Horse 3196 - I Am Completely Surrounded By No Banks

Tell me what you see here. 

Companies providing a useful service in exchange for the money that they make? No.

People?! No.

Bustling trade? Actually, yes.

This quiet corner of Westpoint in Blacktown, is the former home of the Commonwealth Bank, the ANZ Bank, and the National Australia Bank. While you do not see people in this shot, and while you do not see these companies providing a useful service in exchange for the money that they make, what you do see is a very rudely bustling trade with these three banks making money hand over fist. When the National Australia Bank has as their slogan that they "nab - more than money", I believe them.

Once upon a time in the land that they call the past, which is a land that nobody can return to, there stood an unwritten contract between depositors and banks that if we deposited our money with the bank, in return for us lending the banks money, they would pay us some dribbling pittance which they call 'interest' (despite them taking very little interest indeed), and provide basic banking services which might include letting us get some of our own money back occasionally. Those days appear to have passed.

These three banks, all of whom appear in the top ten of the ASX200 and all of whom appear multiple times in the ASX200 due to other securities listings, have such utter disdain for us the general public, that they can't even bother to have branches and shopfronts so that we might do basic banking things. So very strong is the banks' commitment to making super-super-profit, that even the ATM machine machines which stood here, and indeed throughout shopping centres have been either removed entirely or replaced by black ATM machine machines which have the audacity to charge us for the privilege of getting our own money back. 

The irony which is not lost upon me, is that in the middle of a housing crisis and rent crisis, which the banks aided and abetted like a pack of thieves, has forced rents up so far that not even they can afford to rent the space necessary to do their own business. Guess what? They're fine with that. Because being unable to afford the space, means that they have dumped many of their former employees out into the streets like the pieces of refuse scum that they clearly think we all are. If you don't rent premises, you don't have to employ people; and since banks' profits exist because they already have our money on deposit, then not renting premises and not employing people is free profit for them.

Online banking, which was sold to us as a convenience was very very convenient for the banks, as they not only found a profitable way of employing less staff but we the general public have all become de facto unpaid interns for them on zero hours and zero pay contracts.

This open disdain for the general public isn't just expressed in places like Blacktown which is way way west of the Red Rooster Line but in the idle rich suburbs like Mosman and Neutral Bay where I work. The NAB has closed branches at Mosman, Neutral Bay, North Sydney, Balgowlah; which means that the nearest branch is actually at Wynyard, on the other side of the harbour. The Commonwealth Bank operates a business only branch in Mosman, St George has closed its branch at Neutral Bay; the list goes on and on.

Perhaps what is really insidious about this is that in the modern world, it's kind of really difficult to go through life and not use any banking "services" at all. Wage payers are not obligated to pay you in cash and if you want to do anything like pay bills, buy large capital items like equipment, cars and houses, you are almost chained to the banking system in some way. The amount of value that the banking sector adds to the economy is also questionable. Essentially the banking sector lives entirely in the margin between borrowing money from depositors for practically no cost and then lending it out to people, who they will then charge interest to. That interest is paid back with the proceeds of actual real work being done in the world.

So when banks close branches and shop front, not only do they actively show by demonstration that they think that we the general public are all scum, but our money does not stink so that's okay. What's pathetic by its pathos, is that recently I got a letter from the Commonwealth Bank informing me that I had a new "Relationship Manager". In their form letter, they told me that they would "love to have a cuppa and a chat" sometime. Of course the unspoken irony is that my local branch closed years ago, and that they only address listed on the letter was a PO Box. Unless the expect me to have tea with someone inside a PO Box, then this is physically impossible.

Horse 3195 - Why Would It Be So Bad To Abandon Australia Day?

One thing that should have been of no surprise to anyone is that the right-wing trashmedia in this country, in their bid to defeat the upcoming First Peoples' Voice referendum, have employed a strategy of inventing rubbish and then wrapping it in layer upon layer of untruth. It is like playing the worst game of pass the parcel ever. One of the layers of irrelevant wrapping paper that has been wrapped around the parcel containing the central dog poo of lies, is that The Voice will act as a third chamber and then start blocking legislation (this is untrue). The layer of untruth that really appears to get the people who want to wave the flag in lieu of actual thinking, is the lie that The Voice will take away Australia Day. Shock horror!

I like games. I like playing stupid games. If you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes. I am prepared to play pass the parcel here. Rather, the music has stopped and I am now in possession of the parcel wrapped in decades' old news. Allow me to set fire to this strawman of an argument. Sure, it has nothing to do with The Voice at all but it still seems like a fun place to play in.

As far as I can make out, Australia Day in its current form exists as a summer holiday that serves no other purpose than for racists to drape themselves in the flag and pretend that they are Captain Cook, Captain Philip, Captain America, or Captain Kirk. Australia Day is red, white and blue cosplay day with a bit of sport, beer drinking, domestic violence and pretend patriotism. Australia Day currently exists for no other purpose than to give people a public holiday and for conservative people to "own the libs"; thus proving that we're so under the cultural thumb of the United States, that we don't even use words properly.

What would we actually lose if we abandoned Australia Day and instated a public holiday on some other day? Nothing as far as I can tell. I note that the same right-wing trashmedia in this country who are grunting in favour or Australia Day like a pack wolves, will just as easily bark at all the public institutions of the country and hope to tear them to pieces. It seems like a very strange disconnect to me to on one hand call for patriotism and on the other hand actively tear that same nation down.

Australia Day isn't even the day that Australia became a nation. Fine details aside, it is the day of the beginning of the prison colony of New South Wales. Quite likely, literally everyone who was there on 26th January 1788 was deeply unhappy about this. The convicts weren't happy about having spent several months on a ship, only to be dumped on the other side of the world. The officers of the Royal Navy in their diaries, repeatedly expressed that they hated being what amounted to little more than babysitters of criminals. The first peoples like the Eora, were unhappy that men who looked like ghosts shoed up out of nowhere and drove them off their own land.

It doesn't even help that Australia Day if it is a thing, was legally the 1st of January 1901; however far less fanfare was given to that than the bicentenary of New South Wales, 13 years earlier. Australia as a nation exists in the wake of fears that the newly federated Germany had plans of acquiring its own empire in the same way that France and Britain had previously done. The Franco-Prussian war of 1870 was still reasonably fresh in peoples' minds and when Germany acquired New Guinea in 1895, that was more or less the tipping point. History may have proved the federation of Australia in the wakr of that, when the first bout of unpleasantness kicked off in 1914.

As for the holiday itself, Australia Day really only came to national significance on the run up to the bicentennial of colonial rule, in 1988. Before then, while it was a public holiday in other states, the other states of Not New South Wales were staunchly proud of their own Proclamation Days. 

This last point in particular leads me to ask the people of Not New South Wales, why do you even care? I am perfectly prepared to accept that people not in New South Wales would pay homage and fealty to the self-appointed Premier State (according to the vehicle number plates), because all y'all in the other five states are all second rate. 

If not, then why? What does the right gain from Australia Day other than performative agitation? I can't genuinely believe that Australia Day is actually celebrated for any other reason than to open tinnies, have a barbeque, and maybe watch cricket. To be honest, that can be done on any day you choose.

Maybe the right actually wants to take up Premier Parkes' famous question as public policy. When Henry Parkes, the then-Premier of New South Wales, was planning the upcoming 1888 Centenary celebrations, he was asked what, if anything at all, was being planned for Aboriginal people, to which Parkes retorted: "And remind them that we have robbed them?"

Horse 3194 - The Trolley Problem 2: Electric Boogaloo

You must return the shopping cart because it is the right thing to do. Because it is correct.

A person who is unable to do this is no better than an animal, an absolute savage who can only be made to do what is right by threatening them with a law and the force that stands behind it.

The Shopping Cart is what determines whether a person is a good or bad member of society.

Yet again we return to the court of public knavery and to the mounting evidence that those people who refuse to return their shopping trolleys, are no better than animals. If the only tool you have is a hammer, it is tempting to treat everything as if it were a nail. Likewise, if you have seen trolleys out in the wild, you can not help but see them everywhere.

