Samiuela Says:
However, can’t you see how your position (people not having equal rights) is open to distortion and abuse?

Yes, I agree, it is open to abuse, and needs to have strong checks and balances. However, all government policies are open to abuse, so I don’t have a problem with changing the policies, in order to address inequities.

It is ironic that the concept of “everyone is equal” guarantees unequal treatment.

Let me give you a hypothetical example: Imagine two families living next door to each other. One has a sick child that costs $2000 a year to treat. The other has a sick child that costs $4000 a year to treat.

If there is a government policy that contributes medical expenses of $2000 equally to each family, are both families getting equal treatment??

Even within a family it is wrong to treat siblings equally. If one of my children has a skill that enables them to attain international ranking and honours and attend the olympic games, but another of my children is less gifted and is happy aiming to work for McDonalds, should I, as a parent, give the second child $2600 as an ‘equality gift’ simply because I am paying the $2600 airfare for the first child to achieve at an international competition?

In my view parents (and governments) have the responsibility to do what is right and healthy for each of their dependents. This does not involve equal treatment.

I see what you are saying. However, can’t you see how your position (people not having equal rights) is open to distortion and abuse? It is my personal view that human rights is an all or nothing thing: everyone has to have them. Otherwise governments will start picking on minority groups one by one: “you don’t deserve these rights because ….”, then “you over there don’t deserve these rights because of something else”, and so on.

As a small example, in parts of Australia, aborigines have welfare payments “quarantined”, so they can only spend it in the supermarket and a few other shops. This is supposed to stop welfare payments being spent on alcohol etc. However, this quarantining does not apply to white people. So a white person is free to spend all their welfare money on grog, but if you are an aborigine you are forced to spend 50% or 100% of it at the supermarket, irrespective of whether you had any intention to spend it on something “undesirable” in the first place. This type of racist policy is what you end up with when you believe that people do not have equal rights. In the case of welfare payments, to be fair, you have to quarantine everyone’s payments, not just those from a specific group.

I fully expect a fair lot of electrically powered vehicles of all sorts with electrical infrastructure extended to allow them to operate long distances. The rail links can be electrified to far greater extents than they are already and that would be relatively easy. Organizing electrical power for individual vehicles is a bit more complex and I haven’t given much though to how it will be done because I frankly, do not have a way to predict that part of the future in any detail. It’s possible… and it does not rely on breakthroughs in technology for it to happen, though breakthroughs are possible even here.

I think it will be an odd mix of horses, electrically powered vehicles, trains and the odd emergency or specialty vehicle with a biodiesel engine. There are sectors where the fuel density and ability to go anywhere anytime become of paramount importance. There are some ramifications. The end of boy-racers for instance. Accident prevention in general.

For me it is a distraction. I know it will happen. The details I leave to the future in full confidence that the people then will know better than I do, what might work for them then.

respectfully
BJ

samiuela Says:
greengeek: You wrote:

“However if we truly care about the environment we have to stop valuing human lives as all being equal, and all being valuable.�

1) Who determines how valuable each person is?
2) What would you advocate doing if you have a child who turns out to be, in your words, a “defective human�?

Samiuela. Good questions. I liked BJs response, and I think he said it better than I expressed it. A valuable person is one who makes a positive contribution to humanity. Actually I would go further than that…making a positive contribution to the animal kingdom, or the planet as a whole would meet my criterion.

Just being alive, and just being human, doesn’t in my view make one person as valuable as another. We should be judged by our actions, and by the quality of our offspring. (Farmers manage their stock by a similar principle…put down a dog that attacks sheep or humans, and breed from good quality animals such as a sheep that produces healthy lambs that survive tough winters and produce good quality fleece/meat).

As to who should judge which of us is a valuable person. Difficult. Doctors have to make such decisions every day when they prioritise how to spend the hospitals money on one patient in preference to another.

I am advocating that all government departments need to have the same attitude as doctors in allocating resources. eg: a solo mum who produces 3 delinquent children is not as deserving of assistance as another solo mum who has children achieving well at school, and going to girl guides etc.

For the last 20-odd years we seem to have lost an understanding that good families need to be encouraged. We should not value good families the same as bad ones.

I guess I was particularly referring to government efforts to encourage population increase in NZ, by offering birth incentives (eg increased DPB payments to solo parents who have even more kids while on the DPB) and such things as ‘working for families’ packages benefitting families that breed like rabbits.

Governments really do have a huge responsibility to evaluate the longterm effects of such policies that might seem benign and healthy at first glance.

In answer to your second question, I am in exactly that position, with a child (now an adult) who cannot get by without state medical assistance.

As BJ suggested…I am NOT in favour of doing away with the sick and needy (a la Hitler), as I believe it is a mark of a healthy society that we accept the vagaries of nature and genetics, and try to look after our sick, needy and old as well as we can.

I just believe it is morally wrong to increase the population without having a clear view on what individuals/families/attitudes/behaviours we are going to prohibit or discourage.

At present we are not being discriminating enough, partly because we have, as a society, become hung up on the concept of ‘rights’.

There is no such thing as ‘equal human rights’. It is an iniquitous concept that harms us all, and harms nature too.

I read Chefurka as being concerned about global energy use. Nothing he wrote suggested to me that he was concerned only with power generation. He was looking more from the fuel/energy source side. However we are not very far apart in our views since he was concerned with what is measurable, and direct space heating (e.g. sunlight pouring through windows) is not measurable on a global scale.

My impression is that most people aren’t so much in a state of denial about peak oil - they are just unaware of it to deny. The media don’t help much - compare the coverage of peak oil to the coverage of Paris Hilton or Tom Cruise. Unfortunately they give the people what they believe the people want. Now that is depressing!

Trevor.

In defense of Greengeek I don’t THINK he has at any time actually discussed what happens after a child is born. I have perceived this as a discussion about who we are encouraging, through a variety of direct and indirect subsidies, to have children.

For your first question:

The value of any child is determined by their ability and their likelihood of exercising it, to contribute to the survival of human civilization here on earth )and intelligent life in the universe).

The unasked and more important difficulty is “who is to judge”. For while I can go part of the way here, I am loathe indeed to set up any “human” based system to make such determinations. I stated those universal values easily enough. Finding humans who can reliably and honestly apply them is however, humanly impossible.

respectfully
BJ

Our statements were not so very different but what I was pointing out was in response to a response about Chefurka, who was considering power generation. I don’t think he allowed for direct use displacing much. Maybe he is wrong and I would not mind if he were, but for reasons of human nature that I allude to above, I think he is not.

respectfully
BJ