Lefter | Left wing politics & New Zealand

Distribution is key

October 10, 2022 by emweb

I want to vote for Labour again. I do. But the fact is, Labour is a nominally left-wing party, and that makes it hard. Because why would I vote for a nominal party?

You have to ask yourself, what sort of society have we created when a government is more afraid of a few rich people that of a great many poorer?

There are many problems with New Zealand, but most of them can be solved by just sorting the main one: equitable distribution of the nation’s wealth. And that’s what the true left concerns itself with the most, which is what generates so much fear amongst the wealthy.

New Zealand Labour has never had the nerve or bravery to ever really address this issue, apart from a little fearful noodling about at the edges. Now once again we’re heading into an election cycle where the only consideration is to not startle the centre with any prospect of any real change.

When Jacinda Ardern first ascended to the Prime Ministership, she outlined commitments to national wellbeing and social issues including child poverty, homelessness and the mental health crisis. Labour might maintain progress has been made, but really? Do you feel these things have improved?

If Labour has, why hasn’t the government provided compelling evidence? Who is convinced?

I believe these promises were heartfelt. So what, or who, stopped any progress? It was either fellow ministers, the rich lobby or that fearsome, yet all powerful Middle New Zealand.

Possibly Ardern’s most risible mistake was declaring there would never be capital gains tax. It’s a terrible mistake for any politician to say ‘never’. And Ardern is very smart, so what on earth led to this ridiculous position, and even worse, the public statement of it? We may never know. But that, I feel, was the point at which this government really staked its position as being afraid to make meaningful change, and that it was, in fact, already prostrated at the feet of powerful and wealthy lobbyists.

And then Labour selfishly decided it had the votes to rule alone.

In retrospect, it appears that was Labour’s last brave act, even though I believe it was foolhardy to exclude the Greens.

Some ministers have read Piketty’s Capitol in the 21st Century – it’s a long volume, but if you boil it down, the message is simple: what Piketty calls ‘rentiers’ – landlords – lock up capitol while they impoverish their tenants. Their property does nothing for the nation while keeping wealth from circulating.

Ardern may be afraid that her New Zealand legacy might be that she was ‘the COVID Prime Minister’. And she, and her ministers, handled that extremely well, as evidenced by New Zealand having few deaths from the deadly disease. (I personally lost three relatives in the UK to COVID, by contrast.)

If Ardern wants to be remembered for anything else, I think she’s lost her chance to be bold, as that would have been at the beginning of the second term, since now apparently New Zealanders would rather vote for a human thumb than for her. Is there time to put the house in order before the next election? If that was done well, perhaps that would actually get through to voters.

In essence, Labour has the following problems:

No clear vision or message. (As a microcosm, look at the Auckland mayoral campaign. Winner centre-rightist Wayne Brown appears to have had so few actual policies, he was afraid to talk to media once he land-slid in. But he campaigned on simple messages that anyone could understand. Meanwhile, Efeso Collins had no clear messages apart from free transport, which made everyone think ‘shit, the bloody rates would have to go up even more to pay for it!’ Also, Efeso and his backers failed to mobilise the young vote while the old vote went to Brown. You can mobilise the young vote with messages of hope – the old react more to messages of fear. Why can’t the left understand this, as the right so clearly does?

Lack of bravery to push the issues it supposedly believes in.

Terrible advice (one example: Three Waters is a good idea, but a good idea badly sold is no longer a good idea. If the policy is designed to protect people from rate rises and make the system safer, why in hell has Labour been unable to get this message across? Instead, it’s just assisting all its critics by supplying the ammunition).

Inability to convey the successes it has had in fulfilling any of its aims.

If Labour is spending a fortune on advisers and specialists, maybe consider firing them all. They’ve been next to useless for decades already. Labour needs no help in digging the hole it is in any deeper. Why pay people to help deepen this hole? It makes no sense.

I like Jacinda Adern. She’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, and I absolutely believe her heart is true. I believe the praise heaped on her beyond these shores is well deserved.

But the problems at home need addressing.