Exhibit 1: 2.6km and 3.8km

Sometimes the effort put in by these savages has to be admired.

Here, we have a Woolworths trolley which is 2.6km away from the supermarket which I suspect that it came from and a blue Big W trolley which is 3.8km away from where it came from. My suspicion is that the first person who abandoned their trolley, walked home their grocery shopping from the supermarket, and simply left the trolley in a visible place; hoping that someone would take it back for them. 

Granted that the first animal might not have a car, which creates the need but the presumption that somebody else is going to clean up after them, with no announcement whatsoever, is either magical thinking or as I suspect, the result of no thinking at all.

The blue Big W trolley being here is as confusing as all get out. As a variety store, Big W is not a place where someone goes to buy groceries. If the person has bought some kind of bulky durable good, then why would they not ask someone who has a car to help them. Of course, if we take the assumption that those of these people have cars, then what we are left with are in fact animals who are no better than savages.

We have to come to the conclusion that the person who left the blue Big W trolley here, has seen the first trolley and has decided that even though these trolleys come from two entirely different shops at entirely different shopping centres, that whatever magical system exists will simply solve this problem.

Exhibit 2: The corner of Military Rd and Spit Rd. 88m from the greengrocery.

Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury in the court of public opinion, before we can judge what is knavish and what is just purely lazy, perhaps it is necessary to consider the facts before us, rather than just point fingers and paint frowns upon our faces. These are the known facts surrounding Exhibit 2:

Known facts: 

- This person has been shopping at Harris Farm Market; which is a high end greengrocer's.

- This is in the suburb of Mosman

- They would have had to go through the shops on Military Rd, or around them via Brady St

Whilst it is not impossible that someone living in Mosman does not have a car, it is unlikely. Mosman is currently the richest per capita suburb in the country (this alternates betwen Mosman, Vaucluse and Rose Bay). This is a suburb where teenagers complain that they were given a BMW and not a Porsche for their 16th birthday. This is a suburb which positively stinks of money; where economic fortune oozes out of peoples' pores. This is a suburb where people have maids and treat people as such. 

This shopping trolley, being left on a street corner in Mosman, which is the richest suburb in the country, merely serves to prove that animals exist regardless of economic fortune. For everything that money does, it does not buy either class or sense. These are the kinds of animals who wear Lululemon and take their dogs to cafes and expect their dogs to get puppicinos, and actually do have Gucci handbags. This corner in particular is proof that the Devil does not in fact wear Prada, for immediately behind this trolley at 666 Military Rd, is a Birkenstock store. 

Exhibit 3: A Bus Stop. 9.3km from the nearest supermarket.

I shan't shame where this is but I shall note that unlike Exhibit 1 where a trolley has been left in the open and has been joined by another, this one has been "hidden" behind a bus stop. 

The thing about litterers is that litterers know that they are breaking either the law or social convention and so you can often find bits of rubbish which has been secreted away intentionally. Bits of rubbish can sometimes be found wedged into trees, or the circular cap parts of pole, or decoratively placed upon the seats of bus stops. Very often, rubbish has been left behind very intentionally. This is similar in that the trolley abandoner has tried to secrete this trolley behind a bus stop. They have been rather unsuccessful at hiding this trolley away as a shopping trolley is a reasonably big thing. 

You still have to wonder exactly how a shopping trolley gets almost ten kilometers away from its starting point. Is this some kind of tag team effort from bands of animals, who like the various ants of an ant colony have no real intention to their own but work according to a series of unwritten yet predictable rules?

Exhbit 4: Martin Place Station. 102m from the nearest supermarket.

What makes this particular entry so noteworthy is not that it has travelled far and wide, for it has not, but rather that it has travelled downwards. This is the first trolley thus far that has ventured underground. Not only has it ventured underground but it has travelled down at least two flights of escalators and/or taken at least one elevator. 

The lady in the advert for spectacles is almost giving a dejected "why would you do this?" look at the world, for even she knows of the levels of savagery displayed by these animals. These are animals who will travel far and wide across the land, who have now discovered that they can plumb the depths of the earth.

I would very much like to ask the question, if aliens visit us and search for intelligent life, would they think that the machines that we have built are actually the intelligent life an we are but their handservants? Motor cars that travel down the highway follow rules and mostly respect each other; so it is reasonable to think that the pinkish and brownish meatbags inside are their guts.

Shopping trolleys with their obvious need to explore the world, have somehow managed to convince the animals and savages of the world to bade them passage to far off and strange lands; to split infinitives; to boldly go where no trolley has been before.

Or else the more likely story here is that the absolute animal in question has taken their trolley into an elevator, below street level to the concourse below, then through the paid ticket barriers and likely through the wide access gate. I not that they have not then take their trolley further down to platform level; either because the trolley would not fit into those elevators, or because they have been told off by station staff and have decided to run away to the trains below.

Denouement:

Have we really learned anything about these animals; these ferals; these savages; these miscreants of civil society? Evidently, yes. The level of savagery and feralness is clearly on display but that is accompanies with its own dogged ingenuity. It takes a special kind of animality to go overground, underground, trolleying free, with someone else's property. It still does nothing to disprove that these people are bad members of society.

Horse 3193 - On Declarations and Slow Over Rates

On Declarations:

England 393/8d & 273

Australia 386 & 282/8

Australia won by 2 wickets

What was that?! Seriously!

England losing the opening Test Match against Australia in the 2023 Ashes series had all the inevitability of the 06:56 express service to St Pancras hitting an egg which someone had delicately placed upon the railway line. It had no chance and the results were messy and entirely expected and the worst thing is that England did it to themselves.

England was destined to lose this Test Match, the very second that Ben Stokes had a brain explosion and decided to declare the First Innings closed on Day One. In no world is this sensible and under no circumstances should this have been allowed to happen. If h spoke to anyone, they should have quietly taken him aside, spoken to him quietly, and then beat him repeatedly with a banana as part of a comedy humiliation ritual. 

Granted that I do not play and have never played First-Class cricket. Also granted that my highest ever score was a paltry 107 not out in B-Grade, after spending a day tickling the ball to Fine Leg and Third Man and occasionally bashing the ball to Cow Corner and Yoik Town; which means that I have all the poise and grace with the bat of a diseased albatross crashing to the ground. My most notable feat with the ball was taking all 10 wickets in an innings after losing my patience with the captain, and his challenge to me was if I thought that I could do a better job then I should prove it; so I did. I have however watched a lot of cricket over the years and so even from my position on the couch at stupid o'clock in the morning in a freezing Sydney winter, I can still perfectly explain why England lost.

Cricket is about time. England disrespected time.

Test Cricket is composed of five days, made up of three sessions of 30 overs each. Hold this thought, it will become important. The chief weapons of cricket are not fear and surprise but the number of days and overs left. Time is so important that even the batters hitting balls and the bowlers bowling them are actually secondary to the prime task of cricket, which is time management. 

The only way to win a Test Match is to take 20 wickets. 

In principle, a declaration is made for no other purpose than to give your own bowlers ample time to take those 20 wickets from the opposition, by actively destroying your own. Irrespective of how many wickets have fallen in your own innings, at the point that an innings is declared closed, the actual effective number of wickets that have fallen, are 10. Two scores that are 412/7 declared and 412 all not, are functionally identical.

Given this, we can apply some basic principles to when a declaration should be made for any innings:

1st Innings - no earlier than Day 3, 45 overs.

2nd Innings - no earlier than Day 3, 45 overs.

3rd Innings - no earlier than Day 4, 66 overs.

4th Innings - never.

A Test Match is five days long. It follows that an innings should ideally be completed in one and a quarter days. However, the only reason which is sensible to make a declaration, is to give yourself ample time to take 20 wickets. If you declare any early than the times suggested above, then what happens is that you give time to the opposition to score runs. However even scoring runs is actually a secondary act to the prime task of cricket, which is time management. What declaring early does, is give time to the opposition. 

