View From The Couch - 28/Jun/2016

Election 2016 Goes On

And just like that we're into the final week before we go to vote. After all the weeks of misrepresentative argumentation and assigning prior blame to people that can't be held accountable, after mischaracterising the policies of governments past and the contexts in which they were formed, we're going to head to the polls next Saturday none the wiser and less informed than we need to be. This must be the most confused, stupid, irrational election in a very long time; I can't recall one as irrational and idiotic in my lifetime of voting. We are reaching peak stupid when it comes to the political discourse in this nation.

As such, one would think the incumbents are going to win. Which is a real tragedy that will have a deep impact on our polity for years to come.

Part of the problem is that you really can't trust these people at all. Especially after the 2013 election where by Tony Abbott spectacularly promised not to make cuts to specific things like health and education and then promptly went back on all his promises the moment he got into power. The Liberal Party has not really explained itself why they had to so flagrantly break their election promises, nor have they acquitted themselves particularly well For having done so. Worse still they haven't changed course from Tony Abbott's disastrous direction-setting as Malcolm Turnbull has steadfastly stuck to the same stupid policies.  

The ALP aren't exactly mounting a great challenge.  It's competent - but it's going to need to be a bit more than competent to get that 4.5% uniform swing. The fear is that Bill Shorten is trying to get close but not necessarily to win, and ask the party for another shot after a narrow loss. It's a wonder that they just don't go for the jugular with facts given just how incompetent and awful the incumbents have been.

When you look at the Brexit vote and the rise of Trump in the USA, it appears that the victory of slogan-over-substance delivered by Tony Abbott was in fact an early salvo in the rancorous kinds of elections where radical rhetoric muscles into the middle of the political discourse. The self-defeating protest vote that installed Tony Abbott over the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd ALP government is the very same kind of self-defeating protest vote that delivered Donald Trump as the nominee of the Republicans as well as voted the UK right out of the EU.

The best news about this election is that at the very least we're not about to do something drastic because we've already done that in 2013 and hopefully have the hindsight to know that was crap. But you never know. These candidates are ordinary enough to fuck up even that sad silver lining.

How Bad Is It Really?

Skarp sent me a link from The Economist today, probably to alert me to the fact that Brexit really is alarming - not merely disquieting of disturbing, or perhaps eyebrow-raising. It is the full skid, brown an stinky.

People are trying to put a smiley face on the utterly untenable Brexit situation. By people I mean journalists and politicians and spokespeople for the finance sector. The reality is that the ructions caused by the Brexit vote re already besting the kinds of records set in August 2008 when the US congress decided not to hand over the TARP payments to bail out the banks at the height of the liquidity crisis. For all this talk about scaremongering, one would like to ask just exactly were people expecting when they advocated Brexit?

Here's a quick look at what the British leadership looks like right now:

Sixty hours have gone by since a puffy-eyed David Cameron appeared outside 10 Downing Street and announced his resignation. The pound has tumbled. Investment decisions have been suspended; already firms talk of moving operations overseas. Britain’s EU commissioner has resigned. Sensitive political acts—the Chilcot report’s publication, decisions on a new London airport runway and the renewal of Britain’s nuclear deterrent—are looming. European leaders are shuttling about the continent meeting and discussing what to do next. Those more sympathetic to Britain are looking for signs from London of how they can usefully influence discussions. At home mounting evidence suggests a spike in racist and xenophobic attacks on immigrants. Scotland is heading for another independence referendum. Northern Ireland’s peace settlement may hang by a thread. 

But at the top of British politics, a vacuum yawns wide. The phones are ringing, but no one is picking up. 

Mr Cameron has said nothing since Friday morning. George Osborne, the chancellor of the exchequer, has been silent. (This afternoon I texted several of his advisers to ask whether he would make a statement before the markets open tomorrow. As I write this I have received no replies.) The prime minister’s loyalist allies in Westminster and in the media are largely mute. 

Apart from ashen-faced, mumbled statements from the Vote Leave headquarters on Friday, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove have also ducked the limelight; Mr Johnson is meeting friends and allies today, June 26th, at his house near Oxford in what are believed to be talks about his impending leadership bid. Neither seems to have the foggiest as to what should happen next. Today Mr Gove’s wife committed to Facebook the hope that “clever people” might offer to “lend their advice and expertise.” And Mr Johnson’s sister, Rachel, tweeted: “Everyone keeps saying ‘we are where we are’ but nobody seems to have the slightest clue where that is.”

