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Day 9: The Centre of Part II: "Who owns the land?" in one debate



Who owns the land?

Private Sector: This is a veto.

First Nations: This is definitely not a veto and it is deleterious to say so.

Public Sector: This is the best we can do to balance the rights of the indigenous with the needs of capitalism and the importance of public acceptance.

I think an understanding of this is probably necessary for understanding how to think about intended outcomes of the duty to consult pertaining to land as framed by the administrative authority.


Lockean liberalism from an exact angle. Perfect!


Who deserves the land?

Malagasy slaves abandoned for 15 years on a small 1 km2 island of essentially just sand. And yet they survived. Think of the hope, despair, creativity, and resilience required. Incredible. // Archaeologists that went back later were astounded at the level of development of this micro-society with so little materials: sand, mud, grasses, turtles, seabirds, fish, and everything they could salvage from the ship. They found copper utensils made from melting parts of the ship down. // The incredible ingenuity and resilience of slaves. Something great for Black History Month. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRFyVqpNlgw

(Ada Blackjack?)

VERSUS

Bill Gates owning a majority of farmland

And no taxes for the wealthy:

And general capitalist international land policy / strategy: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01436597.2012.679027


How should what is to be done with the land be prioritized?

Creating housing is a problem because of legislation:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/prince-george-tiny-home-stop-work-1.7030911 Who Decides and Why (Selection of Arbiter, Motive for Strategy / Justification for Result)? Minimum of 4: Declarant, Interlocutor, Arbiter, Referee. Rousseauan legislator: One who performs the functions of all four according to the greatest happiness principle.

FB User: I think history has proven that when government takes over a program it becomes rationed with less coverage, exorbitant wait times, and waste. Everything to government touches turns to crap.

Me: Yes because the government has a legal and constitutional commitment to treat all of their citizens equally. Privatized healthcare only "works better" because they only have to see the patients that they want to, i.e. those with money. So privatized for-profit healthcare, for example, only leads to a might makes right system like in the US. If you want a system that works better and more efficiently, you have to find better ways to cater to everyone equally, and that is extremely difficult in such an unequal society and an unequal world. Or did you not think this part through?

FB User: Oh I've thought it through, and that's why, to cater to everyone because of our diversity, we need a mix of private and public and choice in how we receive healthcare. Our body, our choice. If there aren't enough doctors and nurses around then we need more private universities because it seems our current ones can't keep up. Public rationed healthcare like Canada's system, which is very very rare in this world, is a failure.

Me: Exactly. So you believe that maintaining the status quo to inherited inequality is the way to go. Like, you would have also been okay with slavery because it's their fault that they were deprived of opportunity due to historically indentured inequality. Or have I got that wrong?

FB User: I love how lefties always have to insert race or some false equivalency when they have nothing to say on the topic at hand. Around the world it has been proven that a mixed system for healthcare works the best. Which government social program works efficiently without wait times and poor outcomes? A government program that people are happy with?

Me: I said nothing about race and the equivalency isn't false. We are born into historically unequal conditions that we do not choose. This is an undeniable fact. The didn't choose to be born in your country just like a Somali did not choose to be born in Somalia and a Norwegian didn't choose to be born in Norway. Should homeless people remain homeless while a wealthy person maintains seventeen empty properties as a capital investment? Equivalently, should a poor person have to wait in long lineups for healthcare while the wealthy jump to the front? In other words, should social policy perpetuate or improve current historically distributed and validated conditions? Should the poor have less opportunities than the wealthy even though those born poor tend to stay poor and those that are born into wealth tend to stay wealthy? I don't see this as a false equivalency. It is a fundamental consideration. Since wealth tends to be inherited, privilege also tends to be inherited. And your system would perpetuate this. Is this a correct way to proceed?


“The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.“

— Bertrand Russell, Marriage and Morals (1929), Ch. V: Christian Ethics, p. 58

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