how to solve the inequality problem

Political scientist Bryce Edwards provides this recent comprehensive review of media coverage of income & wealth inequality 

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=11556008

including a link to this interesting psychological perspective

http://briefingpapers.co.nz/2015/10/perceptions-of-inequality/

It helps to clarify the psychological motivations that drive political alignments.  Inequality only shifts someone's political alignment when they suffer from it sufficiently, right?  Thus the right supports business as usual and forms governments on that basis so long as most voters don't feel that they are victims of inequality.  The left does the same so long as most voters feel they'll manage better than the right.  Neither left nor right makes any serious attempt to do anything other than make token moves to reduce inequality.

System justification theory helps us understand collective motivations much as paradigm theory does, yet is unhelpful from a common good perspective.  It is in our common interest to shift to a sustainable society in which everyone gets provision for a healthy life.  Our traditional economy evolved naturally so as to minimise the number of winners and maximise the number of losers, making inequality not only inevitable but exponential.  One need only observe the population versus wealth curve for any country to see that. 

Therefore inequality is a design problem, and progress will only come from crowd-sourcing the optimal solution.  The traditional collusion between the political left and right commits both to the status quo, so the only way to make progress is for those in the political centre to advocate a suitably-designed solution.  Academics could facilitate this progress if they shift from analysis to collaboration:  selection of the optimal design is the task.  Here's an exciting intellectual challenge - form a team to engage the task.  Form many such teams!  Then hold an international tournament in which all compete.  Provoke media coverage to escalate public interest.  That will shift everyone out of complacency and defeatism.

Revisioning John Key

Not all that hard to discredit John Key in the eyes of voters. Ask them do they really want to be ruled by a jew derivatives-trader, who played a key role in bringing about the global financial crash. Can he really be trusted with other peoples' money? This tactic could fly with tax-payers, huh?

Could be kiwis are so dumb they don't care if he's a jew financier or arab sheik, so long as he talks like one of us. I personally have no problem with the guy – he's the first leader of the Nats that isn't clearly a total fucking moron (tfm) since I started watching them in the mid-'60s. One ought to give credit where it's due, eh?

My father was a hard-line National party supporter. So was his father. As the eldest of 4 sons, I was probably expected to toe the party line, but unfortunately I wasn't born a tfm. By 1970, at age 21, I finally got over thinking politics was too boring and had sussed out that both patriarchs were closet fascists. JK deserves credit for ditching the closet-fascist stance that Bolger & Shipley had endeavoured to recycle.

I'd never seen any point in reading a book by that young feller, Nicky Hager, till a friend told me I had to read The Hollow Men a few years back, so I did. Yeah, 'twas ok. I was amused at the account of how JK & Murray McCully defeated the rightists in the Nat camp. In politics pragmatism will beat principle any day of the week & boy, do the principled folk hate that! Encountering the email in which one of the ideological purists referred to MM as “the dark side”, I thought how wonderful to be thus provided with a classic example of jungian projection in a political context. I had to concede Hager had got it right: the enemy within is a traditional political archetype and the email trail validated the high drama of the guerilla warfare in which good vs evil played out and the reader as audience was presented with an impartial account. How to tell which was which??

Most entertaining. You couldn't! Well, my sympathies lay with the pragmatic minority, JK et al. Two decades of new-right hegemony was quite enough, thank you very much! So I must credit McCully for being more than the clueless wimp that he had presented as his public image since entering parliament with long hair back in '72. The embittered right wing of the National Party refer to MM & JK as socialists. Hmmm. Can't buy it. They ain't really that stupid!

However it does rather open up a propaganda opportunity for the left. Nationalist socialists haven't been in vogue for ages. Some would even argue that national socialism is a discredited political practice. Nonetheless, JK has already done enough to be credited as a great national socialist leader. If the political left weren't entirely clueless they'd see it, right? They're even shaping up to hand JK a fourth term as prime minister. If he wins again, then he really will deserve to be called the greatest national-socialist political leader since Adolf Hitler.

