From: Damien Broderick (damien@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Tue Oct 27 1998 - 09:15:25 MST
At 03:22 PM 10/27/98 +1300, "J. Maxwell Legg" <income@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
>using the woefully
>inadequate mental health laws to spring a trap on the unsuspecting
>government. After I had accepted their pension because, using their
>social constructions, they considered mind-uploading a thought disorder
That's interesting. Are you saying that you currently receive a New
Zealand invalid pension granted because you were medically evaluated as
mentally incompetent to earn a living?
If so, do you concur with this assessment? If you do, should this have any
bearing on our evaluation of your posts? Presumably you do *not* concur,
given your use of the phrases `woefully inadequate' and `their social
constructions' and your startling candour in mentioning the pension. Do
you find any conflict in your personal values in accepting money under what
therefore would be false pretences?
These questions are not meant as a flame - I do not know Mr Legg, and I am
genuinely intrigued by the issues raised. Perhaps I should make clear that
over the last couple of decades I have eked out my own meagre earnings as a
writer with the aid of five arts grants from Federal and State Australian
governments, as well as a PhD scholarship from a national funding body. I
favour some kind of anarcho-socialist polity, for want of a better term, in
which a guaranteed minimum income is provided, without strings, to all
citizens. I'm made uncomfortable, however, by the idea of someone
contriving to gain such benefits by *pretending* to be either somatically
or mentally ill. If such a misdiagnosis were imposed upon me, I hope I'd
fight it tooth and nail, rather than accepting any benefits that happened
to be entailed.
If Mr Legg actually *is* sufficiently mentally ill to require an invalid
pension, I apologise for the tenor of these sceptical remarks, and will
read his posts with this proviso in mind.
Damien Broderick
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 14:49:42 MST