It is inevitable as a country that we needed to rapidly move to level three and four in our response to be able to suffocate the spread of the virus.
This will shut down most economic activity and working people must be protected beginning the workers in the front line of confronting the crisis.
The government must ensure all working people, in jobs or not, receive a living allowance through the next six months or until it is abundantly evident we have conquered the viral threat.
Any essential service like those in transport, food distribution, or health care, that tries to sack workers or shut down its operations and walk away should be taken over by the government to ensure continuity.
Private hospitals care should be nationalised and integrated with the public system.
The problem with the current system is that it is based on commodity production for profit. If businesses can’t make money they won’t invest. If banks can’t make money they won’t lend.
For 150 years that system spread across the globe and revolutionised production and trade globally. It has achieved almost continuous growth at an average rate of 3%. This rate allowed it to double in size each quarter-century.
But increasingly that system has become inimical to the survival of the human race and the planet we live on.
The system’s short-term profit-seeking myopia is also destroying the atmosphere we breathe and has allowed global warming to reach the level where there will soon be irreversible feedback loops we can’t control.
The way we produce and distribute food destroys the soil and poisons our diets. Take New Zealand’s Dairy industry as an example. The land and waterways are being plundered so Fonterra can use coal to dry the milk into a powder of very modest nutritional value to be exported to China and eaten by a middle class that is convinced it should despite widespread lactose intolerance.
Vast forests that are the lungs of the planet are being gobbled up for short term exploitation and profit.
We produce vastly more than we actually need as businesses compete with each other to become number one and destroy their rivals.
Vast numbers of commodities are produced and then destroyed if they can’t be sold for a profit.
Capitalism’s crises are actually crises of overproduction of commodities relative to the system’s ability to seel the collective proceeds of humanity’s effort for a profit.
The last few decades have seen an explosion of debt as the only way to keep the system ticking over.
That accumulated debt mountain has become the systems Achilles heal. It is toppling over today and it will take us down with it.
Late capitalism has reached an impasse.
The Covid 19 virus was the trigger that has tipped the system over and we will never be the same again.
We face a crisis like the Great Depression of the 1930s with 20-30 percent levels of unemployment across the globe unless we decide to go in a completely new direction for the recovery that is needed.
The greed of the one percent drove the reckless debt creation and frenzied stock market rise. Private equity companies have taken over more and more companies and loaded them with debt to avoid tax while they restructure and rip up workers’ rights.
The last decade has also seen most major companies do share buybacks which pushed up share prices and rewarded the existing stockholders.
The bailouts that happen as a consequence of the crisis and recovery that is to come should not be a bailout of the shareholders like in 2008 but a bailout of the workers.
When we restart production and distribution working people should be in charge of what, when and how this is done.
Air New Zealand has for example, effectively been completely nationalised to ensure its survival. But the new Air NZ should be happy to have half the number of planes it currently has because the planet can’t keep using air transport as the principal means of moving people and freight around the globe to protect the climate.
Everyone’s job should be protected and transitioned to new occupations if the new 30-hour workweek we will adopt for the jobs in the future (with 40 hours pay) can’t employ them all.
A new Air NZ Board shouldn’t be appointed because of their ability to create the biggest and most profitable airline possible. That is currently their legal obligation. We need a board that can count money but also has environmentalists, scientists, engineers, airline workers. Their job is to have a plan for the future of the airline and industry which can be put to the people for a vote. Maybe we could look at the use of airships as an alternative for example. The board members would receive a very modest reward for their public service rather than showered in money like today.
No one would earn a salary of more than $200,000 and all wages should start at the living wage.
Except for the US, we don’t use private profit companies to manage health care, education and many other services.
All other key monopolies and services like banking, insurance, energy production and distribution, transport should also be run as public services with democratic planning and workers co-management and control.
Today, in the crisis we have, humanity’s basic instinct to care for each other comes to the fore when we are allowed. Competitive capitalism has been a barrier to the flowering of those values based on the solidarity needed to transition from Ape to Man and the earliest forms of collective hunting, gathering and farming that created us as humans. That collective solidarity must be restored at the heart of the new way of doing everything that this world now needs for its survival in the very short and very long term.
Don’t use this crisis to try andf impose Socialism by stealth. That is appalling.
We are and always have fought against the erosion of civil rights. Socialist policies as in a fully taxpayer funded health, education and welfare are us protecting people from the excesses of capitalism and people like Mike Treen are all about helping normal people.
You serious?? We have become endangered by the one percent. Are you seriously suggesting we continue down that road?. That’s what’s appalling. It is also appalling any democratic governnent has allowed itself to be intimidated by the one per cent.
What’s also appalling is using a crisis to ram through ideology that was never mandated by the population. This is why we live in a democracy
Are you forgetting what happened to Italy?
Ideology ?- have you been taking lessons from Gosman?
This is about saving bloody New Zealanders lives , you absolute thick- as- a- concrete- post brain dead pillock !!!
Cup a tea and a lie down bro. No need to be nasty.
