This is the submission I made to the NZ parliament on the 3rd August 2011. If I am assassinated or ignored, in lieu of any hope of influence, then it will be a belated funeral. Of course, I have little hope for their intellectual honesty, but I won't totally discount yours.
1. Arbitrary. The problem with regulation in all democracies is that it is arbitrary. There are basically two legal traditions - oh sorry, you are lawyers, you know this already. Oh, but you have no inkling for the fact that there are philosophical premises underpinning our laws, and that humanity has a nature (aka 'science'). That's right, you are lawyers, not scientists. That's ok, scientists don't have must respect for objectivity either. Just look at the scientific method with its reliance on empiricism. Surprisingly really, when you consider that induction entails deductive analytical investigation as to what constitutes a sample. But we have this silly dichotomy in science which is destined to leave you 'lawyers' confused. This is where the 2nd problem comes in.
2. Reconciliation. Your tradition of 'representative democracy' is not a basis for freedom, it is a basis for extortion. Might makes right. Scarcely does a majority get it right. I dare say there are probably only a few individuals who know as much (pertinent detail) as me, and yet you want to listen to the majority.
3. Nominal rights. Your nominal protection of rights is a pretense only. Notice how you only protect political rights. Why would you need to persecute people when you can enlist some 'rogue cop' to assassinate any threat. Or must I trust my govt on faith? You don't need political persecution so long as NZ is a relatively wealthy state, with a high degree of labour specialisation. Who could possible live without economic rights? You think there is a dichotomy between the material and the mind. You can have no intellectual or political rights without protection of property.
By sanctioning democracy, you are all criminals. Of course you can fool the majority, and if you are wondering why people are getting more stupid, its because they can't grasp what is wrong with your system, because your education system has screwed them up, not to mention yourself. Of course, you can argue you are just ignorant or insecure, but why then do you seek moral agency. I had to learn outside your system in order to understand the nature of it.
I suggest that now that I have drawn your attention to this point, you really have a fiduciary duty to rectify the problem, otherwise you will be guilty of extortion. That is a criminal offence.
4. Your statutory laws are actually destroying what is actually the relatively healthy aspects of the law - that is the common law tradition. Not perfect, but at least it implicitly has some cognitive validity. Healthy, because its actually contextual and logical. You think your laws are logical because you are engaged in debate. The majority has the day. That is force, coercion, that is arbitrary. If it reconciles with your more fundamental arbitrary laws, like your Bill of Rights, that is still arbitrary. Which is why judges struggle to interpret it.
5. Your impact on society. You are causing the decay of people's minds. You are enslaving people, and you do not even realise it. Death by a 1000 statutes. People have no need to think because you effectively exclude them from the political process. You think this is 'participation'. It depends on your honesty, respect for facts and intellectual health. I don't believe it, and your sanctioning of a system which repudiates reason as the standard of value affirms your moral ambivalence. You are not accountable for anything I ask, or anything you say 'effectively', thus your 'representative' democracy is a sham that fools uneducated, apathetic minds (i.e. the majority), who have shown their disdain for your system. This system has caused a great deal of mental illness, apart from being a huge opportunity cost. It starts with psychological repression, manifests in apathy, anger, anxiety, depression.
6. Philosophy. As long as you repudiate the role of 'good philosophy' along with the crap produced by academia, who are paid whether they produce or not, you will have no insights, and you will take us into an intellectual mini-Dark Ages. Fortunately, the internet will achieve the political revolution I want.
You might want to rethink military action abroad - the democratic franchise is dying! It ought not be encouraged.
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Author
Andrew Sheldon
