Me Vs We

Jeremy Bentham is most associated with utilitarianism a philosophy which can be boiled down to "the greatest good for the greatest number"

It is the basis for any number of rationing systems with Pharmac and drug buying being a good example in this country.
Some drugs don't get purchased and some people go without treatment because the drugs are really expensive and would therefore use up the budget which could be better spent helping a larger number of people with less expensive drugs. Until the day that you need the expensive drugs people generally accept this as a reasonable basis for decision making, the greatest number of people are assisted within the budget available.

The rights of the individual have an even longer history which from an english law perspective can trace their origins back to the Magna Carta signed in 1215 which established the rights of the subjects vs the powers of the king.

But which is supreme, the rights of the individual or the rights of the society, or group. How you answer this question may well tell me which side of the political spectrum you are likely to fall on.

Those to the right of the spectrum tend to champion individual, you know individual responsibility, reward for effort, my money not the states taxes, small government, big market (a collection of individuals effectively)

Those to the left tend to champion collective goods or groups, increased taxes to assist... (insert group of choice) Protection of the enviroment, gay rights, womens rights etc.

Of course these domains are not clear cut and plenty of "right wingers" can be concerned about gay rights etc but if you listen to the way the ideas are discussed it is effectively group (we) vs the individual (me).

The possible reason why left wingers seem more virtuous as they care about "others" or groups, right wingers appear to care only for themselves "individuals"

This is a bit simplistic though isn't it, both groups seek to advance all, it is where the emphasis goes that counts.

Let The Hindsight Begin

And a lot of hand wringing and moral outrage and some notable cheering. I am of course referring to the American execution of Osama Bin Laden. And no I didn’t choose the word execution carelessly that is in my mind what happened and frankly I don’t care that much that the chap is dead but I am interested in some of the reactions from around the world.


First let's remind ourselves that while he may have been a great friend, husband and father for all I know publicly at least he was not a nice bloke and he started the events that lead to his death. Originally by declaring war on the United States (which is probably regarded by most military experts as unwise at best). He then followed up by among other things arranging for the death of a bunch of US civilians. So perhaps we could just dismiss these folk as the casualties of war because as we know people get killed in wars. However I note that Mr Bin Laden ordered the death of his own people too (the pilots of the 911 planes were bound to die after all) and not just as a possible consequence of soldiers in battle but a guaranteed certainty. And I don’t know a huge amount about it but I suspect he wasn’t a great spokes person for Islam either and was probably corrupting the words of the Koran to suit his own ends. So all in all a lying, murdering, war lord with scant regard for human life, i.e. not a nice guy.

So why the hand wringing and moral outrage? Is it back to this whole idea that we shouldn’t kill people? Well if you care to read my Murder is Wrong? Entry I think we can put that idea to bed, we routinely kill people for all sorts of reasons, which I admit doesn’t necessarily make it right but it is a bit late to start weeping into your chardonnay over this guy of all the potential candidates.

“He didn’t get a fair trial” is another comment I have heard. Well true but let’s be serious he confessed over and over in personal taped video messages etc, would there really have been an alternative outcome? OK so OJ Simpson got off but do we really think Osama was gonna wriggle out of this one? No I didn’t think so.

“If the Americans can just go around killing people they don’t like without due process what sort of world will we end up with?” Well the one we have now as far as I can tell. Do we really think this is the first politically motivated assassination that the Americans have ever carried out? Never mind a bunch of other people and nations.

“Some people will be upset by him being killed” and variations on this theme. Well in the words of Homer Simpson “D’oh” Hopefully those same “upset” people will think twice before joining in on his game lest they suffer the same fate.

But any way why the hand wringing, after all according to Osama isn’t dying a martyrs death in the service of god the greatest thing you can do? Well this seems to be a case of “be careful what you wish for” as his wish appears to have been granted.

Left, Right, March

As they say a week is a long time in politics and recent weeks have shown the truth of this axiom with the rise from the dead of ACT and the creation of the Mana party to add a second “Maori” party to the mix.

This once again raised the whole left vs right issue in the public arena with ACT being labelled as a party of failed Neo Liberal politics and Right Wing ideologs. I think the chances of the users of those phrases having a good grasp on their meaning is likely to be low never mind the people hearing these “slogans”. But it was a clear attempt by some people to paint them as right wing extremists who would do terrible things if they ever got any power.

This right versus left debate is a constant mystery to me. Given that there are intelligent people on each side of the debate (and as much as each side would like to pretend otherwise there are) equally skilled and educated and dealing with the same set of facts (eg economic indicators or data on education etc) how do we constantly come up with such opposing views on the best way forward.

Well my first culprit is single issue ism as represented by The Mana party, their stated goal is the advancement of Maori. Which sounds fine especially when they trot out the predictable statistics about the high crime, low employment, high poverty, low educational achievement etc that ascribe to Maori. But what is unsaid is advancement at the expense of whom as by definition they don’t care about any other group. And assuming we can engineer some win win outcomes so no one is disadvantaged, what is the Mana party policy on censorship or scientific research e.g. non Maori issues. To take a more substantive issue what is the Mana policy on roading as presumably there is no advancement of Maori per se in better (or worse) roads. So without the annoying need to worry about others they can promote policy that doesn’t really make sense in a total solution, to take a silly example they could promote separate lanes for Maori on Auckland motorways to provide better transport options for Maori, over all this is silly but from a Mana party point of view perfectly fine.

I mention this as it seems to me that there is a lot of single issue ism on the left wing of politics in my mind, the criticism of ACT most often trotted out is that there policies are not good for poor people and we need to do more for the “bottom of the heap”. They of course would deny this as they have a view that their policies are good for all. So without getting into the policy argument this is another example of single issue ism, promoting the bottom of the heap is no different than a suggestion that anyone earning over $200k has probably done enough and shouldn’t pay tax. Supporting poor people is more morally justifiable and therefore has a higher feel good factor.

A recent example of this was Labour suggesting that GST be eliminated from “basic food” as a way to help the less well off make ends meet in tough economic times. So this sounds good right, a policy to help poor folk but overlooking a raft of difficulties in defining basic food, they failed to articulate where the additional revenue would come from to cover the new hole they would create in the governments revenues.

So let’s stamp out single issue ism, which when you listen applies to a lot of things people promote, challenge them to explain the full consequences of their idea, who benefits and who pays and what behaviours might this promote. For example cereal would probably make the list for “basic food” but does this include Cafe style muesli or sugar laden coco pops (a chocolate milkshake only crunchy according to the manufacturer) If there was a 15% price advantage the manufacturers would be trying hard to ensure they were.