Category Commentary, Government, Left, New Zealand, Pacific, Politics, Thought | Tags: | No Comments
Where to now

November 12, 2020 by emweb

In the 1930s, when some Americans met Hitler, their reaction was, “This guy is a clown. He’s like a caricature of himself.” Many went through this whole litany about how even if Hitler got into a position of power, other German politicians would somehow be able to control him [Andrew Nagorski, author of Hitlerland, interviewed in The Atlantic].

That was how people reacted to Donald Trump when he flagged his run for president of the United States, and even after he became president. I warned my friends of this and how dangerous it was to underestimate this clown. Very few took it seriously. Then Trump started reshaping the security forces to his will, demonising the press to sabotage any dialogue critical of him, and playing to the crowds like a risqué buffoon, energising his base [word used advisedly] support.

While Trump was president, he effectively held the United States, and the rest of the world, to ransom. Now that he has lost the election, he is still holding everything to ransom. Meanwhile, other despots look on admiringly: even in defeat, Trump is still getting his way.

Even if it leads to actual armed conflict, Trump wants to stay in the White House, where he’s protected from civil suits on tax, accounting, business practice and sexual predation.

Meanwhile, Trump has embraced a theory he doesn’t understand or believe in because it gives a pivot to his supporters: ‘Trump’s a non-conformist disrupter? But Democrats drink blood and traffic children.’ As farcical and ridiculous as this appears to almost all sane people, that’s a basic tenet of the Q-Anon conspiracy, and yet Trump has been willing to embrace it simply because it seems to put him in a spotlight while making him seem more omniscient. To a self-obsessed fame-freak like Trump, throwing gasoline on the barbecue simply draws attention while speeding the conclusion, damn to the damage.

Meanwhile, in New Zealand, we have Jacinda Adern asserting her authority over a party now beholden to the centre, since it’s the centre that gave her such a mandate. Only a very few – I think three? – electorates that had National candidates voted in also had their party votes go to National. In other words, lots of National supporters voted for their favourite conservative Nat candidate, then gave their party vote to Labour. Mostly this was done strategically to keep the Greens out.

They got their wish. The Greens (who actually do have left-wing social policies) have effectively been excluded from government with enough of a tidbit to be kept leashed.

It’s not all bad, of course. Not at all. Jacinda is a very effective leader, and she’s very good at choosing her words, saying the right thing and not giving too much away when she shouldn’t. I admire her. I think the make-up of caucus should be lauded for its breadth and diversity, fingers firmly crossed that any inexperience is nurtured through before it causes any lasting damage and fallout.

I have one complaint about Jacinda – why did she make unequivocal statements before the election? ‘There will be no wealth tax on my watch’ kind of thing. Why, why, why? Because that’s exactly what we need. Do we really want New Zealand children brought out of poverty? Are we then relying on a magical army of elves riding unicorns to do this for us? Come on! It’s going to take money, and we’re in recession, and most of our problems outside of the pandemic are due to the massive inequality that National fostered over nine years.

Category Commentary, Government, Left, New Zealand, Politics, Thought | Tags: , Adern, Greens, Hitler, New Zealand, Politics, Trump | No Comments
What’s up with this world?

January 17, 2020 by emweb

A lot. So much. We all know it. We have raving despots, and that’s just the neighbours. We have climate problems – whatever the cause is, you can’t deny things are awry in the atmosphere. It seems obvious, but anything we do to help the climate situation will help no matter the cause. We have intractable problems to the right and to the left, and even in the middle, these days. As the middle classes collapse, so must capitalism – at least as we’ve known it.

New Zealand is distant from so much, but it’s a country distant enough to make its own future, unlike many. New Zealand has done this before, but not for many decades, unfortunately. When the whole world was going mad, and almost universally more right wing (including many of the nations that would end up fighting against the Fascist powers) in the 1930s, the New Zealand Labour Party finally took power, helping New Zealand emerge from the Great Depression under left-wing governance. This was under revered Prime Minister Michael Joseph Savage. The transition helped prepare New Zealand for the terrible war that followed, but that war in turn led to a strengthening of the dichotomy between town-and-country New Zealand. As far as the farmers felt, they generated the wealth the townsfolk profited from. If townsfolk weren’t profiting, they were perceived as actively obstructing the profit process with their troublesome unions and demands for more equity. The National Party was the natural champion of the conservatives in the rural heartlands, and Labour the natural champion of the workers in the cities.

