Monday quote

If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950).

Myths of privatisation

I am a fan of privatisation for several reasons, not the least being that I think that private companies tend to be less wasteful, more productive, and if they fail the taxpayer isn't called to bail them out, let alone continue to fund them indefinitely. I also do not think it is the government's mandate to run most companies.

Roger Kerr has a good article discussing what he considers are false beliefs held by many opposed to privatisation of public companies. These are the 8 myths he discusses:

1. Privately owned businesses consistently outperform publicly owned businesses.
2. Privatisation is ideological.
3. Privatisation is needed to reduce debt.
4. The government should own SOEs [State Owned Enterprises] because it has a lower cost of (debt) capital.
5. SOEs were sold too cheaply.
6. Privatisation leads to more foreign control over New Zealand.
7. The government loses financially from privatisation because it forgoes dividends.
8. Air New Zealand is a good model for the government’s partial privatisation approach.

Myth 2 is interesting as even proponents of privatisation may think this. Kerr argues it is in fact pragmatic.

Myth #2 Privatisation is ideological. To the contrary, it is pragmatic: it (generally) works. When the Thatcher government embarked on privatisation in the 1980s, some regarded it as a leap of faith. It was not a popular policy to advance but was supported when the benefits became clear.

As a British minister said, “facts overtook the debate.”

The genuinely ideological argument is the reverse: the Marxist attachment to “public ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange.”

Of course it could be both. An ideal system can be the best system if the underlying ideology is basically correct.

Monday quote

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790).

Liberty and community

Libertarians are sometimes criticised that their position favours individualism. For those that promote individualism this is not seen as a downfall; but the complaint, if true, is a reasonable one to make to a Christian libertarian. Christianity teaches the importance of community. The early Christians shared their property, and Christendom views itself communally, as a city on a hill, we talk of the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God. We are bondslaves to our master Jesus. Individuals are metaphorically stones in a temple. The goal of man is to serve God, not himself.

I agree that community is important to Christianity, how could it be other if our greatest commands are to love? One can speak to the nature of community which is important and interacts with the political component. Christian community is a community made up of very unique and distinct individuals. Community does not mean we are less ourselves, rather we are more ourselves. Like a family where each individual contributes something different. But I do not wish to address this issue in detail. Rather the question of whether libertarianism promotes individualism, and is it a negative philosophy for those who promote community?

Pragmatically it is not obvious that libertarianism is detrimental. Looking at our increasingly socialised political structures in the West, we are also becoming increasingly individualistic. That is, our politics are more socialist over the decades and our citizens are more individualistic. Certainly there appears to be some correlation, even if the reasons are a little more complex. I note with some irony the complaints about lack of community coming from socialists who argue the solution is more socialism.

It is possible that individualists can continue to thrive in a libertarian environment? Certainly a Christian should be cautious about promoting laws that are detrimental to community—community as defined by God, not by the secularists—but that is the issue, is it not? Are we not to form our own communities? And the law should be such that it does not interfere with this?

Communities are formed by individuals, by common location or common cause. They are not formed by governments. Attempts by governments to do so fail because laws fail to create community. Legal constructs cannot facilitate friendship. Further, laws frequently inhibit the desires and intents of community by placing unnecessary restrictions on them. Whereas laws that are restricted to dealing with disputes over person and property—that is they prevent and punish actions that are anti-communal: theft, murder, rape—help prevent the fracturing of society.

Laws that punish people who damage other people, damage property, or fail to keep promises that they have agreed to with others, are good in that they address issues of justice, but coincidentally punish those who are engaging in anti-community activities. When government otherwise leaves people alone then citizens can form their own community structures, or not, as they see fit. This is a libertarian position. Certainly libertarian government does not create community, but no government action can. People form communities, and I maintain a libertarian position is more favourable to forming and maintaining functional communities.

Monday quote

Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.

George Washington (1732–1799)

Bible reading level

Below are listed several Bible versions and their reading age level.

Version		Age
The King James Version	KJV	19
Young's Literal Translation	YLT	18
The American Standard Version	ASV	17
Douay Rheims	DR	17
The New American Standard Bible, 1977	NASB	16
The Amplified Bible	Amp	16
The Revised Standard Version	RSV	16
The New American Standard Bible, 1995 Update	NASB95, NASU	15
The New Revised Standard Version	NRSV	15
The English Standard Version	ESV	15
The Weymouth New Testament		15
The Philips New Testament		14
The New English Bible	NEB	13
The New Jerusalem Bible	NJB	13
The New King James Version	NKJV	13
The New International Version	NIV	13
Today's New International Version	TNIV	13
The Holman Christian Standard Bible	HCSB	13
The Living Bible	LB	13
The Jewish New Testament		13
The World English Bible	WEB	12
The New American Bible	NAB	12
The Common English Bible	CEB	12
Today's English Version	TEV	12
The New English Translation	NET	12
The New Living Translation	NLT	11
The Revised English Bible	REB	11
The Message		10
God's Word	GW	10
The Contemporary English Version	CEV	10
The New Century Version	NCV	9
The New International Reader's Version	NIrV	8
International Children's Bible	ICB	8
The Bible in Basic English	BBE	?