There are no circumstances under which anyone should declare on Day One. It is as stupid as declaring in a T20 or One Day International match. It isn't against the rules but it is so monumentally stupid that nobody does it. What Ben Stokes did by declaring early, was give time to the Australians; and effectively signed his own death warrant. 

Slow Over-Rates:

Cricket is about time. 

Batters hitting balls and the bowlers bowling them are actually secondary to the prime task of cricket, which is time management. What does this have to do with a fielding side not getting through their overs?

A slow over rate, where less than 15 overs in an hour have been bowled, is purely about stealing time away from the batting side. Time spent in the middle is the way by which the batting side accumulates runs. The only way that the batting side can accumulate runs is if the ball is in play and the ball is put into play by virtue of it being bowled.

If close of play is 17:30 and the bowling side has only bowled 86 overs for the day, then what they have effectively done is cheated the batting side out of 16 minutes. Since the results of Test Matches have actually swung on the difference of 1 or 2 runs, then stealing 16 minutes, or even 4 minutes away, is nothing less than pure naked thievery.

Any argument about entertainment value for the spectators, or TV commitments, are all side-shows to the crime being perpetrated in the middle. Cricket is one of the few games which has contained within the laws that the game is to be played according to "the spirit of the game". Stealing time by slow over rates, violates the spirit of cricket.

Everyone would cry "blue murder" and maybe "Havoc! Let slip the dogs of war!" if Manchester United decided to declare a football match closed at the 86 minute mark because they were winning 1-0. Football matches swing on the difference of 1 goal; so football solves the problem through the mechanism of "time added". Cricket however, dispenses time in discrete units called 'balls' and 'overs'. 

The answer to a slow over rate is obvious. Make them play out the number of overs for the day. That's it. If a fielding side hasn't got through the required number of overs in a day, yes fine them, but also make them play on. Let them deal with the TV networks. The umpires who are the sole arbiters of space and time and here and now, have the power to make players play. 

Alternatively (and I find this solution quite quite delicious) since the law provides 5 penalty runs for various offences, if a fielding side fails to bowl 90 overs in a day, the umpire should award 5 penalty runs per ball not bowled. If close of play is 17:30 and the bowling side has only bowled 86 overs for the day, then would they do that again if they knew that they were giving away 120 runs? Of course not. A fielding side would be horrified to give away 120 runs in five overs and quite rightly so. If someone can only be made to do something because of the law and the weight of force which stands behind it, then they are no better than an animal. Give them the option. 5 runs per ball not bowled, or bowl out the day. Watch sides bowl through their overs quick-smart!

Horse 3192 - There Does Not Need To Be Two Kinds Of Rugby

 In the now great tradition of Australian Rugby wandering why it is always the ugly sister at the ball, there have been a number of pieces written in The Australian and the Sydney Morning Herald trying to answer the question. The answer turns out to be pretty obvious to anyone who follows sport in Australia and that is that Football, Australian Rules, and Rugby League are the ball sports of the ordinary common people and Rugby is the posh peoples' sport. Rah-Rah can not really escape its image of not wanting to dirty its hands by ignoring the oiks because at almost every level of the game, Rah-Rah wants to ignore the oiks.

Curiously, the ABC's reply is the most honest:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-14/australian-rugby-union-wallabies-wallaroos-grassroots-schools/102464748

It simply illustrated there is a long-standing perception of Australian rugby union that it is the domain of the private schoolboy.

Galloway and others cannot be blamed if they genuinely feel this way, given the substantial number of Wallabies players and rugby administrators — present and past — who went to private schools.

Among last year's Wallabies squad, almost three-quarters of players who were educated in Australia finished their schooling at private or independent institutions.

Of the 25 players named in the Australian Schools and Under 18s squad last September, only three completed year 12 at public schools.

- ABC News, 14th Jun 2023.

I am surprised that anyone is surprised by this.

Before I begin this, I have to lay my cards on the table and say that I think that Rugby League is a stupid game and that Rugby Union is only just a notch above it. I think that the rules of Rugby League have been mangled beyond the point of anything sensible for the purposes of being shown on television, and that it very much suffers as a result. The game mechanically does not reward possession, in that after a tackle count of six, a team must give the ball to the opposition. It got here after the rise of the NFL in the 1970s, with its four down count but did not include the NFL's provisions to restart the count if a team did something with that possession. Had Rugby League frozen the rules in 1966, it would have been (and was) a better game.

All that aside, I think that it is bonkers crazy that there are two kinds what is essentially the same game. The rugby codes exist because of the codification of football, when the carrying game and the kicking game separated. The kicking game formed the Football Association and the carrying game formed the Rugby Union, named after the school which supposedly legendarily had William Webb Ellis pick the ball up and run with it.

The Rugby Union and the Rugby League split further over a pay dispute, namely that players who wanted to be paid something for their efforts because having to train took away from their livelihoods, and the two games progressively diverged a bit. The really daft thing is that both games survived and continue to do so; to the detriment of each other.

I shall use the example of Australia here, since this illustrates the idiocy nicely.

At school level, whether or not a school plays Rugby League or Rugby Union, is mostly determined by a combination geographical location and economic fortune of the school. Public schools tend to play Rugby League more and private schools tend to play Rugby Union more; and together this is an excellent way of maintaining a de facto economic apartheid; which is already rampant in the school system in Australia.

At club level, amateur clubs tend to follow the same kind of geographical split. At professional club level, the League clubs who are mostly backed by multi-million dollar gambling hubs, are able to attract money from everywhere; including sponsorship and TV rights. Club Rugby is amazingly anaemic.

At state level, a weird thing has happened. The Rugby League has correctly identified that limited supply keeps the price and interest up; and so there are three state games per year. There are only two states who play at state level because the rest of the country outside of New South Wales and Queensland struggles to care about throwball at all. The Rugby Union though, kind of invented its own multi-national provincial "club" system, and made use of the fact that countries like New Zealand, South Africa, Japan, and the island nations of the Pacific, still have some latent need for the game below international level.

At international level, Rugby League struggles to maintain any kind of relevance at all. As the engine room of professional Rugby League is New South Wales, then the only interest which can exist is if anyone can beat Australia. This is ironic given the fact that Australians mostly don't care an iota about the Kangaroos. The only other nation which can consistently put up a fight against the Kangaroos is the New Zealand and yet again, the Kiwis are but a poor attendant and sideshow to the All-Blacks. 

The Rugby World Cup is genuinely cared about by more than just a few countries. Admittedly the Rugby World Champions are only ever likely to be one of Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, England, maybe France, and with a very long shot Wales; but the point is that at international level, The Rugby World Cup is properly a thing. The Rugby League World Cup is almost a joke, even to the people who are in it.

Rugby League in New Zealand is almost like the second-chance draw for prizes in a lottery. New Zealand very very much cares about Rugby but Rugby League is the sport for the lads who weren't quite good enough. New Zealand would likely survive excellently well if Rugby League were not a thing. If the Kiwis simply disappeared, who would care? Who would know? The All-Blacks on the other hand are a source of national pride, and almost national identity. If the All-Blacks lose a Bledisloe Cup series, it almost warrants a Royal Commission; and for the perpetrators to be hung, drawn, quartered, and the parts dragged through the streets. At very least, everyone in a losing Bledisloe Cup series should be led into a field and hit with sticks.

If I was Grand Poohbah and Lord High Everything Else, then there would not be two kinds of Rugby. There just isn't any obvious point to two. Roll the clubs into some kind of tiered system and have them rated against each other. Maybe play some kind of Cup competition. It is likely that a club like Randwick would not do well against South Sydney, but they might find that they are a good match for Newtown.

At state level, the provincial competition is already the logical pathway towards the national side in many countries. I'd keep it. Ironically I'd also keep the three State of Origin matches because they have comprehensively proved their worth.

