IF SOMEONE TOLD YOU they could jump off your roof and float gently to the ground, you’d doubt their sanity. Gravity is something we all experience. All of us – bar the seriously deluded – understand that it cannot be overcome. At least, not without the help of parachutes, gliders, hot-air balloons, aeroplanes and rocket-ships. Most of us – but, bafflingly, not all of us – are similarly convinced that the earth is a sphere. Significantly, this conviction is born of the faith we place in science. A spherical earth is not something most of us are able to grasp intuitively. Rather, it is something we trust to be true because we accept the explanations of people clever enough to prove it. In short, most of what we believe derives from direct personal experience. The rest we take on faith. This can be a problem.
For example. If someone attempts to convince a Treasury official that the performance of state institutions is improved by appointing leaders on the basis of their proven expertise and long years of experience within the relevant organisations, and by offering state employees secure lifetime employment, then the chances are the official will respond as if you have just declared that the Earth is flat. Since the number of state servants who can still remember how the public sector functioned before the neoliberal revolution grows smaller with every passing year, the Treasury official’s dismissive response will, almost certainly, be based on faith not direct experience.
Were you to suggest that the entire neoliberal ideology – from which his ideas about the best way to organise the state sector are derived – makes no more sense than the notion of a flat Earth, he would be astonished. He would struggle to believe that any sane person could doubt the veracity of neoliberalism. Mentally, he would file your suggestion under “N” – for nuts.
The events of the past few days: the appalling failure of our neoliberalised state sector to keep our borders secure from the threat of the Covis-19 virus; ought to produce the same reaction from its defenders as a person who, having jumped off a roof, mysteriously finds himself failing to float gently to the ground.
Certainly, it is difficult to imagine a more convincing example of the way in which neoliberalism has corroded the whole ethos of public service. The civil servants of 50 years ago would have been a rock against which the special pleading of selfish visitors/citizens, and the asinine braying of journalists, would have broken without effect. They would have understood that officials like themselves were all that stood between the people of New Zealand and a renewed outbreak of the disease which had already gauged a huge hole in their economy. Unmoved by the howls of protest of people unaccustomed to being told what to do they would have enforced the rules without fear or favour. What does it say about the state of our state that the only people who can now be relied upon to protect it are the personnel of the NZ Defence Force?
The person I feel most sorry for is Dr Ashley Bloomfield. His own professional training (which, unusually in the neoliberalised state sector, actually relates to public health) told him that granting “compassionate” exceptions to the strict requirements of self-isolation and quarantine would be extremely unwise. That ruthlessly defending the border against Covid-19 was the only way to eliminate the virus. He had reckoned without the faux outrage of a news media seemingly unable to understand the need for all responsible New Zealanders to close ranks in the interests of national survival.
Day after day the journalists bleated. “What would you say to those who cannot say farewell to the their loved ones?” Simply by asking that question they must have known that they were helping to dismantle the crucial defences against a resumption of community transmission.
Would their counterparts at the time of the Blitz have asked Winston Churchill such a question? Would they have turned the natural grief of families caught up in a once-in-a-generation national crisis into an excuse for embarrassing the government? Would the journalists of 1940 have deliberately compromised the nation’s resistance for a cheap headline? Not bloody likely!
In the New Zealand of 2020, however, after years of neoliberal corrosion, the Parliamentary Press Gallery knows exactly how to break a civil servant’s resolve. They are well aware of the fundamental caution which utterly pervades the state sector. They know how determined senior members of the public service are to protect their ministers from the clamour of an aroused populace. Evoke sufficient emotion; enlist sufficient support from Opposition politicians; apply sufficient pressure; and to protect his Prime Minister even an Ashley Bloomfield will break. This is how we got compassionate exemption. The Gallery broke the will of the Director-General of Health and forced the Prime Minister to bend. I hope they’re happy.
And, of course, they are happy: in fact they’re delighted. So delighted that they’re still doing it. Still asking the Prime Minister and her Director-General: “What would you say to … ? Don’t you owe an apology to … ?
What was it that Michael Caine, playing the role of Batman’s butler, said: “…some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.” Just substitute the word “worthwhile” for “logical” and replace “money” with “human decency” and you’ve defined the amoral narcissistic pyromania that is neoliberalism.
No matter how high the casualties pile up, broken and bleeding, on the ground below, Neoliberalism keeps pushing humanity off the roof. Because, in their eyes, nobody is falling. In the world defined by their demented vision, we are all floating gently to the ground.
Excellent article, Chris Trotter. Bloody excellent , in fact.
You have hit at the heart of the issue with these neo liberal liars. Don’t ever stop, never stop. Now more than ever we need people of your experience to speak up ! Let them feel the burn. Never stop !
Sock it to them ! Kick their arses!
