ACT are so free market they support slavery
I think ACTs mask slipped last week.
The shock of seeing them for the foaming mouthed ideological storm troopers they really are by refusing to back anti-slavery legislation was surprising even for those of us attuned to watching their toxic culture war social media feeds.
Sure, they were insanely pro-zionist where no act of war crime by Israel was too great to be be justified and defended.
Yes they were race baiters who wondered aloud to their own candidates that they will cause civil war with the Treaty Principles Referendum.
Absolutely Brooke kneecapped 150,000 mainly woman workers and then had the gasp inducing audacity to complain that people were being mean to her for being a woman.
Of course they circumvented democracy by including a corporate vetting council to stop any law that puts human rights above their property rights.
But somehow the sight of watching National and Labour reach across the political divide to work together has made the spectacle of ACTs mask slipping more pronounced and more revolting.
ACT’s attempt at an argument is that smaller players in NZ won’t have to comply with the new slavery standards, which is true, but the top tier corporates should start, and then gradually those standards have to be implemented further down the market to ensure slavery is eradicated in our supply chain.
But to simply shrug and say it’s all too hard for those top tier corporates to even bother with the challenge is libertarianism apathy at its most limp.
Globally there are 50 million slaves producing quarter of a trillion in illegal profits and estimations are there are 8,000 slaves in NZ and we imported $8 billion worth of “risky goods” in 2022 that were sourced using slavery and that $8 billion represents around 10% of our imports in that year.
So this isn’t chump change, this is actually quite large loop holes that are allowing slave supply chains.
Shrugging and saying it’s too big a problem is what we are seeing the Political Right say about climate change and let’s look at how that denial is helping us.
Whenever the true social cost of a product is ever demanded, the Libertarians always claim it’s too hard.
It’s not just a pretend reluctance for the greater good they are promoting here, ACT are such wide eyed free market acolytes that they consider slavery as something the State shouldn’t interfere with!
How far right ideologically are ACT?
Refusing to crack down on slavery is kinda one of those entry points in a Modern Democracy that must be agreed to or you can’t participate.
If you refuse to make slavery illegal and won’t toughen regulations to prevent slavery, then you kinda don’t deserve to be part of the representative democratic process.
The intrinsic value inside every single individual must not, can not be enslaved and any legislation that helps prevent even one is worth the investment and promotion of!
Slavery is an ominous cthulla whose presence must be eradicated with all the fury of treating cancer.
This isn’t about cost, it is about the morality of the human spirit.
Opposing slavery is a little like rejecting political violence, it’s a necessary value to be allowed to participate.
If you run in elections while advocating political violence, you rule yourself out from participating.
Likewise slavery. If you aren’t prepared to make slavery illegal, you rule yourself out from participating.
That ACT refused to legislate against slavery is a scandal of immense proportions.
We all knew ACT were pretty extreme, their knee capping of pay parity, their race baiting Treaty Principles Referendum, their Atlas Network adjacent libertarianism and their acquiescence to Corporate power, but refusing to fight slavery is one of those things you can’t really ignore.
If you democratically support slavery, you are beneath our collective mana and deserve nothing but Intellectual contempt.
So say all of us.
I dont know what are you talking about because i not gonna believe whatever trash talk you say about free market
The slavery in NZ is concentrated in perhaps two places – the first being the fisheries industries, in which work continued at well below the minimum wage for over thirty years with the knowledge and connivance of MPs, most of whom, being lawyers, were fully cognizant of the wrong.
The other is achieved by recognized employers – often 1st generation migrants exploiting their compatriots with the connivance of Immigration – like Ravi (Ravinder) Arora, who brought in and exploited over a hundred unskilled workers, and has faced no significant penalty.
“That ACT refused to legislate against slavery is a scandal of immense proportions.”
Anyone supporting or promoting ACT are clearly racist and repugnant.
Leaving humane considerations aside for a minute or three:
Slavery, forced labour, serfdom is really inefficient. It produces poorly made goods , wastes time and materials.
By contrast skilled, well paid workers produce high quality products and make best use of time and resources.
