No good can come from extortion. i.e. The use of force to attain some value or concession. In society today, people are able to extort people illegally because of arbitrary laws which make excepts, which depart from principles which fail to treat people equally. This is the basis of natural law...the idea that as human beings we are equal in capacity (i.e. thinking in particular), thus equal moral agents before the law. The extent to which we are not equal, i.e. Mentally retarded, temporary insanity or mentally ill, is the extent to which we make concessions or withhold moral judgement. This is also why we don't condemn animals for moral breaches by human standards. They have no conceptual faculty to display moral agenda. That is not to say they are not moral. They just don't have a choice about being moral. By moral I mean - act in accordance with their nature, as opposed to some arbitrary or subjective standard some humans would decide to live by.
In this article we can see how a powerful union in Australia has resorted to extortion in order to extract funds from Australian business. This is not the first time that I have heard news of this. A story years ago described how a local union boss was paid kickbacks to keep miners working at Rio Tinto mines. His workers knew about this.
About 20 years ago I knew a demolition contractor John Compagion who was blacklisted by a construction union for failure to comply with their demands. He received death threats. He had 50 plus staff, and lost his business overnight because of a construction union. He ended up committing suicide by shooting himself in the head. Not before trying to develop some intellectual argument. The problem is business thinks it can simply to continue to pay out these people. They are just rewarding a bad system. Unfortunately, whilst he had the charisma of a leader, he did not have the intellectual arguments. He tried....but it was too late.
This union is an extortion ring, let it persists with its existence because people fear it. It is powerful because its member base is an important support for the Labor government of Australia. Martin Ferguson in this story is directly implicated.
Years ago there was the Labor Senator Richardson who was discovered to have a Swiss bank account. You might wonder for what purpose. We have long been accustomed to Labor's pork barrelling and vote stacking. This party is corrupt... and whilst the Liberals are better; by no means are they stewards of moral standing...which is what you would expect from political leaders. The role of politicians is to enact 'moral law'. The fact that people elect extortionists into parliament ought to be a source of concern. They then have to question the system. Does not democracy legalise and legitimatise extortion? 'Might makes right'. This sounds like extortion to me. Heard about the 'tyranny of the minority'? Well the Senate was supposed to protect us from that...but society has moved on...parliament has consolidated, interests have alligned, and now the major parties have shared interests...to preserve their duopoly of power. The media helps them do it, so they can retain their power as well.
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Author
Andrew Sheldon