You may have heard that the terms ‘left’ and ‘right’ barely have any relevance these days, and maybe that is so. I personally don’t believe so – the different positions are so clear, I believe they’re still relevant.

To boil it down, the right needs failures in society or it can’t have successes, and it likes to propagate human successes despite the human costs this requires. The right actively promotes fear in society to help differentiate class and societal differences, and champions personal greed as a motivational force, lionising the wealthy as forces to the good. The right prefers to punish, rather than to reform, those who might commit crimes. The right reckons that if you can afford something, you ‘deserve’ to have it – even if it’s education and medical care. This all allows for charges of ‘uncaring’, ‘greedy’ and even ‘evil’ from the left.

The left prefers to think about society as a more amorphous structure, so tends to implement policy for the general good. Instead of punishment, the left tries reform. The left tries to create better access to health and educational services for those who otherwise could not afford it. Of course, this allows for the catcalls of ‘nanny state’ from the right, as these measures are almost always impediments to personal wealth creation and accretion since they often concentrate on enforced redistribution. This is hated and despised by the wealthy and aspirational.

So where is Aotearoa New Zealand right now? At the beginning of 2020, we have a fractious Labour Party in power with two fractious partners, all containing lots of stroppy, intelligent people all trying to assert themselves or hold their ground. This is partly for idealogical reasons and partly because they have, let’s face it, relatively easy and very well-paid jobs compared to tens of thousands of the people they govern. (Let me reassure you categorically, from someone who has done both, that putting in long hours sitting on your arse is a damn sight easier than putting in long hours of active work.)

This slightly-left-wing governing mess is all ‘headed’ (not really the right term) by the personable and popular Jacinda Adern.

Opposed to this slightly-left-leaning mess with its whip-smart and engaging leader, we have a well-organised National Party that almost always demonstrates a united front, even when led by that unpopular churl of a man, Simon Bridges. Even his own party doesn’t like him: it’s a testament to National’s unity that he’s still there, but this suits the situation while the party attempts to transmute something into a more acceptable human face to replace him with. Meanwhile, National follows its time-worn policy of chipping away at everything possible that Labour does, trying to make Labour act reactively so that people miss all the proactive things it’s doing. Unfortunately, and as usual, this is working, leading potential voters to add to a pile of growing doubt about Labour’s ability to govern. So despite Adern’s popularity, both here and overseas, Labour might lose the next election.

So?

I have a proposal. And that’s to start almost from scratch. Despite the clear differences between the rural and urban sectors; between those who always want more personal wealth and those who prefer to share; between those who feel they should be able to achieve whatever they want and between those who feel they don’t deserve to; between all those positions and all those entrenched beliefs, there are always things we all can agree on. I believe that’s where we should start.

I believe the current government could consider calling for discussion on those things we can all agree on as a way of going forward. And to be fair, Labour has made some steps in this direction. But I propose this gets tailored into a more essential and guiding ethos that the whole country takes part in.

For example, why don’t we all admit that farming does form the backbone of the economy? How then would we move forward, as a nation? What do farmers really think will benefit New Zealand? What does the government want to do with this?

Let’s all admit that clean waterways benefit all of us. Even farmers like to drink water, and swim in it. Let’s admit that better equality for everyone in this country is better for everyone in this country. The better fed we are, cared-for we are and better-educated we are, the better New Zealand is and the more able New Zealand is to compete, and sell, in world markets. Let’s all just remember that when New Zealand was at its wealthiest during the ’50s and ’60s, education was free for all.

