revolution – Page 18

Should New Zealand Reduce Pensions To The Level of Other Benefits?

When the pension system was introduced in New Zealand in 1898, the average life expectancy was less than 60. Today, it’s closer to 80. Consequently, pension expenses have ballooned. This article discusses whether New Zealand should lower the pension to bring it in line with other main benefits, and what we could afford if we did.

A lot of words are being written lately about universal basic income, but few realise New Zealand already has a universal basic income for the over 65s, known as National Superannuation.

The argument for paying out this universal benefit is that people older than 65 cannot reasonably be expected to earn a living through the workforce, and therefore would starve without a pension. That seems entirely fair. Not many people would argue that a person should be forced to starve, in this age of plenty, just because they were too old to work.

However, the amount of money paid in pensions is taking the piss. $360 per week to every person over 65, when a majority of them own their own house, is an obscenity, when we expect severely mentally ill people to survive on $273 per week, out of which they almost always have to pay rent.

As of June 2019, the New Zealand Government spends over $12,000,000,000 every year on pensions (see table at top of article). This mostly consists of the $20,000 of yearly pension payments per recipient, multiplied by the 600,000+ eligible pensioners in New Zealand. Pension spending is projected to be $20,000,000,000 by 2031.

Although most people can agree that it’s cruel to leave people to starve on account of that they’re too infirm to work, there’s no reason for the Government to be granting pensioners a lifestyle that compares with what people make from working. Indeed, if they’re not working, why should they be paid any more than the unemployment benefit?

A fair compromise between the current luxury pension model on the one hand, and reducing the pension to the level of the unemployment benefit on the other, might be to reduce the benefit to a midway level. This would recognise both that current pension spending is an unsustainable and unfair burden on the under-65s, and that the infirmity of old age demands more expenses than the health of youth.

If the pension was cut by 25%, from its current $360 per week to around $270, this would bring it in line with other main benefits such as the Supported Living Allowance. This 25% reduction would equal a savings of $3,000,000,000 per year in pension expenses.

To give an example of how much money that is, it’s roughly equal to the $3,000,000,000 in tax revenue that the Government gets from the 10.5% tax on the first $14,000 of income. This tax works out to slightly less than $1,500 per person for each of New Zealand’s roughly 2,000,000 wage or salary earners.

So lowering the pension by 25% to bring it in line with other main benefits could be balanced by making all income up to $14,000 tax free. This would be a revenue-neutral move – there are plenty of other ways to spend $3G, but this would be one of the most popular.

Introducing a $14,000 tax-free threshold would make two million New Zealanders much happier about going to work every day. It would revitalise the workforce by giving every worker an extra $1,500 per year. This works out to almost $30 per week. That would make a huge difference to standard of living given the cost of living and cost of housing at the moment.

For two-parent families, such a saving would equal roughly $60 per week. For many Kiwi families on the breadline, this would be enough money to make the difference between survival and disaster some weeks.

There’s no loss to bringing this in, apart from a reduction in luxuries for our current crop of pensioners. None of those pensioners will go hungry because they would still get as much as an invalid’s beneficiary, and considering that these same pensioners had the luxury of being able to buy a house on one income – a luxury that younger generations will never have – there’s no reason for the rest of us to spend empathy on them. We ought to keep it for each other.

At the moment, New Zealand is being sucked dry by a cohort of super-entitled Baby Boomers who feel that they have the right to party it up for 20 years after they reach 65. This was only sustainable when pensioners were a small percentage of the population, but with as much as 20% of the population soon wanting a slice of the pension pie, it no longer is.

We need to bring the pension in line with other main benefits in order to rein in our bloated Superannuation expenses. Reducing it to the same level as the Supported Living Allowance would free up roughly three billion dollars every year. Freeing our economy from this burden would make life a lot easier for the vast majority of Kiwis.

If you enjoyed reading this essay, you can get a compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2018 from Amazon for Kindle or Amazon for CreateSpace (for international readers), or TradeMe (for Kiwis). A compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2017 is also available.