I was merely pointing out that to ram through such a drastic shift in economic and social policy should derive from some type of mandate from the people. What’s there to disagree with that statement?
So, you are of the opinion that a national emergency needs the ‘ mandate’ of the people, are you?
How long do you think that would take in all practicality, bg?
Do you really think we had time to pontificate, hold a referendum and dickarse around?
Get real , bud.
When I read the headline I thought Martyn was referring to Mike Hosking.
Yeah , – and after all these years you still haven’t answered the questions I and many others have asked you as to exactly WHY the Scandinavian country’s are STILL the most wealthy ( per head of population ) on EARTH !!!
And they do NOT practice full blown American / Western style neo liberal capitalism but rather a MIXED economy !!!
Begone with you. And crawl back into that lower intestine from which you slithered from and proceed to do what your good at, sucking the vitality out of your host.
Totally agree.
In Germany they all pay 50% tax but that covers everything from university free to first class health care.
Imagine the capitalists in this country crying a river over a tax rate that high.
Those Germans live happy, they have no debt hanging over them and their futures are secure.
What a shithole capitalism has created here.
Back to core.
If the new corona virus has a zoonotic genesis, it will most probably not be the last case, and we may expect more or similar to come.
Chances are that the corona virus is a symptom of dwindling microbial biota – e.g. as a result of the past 40-50 years of accelerated capitalization of food production, processing and movement of food around the world.
Complicating matters further is the over-population of some human habitats – another typical monoculture leaking out hazardous surrounding syndromes from air pollution to heavily polluting chemicals from personal use onwards plus all the pharma-waste byproducts, all stripping the living eco-system sterile, the only solution for the microbial biota is to become increasingly aggressive.
This is NOT simply a matter a ‘public health’ under the reductionist perspective of our existing administrative and institutional frameworks.
It is of utmost importance that the proper conclusions are drawn over the coming weeks and months, in principle those have to reflect across all angles of human life.
Blind action will not help much. Panic is a bad advisor.
Humankind will have to redefine spiritual role and material function within the terrestrial ecosystems.
The future after Covid 19 is decided then, through these very moments of reflection.
A strong civil society must lead this process and has to be substantially engaged.
A time of ‘fast-tracking evolution’, so to say…
… early warning systems and community-based disaster management remain a strategic priority.
Talk about Ecology. Talk about Climate Resilience.
System Change. Now.
https://www.reddit.com/r/deep_ecology/comments/fmchnb/how_can_we_leverage_the_next_coronavirus_for_a/
Go back to core.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAZJtFZZYmM
Never let a good crisis go to waste eh?
Talk about taking every opportunity to push a fascist agenda.
We should support all workers absolutely. But wandering around forcibly nationalizing things such as private hospitals is truly communist (i.e. despicable).
If anyone objects to private hospitals being nationalized during a public health crises the police will just push past your objections because that’s what the public have deemed appropriate.
Private hospitals are just a bolt on for the insurance industry and that is truly neoliberal (i.e. despicable).
So, what is? Fascist or Communist? Make up your mind. And produce some evidence.
Yes well, Mike… I got through about half of the article,… then the nagging thought kept coming like needing to get up and have a pee halfway through a good nights sleep…
Who benefits from a Depression or a Recession , Mike?
Who lends the cash via such institutes such as the Federal Reserve , the IMF , the World Bank ,…who raises and contracts the interests rates,… and … who pumps money into an economy making loans for that holiday in Fiji or that new extension to that house or the purchase of a new house and the new-ish car on top of all that easy?
And,… when so much of a mountain of debt is created… purposefully,… and the inevitable recall is then made… guess who gets to buy massive national asset stocks in foreclosures and liquidations at rock bottom prices…?
NZ asset sales sound familiar , Mike?
Who benefited from that?
We cant say the Rothchilds did but the Richwhites certainly did.
See where this is all going, bud?
So on a national level we all get excited about re-nationalization of our former assets,… but globally,… ‘they ‘ still win. Even with the advent of covid19 it can be turned to ‘their’ advantage. They are outside petty national issues. In fact , something like the collapse in global trade and economic health is more than welcomed, – it is the perfect excuse for a rest in the global economy and the way we do business.
It ‘ MAY’ even provide the impetus for the doing away with current systems in favour of a purely ‘electronic’ one… a cashless system if you may,…especially as there is no tying to a ‘gold standard’ or any real items of worth… the FIRE economy gets its wishes granted, perhaps one could call it…
In other words, with a global economy destroyed, with mass revolts threatening by an unemployed and impoverished world population of workers, with govts unable to cope , they will be forced to enact a social program that is unprecedented… and that money has to come from somewhere…and loaning that money has the undesirable effect of becoming a servant to your benefactor…
You have good ideals but unfortunately that is not always grounded in human nature when a crisis occurs…witness panic buying and the ‘fuck you’ mentality it displays… there are the good ones, the virtuous ones, but like a bad 1970’s disaster film, the ‘fuck you’ crowd overshadows the good.
So it is in the global financial world, where psychopaths find a safe haven to breed like vampires and pass on their nefarious legacy to future blood suckers.