I believe that Labour should start this process within its own ranks, following up with its coalition partners. Build a mission that everyone can agree on and then, very importantly, enunciate. And then go out to the public of New Zealand, and do the same thing, while extending the initiative to the National Party.

Let’s create a country that’s good for all of us, that we all feel good about, that creates first class products for its own citizens and can market these to the world at large, that acts as a beacon to world citizens as an example, and that also benefits the original discoverers of this land and its exclusive flora and fauna.

This process might help to diffuse the fractious partisanship that’s rising all over the world.

New Zealand is an amazing country, we can all agree. But it’s operating well below its potential. Something better change.

Category Commentary, Government, Left, New Zealand, Politics, Thought | Tags: , answer, climate change, Left, Maori, New Zealand, partisanship, Politics, problems, right, solution | No Comments
Lefter 88 ~ What anarchism means to me

August 31, 2017 by emweb

Some people feel they need to be told what do do. They relish the ‘strong leader’ regulating them and everything else. I really feel sorry for you – but I haven’t given up hope for you.

I have to admit what drew me to anarchism in the first place was Johnny Rotten singing “I am an anarchist” in the song Anarchy in the UK (1977). I was just getting into punk when I heard it. Curious as to what that meant, I went to the library and started reading all I could about it, which led to my decades-long convictions.
First of all, I differentiate clearly between ‘anarchy’ and ‘anarchism’. To me, anarchy is what happens when a system collapses. It’s usually messy and destructive. Anarchism, though, is people getting along and doing mutually beneficial things without a system, by which I mean without an imposed system of ‘you must do this, or that will happen to you’.

Anarchism as a political philosophy is really a product of the last 200 years, along with the rise of the left and the organisation of labour, but anarchism as a working concept has more ancient antecedents – there are anarchist strands in what Confucius taught and, for the West, most notably in passages attributed to Jesus going back 2000 years. Siberian villages that had never even heard of the Tsar, even though they were within his empire, functioned as mini anarchist systems … until the tax collectors and military recruiters arrived, anyway. Kropotkin discovered this.
Famous anarchists like Kropotkin and Proudhon initially hobnobbed with Marx and his followers, but soon began to raise concerns about the authoritarian strands in Marxism. This debate became acrimonious enough that, once the communist factions gained a majority in the International conference, anarchists were banned, which rather underlines the charge of ‘authoritarian’, don’t you think? From this point on, the opposite factions of the left fought for precedence over the more moderate socialists between those poles; the socialists could be swayed ether way as ‘swing voters’ within the left. While anarchists had some notable numbers and regional successes in the late 1800s and again between the two world wars of the 20^th century, there were many incidents of communists suppressing, banning and persecuting anarchists along with, of course, Nazi Germany. (It’s hard to find anything like that even going the other way, by the way, in the few instances when anarchists actually held sway: for example Ukraine in the 1920s under Makhno; CNT-run Barcelona, 1936).

Every ‘communist’ system that lasted beyond a few years had dictatorships and a privileged class – even Cuba. Adherents of communism who refute this fact are 1/ historically demonstrably wrong and 2/ deluding themselves. If they believe Communism is a fine principle, just abused by dictatorial types, that’s like saying ‘Christianity is a great idea, shame about what it’s been like for 2000 years in practice.’ The large-scale crimes perpetrated by organised Christian religious denominations are manifest, similarly to almost all Communist systems. This therefore indicates a structural flaw that is too elemental to lead to any wholly successful, non-oppressive result.
In other words, when it came to the danger posed by the authoritarian strands identified in Marxism, Kropotkin and Proudhon were 100 per cent right.

Anarchism contains various strands of its own: Kropotkin (a Russian prince) was an anarcho-communist: he formulated a communism that didn’t require a dictator to run it.
Frenchman Proudhon, informed by the earlier (and British) Godwin, advocated anarcho-syndicalism, in which revolutionary industrial unions formed cooperative interactions with other industry groups to look after themselves and their dependents. They would run their own production houses. In other words, Proudhon’s methods sat wholly outside capitalism. This is actually even more possible in the internet age than it ever was in the 1800s, with computational intelligence able to instantly assess unitary balances.

