Category Archives: Ethics

Victims and Criminals

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A young man died at the electronic music festival recently. The cause of death? Illicit drugs, which are said to be commonly available at such festivals. What makes me stroppy? His family are describing him as a victim and blaming the festival organisers for his death.

Unless he was held down and forced to swallow pills, or an attacker forcibly injected him, he was not a victim. He was a criminal*. And if festival organisers were required to guarantee the safety of every patron who chooses to indulge in dangerous or illegal activities, I suspect the ticket prices would be much higher than they are.

What makes me even stroppier is that the courts seem to put drug dealing on a par with shoplifting. Three young women who were caught selling ecstasy tablets at a nightclub were given 14-month suspended sentences plus 200 hours of community service. One of them was let off the community service because she was pregnant! These people are beyond any reasonable doubt serious criminals and should be punished accordingly.

* Disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer and I don’t know if using the drug that this young man used is a criminal offence in Australia. I’m using the word ‘criminal’ in a non-legal way to mean ‘perpetrator of something that is so morally reprehensible, so socially damaging and so stupid that it ought to be a criminal offence’.

Islamic Reformation?

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I’ve read and heard several commentators lately, either advocating an islamic version of the Christian Reformation or arguing that such an event has already happened and the results are not pretty.

Former Australian PM Tony Abbott leads the advocacy pack, implying that a reformation would be a modernising influence, moving Islam away from the beliefs and practices that make it barbaric in many people’s eyes.  I don’t want to put words into Mr Abbott’s mouth, but I assume he would share my hope that modernisation would do away with animal sacrifice, pointless dietary rules, punitive mutilation, oppression of women, suppression of other beliefs, contempt for infidels, and capital punishment of individuals categorised as blasphemers, apostates and heretics.

Waleed Aly, a young Australian Muslim who has become my second favourite radio journalist, argues that “Islam’s own version of the Reformation already occurred in the 18th century” and led to Wahhabism, a form of Sunni Islam which is enforced in Saudi Arabia and is the philosophical platform for al-Qaeda, DAESH and other extremist organisations.

Paul Monk disagrees with Waleed Aly in many things but agrees with him in this.  I commend his article in the Sydney Morning Herald.

The UK’s Chief Rabbi, Lord Jonathan Sacks, also agrees. In a recent interview on Australian radio he pointed out that the Christian Reformation was a reaction against corruption in the Catholic Church.  The reformers wanted to return to true Christian values.  This is how Md ibn Abd al-Wahhab saw his 18th century reformation: a return to true Islamic values.

It is as erroneous as it is understandable that we tend to equate ‘reform’ with ‘improvement’, ‘progress’ and ‘becoming more like us’.

 

Unintended Consequences

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I have just read a depressing article by Chris McGreal in the Guardian Weekly.  It’s headed ‘Beattyville: abandoned by coal, swallowed by drugs’ and describes the state of impoverishment and demoralisation that followed the closure of coal mines and other industries in Kentucky.

My stroppiness index rose when I read about the ‘pop’ scam, which works as follows. Supermarkets sell discounted cola to poor people, often for food stamps. The poor people sell the cola to smaller shops, cheaply enough to allow for resale at normal prices, and use the money to buy drugs – in particular an addictive pain-reliever called OxyContin that is supposed to be available only on prescription.

Here is a classic case of unintended consequences, though I’m not sure how anyone administering the food stamps programme could have confused fizzy drinks with food.  I’m not sure what conclusion to draw.  Perhaps it’s that no matter how well-intentioned a policy may be, and no matter how carefully it is crafted, people will find a way to subvert it, turn good to bad, and make poor people poorer still.

As it happens much of my recently published opus, The Eeks Trilogy, is about unintended consequences in the realms of robotics, human relationships and space colonisation.

Bombing DAESH

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The news has just come through – the UK Parliament has voted in favour of bombing DAESH in Syria as well as Iraq.  This is a victory for common sense as well as a boost for British self-respect.  The civilised world is confronting the closest thing to pure evil that we are likely to see in my lifetime.  For a nation with such a proud military history – not always a glorious one in moral terms, I concede – to stand back while others are stepping forward would have been a disgrace.

By the way, for the sake of balance, here’s a link to an article asserting that using the term ‘DAESH’ or ‘Daesh’ is silly.

