As part of our drive to keep our comment section the best in New Zealand we showcase each week an example of a top-notch comment that adds value to The BFD.
Today’s comment was written by Brian Dingwall. Thank you Brian for taking the time to craft such an interesting comment.
A rant, if I may. There was once a bold, exciting, young, entrepreneurial, country, miles from anywhere, at the bottom of the world. Favoured by God himself, it has mountains and forests, bush, beaches from heaven, and a temperate climate perfect for human habitation and growing things. A long way from its markets, hilly and with mostly poor soils, but nothing’s perfect. We were brave then, accepting manageable risks, independent, hard-working, strong intelligent men and women of action.
Farms were hewn out of bush and scrub, rough peat land and stony soils alike became postcard pretty productive farms. We were strong independent, fighters, standing no nonsense. We lost an unfortunate few, but accepted that that was part of the cost of continuous improvement.
Over time we have changed. Too many of us now automatically reach out to the State, the fairy Godmother of so many. If we see an injustice, we reach for a new law, a mandate, or a regulation. CO2 too high in classrooms? We need to regulate (and add the cost of enforcers compliance officers) rather than open a window. There is no longer the attitude of “I can fix this,” for often we can’t, we need permissions.
It used to be said that in England everything new is legal until laws are passed, whereas in Europe nothing new is legal until permission is obtained…..daily we become more like Europe.
The idea that the people have better knowledge (especially of their own needs and priorities) than the elected few has long gone, and we now kowtow to supremely ignorant politicians and “experts” carefully chosen for their ability to re-infect the politicians’ words with long forsaken credibility.
Publicly funded research is far more about loss aversion, and “cultural mores” not new or interesting ideas for increasing production, or for developing new products or tools. This means that scientists position their fields as catastrophe aversion, rather than advancement, it’s much easier to get funded.
We have become craven, cringing, supine, snivelling, lily-livered, pusillanimous, virtue-seeking, yellow-bellied, evidence ignoring, “go along to get along”, run-from-a-fight, sycophants, and label ourselves as “pragmatic”.
We bow humbly before the very people we have chosen to represent us and should be guiding. Our long-suffering farmers, for example, led by their organisations, are trying to minimise the damage to farming to be inflicted by the climate extremists in power. Rather than assemble the huge mass of evidence and argument that any reduction in gaseous emissions that NZ can deliver is going to make no global difference whatsoever, that no other country is meeting its obligations, that we dry milk and low cost energy is one source of competitive advantage, and there is no way to measure methane farm by farm (welcome to model land), and confront the extremists in power and bluntly say “we will not be moved”.
We are just not doing that. No, DairyNZ, the MIA, and even many farming consultants have decided that cooperation with the powers-that-be to figure out the “best way to be screwed” is the better option.
Farmers, I hope you recognize that 11c per kg of milkfat, ok for now, with fat milk cheques, is the thin end of the wedge that will slide deeper and deeper between your financial cheeks in the future.
We are also desperately illogical in our reasoning. That “there is no objective reality” may be OK for Michael Foucault, and academia, but for the rest of us barking our shins (or an empty bank account) hurts plenty, and it’s real! Why do so many “cases for action” we read these days list all the ills of colonisation, of air pollution, of free markets, but never the benefits?
Recently we were asked to believe the absurd claim that air pollution in NZ kills 3600 people in NZ pa. My response: name one of them. I delved into the paper and found yet again more models and assumptions, and no counting of the dead. And no allowance for the many whose lives were improved or saved by “polluting” helicopters, ambulances, private cars, the delivery of drugs, the boilers in hospitals, aircon, and so on.
But air pollution kills, let’s reach for more regulations (and assorted clipboard-wielding enforcers) on emissions….rather than, in view of the benefits, accept the risk. Or at least publish a risk versus cost analysis and let us decide.
Wealth is the reward for taking manageable risks. NZ wake up, we must find our spirit again before we are overrun by the soul-less greyness, poverty, famine, outright lying by State and media, and death, of irreversible Socialism!
