Headline:
2012.
As
reported by Stuff:
Gang members, a grandmother and beneficiaries were all arrested in the country's largest cannabis bust which resulted in the seizure of drugs with a potential worth of $130 million.
More than 2500 people were arrested in the six-month crackdown, which has made a massive dent in New Zealand's cannabis supply, police said.
As well as arresting 2573 people, police also confiscated 280 kilograms of plant material, estimated at $5.6m, and destroyed more than 130,385 plants and seedlings with a potential street value (at maturity) of up to $130m.
Following 2009's Operation Lime, which targeted businesses and individuals selling cannabis-growing equipment, the latest raids were dubbed Operation National, which was the largest operation of its kind, Detective Inspector Paul Berry said.
Police targeted drug dealers working out of houses. The crackdown was complemented by Operation Kelly, which used aircraft to spot cannabis crops during the growing season.
When they raided homes police found multi-million dollar operations, including one which was allegedly run by a Wellington grandmother …
Every gang in the country was involved, including the Mongrel Mob, Head Hunters and Rebels, Berry said.
"This is bread and butter for the gangs. This is how they make their money."
Police also found 248 children, who would have watched their parents grow drugs and sell them at the door, Berry said.
Many of those children had been referred to CYFs.
They seized 14 properties, worth a total of $4.6m, eight cars, a boat, and cash and bonds worth more than $1m, some of which was seized under the Criminal Proceeds Recovery Act.
Headline:
2022.
Supermarket owners, a grandmother and dairy owners were all arrested in the country's largest soft drink bust which resulted in the seizure of soft drinks with a black market potential worth $130 million.
More than 2500 people were arrested in the six-month crackdown, which has made a massive dent in New Zealand's soft drink supply, police said.
As well as arresting 2573 people, police also confiscated 280 kilograms of fat laden hamburger meat, estimated at $5.6m, and destroyed more than 130,385 packs of cigarettes with a potential street value (in the schools) of up to $130m.
Following 2009's Operation Squash-Choice, which targeted businesses and individuals selling soft drink selling equipment, such as shelves and refrigerators, the latest raids were dubbed Operation No-Choice, which was the largest operation of its kind, Detective Inspector Paul Berry said.
Police targeted soft drink dealers working out of houses. The crackdown was complemented by Operation Orwell, which used children to spot soft drink in their homes and dob in their parents.
When they raided homes police found multi-million dollar operations, including one which was allegedly run by a Wellington grandmother …
Every corner dairy in the country was involved, including On The Spot Dairies, and 4-Square supperettes, Berry said.
"This is bread and butter for the capitalists. This is how they make their money."
Police also found 248 children, who would have watched their parents selling soft-drink, and drunk it themselves, Berry said.
Many of those children had been referred to CYFs.
They seized 14 properties, worth a total of $4.6m, eight cars, a boat, and cash and bonds worth more than $1m, some of which was seized under the Criminal Proceeds Recovery Act.
I’ve
written on this before. I don’t smoke or ingest cannabis, but like
alcohol and soft drink, both of which, in excess, are harmful to you, also, it’s a choice, and a tax or ban on choice, is a tax or
ban on freedom, which is a fundamental attaxk on freedom. We only need to police for the initiation of force or fraud. It is as simple as that. Look at what Bloomberg is doing in New York, don’t think that
second headline won’t happen.
I’ve
also written on how we’ve had our privacy voted away in our semi-police states, and see yet another government department is abusing it: WINZ. Those who
understand how important it is to own our lives, to control our privacy,
to have choices, have had that privacy, that right to be left alone, to have choice, voted away from us at the
polling booth. Of course we have abuses
like this from within the fortresses of bureaucracy: we are owned by the most brutal tyrant of all: each other.
"Those who understand how important it is to own our lives, to control our privacy, to have choices, have had that privacy, that right to be left alone, to have choice, voted away from us at the polling booth. Of course we have abuses like this from within the fortresses of bureaucracy: we are owned by the most brutal tyrant of all: each other."
ReplyDeleteThe very last portion is true for as long as individuals tolerate the unacceptable behavior of others, the worst being the enforcers that make all of government possible. Voting is but sending a signal even if it is to say "take away their money/property/business/choices/etc.; government enforcement is actually doing the physical harm.
My comment made today at an earlier entry at this blog is directly applicable here.
Doing away with the societal messes that exist will be a long slow process since it requires a paradigm shift in thinking by at least a large minority of those who live in the self-decreed government jurisdictions worldwide. Anything other than this means violence, a method in which governments are always at the advantage because such violence by the frustrated provides justification to the enforcers - those willing to threaten and actually initiate physical force. In fact the enforcers are the key to all of government; without them all the politicians/legislators/executives (Presidents/PMs included)/judges/etc. are simply wordmongers.
