We need a revolution at the ballot box
In 2010, the 388 richest individuals owned more wealth than half of the entire human population on Earth
By 2015, this number was reduced to only 62 individuals
In 2018, it was 42
In 2019, it was down to only 26 individuals who own more wealth than 3.8 billion people.
In 2026, one man, Elon Musk, holds more personal wealth than the poorest 46% of the world’s population combined.
This isn’t a democracy, it’s fast becoming a feudal plutocracy on a burning planet.
Every aspect of our existence is monetarised for big data to sell us more stuff we can’t afford. We are alienated and anesthetized by a consumer culture that keeps us neurotic and disconnected. Our work, our existence, every move we make are all built to suck money to a minority class that sits above us while under neoliberalism, globalization, financialization, and automation, our existence as individuals has only become more disposable.
NZ will be one of the few lifeboats left and we need to start accepting that as global warming gets worse and worse.
Ultimately, the issue is a full scale reform of the neoliberal state. In the words of the greatest living NZ Unionist, Robert Reid…
…THIS is the real issues in NZ.
We think the masquerade of representative democracy puts us the people in control – it doesn’t! The Wellington Neoliberal Bureaucratic Elite stops transformative change.
A Democracy changes the Government.
A Revolution changes the State.
We need a revolution from an election.
The foundations of the 40 year neoliberal experiment in NZ have been exposed and found to be cracked to their core, with the climate crisis demanding a radical change, this pandemic is the perfect time to challenge the religious orthodoxy of free market dogma.
This is a unique challenge for the NZ Left ever since Identity Politics over took class politics as the dominant theory on our side of the political divide. It means currently that the Left in NZ are intellectually better prepared to organise a WoC Mommy Blogger Trans Ally free the nipple petition on Action Station than they are to debate the hegemonic structure of neoliberalism.
Woke Identitarians will scream patriarchy, racism and sexism to explain our malaise but the truth is economics and the weaponisation of scarcity is designed to erode class solidarity so that those hegemonic structures remain.
This cancel culture has left the Left intellectually ill prepared to debate the failures of the free market economy and the solutions we must adopt to get out of this.
The reality of catastrophic climate change alongside an AI economy that squeezes workers into a precarious gig economy with zero security as the plutocracy writes the laws from their interests as culture war hate algorithms trick us into turning on each other.
The true demarcation of power in a late-stage-capitalism-liberal-progressive-domocracy is the 1% richest (plus their 90% enables) vs the 90% rest of us.
The moment a political narrative on the Left that offers left wing populism to counter right wing populism can focus itself, people hungry for solutions will come.
We as a population, a culture, a society, will not vote our way out of this political malaise. It will take catastrophe to change things, a mixture of climate desolation, plague and an economic depression equal to or worse than the great depression to create the forces of change. When the media cannot sweep under the rug, whitewash corruption, or make excuses for our oligarchs, when the lie that we live in “functional” democracies can no longer be sold to the masses, then, maybe, change might happen. But Millions will have to die first.
As with almost everything, people expect too much.
They listen to what politicians say or they just look at them and say, the Greens always said they’d have a leader from both sexes and they haven’t got that now so I’m not going to vote for them. ‘
Chippy really needs a rocket under him to make him bolder and do brave things for people and he hasn’t shown that’s likely to happen, so I won’t vote Labour.
Peters, Seymour and Luxon all have egos a mile wide so those are the guys to vote for despite knowing they are all egotists who seldom deliver on their high-flying promises. They sound very confident and substance doesn’t matter. Shiny baubles are what attract people.
Voters choose to be offended by the antics in TPM or Greens or anyone else but they are never offended by the Coc’s horrible behaviour and dishonesty. They never think that what they are told sounds too good to be true, knowing what we know.
The lesser, more realistic and attainable goals from the left aren’t as exciting to listen too. There is caution, there are facts to back up the caution but they can’t take being told No, not possible given the restraints we face.
People vote like spoilt children who think Santa exists, really. You just have to know the right people.