George Rude conclusively proved this when he studied the reasons for the end of serfdom in Europe.
it was not because of a sudden rise in humanistic urges by feudal landowners but because the eighteenth century agricultural Revolution needed a new approach to agricultural labour and it was found that units of free waged workers completed harvesting, ploughing and other tasks in a fraction of the time that serfs carrying out their compulsory service to their landlords did.
American historians proved this with practical testing when thirty of them undertook a task that would take thirty slaves a day to complete.
They completed it in a little over two hours.
Is it possible that people who are ill fed and not properly rested do not work very hard? Is it possible that even beatings do not make them work any harder than they want to?
Is it possible that by opposing slavery we encourage the use of living wages and tolerable working conditions in other countries? Even getting them to improve the standard of their manufactured goods?
While I think of it. Eternal damnation to all ACT voters. May they work as slaves forever spreading manure on the pastures of hell, continually sodomised by demons.
RESTORE STATE SOCIALISM IN AOTOEAROA! DESTROY CAPITALISM! SEND CHRISTOPHER LUXON AND DAVID SEYMOUR TO PERPETUAL LABOUR IN A MARMITE MINE!
Was pretty much the same as the American civil war which the northern union won due in large part from have the more productive society as they had abolished slavery.
People like Seymour and Brooke van Kut have no desire for higher productivity, they just have an innate malevolence towards workers and have no ability to create wealth themselves – they can only steal it from others’ labour.
But….Luxon has stated on a number of occasions that he is not interested in ‘intellectual conversations’ such as you have outlined…. instead preferring a ‘top down approach’ whereby the top get most of the money…
Reference Luxon’s $500,000 tax free dollars for not lifting a finger made by buying, and then flicking on, houses whilst the slaves ie .the builders, sparkies, plumbers, plasterers and concrete layers etc get told to ‘sharpen their pencils’ and up their productivity so he can buy and flick-on more product….and his real estate agent mates can clip the ticket on the way through.
ACT’s pigeon chested petulant peacock, Seymour, who has the mental maturity of a 9year, is another case in point.
This species has never done a hard days work in his life… instead choosing the soft cock route of bludging off the taxpayer by, firstly, sucking up to sociopathic muti millionaires, who, in turn, use him as a vessel to proffer demented policies that inevitably keep the slaves pinned under a rock and make the rich even richer…the ‘free market’ is only free for them.
Classless Seymour, Van Velden and their party of weirdos, all have to be gone ….they should never have been allowed to hold power in the first place, but Luxon and National are so pathetically and weak that the monkeys have been allowed to take over the zoo… cancerous and corrosive for New Zealand society….if they think that they are somehow going to up productivity and make everyone more prosperous by using the gulag system then failure is inevitable…but you may as well tell that to a brick wall because stupid is what stupid does!
Slavery is at the top of crook van veldens wish list .No one should aspire to have a warm home ,food on the table or a decent health care and education .Those things are only for the 1%
Slavery? Like the kids in the Congo digging out the cobalt that is needed for EV batteries?
Sure, report on that to every EV buyer.
Do you still think that every EV has cobalt in their batteries? While the use of child labor in the Congo is wrong the EV vehicles are unlikely to be the cause while refining oil for those with ICE cars still requires cobalt.
Exactly. We are all complicit.
Typical Ada. Somehow it has to be the fault of those reducing emissions. Like people driving gas guzzlers never have any cheap labour consumables in their lives at all
The point is Ada that if it is reported on then EV buyers can at least choose whether to buy a car with cobalt batteries or whether to buy one with child slave labour.
Most EV buyers probably have enough of a conscience to force companies to transition away from child labour and to LFP batteries which don’t use cobalt.
Your argument is as silly as castigating someone for buying pork from ill treated pigs because our right wing food lobbyists block any sensible labelling requirements so they have no idea those pigs have been tortured in some foreign country (or NZ).
slavery like we have in NZ where working people cant afford a home to live in or enough food to feed themselves .What makes you think we are any better than the congo.Just like how we like to tell other countries how to treat the people while we spent years abusing and torturing people in state care .Best we tidy up our own back yard first dont you think .