Enough of history. For a society to function without enforcement, it needs people who genuinely want to do well by each other. Most of us fit into this category at least several times a day. We almost all help people; assist people for nothing; offer support; work together for mutual benefit. Want a hand with that? I can hold the door open. Want to talk about it? Most people don’t need to be told to be good, despite what Christians believe.
The whole thing about rules is interesting to me. I’ve had people maintain that without rules, people would ‘all’ be murdering and stealing. Really, would you? Because I wouldn’t.

I’ve had people say ‘You must obey the laws’. Bullshit. We all choose every day which laws we break and which we don’t. We don’t kill people and steal for one good reason: we don’t want to. Believe me, it doesn’t take long for circumstances to worsen enough that people will do either, no matter what the law says – otherwise we wouldn’t have a prison population. It’s not just bad genes and stupidity, as the entitled middle-aged white men like Mike Hoskings of the world would have us believe. Besides, Hosking is a perfect example of what genes, privilege, stupidity and high income can lead to. What leads to crime is usually all, or varying combinations of, poverty, exclusion, desperation, drug dependency, sociopathy/psychopathy, ill-informed decisions/lack of information.

Practical anarchism is expediency. There are sets of systems in the world. We’re all aware of them. Don’t drive on the other side of the road? Of course not, you’ll crash. You’ll either hurt someone, or yourself. Or both. But we will in a heartbeat to skirt a slip, or flooding, and drive on the ‘wrong’ side. We choose to at that point, otherwise we’d still be sitting there waiting for instructions from an authority figure. We are not automatons. And sure, that’s what authoritarians want: non-thinking slaves.
Do you want to be a non-thinking slave? I doubt it.
I try to apply this kind of logic to every situation in every way. I have done for decades. I like to think I choose every rule I follow or don’t follow. You may think it’s fear of and/or respect for the police/judiciary/government/whatever, but in my case, no. It’s me, choosing.
This is a remarkably empowering philosophy (why not try it?). In my case it was inspired, strangely enough, by Nazi Germany: I decided at 15 years of age to never be one of those people who could claim that pushing 100,000 people into gas chambers was OK because I was ‘just following orders’. At the same time, I decided I would never be one of those people in a queue that leads to a gas chamber.

Like it or not, we currently live in systems we can do very little about. Sometimes every few years we get to add our tiny, almost inconsequential tick to a ballot. Many anarchists can’t bring themselves to do this – that’s their choice. I respect choice.
But as Winston Churchill quoted in the British House of Commons in 1947, “… It has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” I agree with him on this. It’s very wise. Churchill was pointing out that all forms of government (institutions that have authority over people, however those institutions were arrived at) are bad, so yes, I agree. Democracy has usually been the least destructive to human life within those governance systems, true (it’s a different story when democracies go to war against each other, of course). Democracies require a lot of checking and balancing to function, and they require the consent of the losers of every election. And as I said, a single vote every three or four years (we get two in New Zealand: party and representative) is almost inconsequential.

Almost inconsequential.

So I vote.

Category Commentary, Government, Left, New Zealand, Politics, Thought | Tags: , anarchism, anarchy, Godwin, johnny rotten, Kropotkin, laws, Marx, Proudhon | No Comments
Lefter 86 ~ Fuck the centre!

August 2, 2017 by emweb

Well, f-i-n-a-l-l-y Labour did something transformative, or so it appears.

Now, all the commentators saying Labour should fight for the centre … no!

NOOOOO!

Fuck the centre. National has it, and it’s been shrinking anyway. Steadily killing the middle class has been killing education, the arts and, for those economically-focussed, tax revenues. The poor can’t pay tax, and the rich avoid it, so the middle class carries the tax burden. Squeezing the middle to foster the inequality that makes life still more lucrative for the rich has resulted in a bewildered group in the ‘centre’ and loads of non-voters.

Labour, if you’ve been wondering where all those Labour votes have been going, it’s the left-wing voters you have been losing. Bring us back! Offer us policies that will solve inequality that this courting of the centre for the last two decades has brought us.

