Talking About My Generalisation

Generalising Generations

I was on the phone to Pleiades today and he sort of laughed and said I was a bit heavy on the Baby Boomers yesterday, and being one of them he wanted to appeal to me that not all Baby Boomers were bad. Which, of course they're not; and most certainly not even half of Gen-X is particularly good. They're really rough demographic handles to talk about a large chunk of the population, and any generalising is bound to contain gross, boundless, indefensible inaccuracies.

Still, my problem is that years ago when I started blogging, I put up the stupid line "Gen-X View of The Universe" like it mattered and have been somewhat bound by that less-than-stellar choice. Had I hoisted "Dissenting Voice In The Universe", I might have had some more leeway to be just as general (and generalising), but without putting myself in one corner of the universe all the time.

Yes, Justin Trudeau is a Gen-Xer, as is David Cameron, but they have hardly anything common with each other politics-wise, and as a commentator, I can assure you I have even less in common with both men. Waving around the banner phrase is simply a kind overstatement of something that is probably a lot more subtle and fleeting.

The moment the demographic question comes to the fore the most, at least in Australia is that policy-makers have drawn lines in the past and into the future whereby things like HECS and HELP have landed firmly on Generation X while the Baby Boomers hardly got touched by it, and even the extension of the retirement age out to 67 applies from Generation X. The different laws covering superannuation contributions and taxation are likewise demarcated on the line - and the only reason I could think of was that the people who have drawn the line there were not Generation X.

Thus, it's not about what we are like, or what they are like; it's that demographically speaking, different rules and regulations have applied to the different generations, and this has resulted in different outcomes for people in different demographics. As a long time observer, it has been clear that a lot of rules had to be rewritten for Generation X because the money that used to be there is somehow no longer there. And so compared to the Baby Boomer generation, higher education cost more for Gen X (and even more for Gen Y), public primary and secondary education was poorer for Gen X (and even poorer still for Gen-Y), and access to jobs and finance was harder and took longer for Gen-X (and is even worse for Gen-Y), and so on.

Is all this the Baby Boomers' fault? No. It's just the way things went, out of over-arching necessities. Yet I think the ramification of all this, is that when Generation X will hold high public offices, it will result in a realignment of the old social compact. This includes things like gay marriage and addressing climate change as the challenge it really is. Generation X won't be progressive because they were born progressive; on the contrary they're likely even more apolitical than previous generations but for the fact that they will be forced to be political on a bunch of issues, and the viable answers are going to lean towards progressive ones because the conservative ones sure haven't helped.

This is why there is a gulf of difference in understanding by the likes of say, Eric Abetz, who is fighting a furious rearguard action, and the future progressive government which will manifest itself at some point eventually. It may well be a sea change of the kind we haven't seen since Whitlam came to power the back of the Baby Boomer vote.

The Awfulness Of Pokies

Mrs. Pleiades put me on to this one. This is an honest-to-goodness scary doco about how Pokies work and what they do to you. It goes through the history of their development, and the behavioural science of rewards, running the gamut from Pavlov, to BF Skinner to the latest MRI scans the brain and how they respond to pleasurable stimulus and how dopamine is released in the brain to stimulate the pleasure centre. Really, it's all about the dopamine and the pleasure centre and conditioned reflex.

It's one thing to be a gambling addict. I could be accused of being one, seeing how much time I do spend poring over the equities market and its gyrations. I hate it, but I like it and as my accountant said, "it's not like you can stop, now that you've started". It's a bit embarrassing but it's true. Even when I sell up the losing dogs at the end of the financial year, I'm still somehow in the market. I must be in it because I like it. It is pretty much gambling in the sense that I like the days where my shares go up.

Yet there is a crucial difference with Pokies in that the Pokies offer endless stimulus and reinforcement to keep you playing until you lose all your money. I've never liked pokies because I can't even begin to calculate what the odds are, just from looking at the machine. This is totally against the spirit of proper gambling to begin with. Then, I can't stand the endless music cues and sound effects because they're not truly musical if we're being specific about music - they're more like walls of sound to fill the air. I hate the nonsensical graphics that purport to tell a story when of course the only story going on is you sticking money into the machine and losing it chunk by chunk. I say, if you're going to a casino, play a real game with the real croupiers - but that's just me being a minority-report sort of guy. The majority of gamblers in Australia go to the local club and start inserting money into these terrifying things.

The doco tells you just exactly how much they tune these machines to fleece you of your money. They call it "gambling to extinction". They're fine tuned to get you hooked in, and suck you dry.

Peter Garrett makes an appearance to explain his little story about the gambling lobby and how powerful it has become and how it stopped the Gillard Government dead in its tracks from regulating the most vicious machines. We know the story, and how it went down with Andrew Wilkie wanting the regulations and pretty much holding the government hostage, only for everybody in government to back down in the face of intense lobbying from the gaming industry and clubs. With a hung Parliament, there simply wren't the numbers to do the right thing. It's a shame, but the real shame is that these horrible machines are still out there, chewing through the vulnerable wallets.

Just as a side observation, Peter Garrett makes a small mention of how the pokies came in and displaced bands in pubs. As one of the musicians that found pokies displacing bands in the late 80s, I can tell you Peter Garrett's nonchalant commentary was annoying as all hell. He got the good bit where pubs were venues, and his band got to play them. My generation got shafted and turfed out by Pokies. So, you know, tell me about it..