Category Archives: Government
EQUALITY IN OUR NANNY STATE
Our nanny state in Australia is a tool of capitalism. It cultivates mass markets and has the appearance of economy and efficiency. Market and state work side by side, giving the appearance of providing for individual choice and community. The partnership is unhealthy because the market passes unprofitable supply to the state, for example rural telephones and rail, because inequality is a breeding ground for politics. Conversely, when the state develops a profitable business, it is expected to stand aside for the market to adopt it, for example the internet, for which equality can be branded. The nanny state serves public welfare as well as capitalism.
People want to have opportunities equal to others’. If they perceive conditions as fair, they enjoy competition when it benefits them and disadvantages others,. There are many types of equal opportunity, from equal status, equal rights, equal education, equal employment, equal pay, equal healthcare, equal hours, and so on.
They also want some facets of their lives not to be equal, to be individual, unique and distinctive. They want jobs to be individualised for them and made unequal, with specialised access and technologies. They want unequal pay, that recognises their voluntary contribution. They want unequal hours that allow them to flex. They want to be able to choose aspects of their job unequal with others.
They want to be able to take unequal holidays on different days. They want personal treatment by their supervisor. They may prefer to have a choice of dress, rather than a uniform. They do not want their home to be the same as everyone else’s. They want to be able to save at their rate, amass their own amount of wealth and will their estate to the beneficiaries they nominate.
They do not want long queues for privileges, such as promotion, cars, houses and transfers. They do not want available products and services to be equal for everyone.
Equality is easily recognised in competition, whereas inequality may be wanted secretly. Equality is easily regulated, but inequality may have to run the gamut of envy, jealousy and complaint. Being unequal, the nanny state could be charged with unfairness. It can become a whipping post for competition between individual employees.
Whereas all employees are supposed to be on the same side, that idea is supplanted in many workplaces by team allegiances, or alternatively, by selfishness. A nanny state can lubricate workplaces with equality by raising awareness of its dimensions. One approach is least common denominators. Fostering of inequalities is less well-suited to mass management. An approach is ‘levelling’, whereby individuals’ competitiveness in wanted dimensions is equalised by attempting to equalise outcomes.
In the novel ‘Turkeys Not Bees’ a nanny state and sports industry want an appearance of more equality and less elitism. They begin levelling performers. High and low performers are equalised by handicapping them like horses in a race.
Levelling also starts in employment, health provision and education.
The protagonists Megan and Chance oppose the nanny state.
Will they succeed?
‘Turkeys Not Bees’ is an exciting fiction story by Martin Knox on Amazon. Reviews: martinknox.com
SUPERPOWER ALLEGORY SEQUEL
Orwell’s 1945 novel Animal Farm tells how the animals revolt, drive the farmer out and run the farm as an animal collective. In this satire, the pigs takeover the farm, mirroring the totalitarian state after the Russian Revolution in 1917-1923.
Animal Farm 2 by author Martin Knox, continues the satire, set on Caruba Island, updating geopolitical events with the Cold War, re-emergence of the Russian state, Animal Liberation and Climate Change. The animals speak English and debate science as they critically evaluate superpower manoeuvring from their position as workers. This is a humorous and imaginative story, with enlightened views of global events.
Novel available from Amazon. Reviews: martinknox.com
CLIMATE DOUBLE JEOPARDY
Double jeopardy prohibits different prosecutions for the same offense. This rule can come into play when a government brings a charge against someone for an incident, then prosecutes that person again for the same incident, only with a different charge.
For example, if a defendant is found not guilty of manslaughter in a drunk-driving incident, he or she cannot be tried again in criminal court. However, the deceased victim’s family is free to sue the defendant for wrongful death in a civil court to recover financial damages.
A situation of double jeopardy could possibly be invoked when an authority brings a charge against an electricity supplier for harmful combustion of fossil fuels. Improper waste disposal is an environmental crime and could be heard in a criminal court. If they are found not guilty, they cannot be tried again in the criminal court for the same incident with a different charge, for example pollution, However, the plaintiff is free to sue them in a civil court for wrongful polluting of air.
A defendant could maintain that non-renewable fuel combustion cannot be both polluting and resource – diminishing at the same time, for when that resource is not renewed, it cannot also cause pollution. The prosecutor cannot have a resource cake with pollution eating it at the same time.
The double jeopardy principle prevents courts contradicting each other.
Although the example situation above could not be dealt with by existing legislation, it could be a guide to fair treatment of alleged polluters from non-renewable resources. Resource depletion should be tested legally separately from alleged pollution.
The situation is notionally relevant to prosecution of fossil fuel compliance when neither pollution nor depletion have corroborating scientific evidence in Australia. A shifted climate science paradigm is explained in the novel Animal Farm 2.
martinknox.com
POLITICAL CRIME FICTION THRILLER
Jane Kenwood is a feisty independent on a city council rife with skulduggery. When there is to be a vote on a casino project that she has been outspoken in opposing in a hung parliament, she disappears mysteriously.
Dr Phillip Keane, her partner, is a forensic scientist and sets up a think tank of her friends to investigate, with help from the police. The story has forensic science to savour and reveals corruption in partisan politics that disable governments.
The friends search systematically and find evidence of causal links between the perpetrators’ motives, suspects’ characteristics, crime scenes and the victim’s condition. Hypotheses reconstructing the heinous crime are related by an Euler walk, a theory of the crime able to convict, keeping you guessing until the dramatic final dénouement.
martinknox.com
