Posted by alexandra_k on November 14, 2005, at 16:44:16
In reply to Re: justice » alexandra_k, posted by Damos on November 14, 2005, at 15:51:21
Hey.
Its good to be back :-)> These are extraordinarily difficult questions and strike at the heart of soo many things.
Yeah, they do.
And I think there are two main issues:
(I'll just say that I think that there is an injustice or unfairness in the radical difference in conditions that different people are born to. I really don't think this is controversial..)
1) Given that there is injustice (the above injustice) should the government do something to try and help alleviate the situation?
2) What should the government do?
So... Some people think nothing should be done. Other people think, yeah, something should be done. They may favour a taxation system that is designed to take more from the wealthy so the government has the resources to try and do something. There are other options as well...
But then the problem remains: what is the best thing to do with that money that will have the greatest impact on remidying the injustices?
So I guess I think that the US policy is pretty much 'nope we shouldn't do anything' (with respect to the first point).
In New Zealand... The problems I have with the current government are issues around the second problem: how that money is best spent.
> Just in Australia the questions about Aboriginal health, education and welfare come to mind - countless billions of dollars spent over many decades for what would appear to be almost no tangible improvement for the vast majority of Aboriginals.
Okay. So thats the second problem of how to best spend those resources...
>WHY?????? How can we continue to let this happen? Are they lacking in 'natural talent'? Not by a long shot. So why do we allow this to go on so long. I don't know, I need to think, it upsets me greatly, and dissappoints me more.
Yeah. Upsets me greatly too.
So... How did Australia spend that money???
Housing comes to mind.
The slums on the edges of Sydney (for example).
Cars... I think it was cars.
What are the aborigine (excuse my spelling) going to do with cars????? What did they do with their cars? I think... Most of them didn't know what to do with them. They couldn't afford gas for them (assuming they knew about the virtues of gas). So... They thought they were houses and lived in them.Hmm.
Not the wisest use of money perhaps...
With respect to housing...
Cheap housing in a slum area on the edges of a big city is probably not going to work out so well... I would have thought that a little forethought...
How about trying to get aborigine communities to the point of being self-sufficient. Self-sufficient with respect to the production of food etc.
?
But of course that would require giving them some land that they would be able to work.
Teaching them how to work and maintain it.
My point... Is that often when we consider the giving of aid we kind of go 'what would I like if I was in their shoes'. What we really need to do is think 'what would be best for me IF I WAS THEM?' And that requires us to... Get in amongst the people in the community in order to assess their needs. And it involves us being able to get outside the limitations that our own culture imposes on us to try and figure out what is worthwhile to them. I mean... Our mark of sucess might be a car and a flash house. But they may well value different things.
Trouble we are having...
IMO...
Land claims are turning rather sour.
According to Maori culture nobody OWNS or POSSESSES the land. Rather, we have gardianship, or custodianship over it. Basically... They don't consider we have RIGHTS to the land, they consider we have DUTIES OF CARE to the land. I suppose they can be considered two sides to the same thing, but I guess western culture emphasises our rights, and maori culture emphasises our duty of care.
The land was supposed to be a common resource.
That was what was so objectionable about the europeans coming and building fences around their property or whatever.And the land was taken from the Maori. So... There are land claims where Maori people (tribes typically) put foward a claim to the government and show how the land was illegitimately taken from them. And in some instances... They win, and they get the land back. And in other instances... They are given money in reperation.
Thats well and good... But my issue is that... The people submitting the land claims are typically urbanised maori. They are maori who have moved to industrial centres and have become fairly much culturally assimilated and studied law and marketing and management and so on and so forth. They might win a claim for Tainui. They might get back a chunk of land.
Then what do they do? They subdivide the land into sections and sell it to wealthy europeans in lifestyle blocks or prosperous residential developments.
IMO... Thats shouldn't be allowed to happen. According to traditional maori culture these people should not be allowed to sell what is not theirs. the land does not belong to them to sell. They merely have duty of care over the land to look after it and develop it in useful ways for the benefit of future generations.
I appreciate that cultures evolve over time and a culture that is not evolving is dying but what it seems to me we have happening here is corruption by people who have become assimilated and have forsaken their cultural values for the dollars they can make use of in their lifetime.
So... I think the government should put a restriction on land that is given back so that it is unable to be sold on.
Thats a fairly particular gripe that I have...
Becuase the fact is... That the average maori gets nothing out of the land settlements. The marae (maori community meeting house / maori community) gets nothing from those land settlements. So... That is a waste of land / money resources to give it to people without checks in place to ensure that that land / resources are actually assisting the average maori improve their quality of life.
Make sense?
poster:alexandra_k
thread:578654
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/poli/20050924/msgs/578705.html