GUEST BLOG: Bryan Bruce – You can’t have a lifestyle if you don’t have a life.
It is a fact that Covid-19 has had ( and will continue to have for some time) a huge impact not only on our economy but those of our trading partners. So there is no doubt we are in for a major recession possibly a depression by the middle of the decade depending on whose economic modelling you follow.
It is also extremely unlikely, as we open up our borders, that New Zealand will not see more cases of Covid-19 especially as a second wave sweeps the planet.
So we are going to have to face up to the fact that we are going to have much stricter entry rules into our country for a long time ( because this thing is not going to go away in a hurry) and these necessary security measures are also going to impact on our economy.
Economically then, we are in for tough times.
But money and value are two different things and in this lies some hope.
Socially we may be in for better times because there is a growing realisation the pre-Covid ME society failed so many of us and that only a return to a WE society, where we all cooperate with each other rather than simply compete, will see us through this crisis. Certainly we won’t get through this thing unless we all work together to defeat it.
Morally we may also be in for better times as the value of sharing becomes the measuring stick of a person’s worth to society rather than the glorification of money and wealth accumulation we have witnessed year on year in publications such as The Rich List.
It will take time but I do have hope that this Covid-19 moment in our Aotearoa/New Zealand history will see us move towards a more inclusive society as even those among us who have benefitted most from the neoliberal regime (where the few profit enormously at the expense of the many) come to realise …
…you cannot have a lifestyle if you don’t have a life.
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.
Looking at the staggering increase in Covid-19 cases in the US, Brazil and India etc. I believe we are at a watershed period in human history, and six months from now the globalised economic system -centred on the US dollar and egregious overconsumption- will have collapsed.
Saying so is still a bit like trying to sell life-preservers to passengers embarking on the Titanic, which was proclaimed to be, and was widely believed to be, unsinkable…until it sank.
The shock to the business-as-usual bandwagon will be more than profound.
And yes, people will discover what life is all about, after living ‘the dream’ for so long.
DON’T EAT CHICKEN!!!!!!!
https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3089995/coronavirus-china-suspends-poultry-imports-tyson-foods-plant
Coronavirus: China suspends poultry imports from Tyson Foods plant after workers test positive
All shipments that have arrived or are en route will be temporarily detained, customs agency says
Reuters says affected factory is in Springdale, Arizona
Oscar Wilde was amazing with words. Didn’t he say once “money is only money but a cigar is a good smoke”? I am not trying to trivialise your excellent (asperusual) blog Bryan, but endorse your point that worship of money has been shown to be a fruitless exercise compared to a sharing and caring model that socialism gives us. Even James K Baxter (who I have to acknowledge spread VD to his young female groupies, as well as poetry) noted that you could only wear one suit at a time. A dozen designer suits hanging in your wardrobe achieves little in practical terms but some of us are hung up on consuming and accumulating. As you say, we must recognise the real world we are living in now and change our ways of living.
Having a set place to live that you can afford, and that gives privacy, warmth, security and good neighbours goes a long way towards bolstering people against difficulties. So this sounds interesting in Nelson as tiny homes are very acceptable when no alternative is left for ordinary people after the PTB have allowed land and housing speculators to corner and twist the market for every type of everyday housing:
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/419534/nz-s-biggest-motor-camp-ripe-for-being-tiny-home-showroom
The group governing a 22-hectare motor camp in Nelson has floated plans to convert part of it into a showroom for tiny homes…
The Tahuna Beach Holiday Park is seeking ways to market itself to a wider audience in the wake of the tourism downtown due to Covid-19.
The 94-year-old motor camp beside Tahunanui Beach is often touted as the largest in the Southern Hemisphere, with room for up to 3000 people at a time.
It is also home to a list of permanent residents in caravans and camperhomes, and it is a temporary home for some of the seasonal fruit pickers who arrived each year.
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2020/06/22/dr-liz-gordon-no-open-borders-for-at-least-a-year/#comment-511771
Yes this Pandemic is more dangerous than we have been told by World health Organisation was aware of long ago.
Italian researchers have now found traces of Covid 19 in city sewers!!!!
This highlights how widespread the virus can spread to re-infect us all again like the “Black Death bubonic Plague was’ during the Europe’s pandemic in the 1300’s that killed 20 million.
https://www.history.com/topics/middle-ages/black-death
The Black Death was a devastating global epidemic of bubonic plague that struck Europe and Asia in the mid-1300s. The plague arrived in Europe in October 1347, when 12 ships from the Black Sea docked at the Sicilian port of Messina. People gathered on the docks were met with a horrifying surprise: Most sailors aboard the ships were dead, and those still alive were gravely ill and covered in black boils that oozed blood and pus. Sicilian authorities hastily ordered the fleet of “death ships” out of the harbor, but it was too late: Over the next five years, the Black Death would kill more than 20 million people in Europe—almost one-third of the continent’s population.
My son and his partner just flew home from Germany last week on Sunday 14th and were Covid 19 tested on 16th and now on 22nd June after six days is yet still waiting to get their testing results back and they are now only 6 days away from leaving the isolation unit to go back into the freely mixed population so the system is yet to be truly fixed.
I enjoy your articles Bryan, and I really feel mean and miserly and hyper-critical saying this, but I truly hope your optimism is not misplaced. The caring bodhisattvas that every society needs to function morally and co-operatively seem to be almost non-existent in Godzone today. That, and the fact that difficult times seem to bring out the worst rather than the best in us, and you might just understand my misgivings.
I hope you are right in terms of better times in NZ…
Sadly disaster capitalism loves a disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shock_Doctrine and look how Auckland City has responded with removing many socially responsible projects while keeping the poorly performing situations going… aka COO’s taking each other to court all with rate payers money… $94 million to billionaires America’s Cup still on the table even though most sports events are cancelled around the world with Covid.
Auckland Council not doing anything about the funny money in the first place, aka Ports of Auckland borrowing money to pay a dividend to Auckland Council, so they look like they are doing better than they actually are…
We have returning quarantine travellers getting everything for free who left the county in the first place (angry about paying for washing) https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/121625975/coronavirus-kiwis-in-govtfunded-quarantine-hotels-living-in-filthy-clothes while homeless pay back their hotel stays. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/304122/homeless-borrow-thousands-for-motels
i>while homeless pay back their hotel stays. That’s mean stuff, and Labour has to get back in with enough votes to cut this down, and dig the roots out of the ground so they can carry improvements forward.
Peters can go, he’s had his day, choosing what sports side has offered him the best deal. Offer him a knighthood to help him go, he actually deserves one, and has done us better than Sir Wodger. If we aren’t able to have politicians who are decent-coupled-with-pragmatic, then let pollies behave like sports teams. They have to practise harder, choose experienced and informed over charismatic baby faces, replace coaches, get a new zeitgeist, get into winning with good policies that cross the line in the sand drawn against the struggler and the precariat.
Be bold and we will love you again Labour and we’ll forget that we ever wanted to eliminate you like a stoat in a bird sanctuary. And listen to the Greens, they are NZs conscience, they can teach you a few things if you have the nous to listen and have good hard discursive planning meetings with them to shake off any utopian ideas, (so that you look at any problem and solution from different POV, before choosing the top three say to take further).