Posts by BenWilson
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Hard News: Occupy: Don't call it a protest, in reply to Keir Leslie,
I dunno, I reckon that there's a further duty on academics as people who are paid to think, and have been put in a very specific part of society, to go beyond the general responsibilities of citizens in this one area.
Perhaps they should have that duty, but I haven't really noticed them exercising it with any more gusto than other segments of the population. I'm not surprised, they have jobs that are very much reputation based, and often extremely cushy. That's never been the ideal conditions to speak out.
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OnPoint: PREFU 2011: "What credit downgrade?", in reply to Sacha,
This government have been systematically hollowing out parts of the public service in wait for a second term (though they won't go as far as some fear).
Do you have some handy examples? I don't disagree, but they don't spring to mind, and it could be handy in arguments over the next 4 weeks.
ETA: Cheers Bart, those will be useful ammo.
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Hard News: Occupy: Don't call it a protest, in reply to Keir Leslie,
Academics have a duty to be conscience and critic beyond their field, and this is pretty obviously accepted. Einstein, Oppenheimer, etc etc. It's one of the ways to distinguish academics from other professional, who all also have roles as critics and conscience.
Everyone has that responsibility. Ones ability to comment technically on a specific field is limited by technical ability, but issues of morality and conscience should always cross all boundaries. There are no morality specialists. Anyone claiming to be one is selling you a religion.
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Hard News: Occupy: Don't call it a protest, in reply to Russell Brown,
All the protesters needed to do was express a little sympathy for working people and their families. Instead, there were a number of public quotes (and I'm going on memory here) that were unbelievably arrogant.
Yes, political activism is quite a different beast in Oz. They let you know when they're angry over there. I don't think it's such a bad thing. But it definitely has casualties.
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OnPoint: PREFU 2011: "What credit downgrade?", in reply to George Darroch,
They’re going to expend that political capital by cutting basic services that have large positive externalities, so that some rich [insert derisory term here] with a view of the water can build a larger swimming pool.
I think that is what will happen, but in some ways it's better than National steadily rising in popularity by talking about doing those things, without ever actually doing them, instead doing nothing but minor attacks on irrelevant things that they just don't like, while the economy grinds down, with all the negative externalities that is already having and will continue to have. The longer it goes on the harder it will be in the end. I thought that was Keith's point, that in actually doing something it will become clear that either they have the right plan or they don't, in which case we get rid of the [insert derisory term here]. This dawdling along slowly bankrupting the country by refusing to raise tax and claiming that as a virtue, while softening us up for asset sales, is some bullshit, and I know how it's going to end. I'd rather it began ending sooner.
I hope even more that both Labour and the Greens (even more so) have a huge poll bounce leading into the election. But projections don't look good at this point.
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Hard News: Occupy: Don't call it a protest, in reply to DexterX,
What really drives the economy?
OK, I left out that question, because it is enormous and inspecific. I guess if you want to get all philosophical about it, I'd say that energy is what drives the economy. There are 2 basic sources of this. Energy coming in from the Sun, and stored energy on our planet (a great deal of which ultimately came from the Sun). One of these is more of less constant, and one of them is running out.
But it's a long explanation from there to money and different ways of organizing society, which is the business of economics, and has huge crossover to politics, morality, science, etc.
I presume you weren't asking for this kind of answer, and instead it was a rhetorical question, and the answer a single word? Jobs? Growth? Liquidity? Investment? Production? Capital? You tell me. I gave the start of my story, but it's pretty long.
To me, economics is a question of fair distribution of wealth balanced against incentivizing work. It's a constant and ongoing question, because the world changes. It's quite possible that in our lifetimes we might have to rethink the whole thing, if an Asimovian future happens, and work becomes something that only machines do. I have put most of my working life into that vision, yet the question of where that leaves human beings is no closer to resolution than it was when I was a boy reading I, Robot (which is, incidentally, nothing at all like the movie).
Perhaps now is the time for us to work it out. Perhaps it can be worked out. Perhaps we can do it. Perhaps the answer is not what any of us think. Perhaps the process does start with people sitting down and blocking further progress until it is resolved. Sometimes the only answer to a tyrannical system is to refuse to be part of it, forcing it to change.
War has been capitalism's traditional response to grinding to a halt, an enormous enforced demand to kick start the economy and occupy surplus labour. But even that is not a viable solution any more, because the capital destroyed is greater than the capital captured, even for the victor, and modern war doesn't occupy First World labour any more, indeed, there are only professional armies left, and they aren't even needed if a really desperate war broke out - instead entire countries can be rendered uninhabitable in minutes. The existing weapon stockpiles are perfectly sufficient to fight any war without gearing any new business at all. The business of war is just another thing bankrupting us.
