Ah well, in that sense I agree with you, mostly. The wealthy in this country do have too much influence, and they’re left to acquire more wealth even though they don’t really use it for anything but acquiring more wealth and power with it. But they don’t control things absolutely. If they did, the Electoral Finance Act would never had made it through parliament. (although their spirited attempt to defeat it shows exactly how timely it was)

That said… I do not object in principle to people owning a lot of property. I’m not even sure it’s practical to object to them using it to invest and generate more wealth. I only object when they think this gives them the right to control- control, not influence- society outside of the workplaces they own, or when they think it lets them trespass on human rights. Neither of these are acceptable.

This is also a big part of why I don’t want to see policy issues, rather than government issues, put to referendum- I worry that it would be too easy to influence people with arguments like “look, if this referendum doesn’t favour me, I’m going to have to close your workplace due to economic fallout.”

When I say we are ruled (in a large part of our lives) by a minority, I mean this: Look at who controls the economy. To a first degree approximation, you can simply look at how wealth of society is divided up to see who controls the levers of the economy.

People with a lot of money don’t just sit around driving luxury cars etc (although they do this as well), they invest it into businesses. This is how a capitalist society works (and I’m not saying whether this is bad or good, just making an observation).

Now imagine a hypothetical situation where a government elected by the majority decided to nationalise large portions of the economy; or maybe workers decided to collectively take control of the factories. What would happen? Would the previous owners just sit down and do nothing? Of course not. In all liklihood, a government would find itself overthrown in a coup, and if workers tried to take control of their workplaces, they would be met by armed resistance.

It is when the interests of the ruling minority are threatened that it becomes clear who really pulls the strings in our society. The rest of the time, the minority are quite happy to stay out of sight (at least in countries such as New Zealand).

Some people will argue that most people in New Zealand are in a sense “mini-capitalists”, because they have money invested in superannuation etc. While this may be true in a sense, just look at who controls most of the money. In the last few decades in New Zealand, the divide between those with lots of wealth and those with not much has been growing, not getting smaller.

So while I’ll agree that we are not ruled by a dictatorial minority in the sense of Stalinist Russia or Saddam Hussein in Iraq, I am arguing that fundamental parts of our society are in fact controlled by a small minority. Most of the time most people are unaware of this, or simply choose to ignore it.

While minorities can certainly boss us around, (in exchange for money and good working conditions) they’re not in charge of us in a significant sense, and the law protects us if they try to abuse that position.

The alternative to a majority-rules situation is a return to oppression by elite minorities. The alternative is balancing multiple distinct interests and negotiation, which is exactly what MMP has brought us.

As for referenda in a wider sense, they certainly have their place! I wasn’t trying to say never use them. They’re usually great for determining how to restructure our government, for instance. That said, I would not support wider policy being determined by direct democracy, at least not yet. I live in hope for the day when people are educated and wise enough for that to happen though.

Zentiger- if by democracy you mean always letting any majority of the population make any decisions it wants, then yes, we’re not being democratic. But then again, neither were the founders of the independent United States, who had similar views about the danger of putting decisions too directly in the hands of the people. *shrug* This isn’t some leftist conspiracy to oppress you all, it’s a legitimate worry that people can be oppressed if you give over too much of the decision-making power to majority interests. It’s long been a principle of democratic decision-making to distribute power among multiple groups that decide things differently and accountably. If we take away power from parliament with binding referenda, who keeps the power of the voters in check?

Didn’t you know that written consonants and vowels are like buses and police officers? Always in pairs. Not sure if it’s because they get lonely and need the company or if it’s just safer that way. And consonants and vowels are like cops and robbers, they don’t really like each other so you can’t safely pair a vowel with a consonant, each has to have another of its own kind to be happy.

Perhaps kiwis are to busy thinking about more important things (like rugby, racing and beer) to worry about complex the rules about silent letters. So to be on the safe side we just treat every second letter as a silent one.

Or there again maybe we’re just lazy.

Of course as fond of spelling things with extra vowels as Kiwis appear to be the fact that they only ever use one when they’re actually speaking does get a mite confusing.

respectfully
BJ
[[ hurriedly donning flame-resistant underwear ]]

> Incidentally, another initially elected UF candidate at the 2002 election, Kelly Chal, was subsequently revealed to not be a NZ Citizen, and therefore ineligible to sit in Parliament, and was replaced by another fundie Christian on their Party list, Paul Adams.

whereas Kelly Chal was a member of Destiny Church, which is definitely not fundamentalist

> hmmm, the judeo-christian ethic? i seem to remmeber the christian church doing everything they could to insure that the plebs could not have any influence, particualy in ensuring that they couldint read the bible from which they supposedly obtained their laws and from which the king and church gained their supremicy, i seem to remmeber that they did everything they could to kill all the heratics who tryed to write and distribute an english version of the origional latin bible?

With respect, that was the catholic church. This ‘Kiwi Party’ seems to have been founded by protestant fundamentalists, who trace their lineage to the people who rebelled against the Catholic church by publishing the bible in English (and German). Protestant Fundamentalists all read the bible, and believe that god has granted to them and them alone the power to decide which bits are to be followed and which are to be ignored, which are to be taken literally and which are to be taken figuratively, based solely on which parts of the bible happen to back up their prejudices.

when it comes to human rights they must be able to be altered but at the same time they must be safeguarded from infringement from groups seeking to disadvantage others, i would support a requirement of supermajority in the house of representitives and comparison to the entrencehed constitutional documents, does sound abit like the american system though.

Its advocate here should learn to spell “honour” with a “u” (unlike the Americans).