DOWN TO THE DOCTOR’S: Anti-industrialists unite, you have nothing to lose but our wealth

Libertarianz leader Dr Richard McGrath ransacks the newspapers for stories on issues affecting our freedom.

This week, nannies who stop life, living, and everybody’s chance at health, wealth and happiness.

1. “Nanny bullies forecourt attendants” – What an insult to service station staff – they can’t be trusted to check tyre pressures, and top up the water or oil. But filling cars with highly flammable petroleum distillate is also potentially hazardous so that surely will be the next task they won’t be allowed to do. That doesn’t really leave much else to do on the forecourt, does it?
   Inside the service station, selling hot coffee will also have to stop – staff might get scalded with boiling water. Interesting that car owners are still permitted to check tyre pressures and engine fluid levels themselves, despite the risk. And most modern cars have plastic water reservoirs that don’t release steam when the cap is removed, so that potential problem is now redundant.
   These “health and safety” regulations will further dumb down the employees of service stations until they become little more than checkout operators – not that I have anything against the latter, but there was once a time when a forecourt attendant needed to have a rudimentary knowledge of motor mechanics.
   “Health and safety” is right – keep the population ignorant and they’ll be safe for Nanny State socialism.
   
2. “Cabinet cowers to the sandal wearers” – John-Boy’s National Socialist cabinet fail to back a suggestion by Gerry Brownlee and Kate Wilkinson to mine half a million hectares of Crown land. What a surprise. Labour’s David Parker correctly surmised that National are backtracking so quickly that one can smell the burning rubber.
   Green token-female co-leader Metiria Turei also hit the nail on the head, noting that this is a government that likes to be liked. In other words, this government is a populist administration that notices the squeaky wheel and which way the wind is blowing and cares not a whit for things such as principles. With a few exceptions, National’s cabinet has the backbone of a giant squid.
   Even Gerry Brownlee accepts “that’s the end of the story.” I wonder how hard he fought to mine these mineral-rich areas.
   So, New Zealand misses out on valuable export dollars and the government must find some other way of paying off its growing debt. Spending cuts would be the best way. Stop paying people to breed and to laze around on the couch. Privatize everything except the justice system, police and armed forces. Let New Zealanders spend their own money. When people are spending their own money, they tend to be a lot more frugal than politicians.
   
3. “Green nutbars hate dairy farmers” – A whole lot of people, most of them sucking at the State tit, want to stop other New Zealanders from establishing dairy farms. The excuse they use for this anti-capitalist sentiment is the threat to “biodiversity.”
   Well, the legitimate way of preventing someone using land for a purpose with which you don’t agree is to buy the piece of land in question yourself, so that you can establish your own priorities for the use of that land. But don’t try and stop other people from using land which they own or for which they have legal authority to use for their own development.
   The worst polluters and defilers of land are totalitarian governments, and the greater the private ownership of land and freedom in its use, the cleaner and greener that land tends to be.
   Biodiversity, as I see it, is not an objective value. It is a priority for some people, but if they feel that strongly about the issue, they should start saving their pennies and establish their own private reserves to foster and promote native species. The best thing is, it would be safe from government interference, especially from Tory ministers who might want to mine it.

“When the people fear the government, there is tyranny – when
the government fear the people, there is liberty.”
- Thomas Jefferson