At national level, duplication is stupid. The only nations where there is any differentiation is Australia and New Zealand and to be honest, the Kangaroos and Kiwis, are but pathetic shadows of the Wallabies and All-Blacks. I do not think that any other country, including England, would particularly care or even notice that the two codes merged at national level. I could throw around words like 'synergy' and 'efficiency' but when you are talking about the tribal differences between poshball and oikball, those things tend not to matter so much. If this was an industry with two similar products, then management looking to maximise profit, would have merged the two codes a long time ago. The perception of difference is only on the outside as internally, both players, coaches, and indeed corporate managers have moved between the two without any cares about with the posh people or oiks think.

Otherwise, the state split of New South Wales and Queensland with throwball and the other states playing Australian Rules football is fine. This is a weird weird intractable split. However, the split between two kinds of rugby is dafter than a cat playing shuffleboard with a scrubbing brush on the Titanic. I do not understand what that metaphor means, just like I do not understand why there needs to be two kinds of rugby.

Horse 3191 - I Am A Pessimist Because People Are Universally Awful (But We Can Fight Against This)

It must be said that I am one of the most pessimistic people that I know. This is very much shaped by the kosmos in which I find myself in and likely a genetic disposition; both of which are crucial in character formation and one's view of one's self and one's place in the kosmos, and indeed the kosmos itself.

The way that I have been treated in the past by people who should have behaved better, leads me to believe that people are universally awful. The conclusions that I draw from my faith, lead me to make what I think is the reasonably logical conclusion that people are universally awful. My reading of disciplines like history, economics, the law, ethics and philosophy, also leads me to believe that people are universally awful. My experience both inside and around law courts, especially Criminal Law, Family Law, Commercial Law, yet again leads me to believe that people are universally awful.

It is a very real possibility to suggest at this point that I suffer from a massive dose of confirmation bias, but when you also consider that we have institutions like the police force and the law, insurance against fire, theft, and deliberate injury, the military generally, as well as the existence of charities and government agencies who exist to correct the effects of the universal awfulness of people, then I have good reason to believe that people are universally awful.

Nevertheless even with a glass half-empty approach, this does not mean that I have no hope at all that things can be better; quite the contrary. If the glass is half-empty then this means that it needs a top-up. If there is one thing that I can glean from my reading of history it is that on history's page at every stage, society is always either perpetually less than ten years from going through a Golden Age, or a an absolute abomination of a horrorshow. Selfishness is always a constant because human nature never ever changes. Likewise, when ordinary common folk realise that collectively and in community that they actually have more power than the few, things change very quickly. Every single generation has to fight the same battles again and again and again. This is simultaneously awful because there is no final victory and simultaneously brilliant because there is no final defeat either.

The sad truth is that since the beginning of time, the kosmos has been run by rich and powerful men. As little as 250 years ago, people could be and were owned by other people as chattel goods; to be worked and bought and sold. This was only stopped because people fought to have it stopped. Business people owned the workers and the land, and if any slave objected they were flogged or or hanged and that kept them in order. The other sad truth is that the only real wealth in the world is land and resources that lie in, on, an under it; and the only real source of power in the world, is who gets to say what happens to the land, resources, and the people.

It wasn't until the Reform Acts of the 1830s and then movements like the Abolitionists, Combinationists, the Chartists, the Trade Unions, the Suffragettes et cetera, that people who actually do the work in the kosmos, had any rights at all. The Abolitionists fought for the right to consider people as more than merely chattel goods to be bought and sold. The Combinationists fought for the right to organise and collectively agree to things. The Chartists fought for the right to extend the franchise, that is the right to vote, to ordinary men. The Trade Unions fought for proper working conditions. The Suffragettes fought for the right to extend the franchise to women. The point is that none of these things were given. Again and again, even the right to be considered as worthy to be spoken to and to speak, must be fought for. It is never ever voluntarily given up.

At its core, democracy and the right to speak and to speak up is a fearful thing for the rich and powerful who do not want to listen. It took me a while to find the following from Adolf Hitler's 1925 nasty piece of work on why he became an anti-Semite but along with his evil evil swirling piles of nonsense, he basically asserts that he thinks that democracy, would lead to dictatorship:

And in politics he (Jews) begins to replace the idea of democracy by the dictatorship of the proletariat.

In the organized mass of Marxism he has found the weapon which lets him dispense with democracy and in its stead allows him to subjugate and govern the peoples with a dictatorial and brutal fist.

He works systematically for revolutionization in a twofold sense: economic and political.

Around peoples who offer too violent a resistance to attack from within he weaves a net of enemies, thanks to his international influence, incites them to war, and finally, if necessary, plants a flag of revolution on the very battlefields.

-  Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler (1925)

Perhaps the kindest way of looking at this is that the one thing that he recognized was that if people knew what was going on and organised themselves and had the right to organise themselves, then things would change in a way that he did not want or like.

He used the Jews and the Communists as an excuse to get into power, and he also held out the promise that if the people gave him the votes and give him power, then he would give people jobs. Well, he did do that in a way, he sent half of the unemployed to work in munitions factories and the other half of the unemployed to go and serve in the army. Also to be fair, Hitler did recognise that if he did away with democracy then it did allow him to subjugate and govern the peoples with a dictatorial and brutal fist.

While it might be valid to paint Hitler as monolithically evil, it is worth remembering that even he does not exist outside of context. His rise to power came after the Gilded Age in which the rewards of the kosmos went to the rich and powerful. He then fought in the war which was supposed to end all wars; which was fought by machinists and chemists finding new and interesting ways to kill people; all directed by the rich and powerful.

Perhaps I have not made this clear enough. We lost one hundred and five million people in two World Wars. That's one hundred and five million souls spent as the coin of the battlefield, just to pay the price of price of capitalism and imperial competition, the selfishness of the rich and powerful, and the insidiousness of the worst of humanity. It was only then, after human nature, stripped of all its skin, laying bleeding on the ground, was held up in lights to be universally awful, and it was only then things did change quickly.

Things like universal healthcare, old age pensions, public housing, and even the provision of electricity and water services in a lot of cases, only happened after a horrible price was paid. The British Labour Party before the end of the Second World War had this to say in its 1945 manifesto:

In the years that followed, the "hard-faced men" and their political friends kept control of the Government. They controlled the banks, the mines, the big industries, largely the press and the cinema. They controlled the means by which the people got their living. They controlled the ways by which most of the people learned about the world outside. This happened in all the big industrialised countries.

Great economic blizzards swept the world in those years. The great inter-war slumps were not acts of God or of blind forces. They were the sure and certain result of the concentration of too much economic power in the hands of too few men. These men had only learned how to act in the interest of their own bureaucratically-run private monopolies which may be likened to totalitarian oligarchies within our democratic State. They had and they felt no responsibility to the nation.

Similar forces are at work today.

- British Labour Party Manifesto, 1945

Similar forces are at work today, today. How very easily that this could have been written in 2023. During my lifetime, the rich and powerful have done an excellent job of degrading the welfare state, and have very successfully stolen back the things which our grandparents and great-grandparents fought and died for. The constant refrain coming from the same hymn sheet of the rich and powerful, is that we can not afford to extend decency to ordinary people because there isn't the budget for it.

The awful truth of the matter is that in times of war, Generals and Field Marshalls are not turned away because they happen tp exceeded their budget for the month. When the enemy is raining down bullets and other munitions fire in war time, you do whatever is required.

I think that it is absolutely scandalous that the rich and powerful people who will absolutely send millions out onto the battlefield to spend the coin of the battlefield, which is human blood and the lives of human souls, refuse to adopt that same principle in peace time. 

What do people want in peace time? They want jobs. They want to be paid decently. They want somewhere to live and preferably to own their homes. They want a good education for their kids. They want health care and protection from disease. They want to be protected in their homes. If they're old, they want to be looked after. If governments can not do this in peace time, then they do not deserve to be within a million miles of the levers of power. The ultimate test of government policy should be whether or not those obligations are met.

And even me who is the perpetual pessimist, whose base assumption is that people are universally awful, knows that if people fight, they can occasionally achieve decency for ordinary people.

