort of in the name really) in which case I don’t know of any Christian religion that thinks it is ok to discriminate against “people” or

They are not people, which begs the question what are they then?

And the marriage thing again, isn’t this irrelevant, if we have decided they are people and we don’t discriminate against people then how do you justify denying them any of the rights ascribed to all the other members of your church.

Or does membership now come in classes? Not necessarily a dumb idea after all there are a fair number of people who only see the inside of a church for weddings and funerals, personally if I was running a church I would have “B” class membership for these folks and “A” for the people who actually participate and contribute and I am prepared to bet that gay folk would show up in both the A and B category.

So the disclaimer, I am neither gay nor part of the Presbyterian church but I can’t stand people who can’t apply a tiny bit of logic to their arguments.

And don’t give me that clap trap about marriage equals children, no one is calling for a ban on infertile people getting married are they?

The Right to Bare Arms

So recently a high profile court case has concluded with a Maori activist and his mates getting into bother around firearms, their use of them and possession of them. This seems principally because they were running around in the bush playing at being soldiers. This as we know has been a popular game for little boys for as long as I can remember and the real problem seemed to be that these men were using real guns instead of sticks.


Given that they have an avowed aim of separate sovereignty that gave the government cause to worry that after they had gotten bored with their bush game they might decide to use the guns on the government or its representatives.

Fair enough I hear you cry, which does seem to be the majority view. And I agree that we don’t want nutters with guns in our society, however....... is it as simple as that ?

The Right to Bear Arms is famously enshrined in the American Constitution as the 2nd amendment and it is also closely linked to the National Rifle Association or the NRA who are the visible lobby group for the right to own guns. Charlton Heston was a long time president and by extension spokes person for the NRA and gave a speech concerning the protection of freedoms and finished that speech in a dramatic fashion by holding aloft a vintage rifle and said “from my cold dead hands” an exert from a the longer version of “I’ll give you my gun when you take it from my cold dead hands”. This has become the slogan and battle cry of the “gun nuts” as most non NRA folk see them.

All this has rather polarised and obscured the original debate about ones rights to protect one self, from other people but the often overlooked point is it allows you a measure of protection from the government itself.

If you cast your mind back to the time of the founding fathers of America you will recall that they had just spent some time sending King George and his merry soldiers packing from the land of the free. This was accomplished by a bunch of farmers forming militia with the rifles they had previously used for hunting. (Ok so they had some help from the French and others but back to the story). So the right to protect yourself from an oppressive government would have been fresh in their mind.

What is more given that most of them were very near term immigrants to the US (no native American involved in the establishment of the “new” country) they brought with them their ideas from back home. This would have included the British right to bear arms included in the English Bill of Rights of 1689, which again was influenced by the troubles they were having with pesky monarchs who thought they could do whatever they pleased.

So I am a little unconvinced that persecuting the populace for waving guns about is a good idea. As far as I know no one has been shot or even shot at. (In another incident he drew some heat for shooting a flag in the middle of a public gathering)

Tame Iti the activist in question, his basic grip is his tribe didn’t sign up to the Treaty of Waitangi and therefore should be permitted independent sovereignty and self determination and rule. It is probably a fact that they didn’t sign (hard to fake that fact) so he may have a point. The practicalities of such a thing would be another issue. He also may not even represent the majority of Tuhoe (the tribe in question) but he does have some supporters (refer chaps in bush pretending to be soldiers) So it is pretty clear he is involved in a political struggle, regardless what I might think of his case. So it seems to me he might have a “right” to wave his gun around, especially if the government is trying to take it off him cause the don’t like him.

The ANC were not above the odd bit of gun waving before the end of apartheid in South Africa and more recently the west has been helping some Arab citizens over throw some “bad” governments with the use of citizens guns.

But of course those were “good” causes and we (a majority of western politicians, still heavily white middle class males) agreed with those causes. Brown guys in the bush with guns hmmm could that be a “good” and “just” cause? Don’t be silly.

What I did in the holidays

I have been on holiday, unfortunately not quite as long as the silence on this blog but long enough for some reflections.

Firstly the very idea of holidays is very middle class, I was watching an episode of Downton Abbey (which I would recommend to those yet to discover it) and at one point a new character to the house is speaking of doing an activity at the weekend, at which point the Dowager Duchess asks “what is a weekend” delivered in a priceless put down tone.

So other than it being the name commonly given to Saturday and Sunday it does occur that a weekend is only relevant to those who have a working week followed by a period of “leisure” or at least not paid employment. Of course the rich and or idle barely notice the passing days, a phenomenon I observed on holiday when I was barely able to tell you which day of the week it was. At the other end of the spectrum are those who work all the time or 6 days a week when the idea of a leisure period every five days is laughable. Funnily enough self employed shopkeepers or hospitality providers fall into this category these days. So really only the privileged 9-5ers among us now enjoy a weekend.

So it is with holidays, some folk never seem to get holidays and some seem permanently on some sort of holiday. (I do realise that this may seem to include those seeking work but having experienced this I know it is not a holiday.) So I decided that being able to describe myself as having returned from holiday is in some ways privilege. It shows I have some work to do but at a sufficient level that allows me holidays. As I say very middle class.

The other thought that struck me was the parts of the holiday that I enjoyed the most, of course the ability to indulge in idle time is great but the catching up with friends and family who you don’t see through the year was also a joy. Mostly this was combined with food and or drink of some sort or another, either a picnic at pleasant spot or an evening BBQ, or just a cup of coffee or glass of wine.

Which reminded me of Epicurus, one of those long dead but not forgotten Greek philosophers, who’s name these days, in the form of Epicurean, has been appropriated as a by word for the enjoyment of food in particular but normally fairly flash food, certainly not a sausage off a BBQ served with tomato sauce and bread.

But while Epicurus promoted hedonism his actual view on what that constituted was good bread and olives and some wine shared with friends. To him this was the height of pleasure, good but simple food shared with friends.

Like a lot of holiday spots ours is simple and less grand than my usual life but the simplicity does not detract from enjoyment. So just like Epicurus simple food shared with friends brought great pleasure. Of course the silly thing is that my usual life could be simpler if I chose. The logical outcome of working 5 days a week is not a more complex life and I know from experience that fancy food at fancy restaurants does nothing to enhance your life really.

So my new year’s resolution is to choose simple but important stuff. Good bread, a little olive oil perhaps and a glass of reasonably priced quality wine shared with good friends as often as I can and take a moment now and again to be grateful that I go on holiday but also that I have the option to work.