On the road to hell

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, traditional folk wisdom tells us. In recent years it has become evident that many of those pavers are actually flawed or false assumptions.

Here's a few... The political left represent the people (the political right represents vested interests - the control system). If you side with the right, you're either a capitalist or an arse-licker. The Green Party represents the broader green movement (so how come it carefully avoids representing blue-greens?). The left needs its own think-tank.

Let's take a look at that last one. A leftist think-tank would only work if leftists could actually think! Nigh on half a century of observing them, and I've never seen any evidence they can. Okay, Brian Edwards, Tim Shadbolt, maybe one or two others – just exceptions that prove the rule!

The New Left were the happening thing when I arrived at university, early '68. Big on rhetoric, small on substance. I was intrigued, but disappointed whenever I checked them out. Since then, the left seems to have gone to hell. Their only governments since Big Norm have had a right-wing agenda – competing by pretending they can do neoliberalism better than the Nats. Presuming the people are so stupid they will re-elect the left on that basis seemed a flawed strategy – it worked, but induced fear & loathing in the people.

It was Shadbolt's two-page spread in Cracuum explaining why Labour was just as bad as National that came at me as stunning revelation (in 1971): the left are part of the problem along with the right! So I must reject both, to make myself part of the solution!! I've been neither left nor right, out in front, ever since.

Come the early '80s green politics adopted that slogan, & I thought “Far out, the slow-learners are getting the picture!” Immensely reassuring - during Thatcherism & Reaganomics.

Whereas socialism produced a comfortably equitable society here in the '50s & '60s, by the '80s it was producing hordes of public servants who acted like petty dictators and were too lazy to run government departments efficiently. Then we got robotic pc conformism that turned leftists into drones.

Q: Who's winning the human race? A: the capitalists. Why? They give us jobs. Doing so makes them rich. Class analysis doesn't take account of those who employ themselves, but for the majority of us, our tacit assumption that we were born to trade on our labour produces a dependency relation; we become dependent on employers for livelihood and sustenance. Poor wages creates mass grievance. Not hard to see why the right thinks the left are emotionally juvenile: if the left were mature adults, they'd take responsibility for themselves and become economically self-determinant. If they were educated with a choice of collaborating for mutual benefit, their tacit acceptance of a power imbalance would make less of them victims of life's circumstances. Given a better choice as youngsters, more will mature.

So the inadequacy of the left is deepest in the area of preparation for career: the teenage years. It is no accident that Labour governments are widely viewed as a bunch of teachers. More trad folk wisdom: those who can, do; those who can't, teach. Adequate people, according to convention, don't become teachers. So we get an education system in which a bunch of terminal losers are employed to stuff crap into the heads of the young, producing more terminal losers. Then everyone wonders why the outcome is a dysfunctional, polarised society. Doesn't matter how dire things get, the left demands more education.

Business as usual persists so long as no alternative becomes available. Models of successful collaborative enterprise have long been available! They share profits and risks. They incorporate participatory decision-making by all who work for each such business. The team ethic prevails because of this incentive structure. The left routinely whines and moans about being exploited, like children complaining about parents. Why do they never embrace - or even advocate - such positive alternatives? They consider themselves born losers? Few of them would agree - but what if parents, teachers & employers all treat them as such? Continual reinforcement will create that subconscious identity in many. So, when that is indeed their tacit assumption, they end up co-creating their road to hell.

You'd think Karl Marx was a Marxist, right? Ain't so. Seems logical, but another false assumption. Proof lies in the historical reality as testified by his co-author of The Communist Manifesto. Engels, in an 1882 letter cites this statement from Marx: “what is certain is that I myself am not a Marxist”. Google that to verify it!

