… If Politics Were Reasonable, if Democracy Prevailed
(c) 2019, Davd
Alberta’s election was called last week; voting day will be April 16. The Ottawa Government has promised a Federal Election for October. Before reading about what the politicians want to persuade us with, I decided to spend several hours thinking about what I want to vote for: Now I wonder how much of it i will get how good a chance to vote for.
I want to vote for Truth and Equal Treatment. For instance, Governments should admit that “carbon taxes” are more a way to collect money than a simple fix for a complex climate1.
For an instance everyone who shops can appreciate, “there oughta be a law” that requires the most visible number on any price tag, whether on the package or on the shelf, be the total amount the customer will pay for the item. That means including sales taxes and all other required payments in the most visible price.
If a litre of apple juice or milk is on special for 97 cents, then I should be able to take a dollar and that litre of fluid food, to the checkout, and not be told i don’t have enough money. If some bureaucracy wants to charge for the milk or juice carton, that tax should be included in the most visible price — the total the customer pays.
I want to vote for equal treatment for men and women, and the genders-reversed principle as a default measure of equal treatment.
Think about how radical the genders-reversed criterion really is. It means that schools will be designed to be as boy friendly as they now are girl friendly. It means that when a divorce occurs, there is joint custody of the children; or the man gets custody of the boy children, the woman of the girls; or else the genuine best interests of each actual child be fairly assessed.
When child custody decisions reach equality by that genders-reversed standard, children as well as fathers will benefit.
It means no double standards for jobs like police constable2.
It is difficult in the 21st Century, to find an aspect of social life in Europe and North America, that exhibits male privilege, but easy to find examples of female privilege. I want to vote for no privilege.
I want to vote for Frugality. It’s the famous Scots virtue, and means organizing to get the most benefit from expenditures, whether of money, time, work …. When I cook a big batch of sauce, and freeze more than half of it to be eaten days later — that’s being frugal with my time (and with the electricity I use for cooking.) When i buy boneless pork loin for $4 per kilo, and cut it into chops, instead of buying chops cut by the store for $7 per kilo, that’s being frugal.
When I chopped firewood and heated and cooked with it, rather than using bought electricity, that was both frugal, and healthy, or as I wrote in a weekly newspaper column a few decades ago, “my exercise program pays me about $10 per hour.” Gardening is frugal exercise which produces better, fresher food than you can buy at “supermarkets”. My good Métis grandfather walked to work until he retired; that was another example of health enhancing frugality.
I want to vote for Social Efficiency: Less bureaucracy, more accomplished per bureaucrat. Facilitating volunteer and sharing alternatives to bureaucracies.3
Social efficiency includes valuing everyone’s time: Waiting for hours is wrong, morally and in health terms. If waiting time were valued at minimum wage or more, many “call centres” and waiting rooms would quickly show themselves wasteful. Frugality and Social Efficiency go together.
Fraternal households are an excellent example of frugal efficiency. The monks with whom I sojourned several years ago, lived well from a few hours of work per day — less than half a full-time job. They chose to spend more time chanting prayers and passages from holy books, than they spent in subsistence work. Their frugal lifestyle is possible for men who might choose study, teaching, fishing and hunting, nurturing fatherless boys, or many other uses for their other time; prayer and ritual appeal to the monks while efficiency should appeal to us all. The efficiency is in sharing costs like paperwork, taxes, “utilities”4; upkeep of common space and common chores; and having their private space be what they really need and want to have private — usually a bedroom — rather than maintaining one kitchen, one sitting room, one library, etc. per man.
Frugality and social efficiency are more logical ways than “economic growth” to make the best of resource scarcity and “limit global warming.” Let the Government tax less rather than more, and spend the money it collects in the ways that produce the greatest public benefit and the least disruption of healthy behavior.
Let the laws and regulations favour efficiency and tolerance rather than “enforce Political Correctness”: No interference with “ethnic” or “religious” values unless they can be proven to harm others. If a Feminist MP believes matriarchy is the best basis for social organization, she should be free to say so — as a Muslim MP should be free to say that patriarchy is the best basis.
Even if there were no budget deficit, forcing abortion endorsement or “gay-straight alliances” on people and religious schools, who believe they are morally wrong, is abusive. Perhaps some research should be done on the social costs and benefits of abortion and homosexuality, with the biological fact that abortion is homicide, acknowledged.