It Doesn’t Matter What The Polls Say Or What The Referendum Says – We’ll Use Cannabis Anyway

Kiwi cannabis enthusiasts were alarmed this week by a couple of polls that suggested a majority of people might now be against cannabis legalisation in New Zealand. A Reid Research poll for Newshub and a Colmar Brunton poll for One News both suggested this. As this essay will argue, what the polls say is just as meaningless as what the law says.

Cannabis prohibition has failed. There’s no doubt about it. With every year that passes, another overseas jurisdiction repeals prohibition, and society in general is starting to move on from it. The most glaring example of this are the falling rates of convictions for cannabis offences, as not even the Police can be bothered enforcing this law.

People miss the point if they say that this means that murder and rape prohibition has also failed because they keep happening. Murder and rape have victims. They are therefore categorically different to using cannabis, and there’s no reason to treat them the same.

Statistics show that using cannabis is one of the most Kiwi things that anyone can do. The correlation between being born in New Zealand and voting for the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party in 2017 was 0.77, which tells us that cannabis use is an integral part of our national culture. The deeper a person’s roots in New Zealand, the more likely they are to be a cannabis user.

So in reality, there’s no need for a referendum, because we live the referendum all the time. Every single day, hundreds of thousands of Kiwis choose to use cannabis, for a wide range of ailments, to socialise, to destress or simply for a laugh. We signal our approval of cannabis every day from the simple fact that we choose to use it every day.

Almost everywhere and everytime Kiwis gather outside of Government supervision, there’s some weed involved. When we go tramping and hunting, we take some smoke with us. When we meet up for a barbeque, we like to break out the bongs. After we play touch or cricket we like to have a puff. And at the beaches, and in the parks, and in the bedrooms, etc…

We’re going to keep doing this, and the Government will not ever be able to stop us. The Governments of far more submissive and less free-thinking peoples than New Zealanders can’t stop their people from using cannabis – how can they stop us?

The number of cannabis seeds in private hands must number in the multiple billions. Law or no law, there is an entire underground network of cannabis enthusiasts who have been sharing seeds, clones and cultivation techniques for decades. These people love to help new people become growers themselves and defy prohibition. This culture has no intention to go anywhere.

Neither is it going to go anywhere. No Government can come up with a justified reason for making a medicinal plant illegal. Whether now or a thousand years from now, human beings will always intuitively feel that a law prohibiting them from using a part of nature to heal themselves is obscene.

This intuitive feeling is not just a delusion brought about from cannabis-induced psychosis. Far from it. It reflects something much deeper, namely the fact that we have a God-given right to use any spiritual sacraments we see fit. This is described elsewhere as the Golden Right, and the Government may not violate it because violating a person’s ability to connect to God causes suffering.

Because of all this, it doesn’t matter that a couple of polls might have suggested that the cannabis referendum result could be negative. I was stoned when I wrote this article, I will be stoned on the day on the cannabis referendum, and I will be stoned the next day too, regardless of the result.

People have an obligation to defy unjust laws. Even if the referendum result is negative, prohibition will still be an unjust law. Because it will still be an unjust law, people will keep defying it. The control freaks in the Government can hiss and rage all they like – Kiwis are going to use cannabis anyway, because it’s our will. Refusing to recognise this fact is futile.

The Golden Right, or The Masculine Aspect of the Precious Right

The essay A Sevenfold Conception of Inherent Human Rights expounded seven human rights that are, after a minimum of thought, clearly understandable to any person. These seven rights stem immediately from a basic understanding of yin and yang, and are encoded directly into the flag of Esoteric Aotearoanism. This essay takes a closer look at what is simply known as the Golden Right.

The black stripe at the bottom of the flag of Esoteric Aotearoanism represents the yin, and when combined with the silver stripe in the context of human rights represents what is known as the Base Right, which is the right to physical liberty. This has two aspects, one pertaining to the right to self-defence and the other to the right to bodily autonomy.

The white stripe at the top represents the yang, and when combined with the silver stripe in the context of human rights represents what is known as the Precious Right, which is the right to cognitive liberty. This also has two aspects.

The Feminine Aspect of the Precious Right is the right to cognitive liberty pertaining to the mind and intellect. In particular, this means the right to free speech and to free expression. The Masculine Aspect of the Precious Right is the right to cognitive liberty pertaining to the soul and spirit. In particular, this means the right to religious belief and religious expression.

