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?