Professor Robert MacCulloch is correct – the NZ Right is crony capitalism
Professor Robert MacCulloch is a Right Wing critic of the corrupt crony capitalism that occurs on the NZ Right for their own profit while being intellectual hypocrites.
The NZ Right preach small business morality while acting in the interests of Corporations.
MacCulloch calls it the ‘Chumocracy’…
Chumocracy is threatening New Zealand’s future – Robert MacCulloch
- Long-run economic prosperity is hindered by top jobs being given based on connections, not merit.
- After the 2023 election, many Sir John Key-era politicians were appointed to high-ranking positions.
- The connections game affects both public and private sectors, leading to perceptions of merit being secondary.
Long-run economic prosperity is built on there being rewards for a person’s efforts and ingenuity. However, when top jobs are handed out on connections, not on merit, it falls apart.
Why acquire skills and work experience when there is little in it for you? Why bother?
So it is now in New Zealand. We are in the midst not of a temporary downturn, but of a longer-lasting loss of living standards; stagnation unlike we’ve ever experienced.
The cause is clear cut. It is not the one being sold by the upper echelons of our political and business classes to the media. It is not due to a lack of foreign investment. It is not due to hairdressers being too regulated. It is not due to the tax code needing reworking.
It is because the upper echelons of insiders are favouring mates, blocking the path of deserving but non-connected Kiwis, thereby destroying their incentives to better themselves, and the country, in the process.
After the 2023 election, legions of Sir John Key-era politicians were given high-ranking jobs. Former ministers included Simon Bridges, returning as transport agency chair; Paula Bennett as Pharmac chair; Steven Joyce as infrastructure advisory chair; Sir Bill English as state housing review chief.
Upon appointing Murray McCully to head an education inquiry, Education Minister Erica Stanford said: “He is my old boss. I couldn’t think of a better person.”
Hiring the best is no longer the New Zealand way. It’s a schmoozing game.
Non-politician VIPs brought back include Graham Scott, who Finance Minister Nicola Willis made chair of her Social Investment Agency. He was Treasury Secretary 40 years ago. Matt Burgess, English’s adviser in the Key years, returned to advise Prime Minister Christopher Luxon.
Lester Levy, appointed by Key to chair the Auckland District Health Boards, returned as chair of Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora. Sir Peter Gluckman, Key’s science adviser, returned to head the science and universities advisory groups. We could fill the page.
…remember, all of this corruption is completely acceptable to Right Voters in NZ because they despise the Left so much, they’ll willingly allow a rotten plutocracy rule just to ‘own’ the Left for some culture war grievance revenge fantasy.
The Right scream meritocracy, but it isn’t a meritocracy, it is a rigged game of mates who went to the right Private School.
The same vested interests get served and the voters who enable it turn a blind eye to this cronyism because their hurt feelings towards being made to feel gauche matters more than the common good.
This is who we is now, this is what we have become.
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I don’t feel at ease seeing Mr MacCulloch’s open necked shirt leaving his throat so exposed and vulnerable. Perhaps he is fated by the ‘cull’ in his surname, which will not now be likely to become a ‘Sir’ name.
MacCulloch is right about chumocracy – but it pays to ask why it bothers him. It bothers him because he believes it is a betrayal of the holy scripture of neoclassical/neoliberal economics. He sees it as a heresy that is being committed by his co-religionists.
Therefore, it is a schism within the church of the neoliberal faithful. And like all religious schisms it is nasty and potentially murderous. And it pays to remind ourselves that if our economy and society were managed in the way that MacCulloch favours, we might even be worse off than now.