I believe there are better answers. Some of them are as simple as a collection of tweaks to the existing system. They are worth trying, since the cost is small. But I believe far more major changes need to be made, that impending resource catastrophe should not be taken lightly, nor should the dangers of global warming, that both of these are driven by the very nature of international capitalism. This really is the big chance we've been waiting for, when it has become clear that the system isn't doing right by enough people to justify ignoring the perils.
NZ may not have an enormous part to play in this, but it could still be significant. We are probably in one of the best situations in the world to take a path of sustainable growth, by taking all of the costs into account. We're not bankrupt yet, nor do we answer to a higher power, as the European countries now must. Our Parliament has extraordinary powers by comparison to most countries in the world to make rapid changes. We've already turned our backs on superpower war once. Why shouldn't we turn our backs on a slide into inequitable poverty and reckless resource depletion, and privatization of many things we spent my whole life paying for?
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Hard News: Occupy: Don't call it a protest, in reply to DexterX,
That it is wishful thinking and won't happen as well as it is just plain bullshit which is why Social credit aren't around.
I don't think we're as powerless to change as you think. It only takes a law to pass through parliament, and bang, we've got a transactions tax. As for why it's bullshit, do tell. That was, after all, what I asked. I didn't ask whether it's going to happen, because neither of us has a crystal ball.
What put us where we are now and where in fact are we - please tell?
Certainly. The world is going through the longest, deepest recession that has happened during my or my parent's lives. This has come about because NZ, along with all of the wealthiest countries on the globe (except for China) have been unable to follow fiscally sensible plans. In labeling any number of good ideas as either capitalist or socialist, we have managed to miss the important question about those ideas on their own merits, whether they are good, or bad. We have seconded to idealism, the right to plan our own futures, to take decisive moves that might have averted the steady rise in the basic cost of life for most people.
Believe me when I say you don't know what I think and you don't get where I am coming from.
I believe you. I'm simply reacting to your opening remark:
The list if executed creates, to my mind, a super socialist state that rewards the failure of governance with a larger tax take and thus a greater buffer for bureaucratic incompetence and wastage.
Which struck me as neoliberal garbage, I'm sorry. There has been a failure of governance, for sure. But it's hardly super socialism to make a few changes to get the economy heading in the right direction. Hickey didn't make any mention of increasing social spending. Quite the opposite he said:
8- Balancing our budget as quickly as possible to reduce the burden of debt on future generations.
Which isn't a suggestion to build a war chest for the next Think Big. It's about not hemorrhaging money until we go broke. As any capitalist would, if it was their own money at stake.
"as a direct result of privatisin public companies through out NZ, the countries debt was reduced from 67% of GDP in 1984 to 60% of GDP in 1994..(Fisher 199)
So what happened to public debt, during the 9 years of Labour, as a % of GDP and why?
Yes, Muldoon went nuts and borrowed a ton of money, and Labour was put under enormous pressure to sell, to raise money as quickly as possible. It was a shocking display of the hubris of power and we're paying for it even now. Hickey is not suggesting that.
Public debt under Clark's Labour was brought under control. Why? Because it's the sensible thing to do. Unfortunately, private debt went totally unchecked and skyrocketed. That is something legislation could actually make more difficult, if we are capable of learning the lesson that too much debt is a bad thing.
Does any of the tinkering suggested in the wish list actually do much of anyhting?
It does a hell of a lot more than nothing, which is our current alternative. If you have others, table them.
Consider these questions and you might make more sense of things.
Done. They raise more questions. Your turn.
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Hard News: Occupy: Don't call it a protest, in reply to DexterX,
I don't feel there is much of any worth in Bernard's list.
So you think bailing out failed finance is a taxpayer responsibility? That foreign ownership of them is a good idea?
What do you see as the downside of a Financial Transactions Tax?
I'm not really seeing a "super socialist state" out of the concept of balancing books, encouraging saving, discouraging speculation, and moving away from the wealth of the nation being tied up in wooden shacks. In fact, to even think that strikes me as a perfect statement of what is wrong with our political economic discourse. To make a binary out of socialism vs capitalism, when it's actually just a matter of broken or working capitalism, is precisely the kind of foolishness that put us where we are now.
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Hard News: Occupy: Don't call it a protest, in reply to DCBCauchi,
All the usual suspects trying their usual tricks. Then looking down the barrel perplexed when all they hear is a 'click'. Is it a click? As some guy explained 'that Gramsci shit', the gun's in each of our heads.
You're reminding me of Rage Against the Machine lyrics. Bullet in the Head. 15 years too early.
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OnPoint: PREFU 2011: "What credit downgrade?", in reply to Bart Janssen,
It does seem to me that National are a little bit caught by surprise that they will get a second term.
You reckon? I think they made it so quite deliberately. And I'm pretty sure they haven't abandoned their hopes to cut the crap out of the budget, they just figured that if they do it in a second term, then that's another whole term that Labour isn't in power. That they will quite possibly have an increased mandate means they can cut all the deeper, quite aside from the fact that it would make fiscal sense (so long as raising taxes is impossible, as they would have us believe).
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