A generation is maturing into political activism who cite `perception is reality' as a truism. Sometimes it does seem to be. Politicos who assume it as a general rule will however tend to suffer the consequences of their flawed assumption: the difference between the two is often apparent to a group of politically-significant others. Those grounded in reality will polarise against those asserting the perception. Folks will tend to realise the former group are right. The reputations of the latter will be diminished accordingly.

The 1999 movie The Matrix featured a sci-fi world (ours) in which humanity's belief systems and perception of their surrounding world are entirely generated and constructed by alien controllers via high technology – an ultra-sophisticated smoke & mirrors act. A powerful metaphor for our actual collective reality!! All of us emerge from childhood growing into a cultural matrix, brainwashed by parents, teachers, and media, all of whom were likewise brainwashed. The culture of a civilisation is collectively generated by participants: in any country the national culture is largely co-created by those in control.

Our controllers are mostly capitalist, but some are socialist and some are hybrids. To survive within, we must comply as our society requires; get real. When in Rome, do as the Romans do, as the ancient adage has it. Work for a living - if you can find a job. To prosper, play the game well. Pragmatism works better than idealism (idealists focus on a better world they imagine, rather than on this one). Be here now means accept the status quo. Yet we will only ever get a better world by co-creating it! If we transcend the status quo, we are free to do so. Few do. But when we do transform our perceptions, our new reality is catalysed.

Those of us who have spent our lives pursuing self-development ought to move on to community-building, in the context that most communities now are non-local. Those of us become expert in transcendence must accept that bettering our own lives is liable to produce narcissism unless we act on a common-interest basis. The skill humanity most needs now is collective transcendence. We must apply that skill to create a positive alternative to business as usual. We must mediate between the world as it is and the world we all need. To get us all from the former to the latter, we must perform a collective act of magic: manifest our destiny. If the better world we imagine seems to distant or abstract, too ideal, and our here and now too opressive, use the tree as our model! It is anchored in earth, yet it reaches for the sky. Keep your feet on the ground – use the current reality as basis and foundation. Build your processes and structures toward the future you aspire to. Together, doing so, we can co-evolve into the future we need. Realise, make real!

The best story I ever came across that is dramatic in the way it exposes the difference between perception and reality appeared in 1981 in a book by the philosopher Raymond Smullyan. He reported “an incident I read about in a book on abnormal psychology. The doctors in a mental institution were thinking of releasing a certain schizoprenic patient. They decided to give him a lie-detector test. One of the questions they asked him was “Are you Napoleon?” He replied “No.” The machine showed that he was lying!”

What's going on here?!? Well, our societal consensus is that science defines reality. That's been the case for several centuries. The lie-detector is a device used to prove whether someone is telling the truth or not. Therefore the general perception of most people is that the reality of a situation can be established by using the device to verify the testimony of those involved. In courts of law such usage is a convention. In the lunatic asylum case Smullyan reports, the schizo patient was proven to be lying when he asserted that he was not Napoleon. Therefore the truth is that he was Napoleon! If you believe in science, technology, societal norms and mass consensus, that is!

Having been around leftist political activists close to half a century, I'm aware that their primary pathology arises from naïve idealism (which I still share somewhat), which embeds in the psyche as delusion when folk are reluctant to ground their experiences in collective reality. Thus the left traditionally asserts that it represents the people. The reality is that the people often vote in contradiction. Democracy is illusory when politicos misinterpret results. When the people vote in a rightist government, their verdict that the left is an unrealistic option tends to be ignored by the left. You can't credibly represent the people if you persist in ignoring what they're trying to tell you! The people, rolling their eyes, invariably think that the left has gone to hell. This public perception trends toward reality the longer the left takes to transform public opinion to a positive alternative. Here's a basic principle of social psychology functioning as a driver of politics: a general perception will crystallise into a shared belief via inertia, unless or until collective reality proves it wrong! Political reality emerges from such shaping of perceptions...

