Not PC

The Blue Team is crowing again about a budget surplus.

From Rousseau to Marx, philosophers of a certain bent argued pre-modern societies possessed an inherent nobility that is destroyed by civilisation.

"A really good example of how people today have been conned," says Elizabeth Rata in this interview above, "is this post-2022 idea that the Māori and English versions of the treaty are quite different."

"It took centuries of intellectual, philosophical development to achieve political freedom.

"The UN has become a useless organisation that serves only to feed a caste of fatally arrogant parasites disguised as well-intentioned bureaucrats.

“Another 'advanced' educational method does not mark examination papers for their accuracy; instead, grades are given indicating that the child has done well in relation to his capacities.

So this week the Bills to replace the Resource Management Act passed their third reading in Parliament, marking what boosters call "the most significant overhaul of New Zealand’s planning system in more than three decades."

Philosopher Stephen Hicks reckons we should strive to elevate our locutionary acts.

“All people, entrepreneurs as well as non-entrepreneurs, look askance upon any profits earned by other people.

"Millions of people around the world will soon consider large models ‘hoovering up’ all their work to be an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions.

"A right is the sanction of independent action.

"You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.

The ghost of Richard Nixon should be pleased.

"The greatest stimulus package imaginable might simply be telling 99% of politicians: No.

"Nice supermarket chain you have here.

“To sit home, read one's favourite paper, and scoff at the misdeeds of the men who do things is easy, but it is markedly ineffective.

"The moral argument against a wealth tax is simple: Your wealth is not a public resource simply because other people are envious of it.

"Wealth is not a fixed pile that existed before human beings arrived.

"Any man with a serious central ambition is more of an outsider in his youth than in later years.

"I'd like to quote the founder and proprietor of Our World in Data, who said that the papers could have had the headline: '187,000 people escaped from extreme poverty yesterday,' every day for the last 30 years!

"The new American foreign policy: Negotiations not for peace, not to build alliances, not to promote democracy or the rule of law but to benefit companies linked to the administration." ~ Anne Applebaum on the new round of peace negotiations with Putin ov…

“The world is full of people suffering from the effects of their own unlived life.

A piece from a Dr Luke Fitzmaurice-Brown is doing the rounds again.

I was struck this morning when reading Home Paddock's 'Quotes of the Week' just how pathetic our local conservatives are.

“Housing is one of the largest ways things are going wrong for young people.

“It would be hard to think of a more ridiculous way to make decisions than to transfer those decisions to third parties who pay no price for being wrong.

While the humble supermarket gets a bad press from every political direction, Emma Camp reckons "the modern grocery store is a marvel that we take for granted..."

"The name is wrong.

"The concept of cultural relativism is a suicide pact.

Observing that enthusiasm for so-called AI is diminishing by the day--a recent survey suggests 86% of the public distrusts AI--that tech "experts" over-promise again and again, and that most predictions about the technology have been proven dead wrong ("y…

“Te Pāti Māori has spent most of the year seemingly allergic to policy, and after all that time this is what they have come up with: five new taxes.

"The ancient Greeks’ word for work simply translates as “not leisure”. ... for the Greeks, only has meaning in relation to leisure.

"[I]mprovement after treatment is not always improvement caused by treatment, since much of it arrives with time and attention. ...

"[T]wo salient facts: At April 1, 2025, a sole parent with two or more children received on average $1,110 weekly; a couple with two or more children, $1,255 net.

"Selling assets the state does not need, and investing the proceeds in new infrastructure, is called asset recycling, as opposed to selling to repay debt. ...

"The Bill’s rhetorical appeal rests on the idea that it targets under-16s.

“The [Iranian] regime [massacred] up to 40,000 in just two days in January.

Chloe Swarbrick: 'Yes, I alone will decide how much profit you will make.

[Hat tip Being Objectivist] Content is copyright PC.BlogSpot.Com © Permission to republish is granted, with link and attribution.

"While Trump makes love to Kim Jong Un and betrays U.S. ally South Korea, North Korean ballistic missiles are slamming into Kyiv.

“When government engages in a losing venture, it gets doubled in size.

Philosopher Stephen Hicks writes on the long reach of postmodern philosophy, its insistence on the social construction of reality, and its practical results in the Arday tragedy.

"[W]omen, men, of all backgrounds discover, invent and create in ways that uplift themselves and others, thousands, millions ... applying reason, thought, research, enquiry and philosophy to humanity, the world and the universe. ...

"Capitalism says inequality can exist, but your needs don't automatically become claims on somebody else's effort.