I Don’t Wanna Stop
https://youtu.be/Yt_Bu1r-Ovg?t=55
You have hit the nail on the head again, Chris.
‘No matter how high the casualties pile up, broken and bleeding, on the ground below, Neoliberalism keeps pushing humanity off the roof.’
Not forgetting Disaster Capitalism, whereby an entrepreneur can sell bottled water to people who have lost their traditional supply due to the effects of neoliberal policies (privatisation, pollution etc.). Or sell tents to the homeless. Or manipulate the prices of basic foods via ‘commodity trading’.
The good news is, the whole neoliberal experiment has generated the outcomes we expected and is in the long expected terminal failure mode. Some of us, who have been fighting the dysfunctional policies for decades are being rewarded by many “I told you so but you wouldn’t listen” moments.
Sadly, the “I told you so but you wouldn’t listen” moments are going to come thicker and faster than ever over the coming months, as the system -having destroyed most of what it requires to persist and now down to the last vestiges of money-printing and grossly overvalued equity markets- collapses.
And sadly, political leaders who apparently are clueless, keep pushing us off the cliff (or as you say, off the roof).
Neoliberalism is a euphemism, of course, a bit of neuro-linguistic programming that makes that which is malevolent sound benign. What sounds better than ‘freedom of choice’? even though we have little freedom and most of our choices have been removed over the decades. Bloody TINA and all it stands for.
See you all at the bottom of the cliff. And no, there won’t be a state-funded ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. (it is too late to install a guard rail, of course).
After which we may start converting golf courses into permaculture centres.
Till then, there are never-to-be-repeated deal on cars and other luxury goods at ‘no interest’ and ‘pay nothing now’ as the overproduction of unnecessary goods piles up in warehouses/
I was thinking, if I can save $3 an hour by purchasing and operating an electric outdoor heater -asz seen on TV- maybe I should buy ten of them and save $30 and hour! After all debts and deficits don’t matter, the Earth is entering an ice age, and the Earth generates oil as fast as we use it, so if we don’t puncture the Earth and suck the oil out it to relieve the pressure oil volcanoes will form and they will erupt all over the place and make a mess of the environment.
That is about the level of thinking of your average neoliberal. And Eric Blair (George Orwell) was so on the money when he wrote [in 1947-1948] that 2+2=5 (in Winston’s torture session at the Ministry of Love).
Of course, it wasn’t ‘Insoc’ that got us but it’s rival, ‘Inglib’.
Of Brave New World (Hat tip to Huxley and Shakespeare).
By the way, not that many people are very interested (and apparently no one in government or Treasury or Ministry of Innovation and Business is)
April CO2
Apr. 2020: 416.18 ppm
Apr. 2019: 413.52 ppm
(Awaiting May’s data update, which will be around 418 ppm)
I thought what a good question and could someone please answer it sanely and practically.
Then I read the first lines:
If someone told you they could jump off your roof and float gently to the ground, you’d doubt their sanity. Gravity is something we all experience. All of us – bar the seriously deluded – understand that it cannot be overcome.
Then I thought, that is what some people who took LSD tended to think with the result similar to that of Icarus. Then I remembered that the USA defence forces gave pilots LSD when they were sent off to attack distant countries and the drug LSD helped pilots to go further, without needing sleep, overriding normal body needs. And I wondered if LSD got into USA drinking water, or affected the genes of males in leader positions.
Perhaps the delusions of grandeur and acquisitiveness that most of people who have acquired money seem to be prone to is all part of the affects of the post WW2 drug and chemical age. This started with the finish of a vast number of Jews in WW2, after which the profit-seeking industrial and agricultural chemical companies have had a ‘field day’. They, and the separate pharmaceutical companies have put out product equalling? – say 1 kg for each person on the planet. A huge amount has been produced with noticeable affects, some good, some bad, but loading the planet with new or ‘improved’ atoms and molecules. For instance Monsanto which became a ‘bad’ brand and sold out to another company but I think, same product under different name.
We have poisoned the well, the water is not pure, and neither are we. We have killed the good by wilful neglect or by insane persistence and now our hard-won good life concepts and democracies are dying or dead; the Philippines journalist jailed by deliberate misuse and flouting of the law with the co-operation of their courts, is hanging on to theirs by her fingernails. (Radionz this a.m.) Perhaps the tech innovations are Nature’s or God’s way of getting rid of us before our love of clever cupidity and capitalism kills off the earth.
“how much longer must New Zealand be damaged by Neoliberalism’s demented perceptions of reality?”
Chris yet another great depiction of the rotting carcass of Neoliberalism, and it will go longer until the establishment who have embedded the corrupt principles of Neoliberalism are completely banished from the parliamentary ‘trough feeder’s minds and the corporate media firstly.