The road to hell resembles a highway with multiple on-ramps. Mass perceptions lead folks down the garden path, through the gate at the bottom, out through the commons and onto one of these on-ramps. Someone, like the kid who pointed out that the Emperor was wearing no clothes, may tell others “Hey, this isn't real!” But the opinion of a nonconformist is unlikely to shatter the favoured delusion of the majority – particularly when that has substantiated into the shared belief system of a social group and thereby has become a social pathology. The indoctrinating effect is so powerful that reality-checks roll off adherents like water off a duck's back. The left will march on down the road to hell in proud solidarity, until disaster looms sufficiently as imminent reality that it transforms their perception of the social environment.

Then a collective shift of perception will cascade through the group: “Oops, wrong way!” Time for a u-turn, retreat towards a place of safety, to ascertain and explore a valid path to the future. For the Green Party, shackled to it's leftist alignment, the inexorable lesson of polling and election results is starting to shift the mass perception of members out of their traditional pathology and toward reality. So many years heading down the road to hell with the left, we need to get back so we can save the world! Watch this space..

Sue Bradford on leftist think-tanks 2012: http://www.converge.org.nz/watchdog/30/11.html

Sue Bradford on leftist think-tanks 2014: http://www.converge.org.nz/watchdog/37/06.html

Fabian Society comment on this: http://fabians.org.nz/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=224:towards-a-left-wing-think-tank-a-response-to-sue-bradford-by-geoff-fischer&catid=44:opinion&Itemid=79

Another blog comment: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1-wzXxBvZSLNk9wakVTYURZazg/view

green leadership

I was glad to see Vernon Tava's candidacy for the Green Party male co-leadership featuring on TV3's The Nation this morning.  I wish Vernon success, partly because he's an excellent candidate, and partly because of his desire to reposition the greens politically.  

In 2011 I established my website (alternative Aotearoa) and on the editorial page I wrote about my history as an office-holder in the Green Party in the early 1990s, and included my critique of the performance of the GP since I left in '95.  You can read that here:  http://www.alternativeaotearoa.org/editorial.html

Since rejoining on 1st November last year, I have been pleasantly surprised by the vibrancy of the culture within and the general quality of the activists.  I have been advocating that the priority of the GP must be establishing authenticity by abandoning the leftist parliamentary alignment, and returning to the original political position of the global green movement:  neither left nor right, but in front.  On my other blog I recently acknowledged that I persuaded the GP to adopt the leftist alignment back in '91 (see Green politics: an integral frame 9/2/15).  It was necessary at the time, so I don't regret that!  However the time to abandon it was about 12 years ago when Helen Clark made it clear that she was going to continue to freeze the greens out.  Anyone who thought the leftist alignment had merit since then is obviously an extremely slow learner - and thus politically inadequate.

Regardless who wins the upcoming leadership contest, I hope we can co-create the opportunity for all three contenders to establish themselves as alternative leaders.  This is best done on an issue-by-issue basis, I suspect. In permaculture (sustainability by design) the relevant concept is redundancy:  concurrent availability of more than one way to get a necessary result.  Power or water supply, for instance, when you have several different sources and are therefore able to switch from one to the other when necessary.  This design makes you more resilient. Similarly with leadership!

The Green Party would be in a stronger position with several alternate leaders - especially if integrated into a collaborative framework.  Seeing each other as colleagues rather than competitors, I mean.  When the male co-leader has prior commitments, or just prefers to give one of his colleagues a go at an issue, then he ought to consult with them to enable this.  Conventional politics requires him to engage without choice, and a below-par performance may result.

I'm confident this is workable on a mutual-benefit basis:  the other 2 guys will appreciate such opportunities to show their mettle.  Such teamwork will then become evident as genuine collaboration to the public.  Modelling a new style of politics will prove to them that we are indeed different to both the left and the right.  A paradigm shift in politics becomes likely as the result!

I always saw the old green slogan `neither left nor right, but in front' as the appropriate signal for such innovative style and practice.  Perhaps I was wrong to assume that other green activists also saw the creative potential therein - but better late than never, eh?  Media will require explanation of this:  just explain that we are the avante garde of politics.