Little looked like a little shadow of Bill English. Puke. That’s why he was so unpopular. He was inoffensive, waffling and dull – like Bill English. We need different, not the same.
For goodness sake, Labour, give us something we can believe in: a future, caring for all New Zealanders, that doesn’t promote rich white men to the exclusion of all others, with social awareness, with the equality New Zealand used to be famous for. Something that protects and nourishes what used to be the best natural environment in the world.

You know. If you try really hard, some of you may even be able to remember it.
It’s called The Left.

Category Commentary, Government, Left, New Zealand, Politics, Thought | Tags: | No Comments
Lefter 85 ~ Thanks, Labour! (Confounded by the profound stupidity of it all)

July 31, 2017 by emweb

So disappointed right now. Mostly at Labour’s stupidity. I just want to vote for a left wing party, all right? But do I want to vote for a stupid one? No I bloody well don’t. And Labour is so stupid these days, I can’t. And there’s no clear alternative.
Why do I want a left wing government? Easy. The left cares about people and doesn’t wage the politics of fear-mongering and by the extension of punishments.
The left has historically made things better for most people. The right – and National here totally fits this mould – has always made things better for the rich. With the dramatic rise of inequality in New Zealand after three terms of National, most New Zealanders desperately need a change of government.
I’ve been refraining from writing any Lefter columns over the last few months, as we head towards a September election, because I know people in Labour are very sensitive about any criticism. The attitude seems to be ‘Just for God’s sake let us get into power and then everything will be all right’.
But I simply can’t believe that. And believe me, I’ve tried to believe that.
Apart from Labour being too scared to admit it’s actually left wing, to the point where it’s actually not, Labour is being led by a bloke who honestly thinks people like him despite the clear and growing evidence that almost all people don’t. Little still thinks he’s a viable leader despite the polls telling him the exact opposite. For God’s sake, Andrew, your potential voters prefer your deputy to you, and she has never even expressed any interest in being the damn Prime Minister! People in the street tell you they are happy with you? Duh. I can hardly contain myself. They’re probably National voters, you fool.
If you can delude yourself so profoundly, what are you going to do to us? Oh, the stupidity! For example, Labour’s tax stance.
OK, here’s how it’s played: National will win, and I don’t want that, but at least lots of people might get a little tax cut which gives them more discretionary spending … then Labour announces it will not do a tax cut and put more money into Working For Families.
Right, so you may have got some more money, say $80 a month, from tax cuts, but under Labour, you’d get maybe $100, if you do the paperwork properly, or if someone else does it for you … yeah, right, which one do you prefer? Which one do you trust? Money you just get, or maybe some money that someone else has to organise for you or that you have to jump through hoops for? There are already thousands and thousands of New Zealanders missing out on various benefits because they don’t know what they’re entitled to, how to apply for it and because staff, after years of neoliberalism, don’t help and don’t care about the right people getting what they’re due. This amounts to a tacit method by which this government saves money.

So:
Thanks, Labour, for not having the vision to define your political stance, despite the very clear evidence that people are crying out for the left to define its stance, with the pretty compelling examples being the popular rise of Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn in the US and UK respectively. (And how many goddamn years have I been writing and saying this??)
Thanks, Labour, for making an ‘alliance’ with the Greens that expires on election day. How cynical is that?
Thanks, Labour, for not even having enough vision to realise that you and your ‘leader’ don’t have any vision.
Thanks, Labour, for still imagining Labour’s more successful past has any bearing whatsoever on the position you now find yourselves in.
Thanks, Labour, for putting Jacinda Adern in a position where she no longer has her own voice while, worse, tarring her with your loser-brush. Because when Labour crashes and burns in this forthcoming election, this will blight her career, and Grant Robertson’s career, and a few others, because thanks to Labour’s lack of process and management, they had to pretend they supported you.
Thanks, Labour, for letting a stinking rich liberal like Gareth Morgan actually start looking like a viable option to some who would otherwise have been easy Labour votes.
Thanks, Labour, for letting the Greens take the left ground, because Meteria Turei actually made a leftist stand while you waffle on with tiny tweaks to this and that.
Thanks, Labour, for letting perhaps the dullest politician in New Zealand history, a conservative, Catholic, anti-abortion farmer who has never been a popular choice as a Prime Minister still get enough oxygen to easily coast in. It’s National’s election to lose, but Labour’s dicking around means National will win despite years of bad government.
And finally, worst of all, thanks, Labour, for foisting another National government on this poor, suffering, badly-managed country.
What you have effectively done is you have made decent people pay the price of three more years of rising inequality and extortionate house prices as the only possible way to get rid of this uber-deluded Andrew Little which might finally – finally! – force Labour put its house in order. Because Labour has been increasingly too damned moribund and stupid to do this since it lost Helen Clark.
Thanks so much.

