Government Wigs
January 21, 2025
By NZB3
Part of the reason we can’t have a State, no not even a little one, is that it always grows and ends up controlling and fowling up everything. One crisis at a time, each seemingly “kind” or “necessary” or “urgent” popular need is grasped upon by politicians on the make to expand their powers. In New Zealand it’s easy, especially in some brief moments, to pass a new law or regulation and create a new institution. When the brief crisis has passed though it’s very difficult to get rid of whatever little monster has been created and as that monster grows larger year on year it’s even harder to banish.
After all, it’s popular politics to build or create something. But nobody gets any votes for being the guy who took away that good and kind thing. What are you, some kind of misanthrope taking away The Thing? We like that thing. Or, at least, we used to like The Thing and have nostalgic attachment to Thing. Or, we’re still hurting about the bad stuff that The Thing was distracting us from were pretending was OK because we had the Thing.
So now government-sponsored wigs are a Thing too.
According to the Press (21/1/2025) it is reported by Health New Zealand (ie The State) that “2971 new patients applied for the wig and hairpiece subsidy in 2023/24, making to a total of 9110 people who received the subsidy in that financial year.”
Each recipient is receiving between $409 and $259 a piece so an average of $334 in fake hair money.
In the latest financial year then the 9110 claimants have cost the taxpayer at least $3,042,740 but probably a great deal more. Here’s a handy chart from wigs.co.nz who must be making a fortune out of this government Thing.
| Who can claim the subsidy? | Subsidy Amount | Entitlement Period |
|---|---|---|
| Adults over 18 years with temporary hair loss (Cancer, etc) | $408.88 | 1 year |
| Adults over 18 years with permanent hair loss (Alopecia, etc) | $2330.66 | 9 years |
| Children under 18 years with temporary or permanent hair loss | $1226.65 | 3 years, or until you turn 18 (if that happens first) |
I start to wonder who these wigs.co.nz people are. How did they lobby the government to sponsor their industry? When? Do they make campaign contributions to the National Party? Did they put Mariné Lourens at the Press up to advertising their Thing? Is their alliance with the government anti-competitive toward other firms that might like to offer cosmetic solutions to people? Who knows.
Someone decided that these millions of health dollars were better spent on the wig shop rather than treating cancer, ambulances, staffing hospitals etc. Hell, there’s probably a few actual cancer drugs $3 million could buy but instead of that….here’s a wig!
We are Anarchists so of course consider this Tzar-like behavior over divvying up loot a vain and crazy idea in the first place. Nobody has the wisdom to sit on a throne and pretend they can calculate what gets made or not made, who gets it or misses out, what price, how much, when, where, etc. Yet we pretend we can in our Socialist State for health and everything else too. This is why the so-called Health System is constantly in crisis, held together by over-worked suckers (nurses, doctors, etc) because they were socialised to be Helpers at a young age and let a broken system exploit their virtue.
Even so, can’t we draw the line at cosmetics? If we must allocate scarce health resources to increasingly desperate people who are sick and in need of healing do we really want to stack on top of that a missing to make sick people look good too? Surely that’s something we could leave to them or to charity?
Because once we start doing that where does it end? Providing a wheelchair not enough, we must provide a flashy designer one too? Nike bedpans not just regular? Scubs that aren’t just functional but make staff look great too? Instead of maximising hospital beds with as many spartan wards as money can buy we’d trade some of them off to have fewer but more attractive furniture with award-winning interior design?
“But then she learned the news that “blew me away”, said Christian, who is now in the early stages of treatment. She qualified for a government subsidy to help her get a wig, hairpiece or head covering of her choice. “I couldn’t believe there was such a thing [as a wig subsidy,” she said. “For the government to just step in like that… it is amazing, it really is amazing.”” – Press, op cit
“”The pupil is thereby ‘schooled’ to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluence with the ability to say something new. His imagination is ‘schooled’ to accept service in place of value. Medical treatment is mistaken for health care, social work for the improvement of community life, police protection for safety,…” – Ivan Illich (1970)
Government wigs are yet another example of mission creep in the Health System Medical System.
The newspaper article, probably for legal reasons, stops short of saying that having a wig brings health benefits. Mariné Lourens and her client know you’ll get lawyers for saying things like that so they write around it the same way the Sleepdrops vendors do in their adverts. They just drop big hints about how “empowering” it is and “you feel normal.” Mind you, how hard do you have to pitch free stuff in a captive market?
Even though its proponents are so crooked they can’t even say it themselves I’m quite sure there are positive health benefits to wigs for chemotherapy patients¹. Some part of self-esteem is in presenting yourself according to who you are. Looking good, feeling clean, feeling equipt and recognised for who you are lets a person interact with others as themselves and project their identity rather than the identity of Sick Person. In a state of your health being out of control you can start restoring order by focusing on some of the things in your life you do have power over. These wigs certainly would be contributing to a positive therapeutic outcome for the oncology inmates.
That is why the government should never be allowed to fund it. Once we let The State in to the beauty care industry it’s a black hole that never stops. Apart from price and quality it will destroy the free people who would otherwise fill this role and the charities that would have stepped up. We don’t get to know how much the customer wants these wigs, what they would pay, or what substitutes there could have been. It may have even had an impact on their decision to undergo a treatment in some cases because the downside is mitigated with government money.
For example, Bandanna Day is an annual charitable event to support cancer patients. A bandanna costs much less than a hair piece. And what does it say about those who choose a bandanna if the government is backing wigs instead? Those who go for the bandanna have been officially deselected and their choice is being marketed against. Their charity hook itself is being devalued. Perhaps they’re going to have to change it to Wig Day and the public can show support by buying a wig too and wearing it? I don’t think that’s going to fly. This government move into cosmetics will either kill the bandanna or else it will just become symbolic. A chemo patient wearing a bandanna on top of a wig starts to get pretty absurd though. The Government is directly competing with and undermining the very concept of an effective and inexpensive free market response to a problem. It’s what they do.
I’ve made the allocation argument about how best to spend the health dollar. There is a line between fixing broken bodies and beautification of them. As far as cosmetic medicine being a support to therapeutic medicine that should never be for a government to decide. It may be that society determines that sick people should look sick and carry their ‘scars’ as we have in the past. Government money signals what is pejorative in this case. Politicians are deciding or at least influencing how we relate to adversity. Yet it might be that having a war wound or a fighter’s gab or survivors scars could be apejorative. Accepted. Respected. WW1 German facial dueling scars prove it can be that way. And sometimes freckles are out and people try to obscure them, sometimes they’re in and people try to fake them. Eyebrows, lips, posteriors, ears, sideburns, teeth, chests,…everything is in motion.
The public, the culture, decides what characteristics will rise and fall in trends we are scarcely conscious of. The Government is here picking out a particular human presentation feature and bankrolling it at the expense of others. Messing with the very fabric of humanity the same way it messed up things like honey, television, education, food, welfare, housing, sport, colonising, energy, and everything else it ever touched. How many times do New Zealanders need to relearn this and finally demand that The State get out and stay out of our hair?
—
1 Or victims, depending on your medical standpoint
Like Comment Share