If there's a momentary silence where you can see them wondering "Oh shit, does this mean I have to find a dictionary?" I suggest courteously adding that the avante garde were traditionally viewed as the leading edge of cultural development.

Being in front means showing the way.  You could cite the seminal text "The Way", by Edward Goldsmith (founder of The Ecologist).  Explain that the way is the path to future survival for humanity.  Explain that the greens have to provide it because the left & right remain addicted to economic growth so people need a positive alternative...

Reframing sovereignty

Having long been happy with the trend to recognise the Treaty of Waitangi as the foundation of our country, I've more recently become aware that it is inducing people to see sovereignty as an institution. I believe sovereignty ought to be vested in the people as a whole. Instead, the traditional practice of nations has been to vest it in the state - the historical rationale being that the state replaced the monarch, and the monarch was the origin of sovereign power.

What's wrong with this? The political left and right have an extensive track record of using state power to limit our attainment of human rights and freedom of expression. Not to mention mass exploitation via taxation without representation. We send them to parliament so they can get rich at taxpayers' expense and pretend to govern in our collective best interests. The collusion between left and right in the ancient control system works via the matrix, which provides a sufficient illusion of democracy to sustain public consent.

Exaltation of the Treaty in recent decades served to restore Maori tribal interests. However it seems to me that the Maori have a co-dependency relation with the British Crown which is not in the best interests of our people as a whole. Our multicultural future may be incompatible with our bicultural past if we adhere to the historic constitutional framework. Instead, we ought to consider the need to reframe sovereignty as a fundamental principle of democracy. We ought to reconstitute Aotearoa by vesting our sovereignty in all of our citizens as a collective whole.

I suggest therefore that we create a genuine progressive political movement in favour of constitutional reform as a national priority. This need not mean creating a republic; observation of the political evolution of the United States of America since the Eisenhower presidency informs us that it is such a flawed role model for republics as to make them seem little better than monarchies. Several years ago Prince Charles published his book “Harmony: a new way of looking at our world” and it reveals his extensive and authoritative track record as an avatar of the global green movement. Charles has therein proven himself both authentic and enterprising, the role model the world needs, and an entirely suitable exemplar and head of state for the British Commonwealth. I've had to rethink my long-standing dismissal of the royal family as irrelevant.

There's a middle way between republicanism and retention of the British Crown as our head of state. A prudent compromise would be to make the latter conditional upon general public satisfaction with the performance of any royal head of state. I suggest the constitutional clause to effect this should specify a plebiscite threshold of 2/3 of kiwi voters required to replace the hereditary royal system with a popular mandate for a kiwi head of state. The innovative change then results from a substantial majority deciding that the old system no longer serves the public.

Dennis Frank, 13/2/15

my advice on the TPPA (sent to the Prime Minister, Trade Minister, & Leader of the Opposition, as a contribution to the Avaaz petition)

Secret lawyer tribunals designed to subvert national sovereignty look like genuine evidence of corporate behaviour that is intended to defeat the public will.
Politicians who agree to legislate to create such tribunals thus self-identify as antidemocratic.  Someone who pretends to support democracy but acts to subvert it will be seen as more than a hypocrite:  those on the right will be seen by the public as fascist, and those on the left will be seen by the public as stalinist.  If the cap fits you, we the people will force it onto your head.

Corporations have replaced communists as the primary source of evil in the global arena.  Any multinational agreement that gives priority to private commercial interests over our common interests will serve as an effective source of evil.  Any politician who agrees to such legislation will inevitably be seen by the public as morally corrupt.  Your choice:  go down in history as a statesman - or just another scumbag.

