T5

time of even those who cannot find regular employment.
The reasoning behind the Right’s obsession with welfare reform is, however, perfectly logical. By
reducing the state-provided income of the unemployed to subsistence level, and then requiring them to
work for it, they are immediately transformed into a vast army of wage reducers and work intensifiers.
And that means that the workers in paid employment are constantly looking over their shoulders and
wondering what it will take to keep the boss from replacing them with someone cheaper.
"Longer hours? – Sure Boss." "Work faster? – Yes Sir." "Can I come in weekends? – No problem."
"Am I asking for a wage rise? – Hell no!" "Unions? – Never heard of them."
Ever wondered why ecstasy and methamphetamine are the drugs of choice for your generation, when
marijuana and LSD were the drugs of choice for mine? Well, it’s simple, grass slows everything down,
while speed – as its name suggests – allows you to do more with less (less sleep, less food, less
morals). LSD suggests that the workaday world is only one of many realities, while E makes the
realities of the workaday world temporarily bearable. Our escape was into time, your escape is out of it.
Small historical footnote: Both Russian and German troops at Stalingrad were fed vast quantities of
amphetamines – it was the only way their officers could keep them killing each other. That should tell
you something.
It should also give you a hint as to why Nandor Tanczos and the Greens are in favour of
decriminalising cannabis.
The Greens grew out of the Values Party – which laid claim to being the first "post-materialist"
political party in the world. I wasn’t old enough to vote in 1972, when Values was launched, but I well
remember the impact it had on young people all over New Zealand.
Here was a party that looked forward to a world where there was less work and more leisure.
I remember Mike Ward from Nelson – now a Green MP – telling his television audience that Values
was about giving us more time to do the things that really mattered - like making love and playing with
our children.
That was not the sort of political campaigning we were used to hearing in New Zealand: – Vote Values
for more sex and play.
Even the Left found it disconcerting. Did you ever hear Jim Anderton say - Vote Alliance for more sex
and play? Can you imagine Helen Clark distributing a little card promising that - "under Labour New
Zealanders will be free to play around?"
The Greens – as far as I can see – are the only political party which truly understands that social
progress is about reducing the amount of time required from every citizen for providing the necessities
of a civilised existence, and the expansion of the amount of time available to every citizen for personal
growth and development.
No one else gets it – not even Labour. For Helen Clark and Michael Cullen and Steve Maharey
government is all about the quantity of life, not the quality of life.