Horse 3190 - Legally Speaking, Trump Is Disqualified From Running For President

Politico was the first over the weekend to report that former President Donald Trump, who was twice impeached but not removed, would continue to run his campaign for the Presidency in the 2024 election even if he was convicted for a felony.

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/06/10/trump-vows-to-stay-in-the-race-even-if-convicted-00101403

Donald Trump vowed Saturday to continue running for president even if he were to be convicted as part of the 37-count federal felony indictment that was issued against him this week.

“I’ll never leave,” Trump said in an interview aboard his plane. “Look, if I would have left, I would have left prior to the original race in 2016. That was a rough one. In theory that was not doable.”

- Politico, 10th Jun 2023

Politico also points out that neither being in prison or being convicted of a crime is a legal disability for running for President. There is not legal prohibition from running for president from prison or as a convicted felon. However, what this article does not mention is that Donald Trump is in fact already constitutionally ineligible for any future run for office.

In the wake of the United States' Civil War, Supreme Court Cases such as White v Texas (1868) ruled that the war was illegal as attempting to dissolve the Union was illegal. In that same immediate period, various state legislatures wanted to ensure that a repeat of the Civil War would not happen again and so the first thing on the Agenda was to bar slavery with the 13th Amendment, and then define things like citizenship, due process and other issues which related to the Civil War.

The relevant section, Section 3, is as follows:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiv

Section 3.

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

- Section 3, Amendment XIV to the United States Constitution (1868)

In the now infamous insurrection which was both violent and quick, Donald Trump had the following to say:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fiT6c0MQ58

Now it is up to congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy, and after this we're going to walk down, and I'll be there with you. We're going to walk down we're going to walk down, anyone you want, but I think right here. We're going to walk down to the Capitol and we're going to cheer on our brave Senators and Congressmen and women, and we're probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them because you'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong.

- President Donald Trump, 6th Jan 2021. (via NBC)

The words of the text of Section 3, Amendment XIV state that anyone who has taken an oath to uphold the United States' Constitution and then engages in "insurrection or rebellion" against the United States, or gives "aid or comfort to its enemies thereof", is disqualified from any office, civil or military, under the United States.

As it currently stands, more than 1000 people hve faced charges relating to the January 6th insurrection which attempted to overthrow the 2020 election, and more than 150 defendants have pleaded guilty to felonies, relating to same. Is has very much been established that there was an insurrection and that former President Donald Trump incited it. Furthermore, because at least 100 cited the words of Donald Trump, as the incitement, then not only implied implied conviction or proof exists, but this is settled; more than a hundred times so far.

Legally speaking, Trump is already disqualified under Section 3, Amendment XIV from appearing on any future ballot and because the words of the text do not mention anything about conviction of the person, then no conviction is necessary to enforce it. At this point election officials must follow the Section 3, Amendment XIV and bar Donald Trump from the ballot. The only instruction is that it would take two-third of Congress to vote to reinstate the person.

The question which will remain unanswered due to cowardice and gutlessness, is why election officials will refuse to enforce the law. Trump could still run for the title of Republican Party nominee but as that is a private organisation, the United States' Constitution is actually irrelevant in such a case.

Horse 3189 - Why Does The Leader Of The Opposition And Not The Shadow Treasurer Give The Budget Reply Speech?

 "Why is it the Leader of the Opposition and not the Shadow Treasurer who gives the budget reply speech?"

- <name withheld> via Facebook, 12th May 2023

There are a number of concepts that we need to fly through before we can get to the answer of this question. For as strange as it seems that the Treasurer presents the budget and their opposite number does not give the reply, the set of conventions which lie under this bunfight are even more strange.

The Parliament is the possession of the Crown. The Crown is corporation sole, which has exactly one share that can not be bought or sold, which as the name corporation sole suggests actually owns itself, and because it owns itself it remains in perpetuity even though its chief officer in the monarch might die. 

Except in extreme circumstances where the monarch is deposed through revolution or execution, the Crown and the monarch get on pretty well. The appointment of the High Court at Westminster Hall, the indictment of Charles I for tyranny, and the fact that he was 5 foot 6 inches tall at the start of his reign but only 4 foot 8 inches tall at the end of it suggests that the Crown and the Monarch are in fact separate legal people. The fact that Charles II was replaced by an Orange, would also suggest that the Crown and the Monarch are in fact separate legal people. The monarch can be replaced by execution, revolution or even just regular old boring death.

The Parliament is the legal agent of the Crown for both the running of executive government as well as the enactment of legislation which enables that running of executive government. Just like any other corporation, the corporation sole of the Crown, has what amounts to a board of directors. Admittedly it is the most boisterous board of directors you have ever seen but the collective decisions of the parliament, subject to a constitution, become the enactment of policy of the government. 

This is where the story gets weird. In Australia, the Governor-General who is the representative of the monarch, has the power to make and unmake cabinet ministers. Likewise, in the six several states, the Governor of that state who is the representative of the monarch, has the power to make and unmake cabinet ministers. Depending on the constitution in question, there is no mention of the nature of those cabinet ministers and in the case of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia, there is no mention of the Prime Minister either. We have already run out of legal concepts that are specified in black ink; which means that the further we go, we step deeper and deeper into the desert of convention.

Technically speaking, the only piece of legislation that the Parliament needs to pass in a year is Appropriation Bill No.1. This has been challenged in the High Court of Australia and the fact that there needs to be at least an annual Appropriation Bill No.1. stems from the words of Section 54 which speaks of the "ordinary annual services of the Government". Even then in the case of Australia owing to the way that they are written, this might not actually be a need provided that the Parliament is fine with the continuation of the existing Appropriation Act (usually they are not). Having said that, at absolute minimum, the only officer from the parliament that the Crown needs to acknowledge, is that of the First Lord of the Treasury. In Australia, the role of the First Lord of the Treasury is almost always fulfilled by the Prime Minister or Premier; who meets with the Governor-General on the normal continuing business of the government and parliament.

However, the Constitutions which govern the parliaments make absolutely no mention of who needs to introduce or present Appropriation Bill No.1 other than to say that in the case of the Commonwealth of Australia, money bills must originate in the House of Representatives. Budget Night in Australia is actually the Treasurer, who is almost never First Lord of the Treasury and who almost never visits the Governor-General in the weekly meetings of the normal continuing business of the government and parliament, presenting Appropriation Bill No.1.

The Budget Reply speech therefore, is made by someone who is not a cabinet minister, who is not First Lord of the Treasury, and who does not meet with the Governor-General in weekly business meetings. As far as the Crown is concerned, it near enough makes no difference whatsoever who gives a Budget Reply speech. Even though this bill being presented before the parliament for consideration and eventual passage into law (or not), is Appropriation Bill No.1 it matters not a jot to the Crown, who replies to the introduction of the bill.

The Shadow Treasurer? The Leader of the Opposition? Who are these people? As far as the Crown is concerned, who owns the Parliament, they are just ordinary people with funny names and who are neither Cabinet Ministers nor First Lord of the Treasury. The Monarch, the Governor-General, or the Governor, who are all actually normally barred from even entering Parliaments under normal circumstances care not an iota nor a jot about the person who might give the Budget Reply speech. That's the Parliament's business. 

So why the Leader of the Opposition and not the Shadow Treasurer? This is political grandstanding and nothing else. But what about convention? Convention, as a QC once told me, lasts exactly as long as it does. The second that convention ceases to be, then it is not. Convention is not legislation; which means that it it is broken, then this is of also no consequence. This also matters not a jot to the Crown.

Horse 3188 - Healthcare Is Very Clearly A Right; Which Should Be Demanded From The State

One of then central problems of economics, of religion, and of society, is that it is made up of individuals who through only being capable of seeing the world through their own eyes, are either rationally or even irrationally selfish; which means that they will generally favour their own self-interest over any concern for others. 

