We are locked into a memory doom loop – radical Ideas the Left need to consider
I’m currently reading Comrade Bill Anderson, A Communist, Working Class life – the biography of NZs great union leader, and what is fascinating to me is how similar all the problems in the 1950s, 60s and 70s are with what we are experiencing now.
The cost of living was too high
The cost of housing was too high
The workers were horribly underpaid
And The Labour Party was insipid and spineless.
Bill spends most of his time fighting the incremental Labour Party to do anything meaningful!
National exists to stop Labour from getting into power and Labour exists to stop the Left from getting into power.
Here is a poem by a NZ Truck driver in 1952
A driver hasn’t got a chance
To live a life of ease.
He seldom gets a second glance
From those he tries to please.
You drive and sweat from dawn to dark
Your work is never done
A driver’s job is not a lark,
There’s never any fun.
You haven’t time to catch your breath
Noises drum in your brain.
They work you nearly half to death –
It really is a strain.
Back to the depot and load there!
The bearings are running hot!
Back to the depot and load some more,
Your ‘smoko’, it is not!
That’s from 1952, and the same stresses and the same demands and the same pressures are what workers face right now. When people say we can’t risk Green Party policy, that it’s too radical – I feel like we have been trapped in an endless loop of history and it’s only by adopting new ideas that we are ever going to break that cycle!
Catastrophic Climate Change, geopolitical trade tensions and the hollowing out of public infrastructure to cheap management teams who milk monopoly rentals while the asset deteriorates.
I’m not asking for socialism from the NZ Left, I’m just looking for basic regulated capitalism!
The 30/30/30 neoliberal debt straightjacket is designed to ensure the public never get fully funded public services.
How on earth can more user pays mythology be the answer when it’s the cause of the current malaise!
Adopting more user pays to solve our problems is like using cancer to cure syphilis.
We need new ideas.
We need to consider new taxes aimed at the wealthy and the speculative.
We need to remove the tax yoke from the working and middle classes and put them on the wealthy.
We need to consider Sovereign Credit as a means to fund new infrastructure.
We need to resource our Communities and make them resilient.
We need way more artists.
We need sustainability.
We need to defend our Economic Zone.
We nee to be 100% electrified and 100% sustainable.
We need a pharmaceutical industry.
We need a data centre industry.
We need a drone industry.
We need to produce things here rather than be a raw material producer.
We need way more native forests.
We need way less pine forests.
We need a new inshore shipping network.
We need more rail.
We need more food security via a third state backed supermarket.
We need less trucks.
We need less cows.
We need more wool production.
We need local investment in R+D.
We need post-growth capitalism.
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A pharmaceutical industry sounds like a winner. Making high-value goods like pharmaceuticals would lift our labour productivity, and minimize the disadvantage imposed by our isolation from the big markets overseas (freighting pharmaceuticals would cost much less than freighting timber, wine, meat and fruit).
But tell me, why do we need more artists? And how are you going to produce more artists? State-funded art is generally crap (as one 18th century wag put it “the mushroom grows in the open field, the toadstool under the tree”), and real artists will find a way to make art no matter what the circumstances. Quality, not quantity.
Government is a drug. Like NASA it starts with a bang then stagnates into a bureaucratic mess. Just imagine an iPhone versus a North Korean State manufactured phone.
Anarchy is the only way forward. We do not need a state. We reject the premise that coercion is required for societal organization.
we need wind power ; https://www.katricktechnologies.com/wind-technologies
we need tide power :https://www.ecowavepower.com/port-of-la/
And heaps more possibilities out there.
We need hemp, bamboo industry. https://www.labroots.com/trending/biotech-and-pharma/22023/hemp-supercapacitors-outperform-kinds-batteries-2
The world has moved on possibilities are endless ( use google) but unfortunately we are stuck in outdated industry’s that benefit those that pull the strings (LPG terminal).
The problem with the Left Bloc when they get into Power they do nothing and just keep complaining about National . Hey it’s our turn to run the country can’t see Captain Chippy doing 5/8 th’s of FA
IMHO.