Hypocrisy and the Death Penalty

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I hate hypocrisy – my own as well as other people’s.  Today I choose to attack hypocrisy in progressive western democracies about the death penalty.

We are quite willing to bomb people whom we suspect of doing bad things, without any trial and in the knowledge that those bombs will kill, maim and dispossess people whom we suspect of nothing at all.  But we go bananas if some other country, after due judicial process in accordance with its own laws, dares to execute a convicted criminal.

I am thinking chiefly of the drug smugglers who were executed in Indonesia, over whom the Australian Government set fire to much of its political capital in that country.  That still makes me stroppy.

Fairness

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Australian politicians, commentators and interest groups have embarked on a public discussion about tax reform. The main focus is the GST (goods and services tax = value added tax).  Should the rate, which has remained at 10% since inception in 2000, be increased to 15%?  Should the base be broadened to include some or all of the 53% of goods and services that are GST-free?

There is one thing that everyone agrees on: whatever changes are made to the tax system, they must be fair. I haven’t heard anyone say, “What this country needs is unfair taxation!”  But I suspect that the concept of fairness is not universal.

The Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) describes itself as “the national voice for the needs of people affected by poverty and inequality.” In their eyes ‘fairness’ means not increasing the share of the tax burden born by the poor.  In a radio interview this morning an ACOSS representative expressed the view that no household with an annual income below $100,000* should have to pay more tax than they do now.

But some other people see fairness differently. They think that people who work hard, learn productive skills, practise thrift and invest prudently should, in fairness, be allowed to reap and keep the harvest that results from this pattern of behaviour.

What do I think?

  • We cannot continue running a fiscal deficit forever.
  • The cost of health care will continue rising faster than GDP as more ways are found to cure illnesses and keep people alive.
  • The cost of supporting and caring for old people and disabled people will also rise faster than GDP.
  • Richer people are better able than poor people to minimise the amount of tax they pay – ultimately by emigrating.
  • Multinational corporations will always find ways to avoid paying normal rates of tax in the countries where they make their money.

Putting all these thoughts together, I don’t see how anyone but the very poorest can avoid paying more, either through taxes or by paying the full price for things that they have been accustomed to getting free or at subsidised prices.

Footnote

* From official statistics for 2013-14 I infer that about two-thirds of Australian households fall below this threshold.

Gold Star for Dilbert

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I have two favourite comic strips which I look at every day, either in a newspaper or online. They are Calvin and Hobbes (by Bill Watterson and Jenny Robb) and Dilbert (by Scott Adams).

Yesterday’s Dilbert strip (double-size because it was Sunday) was about doctors being replaced by computers. In the last frame a nurse appears, armed with a syringe with which to stab the doctor if he tries to do more than read the diagnosis on the computer screen.

“Hello,” I thought, “that’s suspiciously like a joke I heard and re-told a few years ago about Airbus pilots, with a dog instead of a nurse.”

Then I noticed a little note underneath the final frame: ‘Adapted from an old pilot joke.’  It’s not plagiarism if you acknowledge your source.  So Dilbert and his creator, Scott Adams, get a gold star from me for reinvigorating a good joke by recycling it in a fresh context, with an honest citation.

Cayman Islands

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There are plenty of tax havens in the world, but one stands head-and-shoulders above the rest when it comes to notoriety: the Cayman Islands. One never hears or reads of the Cayman islands in any other context.  President Obama singled it out when he spoke about the need to close tax loopholes that are abused by US corporations.  Indeed, he singled out one building in the Cayman Islands – Ugland House – saying that it houses over 12,000 businesses.  He characterised it as “either the biggest building or the biggest tax scam on record.”

So when Malcolm Turnbull, Australia’s new Prime Minister, was looking around for a home for much of his very considerable wealth, why did he choose two investment funds headquartered in the Cayman Islands?

It is normal and proper for senior politicians to place their private wealth in a blind trust, insulating it from their decision-making while in office. Malcolm Turnbull has done this.  But why, when the very fact of his great wealth makes many Australians distrust him, would he choose investment funds domiciled in the Cayman Islands, a territory whose very name has become a synonym for ‘shonky’?

It should be no surprise that the Labour Party has picked this up as a stick to beat him with. He maintains that the tax efficiency of the fund will produce larger profits on which he will in due course pay Australian income tax.  I have no reason to doubt this.  But in heaven’s name why the Cayman Islands?!