Tolerance of homosexuality, I support — to the extent that homosexuality does not harass or harm others. Tolerance of easy abortion, I oppose, because of that unborn human being who is killed. The fact that abortion is
biologically homicide, is one good reason to be intolerant of heterosexual promiscuity; while the high cost of STDs is good reason to be intolerant of homosexual and heterosexual promiscuity5.
Sexual harassment, I oppose, and I include distracting public shows of sexuality as harassment. Since sexuality is distracting at schools and workplaces, those places should require modesty… the usual men’s way of not showing off sexuality at work and at school, is the efficient, the frugal way.
Equality, frugality, social efficiency, truth: What better things to vote for? — if the campaign offers the choice. How good a choice to vote for these virtues, do you think the campaign will offer? in Alberta’s April or October’s Federal election? And if the campaigns won’t offer such choices, what are the politicians saying about themselves and their games?
Actions speak louder than words. Are political campaigns saying, that it takes more and better than multiple-choice elections to make a democracy?
References:
Brown, Grant A., 2013. Ideology And Dysfunction In Family Law“: How Courts Disenfranchise Fathers. Calgary and Winnipeg: Canadian Constitution Foundation and Frontier Centre For Public Policy
“The Futurist”, 2010. The Misandry Bubble . January 1. “A single man does not require much in order to survive. Most single men could eke out a comfortable existence by working for two months out of the year.”
Glubb, John Bagot, 1978. The Fate of Empires. Edinburgh: William Blackwood & Sons Ltd.
Gwynne, Peter, 1975. “The Cooling World.” Newsweek, April 28: p. 64
Hays, J.D . J Imbrie and NJ Shackleton, 1976. “Precession of the Equinoxes … Ice Age” Science, v194, #4270, p1121,
Kemp, Luke 2019. “Are We On The Road To Civilisation Collapse?” BBC Future website, February 19 and 20.
Nathanson, Paul, and Katherine K. Young, 2006. Legalizing Misandry“: From Public Shame to Systemic Discrimination against Men Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Reviewed here.
Schneider, Stephen and Lynne Mesirow (1976) The Genesis Strategy: Climate and Global Survival. New York and London: Plenum.
Notes:
i1. Peter Gwynne wrote a major news magazine article in 1975. “The Cooling World.” (Newsweek, April 28: p. 64; cf. Hays, Imbrie and Shackleton, 1976.) More recent articles have stated that global warming to date may have protected us from an impending Ice Age. Schneider and Mesirow (1976) wrote that climate and weather had been unusually kind for the past century or two, which meant the population/food problem was worse than statistics suggest. .. food and other production should not push ecosystems close to their limits, since these limits are not constant and may contract leaving one over carrying capacity [p. 145]. “Uncertainty is not biased toward optimism” [p. 148; italics in orig.]
I do not advocate increased fossil fuel use; I do believe that we should consider “climate change” to be less certain and more complex than to claim CO2 taxation will solve all or even most of our problems. It is convenient for governments to tax CO2, because it is always convenient for governments to collect more taxes.
2. There should be a minimum fraction of women police, to do such tasks as strip searching women suspects. There should similarly be a minimum fraction of male nurses.
3. Perhaps it should include making “civil service” jobs more like they were decades ago, with security but lower pay than the less secure jobs in private enterprises. That “retreat from big-spending on bureaucracies” might require that for a while, job security is not as good as it was when i was young; or it might be that enough high-paid bureaucrats would quit on their own rather than become lower-paid.
4. In east-central Alberta, an electric connection can cost $100+ per month, additional to the electricity; and a gas connection, about the same. Five men sharing one building would pay for one connection, or about $20 for electricity and $20 for gas, per man. Each man would save $160+ per month, roughly $2000 per year, on two utility connections, compared to “living alone”… the five together would save about $10,000! Sharing heating, appliances, Internet fees, taxes, possibly vehicles would save more than that.
The construction or rent cost would be lower per man, or the amenity enjoyed, greater; because working and leisure spaces are shared.
5. Last i studied the subject, which was several years ago now, homosexuals, male homosexuals especially, were more promiscuous than heterosexuals. They also had higher STD rates. As a heterosexual, abstinent-because-divorced Christian, i support tolerance by civil law, and abstinence by those who are homosexually inclined and try to keep Christian teachings — as I abstain from heterosexual activity.
What I Want to Vote For
… If Politics Were Reasonable, if Democracy Prevailed
(c) 2019, Davd
Alberta’s election was called last week; voting day will be April 16. The Ottawa Government has promised a Federal Election for October. Before reading about what the politicians want to persuade us with, I decided to spend several hours thinking about what I want to vote for: Now I wonder how much of it i will get how good a chance to vote for.