This list was compiled from a range of sites: here, here, here, here, and here. I also ran Genesis 1 in a few versions thru a Flesch-Kincaid reading calculator (which assesses words and syllables per sentence but not complexity of syntax). I have given the reading age level rather than the grade/ year level as the latter differ thru-out English speaking countries. Age level is for English as first language, and I am aware that established reading levels may underestimate true average ability when children are taught well.

Because this list was compiled from several sources, and estimated reading level is somewhat subjective, various Bibles may be rated mildly incorrectly compared to others. For example the ICB became the NCV and I am not certain how much they differ (if at all) and whether they warrant different age levels.

Monday quote

‎I will put down all apparent inconsistencies in the Bible to my own ignorance.

John Newton (1725–1807).

Monday quote

The truly wise man is he who always believes the Bible against the opinion of any man.

R. A. Torrey (1856–1928)

Monday quote

Through all of this of course, underlying it is his grace. None of us ever earn his goodwill by the fact we live by his word. But although that is true, none of us can live in his grace unless we live by his word.

Trevor Geddes

Determinism debate

Source

Monday quote

The bigger the government, the less the citizens do for one another. If the state will take care of me and my neighbors, why should I?

Dennis Prager

Proof-texting in cyberspace

Allen and Swain write on the historical use of proof-texting. While proof-texting is maligned by some, the Bible uses proof-texts, and in ways that some would fault non-biblical writers for doing the same. Good reasons exist for the way biblical authors quoted:

if we are to appreciate the way Scripture uses Scripture to prove a doctrinal point, then we must appreciate the larger hermeneutical frameworks within which citations are employed, the original (historical and literary) contexts within which proof-texts are found, and we must also possess a certain canonical sensitivity to how biblical motifs and themes unfold in the history of redemption, and, perhaps most importantly, how Christ is understood to be the climax of that unfolding historical development.

They distinguish between the citation techniques and the hermeneutical considerations at play: the quote may not be the (full) explanation. In other writings, reference to Scripture may be shorthand to not only the scriptural context, but commentaries written by the author and even others on the passage cited. Consider Aquinas,

The quotation of a biblical passage in the Summa [Theologiae] is meant to point the reader to a commentary written by Thomas or to an exegetical tradition of which he and the intelligent reader would be aware.

The Summa covers a wider terrain than any one biblical commentary—in fact, it could be characterized as a whole-Bible commentary with its very structure being shaped by what we now call “biblical theology.” The particular biblical commentaries contain more detailed expositions of pertinent passages that are merely referenced offhand or quoted briefly in the Summa. For example, he discusses the equality of power of the Father and of the Son in two types of texts (ST 1a.42.6 and in his Commentary on John 5:19). In the article in the ST, Thomas mentions a number of other texts in John’s Gospel (5:20; 5:30; 14:31), and he makes reference to no patristic sources. When you trace those references or quotations to his commentary, however, you see extended analysis of a deep patristic tradition.

A proof-text is, in modern parlance, a hypertext.

Monday quote

In the end, the money has run out—there are just not enough taxes [and] revenues to feed government's rapacious appetite to spend money satiating voters' indulgence, envy and greed.

John Tertullian and Contra Celsum

If your right hand causes you to sin

I was teaching the pre-teens on Bible genre. Explaining how the Bible is composed of various writing styles and how this has an effect on interpretation. An example that came up was the talion in the Torah compared with Jesus telling us to cut off our own hands in the gospels. In the former situation a legal text is meant to be understood by the nature of legal genre to be literal—the possibility of fines notwithstanding.

Your eye shall not pity. It shall be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot. (Deuteronomy 19:21 ESV)

Jesus' words are thought by many to be hyperbolic.

And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell. (Matthew 5:30 ESV)

That it is hyperbolic can be noted by the fact that one does not sin because of his hand, we sin from our mind. And even if we did remove our right hand for stealing, what is to stop us stealing with our left?

The children understood all this, but what is particularly interesting is Jesus' contrast here. Why did he speak like this?

Jesus is teaching about the Mosaic Law. And the Law stipulates and limits punishments that were given for criminal offences. What Jesus does is turn the focus from what we demand occurs to others who have wronged us to what we must do to stop wronging others and God. Paraphrasing:

You know that if another (deliberately) maims someone's hand he is to have his hand maimed; well if you are sinning with your hand cut your own hand off. You remove a man's eye for causing blindness; remove your own eye when you sin with it.

Jesus is using what they do know about the Law to make them realise their own shortcomings. They know about cutting off the hands and plucking out the eyes of criminals, Jesus forces them to focus on how they were using their own hands and eyes.

Monday quote

There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there is never more than one.

C. S. Lewis