Monday, August 20, 2012

The golden age of economics

hasn't come . It may just look that way . Say, when everyone in the home of blunt instruments is singing from the same song sheet - The silly simple song  that praises price above all things. . Its a euphoria that's been celebrated before -- but not for long . Why , because blunt instruments cut , tear and waste money . You only have to study the history of taxation in the tobacco industry to know that the current fascination of Greenlabor with price incentives to control behaviour is out of this world unsustainable . There is no magic number , even though they keep telling us there is one .
Governments happy that they have palmed much of their responsibilities off to private companies have yet to see the backlash from their growing blindness to economic realism in their own ranks .
First its insulation ,today its switches and soon someone will note that higher electricity prices was the governments own idea - when you trace it back .
The golden age of economics hasn't come , Even if we understand eco better,politics must be personal ; human nature still needs some extra ordinary substance sharing to prevent the rich getting richer and parliamentarins singing from the same old hymn sheet in church.

Wednesday, August 08, 2012

Consensus and how to get it

Consensus is NOT built on unity, but on respect for diversity.

What this means is that we can destroy any real unity we already have by forcing diversity into a mold . For many of us the key to life is diversity and the part we play in making things happen together . What this means is that we can fail to find real consensus , or undermine one that currently exists.
What this means is that if we insist on a new form of unity that doesn't really exist - one on paper , or one in legislation  we can do great harm to the building process.How do we ourselves avoid fanaticism in the face of growing demolition and deconstruction and distraction and denial ( esp in relation to earth limits )

None of this is obvious of course,  otherwise people would follow what i am saying here more easily .Am i saying choose unity NO,  am i saying work with diversity YES and to achive that avoid coercive effort .
Such ideas as a  forced unity is one that a silly over confident government or powerbroker might assume exists. This sort of simplifying is of course is a great risk  with cultural matters as the things that contribute to culture and its diversity are subtle - best protected , as in law by,  common law and common sense (Cf common pedantry and lawyer ascendancy ). Try and tell Emperor Julian that - he spent and he failed !
An age which is desperate to prove that every good and perfect gift comes from what's rational is especially prone to make the fanatical assertion ( equality and unity ) here .
Fortunately most Governments in our sector have had enough common sense to stay out of trying to drive cultural debates ( Clearly they have done it as strong parties within the divides ) . The smoothing over Chamberlain heresy is  territory where angels fear to tread but that doesn't stop  the ignorant ( who have no sense of danger) who go there naturally. We pray every day for careful leaders who take advice and who listen to someone other than what's going on in their own heads ( The brain that grows and heals itself ? )

God help us if the government decided that because AFL football is the only football game worth watching,  we should let Collingwood's constitution frame the game . Its stupid right ,  but for some reason we do stupid things sometimes. Its good intentioned enough on both sides too which helps explain why we ALL get drawn in.  We want people to see what's really important - how Geelong plays the game , for example .

Does any government have the right to deliberately force a false unity on its culturally diversity? Of course not . But does that stop them trying ?The very word governance implies subjection to diversity and balancing diversity and growth in various sectors of oikonomia. Good governments know which games they best not try and play !Good leaders though will play and play hard for one side or the other . The problem ofetn with our declining print media is that noone has had any time for the old game ( of trying to cover all games in the one cover sheet) or is not able to find the game they want to watch ( until Twitter , Blogger and facebook came along - hooray!)

Worse , as in the case of redefining marriage to a definition not sustainable in history( BUT  currently before Australia's parliament ( August 2012 ) , Only a blind and self destructive government  could not also see that giving in to those who insist on their" entitlements" is a process of diversity reduction that is quite capable of destroying our delicately balanced oikonomia.  How we define life together, is after all  the key to life itself .It certainly not about letting the loudest , the oldest ,the strongest ,the most insistent , the most talkative, the most sexyist ( in terms of hormone diversity ) and the most self centred determined determine  what the rest of us should be required to do .- what game we play in our own households ( the GL are about to talk to kids in Victorian Primary schools who are trying to work out what  a boy or girl is (their own identity )  that they can have a sex change - if they want to ) Legislating rights can be denying people their rights
 In the West in the past  , legislation WAS often only attempted when absolutely necessary to preserve diversity. Not always of course ( every Englishman has to go to Anglican services for a while or be penalised - this was the govt , not Christians in the  radical tradition of the founder  ) Unity is not about words ( legislation ) because mere words  are not diverse enough to cover the territory. Real freedom must  be based on having real choices( Copyright EA aug 9th 2012)  

In a week which has seen our leaders spruking their heroes , you would think real leaders who respected democracy would mention the name of a truly great man of literature who knew the supreme dangers  of mere" equality" arguments - George Orwell's books  were consensus based required reading in " our culture"
The cultural idea of Marriage is how our culture has established and defined it , not how some small group or some innovative driven government wannabes  want try to define and redefine  it.There are are times when the governments must follow the people-- most of the time ! ( you heard it first on Blogger and from EA )

Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,