With many fewer willing to be enforcers (domestic policing agents and military), governments could do much less harm. And when more people learn that governments are not even necessary since their "services" can be obtained via mutually beneficial voluntary interactions, governments can actually whither away from disuse. But first it is necessary that enforcer-jobs become very undesirable by the majority of those living in any particular government jurisdiction. Do NOT voluntarily associate - no sales, no service, no camaraderie, no anything - with those who continue to be enforcers despite attempts with reasoned logic to get truly value-producing jobs. And make it clear publicly that and why you are doing so. in order that others who agree are encouraged to do the same. Some will not agree even when the logic is presented, but then you (and fellow-thinkers) will know who is supportive and who is not, with whom to voluntarily associate less and with whom more.
When most people in-person and online shun enforcers and continue to do so over many months, large numbers of enforcers will be persuaded to cease those roles. One cannot exist if no one will associate with them in any way. Shunning has a long history of being highly persuasive when reasoned logic is insufficient and does not employ violence.
There is no "quick fix" and the roots of the problem must also be understood in order that it truly be solved. More on the starting process above and getting to the roots of solution: "Tax/Regulation Protests are Not Enough: Relationship of Self-Responsibility and Social Order" http://selfsip.org/focus/protestsnotenough.html
Hi Kitty
ReplyDeleteApologies for the coming typos, but I only have time to scratch this down quickly, then have got to go out.
Firstly, thanks for taking the time to make such a detailed, thoughtful comment. That's always appreciated. Also, while writing this reply I'm (stupidly) flicking back and forth between here and your self-sovereign individual project page. I'll bookmark that page and get back to it with some time - iPad's and bed work best for that - and in the meantime I can't chase through all the links to figure out the nuances of your philosophy, though in individualism, thus individual freedom from state coercion, no doubt, humanism, we two would be closer, by quite a distance, than either of use to a statist :) Although, be wary of me: I realise I seem to have tapped into an anarchist element through Twitter, but I am no anarchist. I'm a classical liberal, and still believe in the rule of law through a minarchy, which is nothing like the semi-police state social democracies we have now. I believe our tyranny of the majority democracies are taking us down the road to serfdom in what are effectively Gulags of Forced Altruism, and I also believe, sadly, I will never see the classical liberal society in my lifetime (have a look at my post on the right menu under 'Posts to Make You Think', called 'Death of Classical Liberalism').
So we're probably working toward broadly the same goal, albeit, our bottom line may be different as to the structuring of the free society.
Your ideas on 'shunning' are worthy: you may well be right. However, I will give an opposing view. I have family who work in IRD (New Zealand's Inland Revenue Department - your IRS - which is where the IRon Drape of my blog comes from, aping, obviously, the Iron Curtain of collectivism), I also have, well, particularly through my wife, friends who are IRD auditors, and alongside that I also have a loyalty gene that won't allow me to shun family and friends. Moreover, I could, indeed, would, argue that would be counter-productive.
What has chiefly gone wrong, and allowed your societies to lurch at an ever increasing speed toward the prison of collectivism, is immensely complicated: from unsound money policy and the evil of Keynesian economics, to a misplaced altruism that has allowed statists of the left and right to feel they have a moral hand of cards to play, which we both know is the opposite, for the society that doesn't protect it's smallest minority, the individual, will always be capable of atrocity, including the current coercive states we live in. But for me the overriding factor knitting together a 'freedom' politics (Libertarian) and economics (laissez faire) is philosophy. And philosophy has not only broken down under the welfare state, but been turned against free men by the Gramscification of children's minds in the state school system (Gramsci - founder of the Italian Communist Party). That's why the rot of collectivism and it's concomitant statism goes so deep, and why I won't see it routed, as stated, in my lifetime. Thus, I feel the best way, or the only option, rather, is to get the ideas surrounding individual freedom 'out there': give those who live in an unthinking, null statism, an alternative point of view wherever possible, and sometimes that's better delivered by friendship, rather than my shunning.
I may just be trying to talk myself into such a position, you ideas certainly have merit. So I guess I will sign off this post in a state of thinking :)
Hope you keep reading my blog when you get a chance.
