[...] Fundamentally, the whole notion of the state being capable of defining and delivering wellbeing to its citizens is profoundly socialist. Not only socialist [...] Delivering wellbeing to the masses is, therefore, an emphatically top-down exercise. Democracy doesn’t get much of a look in.

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Known principally for his political commentaries in The Dominion Post, The ODT, The Press and the late, lamented Independent, and for "No Left Turn", his 2007 history of the Left/Right struggle in New...