Category Commentary, Government, Left, New Zealand, Politics, Thought | Tags: | No Comments
Lefter 84 ~ The Rich Could Eat Us

January 19, 2017 by emweb

So robots are going to be smarter, cheaper and do more and more work. Already, some New Zealand farmers have laid off staff. They get up at 10am instead of 5am, the cows having been robo-shepherded into their milking stalls, the milking cups auto-attached, the milk hygienically withdrawn from the animals, processed and sent off to market.

“They’re happier, too!” The farmers proclaim. Well, the farmers sure as hell are – the ones who can afford this level of automation, anyway.
Soon your car will drive itself. Big deal, people won’t need to learn to drive any more … but think about it. It’s easier to develop and test driverless features on a car than it is on a large vehicle. I predict the real aim is driverless buses and trucks: no sleepy long-haul drivers, no wages and best of all, no pesky unions for owners of haulage companies to deal with any more.
Have you heard of the post-work future? Your job is probably already meaningless, if not mindless. An uncomplaining robot with machine learning could do this while you lay on the beach.

Except you won’t be. Think about that, too. Robots can make (and already do make) many of the things we want to buy. Not just equipment, tech and clothes, but even food.
And how will you buy it? You won’t be working. Universal wage? Right … that would come from the government, and robots won’t be paying taxes. Nor will you, as you won’t be earning. The rich don’t pay taxes already. Their Artificial Intelligence accountancy software will be even better at micromanaging their money so they don’t.
So governments will have no revenue as they will get no taxes. What are they going to pay you with?
Nothing.

Which makes you worthless. Dispensable. And seriously, what do you reckon the rich will do with you? Put you in a fun park? You create problems: sewage, for one thing. You breathe the air, drink the water, demand feeding, and you can’t buy anything and you can’t do anything useful. You’ll be completely irrelevant. The rich could wipe 90% of the population and live like lords with no more crowded cities, no more pollution, loads of space, and they could only use sustainable energy, so that fixes global warming, as oil would be irrelevant too. They’d keep a class of technocrats to keep things going, and to design and innovate a bit, and that’s it. No hoi polloi messing up the beaches, filling up the streets and airport terminals, peskily existing.

Rosy, huh?

Category Commentary, Government, Left, New Zealand, Politics, Thought | Tags: , automation, driverless, no-wage, poor, robotisation, the rich, Universal Wage | No Comments
Lefter 83 ~ Equality

August 15, 2016 by emweb

So, the Neo-Liberal experiment has resulted in a new New Zealand that doesn’t care about its population unless it’s making money, and that demonises rather than supports the poor. It has taken the New Zealand dream away, dangled it like a trophy in the media and then stomped it into the mud under the heels of realtors and The Block. It has fobbed us off with reality television and Max Key’s gleaming, salon-waxed abs. The housewives of Auckland take our attention while the government takes our state houses, handing the properties to developers to make even more money from; it’s supporting landlords to raid the tenants’ livelihoods, and this is the real, unspoken reason behind the property price blow-out.

