The above image is from the testimonials page of VetCBD, a medicinal cannabis product formulated specifically by veterinarians for conditions that might cause suffering to pets. All of the animals in the above image have been (according to their owners, at least) successfully treated with VetCBD.
Namely, it will tell you that that CBD oil, an extract of one of the cannabinoids in the cannabis plant, is known to have considerable medicinal value.
No Kiwi doctor will tell you such a thing – if you ask them about CBD oil they will reflexively groan, zombie-like, “Cannabis causes braaaaaaain damage!”
Some pet owners in places with legal medicinal cannabis treat their pets with more compassion than Kiwis treat each other with
The website also lists a number of conditions that their product is believed to reduce the suffering associated with, in particular pain, anxiety, nausea and loss of appetite – in other words, the same things that human medicinal cannabis users use cannabis for.
Another way of putting this is: people in California treat their dogs with more compassion than New Zealand politicians and doctors treat their patients.
Yet another way of looking at is that medicinal cannabis users in New Zealand have cause to be envious of animals in more enlightened parts of the world.
But whereas animals in over twenty American states can access CBD oil out of compassion for their misery, adult human New Zealanders cannot legally access it, as we have been commanded to go without this medicine for the sake of higher profits.
Next time you think you are living in a free country, Kiwis, just remember that there are places in the world where they don’t even allow animals to suffer to the degree that your own politicians and doctors will allow you to suffer if you have a condition that can be alleviated by medicinal cannabis.
A universal basic income could be expected to drastically reduce the number of women forced into prostitution by poverty
Some forward-thinking people are starting to discuss the idea of a universal basic income. This is the idea that the Government would make a small but weekly payment to each adult resident citizen, just enough to keep them alive but not enough for any luxuries or even any decencies.
Predictably, the idea that the Government might help the poor in some new fashion has resulted in cries of communism from those who expect to inherit large amounts of property.
But there are reasons to believe that bringing in a universal basic income, even if it was as little as the current unemployment benefit, would significantly raise the standard of living of the average New Zealander.
For instance, a universal basic income would, at a stroke, remove all the cruel things that people do to each other out of desperate poverty.
One might object here that they would not remove all the cruel things that people do to each other out of greed – and that’s true in some cases – but consider this.
Every great dictator or tyrant who convinced a mass of people to go against their better nature, and to later regret that they had done so, convinced those people by offering them money.
How?
They just looked for desperately poor people. Poverty is control. That’s the way it has to be understood for the psychological reactions of people to the question of a universal basic income to be understood.
Hitler could not have achieved what he did without the Great Depression and the economic restrictions imposed on Germany as a consequence of the Versailles Treaty.
People like to make a big deal about Hitler’s rhetoric and oratory skills, but the naked fact is that the NSDAP paid men to serve in the military, and they could pay a lot of men for not much money because those men were all as poor as shit.
This is why getting the rich to give up some of the money they have extorted out of the poor through their control of the Police and of private property is not a simple matter of appealing to the simple fact that it would reduce the sum total of human suffering.
One must also take into account the loss of power this entails.
Think of all the women in history who were forced to accept the sexual advances of a man they didn’t like because they needed the money.
Think of all the men in history who have wound up doing violence to strangers because they were forced to be obedient to someone violent for the sake of money.
Think of all the kings and queens who were able to raise an army to invade some other peaceful place because the peasants of their kingdom had no access to the commons on account of enclosure, and therefore were forced to take the monarch’s silver or starve.
Think of all the times a parent who, on account of stress from worry about where the next meal was coming from, took a short-sighted decision in the heat of the moment and came to regret it.
Go back as far in history as you like. How many robberies, how many burglaries, how many thefts, how many assaults and murders could have been prevented had we merely seen to it that people didn’t need to go hungry, and did so with a similar effort to what we already put into punishing and protecting ourselves from robbers, burglars, thieves and murderers?
We’re not talking about an equal distribution of luxuries, or even decencies. A person living merely on a universal basic income will be too poor to afford much beyond food and shelter – but at least they will not be so poor that they will take violent actions out of desperation.
One might raise an objection to this on the grounds that, if people were willing to look after each other enough to introduce a universal basic income, they would have done so already and would not need coercion through Government taxation.
This objection is only reasonable up to a certain historical point. When the productivity of the average citizen has advanced to such a degree that simply by pressing a button they can cause machines and computers to produce a million dollars worth of goods, there’s no reason barring a sadistic need for control to cut non-machine-owners out of this cornucopia.
Of course, much of this discussion is academic in the case of New Zealand, which is 20 years behind the rest of the world in progress on questions like this and getting worse. Medicinal cannabis was legalised in California in 1996 and we are yet to even have a proper discussion about it, so we will likely be several decades behind the rest of the world on the basic income question too.
Asians represent the fourth major wave of immigration to New Zealand, and, partially as a consequence, their voting patterns are the least well understood. What makes it especially difficult is that “Asian” covers a very large number of people, many of whom are very distinct from some of the others.
The most striking thing about Asian New Zealanders is their love of the ACT Party. The correlation between being Asian and voting ACT in 2014 was an extremely strong 0.85, which is enough to suggest that most ACT voters are Asians (note that it does not mean most Asians are ACT voters, because the population of Asians is many times higher than the number of ACT voters).
As is described elsewhere, the highly educated class tends to split into a right wing that votes ACT and a left wing that votes Green. If the correlation between voting ACT in 2014 and being Asian is so strong, one could predict that there were fewer educated Asians left to vote Green, and indeed the correlation between voting Green in 2014 and being Asian was 0.00.
Also because of the extremely strong ACT support, one could predict that there was little conservative sentiment left over for supporting the National Party. This is indeed the case – the correlation between being Asian and voting National in 2014 was 0.09. There was even less for the real Conservative Party, voting for which in 2014 had a correlation of -0.07 with being Asian.
The correlation between being Asian and voting Labour, by contrast, was 0.17. Some might be surprised by this, given that there are a large number of Asians attracted to the ACT Party. The explanation is that most of the ACT-voting Asians are from Far East Asia and the many from India, Thailand, Malaysia etc. are more likely to have social democratic sentiments.
Given that Maoris were the first wave of immigrants and Asians the most recent, it’s not really surprising that being Asian had a significant negative correlation with voting for any of the four Maori-heavy parties. Being Asian had a correlation of -0.23 with voting Internet MANA, one of -0.30 with voting Maori Party, one of -0.50 with voting Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party and one of -0.60 with voting New Zealand First.
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This article is an excerpt from Understanding New Zealand, by Dan McGlashan, published by VJM Publishing in the winter of 2017.
