Thursday, April 28, 2011

The men in the picture --King Canute and his courtiers

As one great Boyer lecture series author ( John Passmore ) said . King Canute was an enormously effective leader. How then does he get this reputation as a bit of a dill  by taking his courtiers to the sea and showing them the waves .
He was clearly one of the those people we call conservationists and also had his commonwealth at heart  . He wanted to show them that nature however bountiful had limits and they were ,  like so many , inclined to ignore them . The sea for example had power we could not control.

He was also a commonwealth man - there for all the people not just the rich . Look  at all the land he ruled over .
His country was running out of lead to export . We will run out of iron and we will have less and less cheap oil . The point is while we need not run out completely our attitude is the problem ; a false sense of confidence is apparent in the audience of  what was a competent governing group .
Unlike our present leaders,  I don't think generalized taxing or the particular resource cost is the issue - its the lack of foresight and the uneccesary waste that blatant lack of planning and specific taxation generates for our children to have to pay for .

2 comments:

Malleebull said...

You can for example if you are rich ignore the impact of a "little "carbon or water tax on the cost of your travel, heating and lifestyle . The bureaubrats are dangerous because it was their idea to " reduce use " by "making people pay more for it "> Clever clones of business men they are, but not big picture thinking commonwealth men.

Malleebull said...

Too bad about the poor eh