I’m not qualified to talk about the medical aspects of the 2019 nCov virus.I think we should all simply do what our public health professionals recommend as they put measures in place and time will tell whether it will wreck the kind of human havoc that many fear.
What I DO know for a fact is that China’s response to the outbreak in effectively putting 11 million people into isolation in the City of Wuhan, the closure of factories and the limitations on travel not just to and from China but from other countries where there have been outbreaks, has already impacted on the global economy.
In the last couple of weeks we have seen Stocks and Shares in companies whose products or services rely on trade with China plunge on global markets and many retailers who are dependent on goods from China now face a new struggle that may put some of them out of business.
While no one can predict the outcome this virus will eventually have on the world economy and our everyday lives, the outbreak should give us pause to reflect on whether the neoliberal agenda of closing down local production and outsourcing as many of the things we need for our daily lives to overseas locations where labour is cheaper , was such a great idea.
In the immediate post war years we were pretty much a self – sufficient little country. Yes we imported a few things but there was low cost essential foods for everyone, we built our houses out of timber we grew and we even made our own trains.
Those days are gone. We can’t make cellphones and laptops for example, but we could reduce the impact the ups and downs of the global economy has on us here at home by fostering local industries and reducing our contribution to gloabl warming by buying local whenever we can rather than imported.
Coronavirus 19 is not a hoax as Trump declared at a recent rally. We have to take it seriously and look after ourselves and the health of others by taking all the precautions our public health advise from regularly washing our hands to avoiding public meetings and closing schools as may become necessary if the outbreak worsens.
But however mild or bad this virus proves itself to be, either in the short term or long term, it should give us all pause to reflect on the how dependent consecutive governments over the last 40 years have made us on what happens overseas and ask ourselves “Can we be more self-sufficient and less dependent on global markets?”
I think the answer is “Yes we can. If we want to”.
Bryan Bruce is one of NZs most respected documentary makers and public intellectuals who has tirelessly exposed NZs neoliberal economic settings as the main cause for social issues.
If we are not brave enough to change our economics to a cooperative based business model then at least shift to a more Keynesian approach.
Our universities follow a neo liberal thought stream and do not equip our graduates with a wider perspective.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynbgMKclWWc
We have suffered loss of our resilience because we are dominated and ruled by a handful of uber wealthy off shore shareholders running in the guise of holding companies. They rule us and we have no say. Our elections do not change this.
Trust me. This is just the tip of the iceberg of all the deceptive shit the government needs to do after decades of running the joint down.
Agree, except for the Trump hoax thing which needs needs to be taken in context.
War is the other situation where being an actual nation is important with control of food production and industry. We have lived through one of the longest peaceful stretches in human history in this part of the world but that is an aberration historically.
Yes, also time to take stock and see if the global neoliberal strategy is working for NZ.
While many have made a fortune off grocery, Fonterra nearly went bankrupt with their China policy and overseas investments and scandals. Mainzeal went bankrupt in the middle of a housing boom again by ‘loans’ to Chinese nationals. Fletchers has been a the red for a while even though we are in a housing boom and labour has never been cheaper which is the neoliberal mantra. Cadbury is stripped with funny money schemes by it’s US owner. Many of NZ companies are now more than 50% owned or managed by Foreign companies and at the mercy of their decisions. This makes profits now one of NZ’s biggest exports. Importing in low wage workers and future beneficiaries, the Asian pensioners tripling, in a welfare state will require a massive tax burden in the future and our interest in criminals from overseas being resident in NZ, is also spiking a tripling of prison builds.
Is the future of NZ, one of poverty, inequity, loss of welfare, environmental loss, loss of assets, and brain drain? Seems like that is our low wage strategy which benefits the 1%, many of whom don’t actually live in NZ very often.
Hello Bryan – more of us are getting on the wavelength of your thought:
While no one can predict the outcome this virus will eventually have on the world economy and our everyday lives, the outbreak should give us pause to reflect on whether the neoliberal agenda of closing down local production and outsourcing as many of the things we need for our daily lives to overseas locations where labour is cheaper , was such a great idea.
Some don’t think much at all,. just go on accepting what comes day by day, ordained by people separated in space, time, experience and commitment to most of the other humans (and living things) in NZ. I recently spoke about deteriorating conditions and confrontations with tourists to a travelling pair, who shook their heads wisely – “That’s just how it is these days’. They were travelling to experience NZ and us, but looked like no new thoughts or visions worth keeping were generating in their heads.