Then the Government should have the courage to make changes in policy to make a ‘shared commonwealth economy’ live again as we lived through during the 1950’s as teenagers my friend.
If you think “Neoliberalism’s demented perceptions of reality” is dead and buried, let’s get National and ACT to say what they would do if they get into power in 2020?
Blah blah … we were left with worst debt ever from an “fiscally irresponsible shambles of a coalition” … blah blah …UNPRECEDENTED debt .. blah blah, .. cut taxes for the top performers, businesses and farmers (our backbone) in the economy and let this trickle down to the minions…. blah blah… cut contributions to Kiwisaver back to 0.001% until we get out of the hole that the Labour Party left us with …blah, blah… bulk-fund and private partnership all schools….blah blah..privatise health…blah blah.. get rid of Nanny State Resource consent…blah blah…a little bit of pollution should be permitted until we can come up with better cost-effective technologies…blah blah….it’s too cold to swim in rivers anyway, so why bother about the pollution when we have bigger priorities …like the economy…let’s have a new flag because the old one’s got Covid connotations….blah blah … more powers for the SIS to keep us safe…law and order…blah blah….have US Nuclear ships back here….and on an on ad nauseum…
And their coalition partners ACT …blah blah blah …raise GST to 40% to stimulate the economy and lower income taxes for everyone …. blah, blah …. compulsory euthanasia for anyone undesirable …. blah blah… make all new babies born from now onward be called David Seymour … blah blah…more sensibler than Peter Dunne … blah blah … assets should be able to sold to anyone regardless of whether they live here or not…blah blah …bananas… blah blah ….. more jails and tougher sentences…blah blah ….. state-funded statues to be built of Roger Douglas, John Banks and Don Brash…. blah blah….have the statues in wealthy suburbs or gated communities … blah blah.. zero business tax. … blah …. limitless undeclared political donations … blah blah blah… and put the retirement age up to 75 from September 30th 2020…blah blah… get rid of guillotines….blah blah….make New Zealand a tax haven….blah blah…
Have you seen the moral and social carnage in America from rampant Reaganomic neoliberalism which began in the 1980’s?
A more advanced capitalist, user-pays, elitist, trickle down bullshit neoliberalism …. thank goodness David Lange had a bit of a sit-down and a cup of tea, once he realised what neoliberal filth had infiltrated the Labour Party because of Muldoon. It slowed down NZ becoming the USA 53rd State in the South Pacific…
Americans without healthcare die, Americans lose their jobs and lose their healthcare then die, essential workers paid minimum wage, no PPP and die. You have a President who thinks that giving yourself a bleach colon-cleanse will kill the virus, and if enough sycophants shine sunshine up your anus, it will also kill the virus.
Open the economy, full steam ahead, damn the torpedoes, the virus is almost gone anyway. US demented Neoliberalism –
It’s a sick, twisted joke what the right-wing neoliberals like Trump have done to denigrate Science and promote division and lack of a human, social contract for citizens…
We need to rid ourselves of the demented neoliberal scourge here in New Zealand …. before more die on its heartless altar, like the dying embers of the Incans towards the end of their demented “civilisation”.
The French had a more expeditious way of ridding themselves of their demented “let them eat cake-brigade”, as one of the David Seymours alluded to this in his blah-blah neoliberal manifesto.
Demented right enough Chris…..
Is there a single word to stand in contrast to ‘neoliberalism’? ‘Socialism’?
‘egalitarianism’ as I grow up in the 1950’s with it and we all shared in the “common wealth” of our country.
That was not socialism; – rather it was ‘simply all sharing the fruits of our wealth’.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egalitarianism
Egalitarianism (from French égal, meaning ‘equal’), or equalitarianism,[1][2] is a school of thought within political philosophy that builds from the concept of social equality, prioritizing it for all people.[3] Egalitarian doctrines are generally characterized by the idea that all humans are equal in fundamental worth or moral status.[4] Egalitarianism is the doctrine that all citizens of a state should be accorded exactly equal rights.[5]
The term egalitarianism has two distinct definitions in modern English:[6] either as a political doctrine that all people should be treated as equals and have the same political, economic, social and civil rights,[7] or as a social philosophy advocating the removal of economic inequalities among people, economic egalitarianism, or the decentralization of power. Some sources define egalitarianism as equality reflecting the natural state of humanity.[8][9][10]
Cg
I don’t think we have ever been treated as equals although the sentiment may have a nice ring to it.
Socialism was the thrust of the first Labour Govt but the leaders did not follow though with the many powerful Socialist ideas discussed in cabinet.
The State as a parent provides security and protection to its family when based on Socialism in its wider sense..
The privateers who preach unbridled market forces as the family rules, have never looked after the family, nor the country and its environment nor kept peace in the global community.