Better to realise that corporations can be forced to stop being parasites on the body politic, and restructured to serve our common interests while continuing to make private profits.  Frame legislation that guides their evolution accordingly!  Create a win/win scenario that suits all stakeholders.  Not the usual sham - one that all can clearly see is suitable.  Please ensure that the TPPA is amended sufficiently to achieve this result!

transcending democracy: a guide for practising altpolitics (plus therapeutic advice for leftist politicos)

Democracy is a strait-jacket.  Long ago the powers that be learned to manage it to ensure retention of the status quo, so business as usual can destroy nature by creating more crap that we don't need.  Progress hasn't come from the left for as long as anyone can remember.  Doesn't matter how long the left pretends to be progressive, people know that whenever they get into government we only ever get more of the same.  The left is dead in the water.  Progress can only come from being neither left nor right, but out in front & advancing!

Labour is made impotent by slavish adherence to a fossil ideology:  socialism.  They could reinvent it.  The need was apparent to me in the early '70s; by the mid'80s the advent of Thatcher & Reagan plus the lack of any positive alternative in response from the left ought to have even made it clear to slow-learners. Instead, political leftists continue to spout banal clichés in media situations as though the public knows what they mean - whereas that implied tacit acceptance of validity is only ever actually shared by those who join a socialist party.

The discrediting of socialism in the public mind has primarily been achieved by the performance of socialists in government:  they kept proving that it doesn't work.  All we ever got was high taxes and a bloated inefficient bureaucracy.  Folks feel alienated from the left & some become victims of the left's use of state power to suppress or exploit people when in government.  Leftist governments penalise individual effort (either in business or as high-earning employees).  The example of governance they provide is gross irresponsibility and lack of accountability for poor performance.  Wrong-doers evade accountability by means of bureaucratic cover-up.  Unethical behaviour is institutionalised.

Could this dead political movement come alive again?  Only by re-invigorating its spirit.  So what is the spirit of socialism?  It is embodied in concepts such as equity and the commons.  Curiously, in 45 years of observing socialists, I've seen no evidence that any of them are aware of this.  If they are, how come they never say so?!  Socialism emerged in the early 19^th century as the antithesis of capitalism.  Since the ideology of capitalism is anchored on self-interest, one would therefore presume that of socialism is anchored on the common interest.  Has any theorist of socialism pointed this out to the public?  Not to my knowledge!  Hegel's perception of a dialectic that produces a social response in antithesis to any thesis, and his suggestion that consequent polarisation of two bodies of opinion can always be resolved by a synthesis of the two, was a profound insight.  In the psychodynamics of mass power - that pits an individualist tendency against a collectivist tendency - we can always transcend the dualist frame (state of mind) produced by the polarity if we create a synthesis instead.

Perhaps the socialists failed to do this because they were led astray by the red herring of communism – a sectarian ideology based on a conceptual division of western civilisation by means of a frame called `the class system'.  Communists pit the common interests of workers against the common interests of business owners.  I believe this to be a strategic error in socialist thought, that led the socialist movement into an historical cul de sac.  The success of any collective enterprise is maximised via a common interest design, structure and process that integrates stakeholders by motivating them to work together for the common good.  Such an incentive structure is essential for optimal outcomes.

Polarising employees against owners was an idiocy deemed expedient when accepting the private property right of owners to operate business in such a way as to minimise the share of non-owners.  Greed thus dictated outcomes.  A win/lose zero-sum society became inevitable when everyone shirked the responsibility of designing a win/win scenario that would produce mutual-benefit outcomes.  When the positive alternative has been implemented, reality shows that employees work better in situations where the business gives them more of a share, and those businesses become more competitive than those still using the traditional model.  The sensible course, therefore, is to charter businesses on the basis of a collective agreement, where the relative shares of investors, management and staff are mutually agreed. For a fairer basis of equity, such charter agreements should include the sharing of risk as well as profit.

