A Universal Basic Income Would Pay For Itself In The Bitching It Would Prevent
By VJM
The Internet is full of bitching about who is entitled to what and who is ripping who off. Endless back-and-forths that have been running for decades already, and sometimes for centuries before the Internet was invented. This bickering does a tremendous amount of social damage, fostering distrust, suspicion and cynicism at all levels. As this […]
Read more..September 8, 2019
1989: Jim Anderton Splits
By Anarchist History of New Zealand
Jim Anderton (79) died in 2018. Man, did age catch up with him in the end, as if having a hand in the political ring has been the drug that kept him vital. Not winning the 2010 Christchurch Mayoralty, by that view, has been the death of the ageing drummer boy. He really did represent […]
Read more..September 7, 2019
Democracy Has Failed
By VJM
It’s starting to appear that the democratic system now causes more misery and chaos than it solves. The ancient Greeks were well aware of its shortcomings, and now that our cultural decay is starting to become conspicuous, we’re learning about its shortcomings as well. This essay shows how democracy in the West has terminally failed, […]
Read more..September 6, 2019
1868: The Beak of the Bird
By Anarchist History of New Zealand
Today in New Zealand history, 7 September, 1868: Te Ngutu O Te Manu/’The beak of the bird’: McAttack! Chief Titokowaru picked up the Hauhau mantle after it’s creator, Te Ua, died at the end of 1866. From mid-1868 the cannibalistic cult leader rebelled against New Zealand, murdering and destroying and thieving about South Taranaki. “Te […]
Read more..September 6, 2019
1821: Musket Wars Auckland
By Anarchist History of New Zealand
Musket Wars Auckland: This is where you go to die. The Kill Box. Once a rich urban paradise, the Auckland isthmus Maori settlers prospered. A blend of peoples built fertile gardens and terraced their hilly cultivations. “Tamaki-makau-rau” (as revisionist historians have started calling it) became highly populated then it became a wasteland. “Reverend Samuel Marsden […]
Read more..September 5, 2019
1820s: The Murder Olympics
By Anarchist History of New Zealand
The Olympics (Winter or otherwise) are a good way to think about the New Zealand Musket Wars. It occurred to me that the incentives are similar and both groups of competitors access performance enhancing drugs (often illegal) so they will not get knocked out of their competition. The pre-Colonial Maori’s substance was iron and muskets, […]
Read more..September 5, 2019
Mummy Politics and Daddy Politics
By VJM
If religion is for those who have outgrown their parents, as Freud had it, then politics could be said to be for those who haven’t outgrown their parents. The only reason why any person would want to vote for a ruler is because of an emotional juvenility that caused them to seek after a surrogate […]
Read more..September 5, 2019
1855: Governor Browne
By Anarchist History of New Zealand
Today in New Zealand history, 4 September, 1855, the 23-year theme of having governors named after colours continued. Colonel Gore Browne arrived in Auckland in the morning and was sworn in as top Executive of the Crown Colony within 30 minutes of stepping off the ship. Browne was the filling between the slices of Grey bread either […]
Read more..September 4, 2019
Lessons For New Zealand From the German Electoral System
By VJM
When New Zealand adopted a MMP electoral system in 1996, we based that system on the German model. Germany had already had decades of experience with MMP, and it was thought that we could learn from their lessons. As demographer Dan McGlashan will show in this essay, there are further lessons to be learned from […]
Read more..September 3, 2019
1988: Labour Goes Full Victimhood
By Anarchist History of New Zealand
The Old Left were a Slave Culture who wanted to be ‘looked after’. Plain folk, descended from surfs or Workhouse inmates or clans-folk (The word clan is derived from the Gaelic clann meaning “children.”) They don’t have any trust/faith in anything so abstract as institutions of law or custom. They were the voting plantation of […]
Read more..September 3, 2019
The Three Failed Political Models of Our Time
By VJM
There are three very popular political models in the West at the moment, each one promising utopia through its own path, if only it is followed. The problem is that these three popular models have all failed catastrophically, and furthering any of them only brings more misery into the world. This essay explains these models, […]
Read more..September 2, 2019
1958: Open Hearts
By Anarchist History of New Zealand
Today in New Zealand history, 3 September 1958, the country’s first open-heart surgery was performed. The team at Greenlane Hospital, Auckland, were not just pioneering health for New Zealand but for the entire human race. There was a generation of New Zealanders who produced such wonders who, in America, are called The Greatest Generation. In Strauss […]
Read more..September 2, 2019
