More steps

Didn't do much except read most of the day. late in the afternoon, I used the leaf blower to clear all the leaves and other debris which falls from the many trees surrounding the house. Then I went for a walk in local streets. In this walk, I come down the Waima-Boylan Terrace (a rather fancy name for a short path through native bush). The path has been constructed to be safe and easy, in contrast to yesterday's picture.

Part of my reading was a paper comparing two antipsychotics as monotherapy with the two drugs given at the same time, with dosage being determined by clinicians. Using a standard well accepted measure of severity of illness there was little difference between the three groups in outcome. However, the clinicians used nearly twice as high doses when both medications were prescribed than when half of what they chose was a placebo.

I will share this paper with the other members of the group working to reduce high dose prescribing of antipsychotics.

In a completely different vein, the reading that most shook me was an essay by an ex-journalist on corruption in the modern world. How this has become accepted; that politicians feather their own nest (and those of their friends) while those suffering (my word) from what she called the Midas Disease, corruptly gather as much as possible of the finite resource the world has for no other reason than greed. To do this they are shamelessly corrupt. 

The new leader of New Zealand's main opposition party shamelessly announced his intention when he becomes prime minister to change tax laws and the like in a way that will only advantage him and other millionaires, and will infact harm the worst off.

John Rawls' difference principle has always (since I learned about it) struck me as the only ethical way for a society to distribute its wealth/resources. This principle requires that an economic system (of distribution of resources) is just if, and only if, there is no alternative economic system in which the least well off would be better off. That principle does not pertain in any western democracy to the best of my knowledge.