So others, the minority have to think harder, the burden can’t be shoved away, for fear of the sure, inevitable tears, heaving sobs and out of those the sounds of ‘What If’, followed by the saddest words in the English language, ‘If Only’.
If it turns into a full-on pandemic then one invaluable effect could be just this, the opportunity to click the ‘Re-set’ button, not only on our approach to the economy but also to the environment, to our communities, to all that represents Aotearoa, and to our fundamental values as individuals and as a nation.
I think that we’ve long been in need of just such a re-set. According to how we respond to the challenges that arise, so we can look towards a much healthier and better future.
Globalisation has always been skewed in favour of the corporates. International finance capital moves money around the globe in milli seconds. Companies piss off to where the cheapest labour or resources are. There is virtually unlimited mobility for the owners of capital.
But, if workers employed or unemployed–labour–try to be mobile, and participate in neo liberal world of ‘winners and losers’, then there is often hell at which ever border they try and cross. Labour mobility is a no-no and gets exploited by nationalists, fascists and racists the world over.
So yes, while I have a natural aversion to “Fortress NZ”, the inhabitants of this country may have to go there sooner rather than later. The least we can do is wage war on the neo liberal hegemony that has had this country in a death grip now for 30 odd years.
Fuck the corporates.
Form NZ based cooperatives to provide basic needs. Democracy in the workplace is far more efficient and robust than any corporate profit for a few and ignore the social and environmental consequences type of structure that now dominates capitalism.
Local skills foster resilience over a period of cooperative collaboration.
I will not be at all surprised if the total world mortality by respiratory disease numbers, are lower in 2020 than those for 2019, even though a large and previously unknown numbers of deaths by COVID-19 do increase.
What I mean is that all the precautions people are adopting for COVID-19 prevention will have a major impact on transmission of other infectious diseases particularly ‘common’ influenza which right now is killing people around the world at a far greater rate than COVID-19.
In other words there is no rational way that the spread of this coronavirus should be deemed to be the cause of the entirely predictable world economic collapse caused by the still unregulated financial industry reverting to exactly the same shonky practices as those which caused the GFM in 2008.
Ordinary human beings would rightly jack up were governments to bail out banksters yet again in that circumstance, particularly given it would almost certainly require those same governments to bring on even more austerity. Kiwis who didn’t invest in the guaranteed 10%pa finance industry rorts were largely insulated from the worst of GFM by the fact that apart from kiwibank which had traditional ‘old school’ borrowing practices, the other banks were foreign owned. That and the Christchurch earthquake which stimulated spending. We shan’t be protected this time around.
IMO the arseholes have grabbed ahold of the pandemic and are beating it up as much as they can so that COVID-19 will cop the blame for yet another financial meltdown and people be forced to accept yet another round of socialism for the elites – they privatise profits, but socialise losses. Wait, watch & see.
Instead of ‘the banksters’ being the focus of people’s wrath, ‘the Chinese’ will be. I say anyone for a drop of war?
The coronavirus scare has lifted congestion in Auckland, dropped the price of domestic flights and is about to lower interest rates. Hopefully the background effect is to inspire a renaissance of NZ home grown activity and important reset of priorities away from blind ideological risk taking that is creating massive avoidable crisis in NZ.
There are many examples in recent years where our politicians have connived to let us down for their own interest and benefit.
Just one is the ‘unexpected’ resignation from politics not long before the last election of the then Minister of Health, Dr Jonathan Coleman. It took only a few months before his next job was announced – as CEO of a private health/hospital conglomerate.
In office, he continued running down the public health sector, as did his National predecessors, and then, when he sees the writing on the wall for the Nats, takes top-level employment in the private health sector.
Hardly a mention of the rank hypocrisy and selfishness of such a move in the MSM – or anywhere else!
And that is just one example of many.
There are many examples in recent years where our politicians have connived to let us down for their own interest and benefit.
Just one is the ‘unexpected’ resignation from politics not long before the last election of the then Minister of Health, Dr Jonathan Coleman. It took only a few months before his next job was announced – as CEO of a private health/hospital conglomerate.
In office, he continued running down the public health sector, as did his National predecessors, and then, when he sees the writing on the wall for the Nats, takes top-level employment in the private health sector.
Hardly a mention of the rank hypocrisy and selfishness of such a move in the MSM – or anywhere else!
And that is just one example of many.
You speak many truths Verity.
He was one of many moles.
Big money corrupt and that spreads like the disease it is.
Censorship prevails.
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