Granted that people will develop some kind of moral sense, and from there form rules and guidelines for proper conduct and morality but even these rules and guidelines still based upon the central premise that are inherently selfish. The reason why hard law needs to exist is that really people are no better than the beasts and have a tendency to revert to acting beastly to other people, because they are rationally or even irrationally selfish. Religion might come to a set of codified set of rules, which it arrives at based upon the assumption that there is a higher order power and a higher order force behind that power but even religion still can not escape the central problem that people are selfish.

I would argue that human selfishness is the dark puppet master underneath the two sliding scales of authoritarianism/libertarianism on one axis and collectivism/individualism on another and that most people's view about economics and politics is still shaped by that notion. When if comes to talking about human rights, selfishness which is the beast that shouts "I" at the heart of the world, is still right there. 

The provision of goods and services, is in some respects an economic question which asks what, where, for whom, and who shall, produce things; but it is also a political question because those same questions are answered through the enactment of policy. Policy is nothing more than the formal arrangement of plans for the future; which plays with those two slider bars of authoritarianism/libertarianism on one axis and collectivism/individualism on the other.

The following post was in relation to a assertion that health care is a human right:

How can a human have a right to a service provided by another human?

You can certainly have a right to access it. But you can’t claim a right that demands the other party provide that service at the price, place and manner of your choosing.

- via Twitter, 4th June 2023 (name withheld).

As with so many of these discussions, people make statements with only a vague understanding of the terms therein. It is one thing to say that health care is a human right. However any further discussion on the issue is futile in a lot of cases unless you define what a "right" actually is.

Put simply, a "right" is the ability to:

- own a thing

- do a thing

- command a thing

- get a thing

...at law.

Most people understand property rights because a person owning a thing, which might be a small thing like an object or a very big thing called "land", is a pretty natural conception of the world. It is not hard to imagine that in the kosmos, objects have owners. 

Even the thing itself does not have to be real. A person can own some land but in most cases does not own what's under the ground. The right to extract what is under the ground are held in rights such as mining rights, which are in effect the right to do a thing (mining). Mining rights are the ownership of an abstract concept; namely the ability to do something. Mining rights, patent and design rights, rights to abstract notions such as the franchise, and rights to intangible things such as citizenship, are all instances of where owning a thing happens when the thing isn't real.

Usually attached to property rights, is the right to command other people to leave. Various enclosed lands acts and crimes acts will rule the act of trespass as either a civil misdemeanor or a crime but still attached with the ownership of that property is the right of the owner to tell unwanted trespassers and miscreants to go away and "get off my land". This is different to merely owning a thing or doing a thing because this is the right to command a thing.

Our friend who obviously lives in the United States which is a nation which still hasn't really moved on from its eighteenth century conception of what its telos is, asserts that people do not have the right to healthcare because they do not have the right to command another human to provide a thing. This is where we find the basic and very deliberately cruel fault in logic from so many people.

Curiously, healthcare is a right which the individual should be able to demand that the other party provide that service at a proper price and place. Healthcare should be a right because you should be able to get it from the state as part of their responsibility to the citizenry. It actually has nothing to do with your ability to command it from a human but rather the state itself and quite frankly, the argument that it is dependent on a human is cruel and stupid.  Stupidity is not a matter of intelligence but choice. Stupidity is the act of choosing to do a thing which actively harms one's self or other people. Choosing to deny healthcare to someone as a matter of public policy, can be viewed in no other terms and to do so is dishonest.

Perhaps the nearest equivalent to this is whether or not a child can demand to be looked after by their parents. Only very cruel and stupid people would argue that a child does not have the right to be looked after by their parents. However their right does not stem from their ability to demand anything but rather that the child's parents have the responsibility to look after their children. Any failing in this respect is in not way the fault of the child but the absolute fault of their parents.  Likewise, to suggest that the health of the citizens of the nation is not as much a responsibility of the state as law and order, or education, or defence, is cruel and stupid and put forward by equally cruel and stupid people.

For almost every nation state in the world, that nation state is a legal person which has been established by constitution. There are only a very few places like the United Kingdom or New Zealand where there is no single constitution but rather a raft of planks which together make up constitutional framework. No matter, in every example that I can think of, the nation state is corporation sole which has been established by constitution.

Depending on the legal fiction employed, the nation state is either corporation sole which is bootstrappy in that it owns itself, or is corporation sole which is owned another corporation sole which is named something like the "Crown" or "The People" in plural. Citizens generally have voting rights (which again are the ability to own, command and do a thing - the franchise), who then elect what amounts to board members and executives in parliaments and cabinets. It is by no accident that the head of state of republics (that is 'res public', a public thing), are called usually called Presidents because they preside over the board of directors of the nation state.

Healthcare should be a right not because you can command it from the nation state but rather that you can get it from the nation state because the nation state has the responsibility to look after its citizenry. The nation state like every citizen and other corporations, has not only rights to own, do, command and get things, but also responsibilities. I would very much argue that the defence of the health of the nation is as much as responsibility of the nation state as is the military defence, or civil defence and law and order, and fire safety defence of the nation. It is also reasonable to expect that the nation state should provide those things which are reasonable to allow a reasonable function within the nation state, such as education, water and sewerage services, parks, et cetera. 

The question of healthcare as a right, that is the right to get seen to by a doctor and have one's health maintained for the proper functioning within society, is in part the deliberately wrong way to look at it. The right to get a thing or command a thing, is far less important than a person's responsibility to do a thing.

The expression of the attitude that someone thinks that the nation state should not have the responsibility to see to it that the health of the nation is maintained to some proper and reasonable standard, actually gives away their belief that they think that the other citizens of the nation state are beneath them. Granted that people naturally tend towards selfishness and there is also a natural tendency to look after one's own family before other peoples' (which is fit and proper as one has responsibilities for one's own family), but selfishness extended to the running of the nation state cussedly raises a middle finger to the public of 'res public' and the common of a 'commonwealth'. I am very much prepared to say that a nation state which refuses to look after its own citizenry, is a cruel and stupid populated by equally cruel and stupid people who choose that for their nation. 

Suggesting that healthcare is not a right, is to demand that as public policy. It only stems from someone favouring their own self-interest over any concern for others. Yet again, we end right back at our old friend selfishness.

Horse 3187 - The Trolley Problem

A copypasta that has passed into lore on the internet is "The Shopping Cart Theory". I have no idea from where this first appeared, though I have seen it pop up in forums and being read dramatically on YouTube. 

"The Shopping Cart Theory" is as follows:

The shopping cart is the ultimate litmus test for whether a person is capable of self-governing.

To return the shopping cart is an easy, convenient task and one which we all recognize as the correct, appropriate thing to do. To return the shopping cart is objectively right. There are no situations other than dire emergencies in which a person is not able to return their cart. Simultaneously, it is not illegal to abandon your shopping cart. Therefore the shopping cart presents itself as the apex example of whether a person will do what is right without being forced to do it. No one will punish you for not returning the shopping cart, no one will fine you or kill you for not returning the shopping cart, you gain nothing by returning the shopping cart. You must return the shopping cart out of the goodness of your own heart. You must return the shopping cart because it is the right thing to do. Because it is correct.

A person who is unable to do this is no better than an animal, an absolute savage who can only be made to do what is right by threatening them with a law and the force that stands behind it.

The Shopping Cart is what determines whether a person is a good or bad member of society.

...

I like the Shopping Cart Theory because it presents itself as a proper experiment upon which to do analytical philosophy upon. We get to evaluate whether or not this theory itself is true or not. 

The Shopping Cart theory says that "there are no situations other than dire emergencies in which a person is not able to return their cart"; yet this is objectively wrong. People regularly abandon their shopping trolleys at the bus station because after having fought their way out of the mall, over the railway station complex, and down to street level at the bus station, they have no way to return their trolley. The kinds of people who do this are already the kinds of people who do not have a motor car, or else they'd have loaded their shopping into their car and then likely have returned their trolley. These people's next mode of transport is the bus; upon which they can not take the shopping trolley.