The historical failure of the left lies in its failure to even conceive a credible design for collective enterprise, let alone implement it.  They have instead tacitly exposed their intellectual inadequacy by adopting the practice of conceding to capitalists the operation of the economy.  In compensation for this weakness, they have sought political power by promising to use state power to extract and redistribute the wealth produced by business to those who vote for them.  They have learned that this strategy is only successful when they redistribute the tax money on a sufficiently credible equity basis that their antique class agenda is masked.  This is done via public services and targeted state support for various groups unable to earn a sufficient wage via employment.

Thus both Labour and National governments adhere to the capitalist system.  This traditional collusion of the left and right defines people as consumers of capitalist product and binds them into debt slavery. Folks continue to yearn for freedom from this antiquated bullshit system, yet the left continue to fail to provide a positive alternative!  No wonder voters have been deserting them.  Pretending to represent the people no longer works:  too many can now see through that pretence.  The persistent refusal of the left to provide real progress threatens to marginalise them to the point where the effect becomes terminal. Time to get real!

People think they are born free, yet the system prevents them owning anything unless they earn capital, and it is designed to minimise the amount that people can earn.  Life becomes a grim struggle for most, made worse by the excessive wealth of those who have more than they need, and the collusion of those who pretend to be helping the struggling majority.  A social system based on deceit and exploitation breeds moral corruption and ill health, and the consequences cost everyone.  People must be free to choose a positive alternative to the status quo, yet the left still colludes with the right in maintaining the status quo.  Wage slaves forever?  Not when capitalism is failing to provide the jobs.  Home ownership a distant dream?  Nobody left from the 1980s still believes in the mythical trickle-down theory of wealth (unless it is the top 1% of owners pissing on everyone else).  Yet that scenario is misleading:  despite shrinkage of the middle-class, around 20-30% of the populace remains comfortably well-off, while according to recent news reports half the families in our country now receive some form of state support.

David Parker seems that rarest of kiwis, a leftist with genuine intellect - but he will need to prove that he can go where no other leftist with intellectual pretensions has ever gone; to the avante garde.  We need to reformulate socialism via a return to basic principles such as equity and the commons.  A rationale that derives social theory from metaphysics is still missing on the left.  What do Maoris, Greens, and the English peasants of the 17^th century share?  The tragedy of the commons, of course, and it's just as obvious now as it was 30 years ago.  Enough already of fatalistic contemplation or evasion of the problem, which is seemingly the eternal predisposition of leftists.  Move on to the solution please!  Why be an intellectual wimp forever?  Let's make progress instead.  Even leftists are potentially capable of being real men and making a positive contribution to society.  Actualise that potential!

Protection of the commons must be constitutionally enshrined by all peoples everywhere to enable the human race to survive and prosper.  Make this a priority now!  If the right stands for individual rights, the left must stand for collective rights to perform a complementary function.  Regenerating the commons must be the imperative of all leftist political movements if they want to serve the public by fulfilling their natural function.  Future generations have a right of equity in the environmental commons that must be secured by international law.  We all have a right of equity in social wealth produced by collective endeavour provided we contribute equitably to that endeavour.  The traditional right to private profit cannot continue to be protected on a morally corrupt basis.  The private exploitation of the commons contravenes our right of equity – yet social convention and the law continues to protect such corruption. Businesses ought not to be parasites on the body politic!  We need a new state that subordinates the right of private profit to the preservation of the commons and our collective right of equity.  This means formulating a public consensus that approves mutual-benefit economic practices.  Teamwork, as exemplified by the All Blacks, serves as suitable method and role model for collective enterprise.

Parliament's upper chamber remains empty, unused, dormant:  testimony to the lack of political imagination of democrats and other politicos.  Why not use it to create a forum for political debate unconstrained by the formal rules of our antique democracy?  Why not allow consensus decision-making to replace adversarial grid-lock?  Let's empower collective brainstorming in the ambience of the old colonial aristocracy.