Cheers Mark
I am pleased, Mark, that you are "in a state of thinking". When you have done a thorough reading of the foundational treatise by Paul Wakfer (my partner in all), "Social Meta-Needs: A New Basis for Optimal Interaction" (http://selfsip.org/fundamentals/socialmetaneeds.html) with its many links, I hope that you will use your blog to critique it - make your comments and ask questions using quotes from Paul's writings rather than paraphrasing (so as to be exact). This will require intellectual chewing on your part, as the treatise, on which my focus article re. protests and self-responsibility is based, is not is not a simple read.
ReplyDeleteThe twin-framework implementations of the Social Meta-Needs theory - The Natural Social Contract & Social Preferencing - are envisioned as replacements for existing governments, all of which are described & regulated (in the US alone) via thousands of volumes & many millions (?billions?) of words enabling tens of thousands of lawyers to charge handsomely to serve as "gatekeepers" for the common folk. Therefore all of this is not a breezy read - a warning for those looking for & used to soundbites on which to walk away with, thinking that such bromides are really foundational and meaningful as a solution to serious social problems.
However you strike me as a person who is truly interested in understanding the roots of the serious societal problems that exist AND the solution. You will need to realize that true friendship is a mutual benefit and does not exist when one party is an enabler to the enslavement of the other (or others), or worse is an actual government enforcer - one who threatens and even initiates physical force. Shunning - reduction and even total withdrawal of voluntary association, negative Social Preferencing as I and Paul refer to it - is the only non-violent recourse when reasoned logic fails to dissuade a government enforcer or even other government enablers (ie. tax agents, regulation agents, etc) or supporters to cease being such.
Good chewing.
**Kitty
I will give a promise to read that paper, but then I'll see where I go from there. Also, I've heavy work commitments, some of them textual based, so I won't be reading anything heavier than a blog or novel until I take a holiday in about a months time. I'll read that paper then.
DeleteBut, before I do, clue me in, because you do look like hard work :) Never minding tags for myself, with the only warning being they always exist in a context, the following broadly define me:
Politics: classical liberal/libertarian (non-initiation of force).
Economics: laissez-faire capitalism (not the current crony kind).
Philosophy: Objectivist (which means atheist, humanist, rationalist, anti-new age mystical nonsense, et al).
Now, help me out, on coming to 'Social Meta-Needs': you?
Mark, you can read my and Paul's bios at http://morelife.org/personal/ where our backgrounds are briefly described.
ReplyDeleteYou can also read the Abstract of the treatise:
"Evidence from a variety of science and social disciplines is integrated to create a new approach to the basis and determination of the optimal methods of Social InterActions within Society. A new concept is defined and developed: Social Meta-Needs - those properties of the Environment of InterActions within Society common to all Members, which facilitate the highest possible attainment of Lifetime Happiness by each. Ethical egoism is redefined as a hypothetical imperative that is shown to be fully compossible and to form a logical and consistent basis for human Actions that will achieve the Social Meta-Needs. It is argued that the concept of "rights" is neither a complete nor a consistent basis for human Liberty, and that "rights" should be replaced by Stipulations concerning Entitlements and Responsibilities within a new conception of a Social Contract in order to facilitate the achievement of the Social Meta-Needs - the Members of the Society being those who Execute the Contract together with all their Property. The nature of Harm and Violation within the redefined concept of ethical egoism, and the principles for their determination, are considered in relationship to the Social Meta-Needs. It is argued that the Social Meta-Needs require that the only reasonable justice ethic is the complete restoration of a Victim to the State of Happiness in which he would have been if the Violation had not occurred, with the amount and type of Restitution Required being determined solely by the Victim. The limitations and the practical implementation of such an ethic are also discussed. The Natural Social Contract is provided as an embodiment of that portion of the Social Meta-Needs which can be enabled and stabilized by means of formal Stipulations. Full and complete Social Preferencing, effectively extending market preferencing to all aspects of human interaction, is shown to constitute the less formal, but more essential means to achieve the Social Meta-Needs. Unambiguous definitions of many terms and concepts are made, as a necessary part of the developments introduced."
Remember that the above is an abstract of a detailed paper; also, it (as well as the full paper) contains technical terms (capitalized), the use of which is explained in the prefacing note.
My own articles are less meaty, but can only be fully appreciated (and become highly useful) when the foundational principles are understood. http://selfsip.org/focus/
Mmmm. I think it's important to be able to sum up: I don't understand why you can't put your cards on the table and say, in plain language, something so simple as whether you even advocate a capitalist economy or not, however, I made a promise, so despite the fact that over quarter of a century ago, after starting a Master of Arts in English lit, and reading Lacan, Derrida and Foucault, I promised myself I would run from anyone using the word 'meta', as they were always trying to undermine language in a sea of collectivist subjectivism, I will read that paper, on holiday, in one month.
Delete