Poverty and Longevity

The BBC are prattling on about poverty and longevity at the moment (hat tip rob in the comments section under a post at Devils Kitchen). I suspect this report is a result of the BBC sending people up to The Undiscovered Country of Glasgow East during the recent by-election.

The BBC appears to be confusing correlation with causation, or even Post Hoc fallacy - "they are poor and then have a short life, so poverty causezittinnit?"

It might be that the bad choices/attitudes etc that shorten life are the same that entrench poverty. I know where I'd put my money. Poor people can live a long time, in fact in Japan, a low calorie diet caused by food shortages (especially red meat) increases longevity.

Powerlessness might shorten life, that makes sense - powerlessness builds deep levels of stress and lack of hope, lack of a future. What do you think the biological carbon unit would do if hope is taken away, or rather what would a body try and do if hope existed, even in extremely harsh circumstancs? I know what, it would want to live at any cost. Remove hope, remove the reason to live, shorten life. It is pretty logical. Biggest contributor to removal of hope and entrenching a sense of powerlessness? (drumroll) The Welfare State, Ladies and Gentlemen, in all its infantilising glory.

It is not poverty that shortens peoples' lives in my opinion, it is the unintended (?) consequences of the Welfare State.

Soylent Red is PEOPLE!

An excellent Common Error at the ASI (hat tip The Devil):

Common Error 9. "It is wrong to allow bright children to go to special schools. This deprives the ordinary schools of their beneficial influence."

It goes on to say:

The vicious notion is that children, whether bright or not, should be regarded as the instruments of the ends of others, instead of ends in themselves. Children do not exist to serve the purposes of the state, it is the other way round. The concern should be with what is of benefit to the individuals concerned, rather than with how they can be made to serve some ideological view of society.

This ties in with the organ donor mindset, the very fact we are taxed so highly, the recycling and green tyranny*, the push for ID cards, chipping people, smoking bans...basically much of what the present EU-submissive government is doing.

Soylent Red is PEOPLE!**


* I recycle and conserve, but it should always be a matter of free will.

** For those of you who do not have the faintest idea of what I am on about, look here.