Realism about animal rights

Re: letter on January 25, written by Jenny Moxham, Australia.

With respect to you Jenny, I felt your letter was over the top. I am a farmer. The people need to eat. Most of the population live in cities, towns, etc.

How do they feed themselves? They do not have the land, and are too busy. Society has changed so much since even my father’s day.

It is that a human eats meat, it is fact.

Not everyone is vegetarian. In the dairy industry there would be too many calves of which half are bull calves, heifers are reared for replacements, the bulls are slaughtered.

Their mothers produce so much milk that the cow would become sick, her calf could not drink that much milk. This is the 21st century. There are millions of mouths to feed.

I, too, do not like the experiments on animals, but I and millions of other humans are alive and benefit from the medications.

The last statement about unjustifiable cruelty is your way of thinking. Here in New Zealand as in Australia the SPCA, MAF are the watchdogs for animal welfare. JULIE RUSH Feilding

Socialism’s folly

A college economics class recently insisted that socialism benefited everyone, because no-one would be poor and no-one would be rich. A great equaliser. Their professor then agreed to a class experiment based on socialism.

All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade, so no-one will fail and no-one will receive an A. (Substituting grades for dollars).

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.

As a result, many students who studied little studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they too were entitled to a free ride so they studied little.

The second test average was a D. No-one was happy. The third test average was an F. As the tests proceeded, the scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in animosity. Consequently, they all failed.

The professor had just shown them that socialism ultimately fails because when the reward is great, the effort to accomplish is great, but when government takes all the incentive away, few will try or even want to succeed.

The reasons why socialism and communism (and therefore the goals of the ‘‘occupiers’’ worldwide) are fatally flawed can then be summarised as follows:

1 You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.

2 What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.

3 The government cannot give anybody anything that it does not first take from somebody else.

4 You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.

5 When ‘‘99 per cent’’ (allegedly) of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other ‘‘1 per cent’’ is going to take care of them, and when the other ‘‘1 per cent’’ gets the idea that it does no good to endeavour because somebody else is going to get what they work for, historically, that is the beginning of the end of any nation. T WHYMAN Palmerston North