This is a situation other than a dire emergency in which a person is not able to return their trolley. I feel that there is a level of assumption here which was unable to imagine the kosmos that complexly; which has resulted in an objectively wrong statement. However, abandoning one's trolley at the bus station is still pretty feral as it creates menial make work for people who could be doing something else.

One shopping trolley left abandoned at the bus station is bad. Two shopping trolleys left abandoned at the bus station is feral. Forty-seven trolleys left abandoned at the bus station is a systemic problem.

I have no idea how much a shopping trolley costs but I imagine that it is a non-zero amount. Not only is there the hardware of the trolley itself but the wheels generally have to be individually engineered for the shopping centre in question, so that the rear wheels will sink into the grooves of travelators between floors and not slip backwards. 

The point here is that there is a lot of money tied up in the assets of forty-seven trolleys. Having them abandoned and left outside to suffer the elements, only leads to the degradation of these assets and a carrying expense for their repair. I would hope that if I was the comptroller of the supermarket, that I would run an analysis to work out how much it costs to retreive these things before they need repair. Leaving trolleys to rot, is a pointless expense.

One step up the ladder of feralness are the examples of humanity which have made an attempt to return their shopping trolley, albeit a very feeble one. This collection of trolleys has been left near an elevator well in Mount Druitt. The underground car park connected to the shopping centre here, had a dedicated parking space for shopping trolleys; which was signposted with the very un-Australian term "Cart Corral". To be honest, I have no problem with either the term 'shopping trolley' or 'shopping cart', other than to say that 'cart' just doesn't sound proper coming out of the mouths of a non-rhotic speking population like Australia. The term 'corral' though, which makes excellent use of alliteration, invokes images of the Wild West; which does seem strangely appropriate.

The Wild West, the wiki-wiki-wah-wah-Wild-Wild-West, is a mostly fictional imagining of outlaws, cowboys, train robberies, and gunfights at high noon. Meanwhile the the wiki-wiki-wah-wah-Wild-Wild-Westen Suburbs, is a actual land of inlaws, homeboys, petty robberies, and bunfights. Very clearly the rootin-tootin ruffians of County Mounty, couldn't be bothered to walk the 25 or so meters across the car park to the Cart Corral. This was obviously too hard.

This is the corner of Spit Rd and Military Rd, Mosman. At the time of writing, Mosman was the richest suburb in the country in terms of incomes being reported and the 3rd richest suburb in the country in terms of assets being reported by individuals to the ATO. This is not a poor suburb by any stretch of the imagination. This is a suburb where Ferraris, McLarens and Lamborghinis actually are parked on the street. I would be very surprised if any shop front in the suburb, has staff who actually live within the suburb. 

Yet even Mosman as a fantastically wealthy suburb still has absolute savages who can not return their shopping trolley. The reason why this is included in my survey in particular is that it demonstrates that wealth is not a determinant of quality of person and that even the richest suburbs in the country, have people who are borderline feral.

Another bus stop; another shopping trolley; another lonely abandoned soul. Okay, shopping trolleys very likely do not have souls but if they did they would cry out that they have been abandoned, forgotten, forlorn, lonely, and alone.

The curious thing about this trolley is that this is next to a bus stop which is on an inbound route to the big shopping centre. I can understand why someone might abandon their trolley after they have done their shopping and then got on the bus but this defies rational explanation. This is a chance for Vizzini from 'The Princess Bride' to exclaim "Inconceivable!" as my wee little mind is unable to conceive of the telos of what has happened here.

Someone has returned a shopping trolley to somewhere? We are a bit over 3 km from the nearest shopping centre; so I do not know how it got out here. Has this been left behind by a ragman and bagman who has decided to move on? I do not understand, nay, I can not understand.

These are two shopping trolleys which two people have decided to decorate the creek with. These two travellers demonstrate why broken windows should be fixed as soon as possible. A broken window is usually given as an example in economics textbooks as a make work exercise which helps to keep people employed. A broken window provides employment for the glazier, which is counted as employement but only exists because the window is broken.  What a broken window does is act as a moral signal that feralness is accepted in this area, even if that belief is incorrect.

Our first galaxy brained feral thought that it was an excellent idea to leave one's shopping trolley next to the creek. Due to the Section 2 of the Simian Duplication Act 1837 (Monkey see; monkey do), our second first galaxy brained feral thought that it was an excellent idea to add their shopping trolley and make this some kind of community art project. I have no doubt that in the future that some other feral, who will usually be between the ages of 13-19 and male, will think it even more excellent to do a further gravity experiment and push both of these shopping trolleys into the creek. Feralness breeds more feralness.

How?! I am almost impressed with the effort put in here, to send this trolley on a journey so far from home. I can understand a shopping trolley moving a few hundred metres if several ferals have pushed it along but this one has migrated all of 6.6km from home, as it has decided to make its own way into the world on its own. Its continuing mission is to seek out new and strange lands; to chart unknown paths; to split infinitives and use excessive semi-colons; to boldy go where no shopping trolley has gone before.

It is almost like this shopping trolley which has travelled so very far from home, is crying out that it is cold, lonely, and naked. Its wheels hurt and it is far away from its kith and kin. It has found refuge in a roundabout; hoping desperately to be seen by someone who can take it home. Or else it could be that this has been caused by a new athletic kind of feral; previously unknown by science.

Absolute savages... all of you.

Fair play to you. Well done, you magnificent knave!

Horse 3186 - The "No" Case Is Fourfold

While standing in line at the bank (the Bendigo Bank - our community shifted $100m in capital away from the big four after they closed branches in the area) and watching t'telly, I noticed Rowan Dean from The Spectator and Sky News Australia, spitting bile about the level of discourse surrounding The Voice To Parliament and the upcoming referendum on same.

His complaint was that the level of discourse was both nasty and political; which I can only assume was argument by demonstration because his own argument was also nasty and political. His tirade basically amounted to demanding that Aboriginal people be grateful to the nation for what it has given them, before making the usual kind of argument that "we are one" while deliberately trying to other those same people he wants to be grateful. 

I absolutely understand the reason for The Spectator and Sky News Australia's opposition to The Voice. If all that Aboriginal people were demanding was token recognition in the Constitution, then quite frankly The Spectator and Sky News Australia, would probably be fine with it. But the fact that Aboriginal people are asking to be heard and have a say on decisions which affects them, makes the collective blood of The Spectator and Sky News Australia boil.

The very idea that anything stands in the way of the rich and powerful either making profits or maintaining power for power's sake, is offensive to them. The idea that there might any kind of voices or anyone else to stop these ends, is offensive to them. The idea that nation states and subnation states might be responsible for what they have done in the past, is a secondary issue but the idea that those nation states and subnation states might have just claims for things like taxation, and the legislative ability to stop the extraction of profits or their maintenance of power, is offensive to them.

Of itself, the existence of Aboriginal people is a non-event to The Spectator and Sky News Australia. The fact that they have legitimate claims of justice upon both the nation state and the various subnation states of the country they operate in, is a problem that must be extinguished. Officially that was also the stance of both the nation state and the various subnation states of the country for a while. My suspicion is that had The Spectator and Sky News Australia been around in the late 1890s, they would have also been fine with the proposition that Aboriginal people themselves were problem that must be extinguished, through creative apathy.

The basic premise of the Yes camp is pretty simple. There is an underlying injustice to do with the creation of the nation state and the subnation states which exist in Australia. The persons of the Crowns are responsible for that injustice. No formal treaty process has been undertaken. After many years of formal dialogues, which consulted more than thousand people groups, the instrument put forward was formal recognition in the Federal Constitution and a new instrument called The Voice To Parliament; which were both consequences of the Uluru Statement From The Heart.

The previous Turnbull and Morrison Liberal/National Governments who received this advice, did nothing with it and the Albanese Labor Government had the enactment of policy with regards this, as part of its manifesto for government. As part of its responsibility, the Albanese Labor Government is more or less obliged to put forward the question of The Voice to a referendum, as part of meeting its obligations of being given the right to govern.