The Feminine Aspect of the Precious Right is also known as the Silver Right, and the Masculine Aspect of the Precious Right is also known as the Golden Right. This is because it is the most precious of all rights. Without it, individuals and nations lose their moral compass and will fall.

The right to cognitive liberty in the context of the soul and spirit means the right to explore the soul. This means that people have the inherent right to turn away from the material world for the sake of finding God. The Golden Right, therefore, is the right to reconnect with God at any time and place, by whatever means the individual feels necessary.

Being an aspect of the Precious Right, the Golden Right does not confer the right to cause suffering to anyone else for the sake of religion. The Golden Right yields to the right to free speech, to self-defence and to bodily autonomy. Therefore, no methodology for reconnecting to God can ever be above criticism, because this violates the right to free speech, and neither can it impel anyone to do anything, because this violates the right to bodily autonomy.

However, the Golden Right also recognises that impeding another person’s attempts to connect with God causes suffering, and no Government may therefore do it.

This means that people have the right to perform basic acts of spiritual hygiene. Not only does this include meditation, but it also includes chanting, drumming, singing, gathering in communion and entheogenic ritual. All of these activities can make a person more spiritually healthy by causing them to forget the pressures and temptations of the material world. Therefore, the use of cannabis and psychedelics, as well as of all other spiritual sacraments, is a right granted by God.

The fact that cannabis and psychedelics have thousands of years of use as spiritual sacraments all around the world, and that this is heavily documented, is enough to declare that the Government violates the Will of God by restricting their ability to connect with God. In fact, it’s more than enough.

It’s enough that an individual simply declares a particular course of action to be a methodology that enables them to connect with God, and it is allowed under the Golden Right. This means that, if a person believes that taking LSD (or any other modern chemical) is capable of reconnecting them with God, they have the right to do it.

Of course, if in taking these substances a person comes to violate the baser rights of their fellows, they are to be punished accordingly. The Golden Right does not confer freedom from the consequences of misbehaving under an entheogenic substance. The responsibility is on the user to make sure that they understand the dose they’re taking and that they take it in a controlled environment (to the extent this is appropriate).

Ultimately, the Golden Right is one of the inherent human rights granted by God, and is therefore a right no matter what any human Government might say. Anyone trying to take that right away from someone else is trying to enslave them by removing their inherent rights. According to the principles of anarcho-homicidalism, then, people have the right to kill anyone who impedes their right to connect to God.

The Empire vs. The Nations

All throughout history, there has been a neverending struggle between two implacably opposed forces. Much like good and evil themselves, human history has been characterised by an eternal struggle between an Empire that sought to conquer the world and the Nations that sought to resist. This essay elucidates.

Much as the Sun beats down from above, its rays bringing order to the Earth that receives them, so too does the Empire impose itself from above, onto the Nations that form from below.

On the world stage, the Empire is the force that seeks to subjugate all the nations. It is based around the idea of central rule, where a single leader imposes a code of laws on its subjects. The Nations are those who rise up from the soil and who self-organise based on natural similarities between members of a wider kin group.

On one level, the words democracy and republic means the same thing. But they reflect different perceptions. Democracy means rule of the masses, deriving from demos, which means people, and -cracy, which means form of rule. Republic also means rule of the masses. The difference is that democracy is a national concept, whereas republicanism is an imperial one.

The concept of democracy, in a Greek sense, is easy to understand if one if familiar with Aristotle’s Politics. In the same way that the head of a family makes decisions of behalf of their family, who gives them power, so does a chieftain make decisions on behalf of their village, a baron on behalf of his county, and a king on behalf of his nation. This is all good and well, but the bottom-up structure of every nation clashes with the top-down system imposed by the Empire.

This conflict between top-down and bottom-up systems can be seen all throughout history. In a sense, it doesn’t really matter what or where the Empire is, or whether it’s Roman, Mongol, British or American. At the centre of the Empire is the one who wields the Spear of Destiny, for they are the one who directs the course of this Empire, and the course of Empire reflects them and their will.

The two are fated to clash because the morals of the two systems are entirely different.

