Comments on: Confidence in Government

By: strawman

strawman — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 12:40:26 +0000

Death is part of life.

I hope to never experience war, pestilence and famine.

I will experience death. It’s not something to fear, or
something to fight – just something to delay until it’s my time.

By: P.M.Lawrence

P.M.Lawrence — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 12:56:45 +0000

The sort of thing the writer was referring to, using imagery, was a typical pattern of bad things: war, which didn’t actually cause that many direct deaths because most people could hide; famine, because people had been unable to look after agriculture while hiding and because the fields had usually been ravaged to encourage people to come out and fight with the odds against them (“havoc”), which also didn’t cause that many direct deaths but usually led to poor nutrition rather than outright starvation; pestilence, which flourished in the weakened population, both because they were individually more vulnerable and because there were more sick people to catch it from; and death, from any of those causes but most of all the last. So it wasn’t redundant to have death on the list; the others were other ills, usually coming first and each setting up for later ones.

By: Strawman

Strawman — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 12:28:17 +0000

>> On a point of information, the four riders of the
>> Apocalypse are war, famine, pestilence and death

Hmm .. thanks for this. I used to use death – until I realized that having death in the list is illogical. Oops.

.. clearly I didn’t pay enough attention in Sunday school!
(The teacher didn’t beat me enough)

By: P.M.Lawrence

P.M.Lawrence — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 02:25:49 +0000

On a point of information, the four riders of the Apocalypse are war, famine, pestilence and death – in that logical order if you want to trace which of them sets up for the later ones. Pestilence and plague are actually the same thing by different names.

By: davidleyonhjelm

davidleyonhjelm — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 13:09:25 +0000

This is consistent with my own thinking – people increasingly expect the government to save them and are aghast when it doesn’t.

My concern is what comes next. Politicans have historically been in the firing line but holding public servants to account is growing in significance. The Victorian bushfire Royal Commission is applying some serious heat to the bureaucrats, for example.

There are two possible outcomes. One is that public service at senior levels will become more risky, with losing your job due to “negligence” becoming an occupational hazard.

The other is that the public service will start to push back, refusing to accept responsibility for the choices others make.

I’m not sure which one is more likely, but I’m prepared to help the crowd arguing that “the government should have saved us”. I’m betting it will make the bureaucrats more wary of creating a nanny state.