I want to vote for Truth and Equal Treatment. For instance, Governments should admit that “carbon taxes” are more a way to collect money than a simple fix for a complex climate1.
For an instance everyone who shops can appreciate, “there oughta be a law” that requires the most visible number on any price tag, whether on the package or on the shelf, be the total amount the customer will pay for the item. That means including sales taxes and all other required payments in the most visible price.
If a litre of apple juice or milk is on special for 97 cents, then I should be able to take a dollar and that litre of fluid food, to the checkout, and not be told i don’t have enough money. If some bureaucracy wants to charge for the milk or juice carton, that tax should be included in the most visible price — the total the customer pays.
I want to vote for equal treatment for men and women, and the genders-reversed principle as a default measure of equal treatment.
Think about how radical the genders-reversed criterion really is. It means that schools will be designed to be as boy friendly as they now are girl friendly. It means that when a divorce occurs, there is joint custody of the children; or the man gets custody of the boy children, the woman of the girls; or else the genuine best interests of each actual child be fairly assessed.
When child custody decisions reach equality by that genders-reversed standard, children as well as fathers will benefit.
It means no double standards for jobs like police constable2.
It is difficult in the 21st Century, to find an aspect of social life in Europe and North America, that exhibits male privilege, but easy to find examples of female privilege. I want to vote for no privilege.
I want to vote for Frugality. It’s the famous Scots virtue, and means organizing to get the most benefit from expenditures, whether of money, time, work …. When I cook a big batch of sauce, and freeze more than half of it to be eaten days later — that’s being frugal with my time (and with the electricity I use for cooking.) When i buy boneless pork loin for $4 per kilo, and cut it into chops, instead of buying chops cut by the store for $7 per kilo, that’s being frugal.
When I chopped firewood and heated and cooked with it, rather than using bought electricity, that was both frugal, and healthy, or as I wrote in a weekly newspaper column a few decades ago, “my exercise program pays me about $10 per hour.” Gardening is frugal exercise which produces better, fresher food than you can buy at “supermarkets”. My good Métis grandfather walked to work until he retired; that was another example of health enhancing frugality.
I want to vote for Social Efficiency: Less bureaucracy, more accomplished per bureaucrat. Facilitating volunteer and sharing alternatives to bureaucracies.3
Social efficiency includes valuing everyone’s time: Waiting for hours is wrong, morally and in health terms. If waiting time were valued at minimum wage or more, many “call centres” and waiting rooms would quickly show themselves wasteful. Frugality and Social Efficiency go together.
Fraternal households are an excellent example of frugal efficiency. The monks with whom I sojourned several years ago, lived well from a few hours of work per day — less than half a full-time job. They chose to spend more time chanting prayers and passages from holy books, than they spent in subsistence work. Their frugal lifestyle is possible for men who might choose study, teaching, fishing and hunting, nurturing fatherless boys, or many other uses for their other time; prayer and ritual appeal to the monks while efficiency should appeal to us all. The efficiency is in sharing costs like paperwork, taxes, “utilities”4; upkeep of common space and common chores; and having their private space be what they really need and want to have private — usually a bedroom — rather than maintaining one kitchen, one sitting room, one library, etc. per man.
Frugality and social efficiency are more logical ways than “economic growth” to make the best of resource scarcity and “limit global warming.” Let the Government tax less rather than more, and spend the money it collects in the ways that produce the greatest public benefit and the least disruption of healthy behavior.
Let the laws and regulations favour efficiency and tolerance rather than “enforce Political Correctness”: No interference with “ethnic” or “religious” values unless they can be proven to harm others. If a Feminist MP believes matriarchy is the best basis for social organization, she should be free to say so — as a Muslim MP should be free to say that patriarchy is the best basis.
Even if there were no budget deficit, forcing abortion endorsement or “gay-straight alliances” on people and religious schools, who believe they are morally wrong, is abusive. Perhaps some research should be done on the social costs and benefits of abortion and homosexuality, with the biological fact that abortion is homicide, acknowledged.
Tolerance of homosexuality, I support — to the extent that homosexuality does not harass or harm others. Tolerance of easy abortion, I oppose, because of that unborn human being who is killed. The fact that abortion is biologically homicide, is one good reason to be intolerant of heterosexual promiscuity; while the high cost of STDs is good reason to be intolerant of homosexual and heterosexual promiscuity5.
