At 03:22 PM 10/27/98 +1300, "J. Maxwell Legg" <income@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
>using the woefully
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?
>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
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.
Damien Broderick