By the way, although the border dispute between India and China is not directly related to the topic of neoliberalism pushing us off the cliff edge (roof), it is symptomatic of the us versus them mentality that neoliberalism fosters (despite all the rhetoric about free trade).
We are required [by our capitalist masters] to adore nations that embrace capitalism and abhor those that don’t. So, given the choice, we must side with India against China, right?
I learned something new today. It seems that China has been struggling to bring India to the table for many decades over the incorrectly drawn border 0incorrectlky drawn by the British of course; how many times did they manage that? About a hundred times.
Anyway, it may well be that China is in the right on this matter.
‘Historically, the border disputes existed since 1947, when India got independence from British rule. This was the era of the Chinese revolution when a weak, corrupt and naïve government of Nationalist Party (Guo Ming Dang) was in power in Beijing, and the Communist Party of China, led by Chairman Mao, was over-engaged in the power struggle. The Government in China at that time was not strong, not stable, or not visionary and were fighting for their own survival. They were least bothered with their International borders, whereas, they were focusing on their grip on Beijing city only, as a symbol of their Government. The Britsh demarcation of the border was unjust and one-sided. There were Chinese territories marked into Indian control and vis-à-vis. The people’s republic of China was established in 1949, since then, China was demanding a rational border, but India was denying and delaying to resolve the border disputes.’
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/cause-tension-between-china-and-india
Needless to say, the US has been courting and cajoling India into becoming a core nation in its ‘containment of China strategy’.
Where does that leave NZ, with the most powerful neoliberal nation, supposedly our ally, going down the drain super-fast, and China, supplier of everything from televisions and phones to footwear and garden tools, in deep trouble.
India, of course, is headed for basket case status, having inherited the loot-and-pollute and who-cares-about-the-poor attitudes from Britain, and now having out-of-control coronavirus.
Not that I am saying we’d be better of under Chinese-style communism because pollution respects no borders and we can die just as quickly under a pseudo-communist regime just as under a neoliberal regime. And China, though it has elements of communism, cannot be truly described as a communist state -despite all the ‘reds under the beds’ rhetoric we’ve heard since the 1950s- because it has elements of dictatorship and a corrupt hierarchy.
Sorry to give you the taking colonies with flags skit again but it is funny and so right.
Eddie Izzard (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9W1zTEuKLY
and
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrOgGxSgGF4&t=0s&index=51&list=PLwvjQhNqJrV07DytQkGqG0XhsxL_ggQep
The Kuomintang backed by the USA gave it a good go at taking over China after WWII when the Japanese were pushed out of China and Korea.
The Kuomintang were pushed out of China to Formosa along with the USA backing. China had enough of corruption and warlords running the show along with foreigners and thieves.
Then the USA concentrated on Korea but got beaten back to run a puppet govt in South Korea after terrible punishment was meted out to innocent civilians by the USA and allies including NZ.
The carpet bombing on Korea by the USA was a very dark moment in human history where millions died.
Considering China’s use of the ‘nine dotted line’ drawn by one British person in a hurry to validate their take over of the entire South China Sea I suspect that China is just lying.
BTW, Taiwan is also not part of China even though China now claims it and a large part of the rest of the world goes along with that lie.
Britain’s part in this border is more than suspect for reasons you havce touched on.
But when the Kuomintang fled to Formosa they were not welcomed by the indigenous people who had and uprising against the new colonisers.
They were over whelmed and forced to comply with the new rulers.
QZ.com is hardly a place to avoid US propaganda if you are serious about gathering information.
Taiwan has factions that are anti and pro reunification with the mainland.
i take heart from the work being put out by economists against neoliberal ideas and policy. that the economists are becoming louder and are speaking to the public not just each other.
the challenge i guess is to be loud enough for the messages to get past all of those flat earth public servants to be heard by government.
and the challenge of limits to the imagination of government.
and limits to my ability to write as interestingly as Chris…
https://berl.co.nz/economic-insights/employment-and-skills-gdp-and-inflation-global-issues-government-and-fiscal
http://www.levyinstitute.org/publications/guaranteeing-employment-during-the-pandemic-and-beyond
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vNURrebGxw&feature=share
It is the dumbness of the average Kiwi that keeps things as they are, full stop.
Well it hasn’t slowed down, much less stopped.
The bill to regulate the organic sector currently heading into select committee is laden with neo-liberal presumptions, a user pays vehicle for users who have long since developed their own much cheaper and actually respected certification regime during the decades of bureaucratic sclerosis. This bill will do nothing for the sector except employ the coercive power of the state to exact tribute, like some Persian satrap or petty crime boss.
Many growers who supply week end growers markets use a “spray Free” principle while many are also Organic but avoid registering as Organic which is too much bother and expense.
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