Sexual harassment, I oppose, and I include distracting public shows of sexuality as harassment. Since sexuality is distracting at schools and workplaces, those places should require modesty… the usual men’s way of not showing off sexuality at work and at school, is the efficient, the frugal way.
Equality, frugality, social efficiency, truth: What better things to vote for? — if the campaign offers the choice. How good a choice to vote for these virtues, do you think the campaign will offer? in Alberta’s April or October’s Federal election? And if the campaigns won’t offer such choices, what are the politicians saying about themselves and their games?
Actions speak louder than words. Are political campaigns saying, that it takes more and better than multiple-choice elections to make a democracy?
References:
Brown, Grant A., 2013. Ideology And Dysfunction In Family Law“: How Courts Disenfranchise Fathers. Calgary and Winnipeg: Canadian Constitution Foundation and Frontier Centre For Public Policy
“The Futurist”, 2010. The Misandry Bubble . January 1. “A single man does not require much in order to survive. Most single men could eke out a comfortable existence by working for two months out of the year.”
Glubb, John Bagot, 1978. The Fate of Empires. Edinburgh: William Blackwood & Sons Ltd.
Gwynne, Peter, 1975. “The Cooling World.” Newsweek, April 28: p. 64
Hays, J.D . J Imbrie and NJ Shackleton, 1976. “Precession of the Equinoxes … Ice Age” Science, v194, #4270, p1121,
Kemp, Luke 2019. “Are We On The Road To Civilisation Collapse?” BBC Future website, February 19 and 20.
Nathanson, Paul, and Katherine K. Young, 2006. Legalizing Misandry“: From Public Shame to Systemic Discrimination against Men Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Reviewed here.
Schneider, Stephen and Lynne Mesirow (1976) The Genesis Strategy: Climate and Global Survival. New York and London: Plenum.
Notes:
i1. Peter Gwynne wrote a major news magazine article in 1975. “The Cooling World.” (Newsweek, April 28: p. 64; cf. Hays, Imbrie and Shackleton, 1976.) More recent articles have stated that global warming to date may have protected us from an impending Ice Age. Schneider and Mesirow (1976) wrote that climate and weather had been unusually kind for the past century or two, which meant the population/food problem was worse than statistics suggest. .. food and other production should not push ecosystems close to their limits, since these limits are not constant and may contract leaving one over carrying capacity [p. 145]. “Uncertainty is not biased toward optimism” [p. 148; italics in orig.]
I do not advocate increased fossil fuel use; I do believe that we should consider “climate change” to be less certain and more complex than to claim CO2 taxation will solve all or even most of our problems. It is convenient for governments to tax CO2, because it is always convenient for governments to collect more taxes.
2. There should be a minimum fraction of women police, to do such tasks as strip searching women suspects. There should similarly be a minimum fraction of male nurses.
3. Perhaps it should include making “civil service” jobs more like they were decades ago, with security but lower pay than the less secure jobs in private enterprises. That “retreat from big-spending on bureaucracies” might require that for a while, job security is not as good as it was when i was young; or it might be that enough high-paid bureaucrats would quit on their own rather than become lower-paid.
4. In east-central Alberta, an electric connection can cost $100+ per month, additional to the electricity; and a gas connection, about the same. Five men sharing one building would pay for one connection, or about $20 for electricity and $20 for gas, per man. Each man would save $160+ per month, roughly $2000 per year, on two utility connections, compared to “living alone”… the five together would save about $10,000! Sharing heating, appliances, Internet fees, taxes, possibly vehicles would save more than that.
The construction or rent cost would be lower per man, or the amenity enjoyed, greater; because working and leisure spaces are shared.
5. Last i studied the subject, which was several years ago now, homosexuals, male homosexuals especially, were more promiscuous than heterosexuals. They also had higher STD rates. As a heterosexual, abstinent-because-divorced Christian, i support tolerance by civil law, and abstinence by those who are homosexually inclined and try to keep Christian teachings — as I abstain from heterosexual activity.
About Davd
Davd (PhD, 1966) has been a professor, a single father keeping a small commercial herb garden so as to have flexible time for his sons, and editor of _Ecoforestry_. He is a practicing Christian, and in particular an advocate of ecoforestry, self-sufficiency horticulture, and men of all faiths living together "in peace and brotherhood" for the fellowship, the efficiency, and the goodwill that sharing work so often brings.