Election 2008: choosing your slave master

New Zealand elections are a farcical process because we get to say who we want our slave master to be, but we do not get to express our opinion about the legitimacy of the governmental system. Nor are we allowed to say whether or not we want a government that has no legal constraints upon it and therefore has absolute power over us – power which is backed with guns and prisons.

No, we are only allowed to say which slave master we think will be the least cruel, so our country is only one step better than a one-party state that holds sham elections. We should be grateful that we have elections at all, because there is nothing that prevents the government from cancelling all elections: whatever “rights” we have in law exist solely because our beneficent masters keep them there as long as they find it convenient to do so¹.

Why do I refer to the government as a slave master? Because there is a body of opinion amongst constitutional lawyers which says that the government stole sovereignty (ultimate authority) from the citizens and rendered itself illegitimate when it passed the Constitution Act 1986².

I also refer to the government as a slave master because most New Zealanders have to work for four or five months each year just to earn enough to pay their taxes, so they are enslaved for those four or five months.

As Leo Tolstoy said:

The essence of all slavery consists in taking the produce of another’s labor by force. It is immaterial whether this force be founded on ownership of the slave or ownership of the money that he must get to live on.

Whichever way you vote you will still be enslaved, so this is not a “free land” as our national anthem says. The state is always your enemy, and as a classical libertarian I am opposed to that enemy and seeking freedom. The first step to freedom is realising that you are a slave.

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1. the fact that Helen Clark was able to breach the Bill of Rights with the Electoral Finance Act shows that the government is able to break laws with impunity: to put it another way, laws are only effective whilst the government chooses to make them effective because the government is truly above the law. It also shows that we cannot expect to receive any protection from the Queen or the Governor General, who is chosen from a list supplied by the Prime Minister.

Section 18 of the Bill of Rights codifies the right to vote: if the government can use the Electoral Fiance Act to take away the government-given right to freedom of expression in s14 of the BoR they can also take away our government-given right to vote.

Click here to view a long but very interesting article on the legalities of the EFA.

2. Update: I was remiss in not citing my source: click here, here, and here.

Compulsory training – Part 2

An update to my previous post.

Commenter democracymum raises a good point on Kiwiblog:

Ironically this policy also penalises those children who are fast learners.
My son will be 15 at the start of Year 13 and could, theoretically have finished a degree by the time he is 18.
No gap year, or work experience, or OE for him until the White Witch says so. [Year 13 is 7th form in old money, when most kids are 16-17 years old. White Witch is an original idea of mine so I'm claiming copyright ]

Here are my thoughts on this:

1) if this young man wants to go to university he can go there directly from school, but that will mean a student loan, parental assistance, or both. This increases the financial burden on him, his parents, and taxpayers.

2) if he wants to take the sensible approach and work to save for university before going to university he must wait until his 18th birthday: that means filling in time with various training schemes, which may or may not match his abilities and may or may not be what he wants to do. If the schemes do no match his abilities he is likely to be bored and frustrated.

This will also mean that the start of his postgraduate salary is delayed, making him poorer: he can never recover those lost years of earnings.

3) university students have a more mature approach if they have had work experience or OE (overseas travel experience) before going to university; more so from work experience. Compulsory training makes it much harder and much more expensive for him to gain that maturity before going to university (see #2).

4) democracymum points out that her son cannot go to work [without also doing training] or overseas until his 18th birthday. I believe that this is slavery, my definition of slavery being “Involuntary detention of those who have not committed crimes against person or property”*.

5) raising the school leaving age to 18 means that the state is treating teenagers as children until their 18th birthday: this is an infantilisation of teenagers, and I believe that the resulting immaturity will have an intergenerational effect on our country.

In other words, the State is treating teenagers as babies until their 18th birthday, which promotes immaturity in teenagers, and they will pass that immaturity (reduced skills for sensible living) onto their descendants.

Thanks Helen, your policy is going to damage our country for many generations to come.

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*Consider also the Bill of Rights (not that Helen has any respect for the rule of law):

♦ s6: Interpretation consistent with Bill of Rights to be preferred

Wherever an enactment can be given a meaning that is consistent with the rights and freedoms contained in this Bill of Rights, that meaning shall be preferred to any other meaning.

♦ s18: Freedom of movement

(1) Everyone lawfully in New Zealand has the right to freedom of movement and residence in New Zealand.

(2) Every New Zealand citizen has the right to enter New Zealand.

(3) Everyone has the right to leave New Zealand.

(4) No one who is not a New Zealand citizen and who is lawfully in New Zealand shall be required to leave New Zealand except under a decision taken on grounds prescribed by law.

♦ s22: Liberty of the person

Everyone has the right not to be arbitrarily arrested or detained.