This could quite possibly be, the final and completely happenstance / fortuitous means by which to introduce a complete and global cashless society predicated upon by the dictates of a small list of ‘society’s’ who have been pushing for global governance for decades,.. nay ,…hundreds of years…
All it needs now if that is the case ,…is for the silicon chip to be inserted under the hand or on the forehead… and your ‘workers’ and indeed everyone else,.. will gladly accept that rather than see them and their family’s starve to death because they cannot buy anything…they will take the chip.
Mwhahahahahhaaaa !
Interesting though, isn’t it…
Food for thought. Pardon the pun.
Just kiddin’ folks!
Creed – My Own Prison
https://youtu.be/iBBqjGd3fHQ?t=49
The Mark of the Beast RFID chip changes DNA to read “Owned by Lucifer”.
The chip is a two-way transmitter which receives and sends. It is planned for the chips to be turned off for many people. This is how the number carved into the Georgia Guidestones will be achieved.
People will die in their millions but infrastructure will remain in tact. Perfect plan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL4nkYK5vy8
I’m just thinking about one aspect and will say that private hospitals should not be amalgamated with public.
Let them operate separately and fund public properly. Public and private do work in together and it should be a matter where there are suitable fair costs only, not public paying private rates and vice versa. There has been co-operation for yonks. :Let the people have choice. Sometimes it is more effective for public to hire specialists that also have a private clientele as it may not be possible for public to employ an expensive specialist full time and nobody start complaining they may get paid too much etc as that is an argument for another day.
Helena Jordan you sound as if you have been listening/looking at the lunatic fringe. They are infected with another sort of virus. We have enough to do thinking about Covid-19.
Erm, I seriously beg to differ, .. you see, in every field of research, one must collate and document ALL evidence, from anecdotal to empiric and beyond… to indeed practice good science. No matter how bizarre the evidence may seem at first.
The problem with western ‘rational’ thinkers is that they are 300 years behind the times.
They try to explain world and material phenomena using only Newtonian scientific standards , whereas anyone with a modicum of progressive scientific inquiry would at the very least attempt an integration of Newtonian science with Quantum Physics.
THERE ,… you will find the answers you might just be looking for.
One CANNOT explain the now hundreds of thousands of UFO eye witnesses including Sasquatch encounters by mere Newtonian science , where using the 5 senses and the standards of measurement, mass and repeatable experiments in a controlled setting etc are the only criteria. In the age of emerging rationalism, the age of Darwinism, this was all very cubbyholed, predictable and essentially, backed up a theory that is now accepted as fact.
The problem is when that theory starts to fall apart upon close scrutiny and the glaring discrepancies become obvious. Such as Darwinism. And by extension, geological time, carbon dating techniques and related fields to expand the ( so called ) rational paradigm.
I posit there is a God.
I say that he created you , loves you and wants you to be his legally adopted child by the very sacrifice he made by the blood sacrifice of his Son.
Let us look at a few examples of the unexplained and how they actually validate the Bible , shall we?
Perhaps this :
A closer look at – Guy Chases Bigfoot In The Woods – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnJwBAskrf8
Cracking the Bigfoot Code (ThinkerThunker)
https://youtu.be/4EicVEOtm1A?t=8
( And the wealth of evidence is now phenomenal )
Neanderthal: Profile of a super predator – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZbmywzGAVs
The Paul Freeman Film – This is the highest quality digitization ever produced in 1080p
https://youtu.be/rdlUu3Ag_cU?t=10
Or this :
Polystrate Fossils — evidence against millions of years
https://youtu.be/hqUtY23L4iQ?t=1
Rock Strata, Fossils and the Flood with Dr. Andrew Snelling
https://youtu.be/e0imsTv5Ez4?t=3
Or even this ,… to name a few…
The Temple | Bob Cornuke – YouTube
https://youtu.be/zKqDx3RDCos?t=10
Phil Schneider – Deadmen Tell No Tales – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeltiHPR9nw
Steven Greer – Disclosure Project 2001 – Aliens Secret Technology
https://youtu.be/8Of9JX94ls0?t=5298
Nick Pope: UFO Disclosure / Ministry of Defense / Pentagon UFO Program
https://youtu.be/VquXDGy1TMg?t=5
That ought’a keep you busy, and unless you want to go up against renowned PHD’s such as Dr Grover Krantz, ( PHD) ( RIP ) Dr Jeff Meldrum ( PHD) (currently Idaho state university ) and the late Dr John Bindernagel ( PHD ) , I’d suggest you read up well before you dismiss anyone with a different perspective.
Least you become as one of the witch burners of the Renaissance era / primitive science adherents. You just might learn to make sense of exactly whats been going on under our very noses all these century’s…
Will this NZ Neoliberal Government finally flip? Become a Socialist Government, finally?! Return to its roots!✊
This capitalist bullshit might be benefiting some of you but the majority of us need more socialism to balance the system out, too many of us are being exploited by these capitalist narcisstic wankers this country has developed.
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