Month: December 2016

How Much Has Peter Dunne Cost New Zealand By Stopping Cannabis Law Reform?

After the reign of Graham Capill, Peter Dunne vied with Colin Craig and Nick Smith for the title of “New Zealand Politician Considered Most Likely To Get Sent Down For Kiddy Fiddling”, as Dunne is also a highly narcissistic, sexually repressed, out-of-touch Bible thumper – the prime demographic. But in the cold light of day, not even a dozen Beasts of Blenheim could have done as much damage to Aotearoa New Zealand as Peter Dunne.

This article limits itself to calculating the amount of financial damage Peter Dunne did to New Zealand through his one-man campaign to prevent even the possibility of reform to our expensive, vicious and counterproductive cannabis laws.

After the 2002 General Election, called in the wake of the collapse of the Alliance Party, Labour Leader Helen Clark had three possible options to help her stitch together a Government: New Zealand First, who wanted no immigration; the Greens, who wanted no genetic engineering; and United Future, who wanted no reform on social issues.

In the end it was apparent that big business strongly supported both mass immigration and genetic engineering, so cannabis users and gays and lesbians wishing to marry got thrown under the bus for the $$$$$. Helen Clark signed on the Wormrider’s bottom line for the support of his 8 MPs and the rest is history.

After the 2005 General Election things were slightly different. United Future had less influence on account of voters not being so easily tricked by a television gimmick this time around, so Labour was in a position to try and unfuck the country.

Dunne was able to get a cabinet position, cementing his reputation as “Hemhorroid of the House” by resisting all progress.

He continued to oppose progress on social issues by voting against the Civil Unions Bill, a half-arsed attempt at a gay marriage bill sold as an ingenious compromise with New Zealand’s legion of elderly Christian bigots, and, of course, by not allowing so much as a discussion about cannabis.

After 2008 the conservative National Government took power, and naturally they did not repeal cannabis prohibition as it directly serves major capitalist interests to have a competitor to the alcohol, tobacco and pharmaceutical industries crushed.

Dunne managed to worm his way into the position of Associate Minister of Health, from where he was able to garrote all attempts at cannabis law reform in their infancy, most notably by skillful and successful actions in dividing the cannabis law reform movement.

The two most notable examples of this were declaring the grossly unsuitable fraudster Toni-Marie Matich to be the public face of cannabis law reform, thus damaging the credibility of the movement, and the Orwellian Psychoactive Substances Act, which made everything illegal and divided the movement into people who had read it and people who hadn’t.

So, aside from the couple of million that Dunne has leeched from the public funds in the form of an MP’s salary and perks, how much has he cost the country?

There is no simple calculation because it depends on the extent of the cannabis law reform that was prevented in the last window of opportunity presented by the Fifth Labour Government.

We know that full, Colorado-style reform would save New Zealand $500,000,000 per year in Police costs, court costs, prison costs, and lost tax revenue. Multiplying this by the 14 years since 2002, when Dunne first had his influence in preventing reform, gives us a figure of $7,000,000,000.

In reality, the Clark Administration would have likely brought in some kind of medicinal cannabis and/or decriminalisation in 2003/4, with full legalisation coming later, so the immediate savings might have been a third to a half of their final value, increasing as time went on.

This suggests a figure for the total wastage of Kiwi labour and resources due to Peter Dunne’s actions of between $3 and $7 billion.

This thought experiment ought to be a sobering one for anyone worried about Maori beneficiaries having too many kids and Chinese restaurants not paying taxes. If one politician can cost the country $3,000,000,000 because of moral and intellectual incompetence, all of our scrutiny ought to be directed at the ruling classes, and not on each other.

Autism and Psychosis Are Perfect Natural Complementaries

Some people contend that all autists and all psychotics are mentally diseased and have to be corrected by whatever means necessary. Others, especially the autists and psychotics themselves, contend that their conditions are not diseases but natural expressions of the human genotype.

A revolutionary article from 2008 pointed out that autism and psychosis are, in some physiological ways, opposite poles of a spectrum: “autism involves a general pattern of constrained overgrowth, whereas schizophrenia involves undergrowth.”

This can readily be confirmed by anyone who has spent much time observing autists and psychotics.

If autism is characterised by overgrowth, one might say that this reflected an excessive degree of order and therefore masculinity. Indeed, autism appears to correlate with masculinity in many ways – such as increased mathematical and logical reasoning and a decreased capacity for social intelligence. Also, autism is much more common in males.

If psychosis is characterised by undergrowth, one might say that this reflected an absence of order and therefore femininity. And, in opposition to autism, psychosis does appear to correlate with femininity in many ways – in particular, an increased capacity for social intelligence and a decreased capacity for mathematical and logical reasoning. Also, it is much more common in females.

On the dark side, the vast majority of serial killers have some kind of autism, because psychotics generally can’t keep it together well enough to kill many people and keep it a secret. However, the vast majority of suicides have some kind of psychosis, because psychosis is unusually terrible, and autists are better at keeping it together well enough to not fall into suicidal ideation.

On the bright side, both autists and psychotics have made immense contributions to the human survival project, not despite, but because of their lack of neurotypicality.

Autists can be programmed to last forever. They just keep going, and if they can find a subject interesting enough to them they never get bored. Many of our great engineers and surgeons were probably a bit autistic, as it was this that led them to obsess magnificently over their projects until they knew more about the subjects than anyone else ever had.

Psychotics are the exact opposite. Psychotics are not easy to program and they don’t stay programmed. Every time there is a ‘psychotic break’, more programming is shrugged off. This means that it is through psychotics, who have seen beyond Maya, that our spiritual and philosophical traditions arise.

In much the same way that, in order to get anything done, a person needs a mixture of autism and psychosis, so too does society need autistic and psychotic individuals in order to function healthily at the top level.

A society wouldn’t last without both autists and psychotics; without the former, no work would get done, without the latter, all work would still be picking berries and smashing open mammoth bones for the marrow within.

Oftentimes, it is necessary for a psychotic to show the way to a new field of knowledge but it is also necessary for autists, once shown the way, to do what is necessary to make practical applications out of that knowledge.

This is akin to how the Anglo-Saxons, whose culture has an unprecedented degree of tolerance for psychotics, tend to invent things and how the Germans, Japanese and Koreans, whose cultures have an unprecedented degree of tolerance for autists, tend to refine them into excellence.

In other words, society would go backwards without the autists and it would never go forwards without the psychotics. Autists, psychotics and people who are neither are therefore all necessary for an optimally healthy and functioning society.