The moral virtues of the Empire are all about expedience. The Empire cares about control and profit. Its basic inclination is to expand. Enjoyment of life comes from glory and domination. The Empire believes that it has a moral blueprint that can serve for all human life, and therefore they’re doing the Nations (i.e. the barbarians) a favour by subjugating them. The Empire has no problem with the Big Lie.

By contrast, the moral virtues of the Nations are the same moral virtues that allow one to thrive in a state of Nature. The Nations care about the physical and mental health and strength of their peoples. Their basic inclination is to remain the same, and to enjoy life, which comes from interaction with people and places that they love, and from being at peace with God.

Alchemically speaking, it could be said that the Empire was of iron and silver while the Nations were of clay and gold. The Empire values cheap labour, willing mercenaries and the kind of science that builds artillery, battleships and railroads. The Nations value good sex, good food, being healthy and a direct spiritual connection to God and the Great Fractal.

In most cases, the desires of the Empire and the Nations are the same. Both want peace. Both want order. In most cases, they also agree on how to achieve this. Both the Empire and the Nations strive to keep their citizens fed and entertained. Their approach is, however, entirely different.

The Empire believes the state of Nature to be a state of war, and consequently declares it a good thing that the Empire imposes order. The greatest motivation of the Nations is to resist the impositions of Empire and to live a life in accordance with Nature, which they believe to be a state of peace until disturbed by Empire.

Because of this difference in approach, certain political issues cause great tensions.

Open borders seems like a great idea for the Empire, because it allows them to import cheap labour en masse to any territory they desire. If a Caribbean island starts a sugar plantation, the Empire can’t wait to import 10,000 Africans to work it. The Nations, however, hate open borders, because open borders means the destruction of all national, regional and local solidarity and culture.

The question of open borders has divided our societies into imperialists who want to import capital and workers as fast as possible, and who are pro-immigration, and nationalists who want to emphasise bonds of solidarity between kin and neighbours, and who are anti-immigration. Both sides declare the other evil, accusing one of being soulless money-worshippers and the other of being narrow-minded bigots.

The matter of religion and spirituality also causes great conflict. The desire of the Empire is to have a “Holy Land” that all of its children look to, and a single religious template into which all spiritual inquiry must be forced. The Nations, however, tend to resist this centralisation. The spirituality of the Nations tends to revolve around great local men who have achieved gnosis by discovering or developing a particular methodology.

The religion of the Empire is that which inspires them to conquer and to impose their order; the spirituality of the Nations is what which inspires them to resist and to tell the truth in the face of expedient lies. In our iteration of the world, societies are split between imperialists who usually support some form of Abrahamism, and nationalists who are more interested in direct gnosis and local traditions.

In many of the great issues of today, it’s possible to see that, fundamentally, these issues have arisen because of the conflict between the Empire and the Nations. Where it really gets tricky is that this conflict, much as the conflict between good and evil, runs through every human heart.

There are two types of people, therefore: children of the Empire, and children of the Nations. If you are a child of the Empire you probably speak English as a native language. You probably feel most at home in universities and airports. If you are a child of the Nations you might speak anything as a native language. You don’t feel home in places but in one particular place.

New Zealanders, like all children of the Empire, have a unique dilemma. The vast majority of us are raised speaking English, the Empire’s language. As such, we have a very weak national identity. Many New Zealanders are perfectly happy moving to Sydney or London and working there. There is almost no culture shock when one moves from one part of the Empire to another, but the economic opportunities may be many times greater, and so the pull is extremely strong.

Over the past century, however, a nationalist sentiment has slowly risen. This was first inspired as a reaction to the indifference with which Empire administrators treated the well-being of our soldiers in World War One. After Gallipoli and Passchendaele we came to understand that being children of the Empire was to be so much cannon fodder. Self-rule was the only way to have the requisite dignity.

Therefore, many of us suffer from divided loyalties. A line runs through the hearts of many New Zealanders: do they choose the Empire side, and emphasise the great wealth and economic opportunity that comes with being a native English speaker with an Anglosphere passport, or do they choose the Kiwi side, and emphasise loyalty with their neighbours and region?