We ought to resume operation of an upper house of parliament in an advisory and advocacy role.  The social charter of its operation should define the purpose as social improvement via the solution of the most urgent social problems.  Membership driven by the ethic of voluntarism, the culture to be meritocracy, providing an alternative forum for the public service ethic.  The agenda to be nominated by consensus of concern, with volunteers offering their skills and expertise to teams taking on collective priority tasks. When the chamber is overloaded with process or commitments, these tasks and teams to function autonomously outside parliament until their job is done - whereupon the upper house would be required to address their report and decide subsequent implementation options.

Such a forum would allow folks frustrated by the strait-jacket of democracy to work together for the common good.  People keep appealing for a new style of politics as if it hasn't occurred to them that the structure of democracy is designed to prevent any such thing.  Use of a rule of consensus decision-making in a non-adversarial context ought to foster an innovative political culture. Expedite the brainstorming of difficult issues via use of `the fishbowl' – a dual holistic structure of audience and activists that the Greens used in the early years to move everyone toward resolution.  As Convenor of the Standing Orders Committee of the Green Party I was confronted by a catch-22:  early in '91 an activist at a Party meeting explained to me that formal decision-making wasn't happening because the leading activists couldn't agree on the requisite rules for how to make Party decisions.  He said getting them to consensus was “like herding cats” - first time I'd heard this expression, which has since become popular!  All it took to break the impasse - as it transpired - was use of the fishbowl strategy as catalyst plus the usual judicious redrafting to clarify ambiguities and intent.

Democracy creates conformist pressures within a political party that are inexorable in marginalising and eliminating lateral-thinkers, the very type of human being who normally excels in problem-solving. That's why democrats continually wallow in historical social problems. The lowest-common-denominator design of democracy eliminates the very folk most likely to produce the results that democrats aspire to.  Use of an upper house allows us capacity to collectively transcend this flaw in democracy, this paradox, by means of a more intuitive informal decision-making process fostering a culture of meritocracy.  If we telecast the forum it will provide the opportunity to role-model the process to non-participants.  Younger folk would have their survival prospects enhanced by doing so.

A right of self-determination exists on both the individual and collective levels, thus sovereignty cannot be restricted to the nation state.  The right of indigenous peoples and other minority groups to determine their destiny must be recognised and accepted – provided that exercise of that right does not produce harmful effects on others.  Where such become evident, minority group rights must be suspended or restricted till the harm is eliminated.

The role of the head of state ought to be constructive and exemplary, and constituted accordingly. Suitable contract clauses that compel performance must be incorporated to secure this result.  Currently, MPs must swear allegiance to the Crown, which is an archaic irrelevance.  In order to create a true democracy, elected representatives must be made to swear their allegiance to all citizens.  The oath of office would then alert them to their responsibility to serve the common interests of the people in accord with their collective aspirations.  The people have the right to remove any office-holder that they agree is acting contrary to that oath, so the constitution requires a recall mechanism to replace them.

If the upper house is chartered to make advisory decisions on constitutional changes, then lobbying by experts can allow improvement suggestions to be tested for the general perception of suitability in that forum, amendments to be made, and a prototype bill to be proposed to parliament.  In the event of parliament refusing to make the legislative change on any issue, we ought to empower the upper house to launch public referenda, the results of which would be binding on parliament.  This mechanism allows voters to progress issues that party politics avoids or fails to achieve consensus on.

I'd also charter the upper house to integrate traditional values & priorities of the left and right, discarding elements of capitalism and socialism that have proven to be contrary to the public interest.  Those emotionally attached to the traditional political and philosophical framework of dualism would remain free to use democracy.  The psychodynamics of polarity and their adversarial relations they induce in people are addictive.  The upper house would be dedicated for the use of those who prove capable of transcending this addiction, so they can provide a positive alternative to those wallowing in the negativity of democracy.  Specifically, this would mean a constitutional framework in which individual rights and collective rights are defined separately so their natural complementary relation is apparent to all.  The traditional political dialectic of thesis and antithesis would thereby achieve synthesis.