It’s got so smug, John Key doesn’t even bother learning the answers to half the questions he’s asked any more. He just says he doesn’t know or can’t remember, and his supporters would rather continue to fondly imagine this shows his honesty instead of what it actually shows: he doesn’t actually even care to pretend he cares any more. People love him anyway. People still think he’s the bloke to have at your barbecue. ‘He’s just like us! He’s given up …’

Meanwhile, the left in New Zealand is too frightened to call itself left, too wrapped into its own internal dramas to formulate real policy and so far up it’s own inner, defeatist darkness now, it continues to either let its leader and top MPs talk without any preparation, or worse, advises them with really shit advice which makes them look stupid for all to see.

It’s a spurious argument, in my opinion, to keep insisting Labour just can’t afford good advice, compared to National. This is the thing, Labour: stupid is just stupid, no matter how much or little that’s funded.

So, with the left successfully demonised that it’s even frightened of itself, and too scared to talk about what it has done for New Zealand (the good things, I mean), what’s left for rational human beings who believe in civil society?

I reckon it’s time to formulate a new set of precepts to live by, to be proud of and to propagate. It needs a simple, strong message, easy to understand, easy to explain, easy to spread.

Equality.

Category Commentary, Government, Left, New Zealand, Politics, Thought | Tags: | No Comments
Praise the Lord and pass the luke warm dishwater

May 5, 2016 by emweb

Out there in the big wide world – or at least the big white western world – traditional politics has polarised. When anxieties rise, people think more left or more right. The Great Depression of the early 1930s led to the massive increase of Fascism and Communism, bloodshed and trauma.

When things are going well, economically at least, the extreme ends of the spectrum shrink and the middle expands. Look at the 1950s.

The middle of New Zealand has definitely expanded – and it’s stuck in spread mode. Trump is so right-wing in his pronouncements, even dyed-in-the-wool Republicans tremble. While the United States tussles with the mawkishly Hitlerian antics of Trump, Sanders almost daily surprises with increases of a constituency that self-admits to being left – quite incredible in itself, in present day America. The only figurehead left upholding the middle, currently, is Hilary Clinton, the darling of her own establishment, and the pillar of its own smug ennui. If she wins (and we have to hope she does, over Trump, as unattractive as that prospect is), she will have a vocally and avowedly disenfranchised left wing to deal with on her own side of the fence – something that hasn’t properly existed in the US since the 1960s.

In England, Jeremy Corbyn is hated by his own party establishment but loved by its members. Those members put him there, whereas here in New Zealand, the practically useless unions still managed to get their own man in, instead of change and vision. In Europe and elsewhere, right-wing anti-immigrant and refugee parties are surging as people fear the future; fear the mini holocausts that flame across the Middle East; fear the consequences of their actions and inactions while struggling to stay out of it no matter the cost.

Here, the Left let a middle manager of a union rule the Labour Party again, eschewing the chance to break out of the white hetero middle class male mould even a little.

Here, the political fight is for the middle.

Here, it comes down to who you’d rather have at your barbecue, or currency trading at your bank, or who you think is a good bureaucrat. Someone who looks the same, doesn’t stand out, but can still make the ‘hard decisions’ to let a few rich people make even more money.

It’s boring. They’re boring. Rather than a titanic struggle, we have a disagreement over that bowl of boiled potatoes on the table. Who gets the biggest piece of white bread. Incremental shifts in slight tweaks of policy.

Labour won in New Zealand a few decades ago by embracing the middle. National won that middle back and now enacts Labour-type policies (what National used to refer to as ‘nanny-statism’) while pretending to still represent conservatism: laissez faire economics and farmyard interests under the smokescreen of increasingly telling people what to eat, drink, smoke and what medicinal drugs it will or won’t allow.

Is the middle a fight we can win? Not any more. It’s irrelevant, it doesn’t engage youth (and who can blame them), and it’s just bloody boring.

The world is under increasing stress.

And the middle’s not going to solve anything.

Category Commentary, Government, Left, New Zealand, Politics, Thought | Tags: , Clinton, Corbyn, fights for the middle, Key, Labour, Left, Little, National, New Zealand, right, Sanders, Trump | No Comments

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