And so exists the relentless campaign from entities like The Spectator and Sky News Australia. They hate the idea that The Voice exists because it might interfere with their advertisers' and backers' ability to extract profits and maintain power. Profit and Power are really all that's at the bottom of this. All notions of equality magically disappear like the morning mist, if you were to put forward the suggestion that profits might be a moral bad, or that equality through the ballot box results in governments they don't like.

The basic premise of the No camp is roughly fourfold.

There are hard racists who genuinely think that Aboriginal people should have died out and that the Commonwealth won the nation through the act of conquest. Sure, they may use words such as "settled" but when you have the Royal Navy show up with 11 ships, and then enact its claim through the use of active clearance at gunpoint, then really "settling" is a lie. Australia was started as a penal colony and then martial law was enforced via the New South Wales Corps until semi-autonomous government and then responsible government arrived. We know that active clearance at gunpoint amounting to genocide occurred because we still have the receipts and account books. The very first deposit to the Bank Of New South Wales, which was three days before the bank even opened, was by Sergeant Jeremiah Davis of more than £50, which he was paid 1/6 for the head of every Aboriginal person that he killed - which is personally more than 660 people.

There are the soft-core racists who don't actively wish harm on Aboriginal people but who still don't want the Commonwealth to do anything about the past. Again, they buy into settler narrative lie and then want to paint some rosy picture about how hard it was for the settlers and convicts who arrived. They see this story as the consequences of work and that Aboriginal people have not worked hard enough with what they have been given. These people will often point to a range of whataboutism type questions, including the whatabout question of another colonial power arriving, or the benefits of modern society arriving upon Aboriginal people, in complete apathy to the price of dispossession and genocide.

Then there are the casual racists who think that because they are not personally responsible for what happened, that nothing should be done. This is racism through creative apathy. The central lie here is that based upon the truth that they are not personally either the Commonwealth or the six several States.

Ever since 26th January 1788, with the proclamation of the colony of New South Wales (argue about the ins and outs of the dates) there has always been some corporation sole which claimed ownership by force. In the first instance it was the Crown of the United Kingdom. In the second instance it was the Crown of the several states when responsible government arrived. In the third instance it was the Crown of the Commonwealth, enacted by Constitution and starting at 1st Jan 1901. The Crown is a separate legal person from the Monarch, from the Governors, from the Governor-General, and from all the people who claim that they are not responsible. The lie here is that because these are not personally responsible for what happened, that nothing should be done; despite and actively in spite of the fact that the several Crowns are very much responsible.

The fourth case is that there are those people who fear what voting Yes will do. I have sympathy for this kind of argument but it still happens to rest upon a pillar of casual racism through inactivity. Unless people can make a case of what should be done to address the issue of equity, then the fourth case is nothing more than a restatement of the third case but a bit more florid.

The argument here is that because we don't actually know what final form that The Voice will look like, that it should be rejected out of hand. This relies upon the lie that the referendum is over a Constitutional Amendment and that the Constitution almost never spells out the details of what the various Ministries, Agencies, Departments, Quangos, Offices, et cetera, actually look like. 

Every single argument without exception when discussing the No case falls into one of these four cases. There might be different colours of nuance within the position but boiled down to its basic elements, this is all that exists.

Whilst it is true that not everyone who votes No is racist, it is also true that everyone is racist will vote No. The open racists will continue to be racist but they can hide behind the casual racists if they want to. 

I personally don't like the instrument of The Voice because I think that it is the wrong answer to the fundamental question of equity. However, given that I think that the proper answer involves treaty, dialogue, truth-telling, and and actual say on legislation through seats in the Senate, then my preferred proposal (which wouldn't even involve a constitutional amendment) is about as likely as Satan ice-skating to work. The Voice might be a first step but at the moment, it's the only first step that we're likely to see while people like Rowan Dean have a nasty megaphone through which to spit bile into the discourse of the nation.

Horse 3185 - See The Car That The Owner Can't Drive

 I have been asked to write a piece about what I think about the Melbournian property developer who paid millions of dollars for a hypercar and then have it hauled into his apartment by crane to the 50-somethingth floor. 

I suppose that given that I am a known car person, that I would be sad about something like this being hauled into the sky, only to be never used for the purpose for which it was intended. However, I am fine with it.

I suppose that given that I have written many pieces about things like economics and philosophy, that I should be outraged about someone spending this amount of money. However, I am fine with it.

The truth is that this particular hypercar with however many turbos it has and however many buff horses and torques that it might have been able to produce, has been resigned to a life of being nothing more than an expensive art piece. Given that I can't even be bothered to find out what kind of car it is, much less anything about what specifications it might have had, and that I think that in the sky it is as useful/useless as any other art piece, then up to this point I think I've successfully demonstrated as much applied apathy towards it as I would any other private art piece. If the guy likes to look at it, if the guy gets some kind of satisfaction that he could spend so many dollars, then it has fulfilled its new function. However, I am fine with it.

Would I have spent many millions of dollars on a car that I can not drive? No. To that end, someone like Betty Klimenko of Westfield fame and who owns Erebus Motorsport, has in my mind derived far more enjoyment and given far more enjoyment to the world than this chap has. Her team has claimed arguably the greatest prize in Australian motorsport; for far less money than this property developer spent. 

Would I have put the money to other use? Almost certainly. Personally I could do with not paying to live in someone else's house but beyond that I don't really know what I would definitively do. There are a multitude of charitable causes in the world, and business opportunities to be able to generate new funds for said charitable causes but in my current circumstances, I neither have the knowledge nor this amount of capital to be able to make them work. 

The question of what I think about this Melbourninan property developer who paid millions of dollars for a hypercar, sort of misses the deeper moral question. Namely why has the kosmos allowed him to exist in the first place? Not why has the kosmos allowed this chap to exist but why the kosmos has allowed any for profit property developer to exist in the first place? We have a homelessness problem where particularly older women are becoming the new unseen demographic in trouble. We have rents increasing at faster rates than people's wages are increasing and never once does anyone bother to ask about the moral fitness of that as a thing. Whatever moral objections that the kosmos should have had that allows someone to make insane profits from the tables of other people, is immediately nullified by the fact that someone has made insane profits. Money, markets, and the kosmos care not an iota about moral questions, nor the goodness and/or fitness and/or proprietary of why the reward system exists as it does.

Clearly this person was not all that charity minded but we could have already guessed that in the first place because that it how he made his money. On one hand people complain about the notion of having to pay any kind of taxation but seem to have no problem with the fact that if you do not have a house, then you are in effect paying a higher marginal taxation rate just for the privilege of living in one. We have taxation incentives for people who make money via charging someone else to live in a property, but no such equivalent for the people who actually get charged for that same process.

The fact that I am ambivalent about the fact that this Melbourninan property developer paid millions of dollars for a hypercar and then have it hauled into his apartment in the sky, is secondary to the problem that this Melbourninan property developer exists. I could care less about this car but I fail to see how. What is worrying, is why in the space of less than a kilometer, one person is rewarded merely for owning houses and gets to live in a mansion in the sky, while others get punished for not owning a house and get to live on the embankment by the Yarra.

Aside:

If I did happen to have many hundreds of millions of dollarpounds, I would consider starting my own car company. Not even for the reason that I want to make profits either, though it would need to in order to be an enduring enterprise. No, the reason why I want my own car company is because I happen to like the idea that we should be able to make stuff here. Making stuff employs people. Making stuff means that we don't have to import said stuff from that mythical place called "overseas". Making stuff means that we'd not only need to employ people but we'd need to buy components from other companies to make stuff; which employs other people at those companies. 

And I'd get my own race car team to play with on the world stage too. That would have the knock-on effect of letting the rest of the world that we make stuff and hopefully they'd buy our stuff too.

In principle, merely dumping capital into property (which is what we've redesigned the economy to do over the past 20 years), is really really stupid. I already think that the entire financial system is a moral vacuum and borderline evil and property development for the express purpose of extracting profits from people is really not much different.