I thought that alone would fill you with joy. If that's not whacky-disheartening enough, there's a report that a British nuclear sub has made port at Gibraltar to exert pressure on the Spanish not to attack. Like, hullo! Brexit surely doesn't mean the UK goes on war footing with the EU. Who the hell is running the show?

This whole process of Brexit clearly wasn't thought through let alone war-gamed or tested. You know I've been talking to reasonable people explaining to me why they thought the UK should leave the EU and why they voted that way, but truth be known they probably thought about the whole thing a whole lot more than the idiotic advocates Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove. It's rapidly becoming clear these idiots have no plan (never even saw the point of one), and as such Britain is more rudderless and adrift rather than proudly sailing forth out of the EU.

The people who have been explaining to me the rationale for voting Brexit are actually rationalising a bad decision with great skill and imagination. It's crap. It's the full load of shit that's hit the biggest fan in the world and the shit is flying all over the planet as we speak.
As politics goes, this is a well-thrusted custard.
Bravo Stupid.

The Dinosaurs Scream At The Incoming Asteroid...

Michael Moore had an interview with Owen Jones in the lead up to the Brexit vote in which he likened the British desire to leave the Eu as being like a Premier League football club wanting to leave the Premier League, relegating itself out. In the same interview he likened the people voting for a Brexit to the sorts of people voting for Donald Trump and said that most of the time the demagogues represented the dying wails of the reign of the straight white man. That it was like dinosaurs screaming at the Incoming asteroid, "build a wall!"

The fact is that the demographic change is happening and with it will come a new generation of thinkers, writers, and most importantly voters. They will think and enact things that this current set of status quo politicians cannot imagine let alone enact. And if you fear the future, you just might put your foot down and scream with Michael Moore's dinosaurs, "build a wall!"

That got me to thinking about the demographic divide on many issues which, in usual discussion starts off with the difference on things like gay marriage, but more importantly cover things like education and health. The segment of people voting for the likes of Bernie Sanders are young. The segment of population in Australia that supports gay marriage is young.

These issues might be contested heavily in the future if they were divided along ideological lines but It turns out they are not. That means these issues will inevitably go the way the young people want it in the future. The urge to leave the EU because one is a Euro-sceptic and make  as the urge to vote for Trump who promises to make "America Great Again" (which has been lampooned as "make America White Again"), and even to the extent that Australians can be persuaded that locking up asylum seekers on Manus and Nauru is a good idea. In the not too distant future when there are more of the young than the old again, it will flip.

In the mean time the current regime of dinosaurs will try and stack things in their favour as much as possible, trying to build barricades - heck, build walls. These are all rearguard actions of an older mindset. There are still enough dinosaurs fighting the rearguard action, staving off the future in, say, the DNC as there are in-reconstructed racists and crackpots on the right who pushed Trump into the limelight. Equally they are in the Tories in the UK and LNP here in Australia. The LNP are so anti-progressive they are determined to be absolutely regressive - but they just can't get the youth vote doing that.

To that extent I am more optimistic than pessimistic About the future. It's a real shame Bernie Sanders won't get up this year as the Democratic Nominee, for instance - but something is going to come from the enormous movement he has built. Something like climate change denial is a sport for the intellectually dishonest, but the phenomenon itself is advancing inexorably. At some point in the future, the young voters of today will have the numbers to get their politicians in who will not only institute proper policies but maybe even find the means to reverse decades of carbon emissions.

I have to admit, I am secretly hoping this is the election where it changes over and the Australian dinosaurs are consigned to history.

Speaking Of The Great Wall Of Trump...

I had the funny insight given to me this month:
The Chinese built their Great Wall to keep the barbarians out. But they sure didn't try to charge the cost of building that wall onto the barbarians.

'Where To Invade Next'

Michael Moore's Timely Polemic

GS got me out to one of his free movie night courtesy of the ethics society. I think I'm on a good wicket here. It's for hard to convince one self to get to the cinema when your income drops - so a special shout out to GS who keeps asking me to go watch these films with him. As with 'Eye in the Sky' this film deserves a write up too.

It's been a long time since I last saw a Michael Moore film. The way I see it, I don't really need the heavy-handed propagandising that he carried out with 'Capitalism: A Love Story' because I'm pinko enough and I'm not an American so I can't vote to change America; so with me, Moore's preaching to the choir in the wrong church in the wrong suburb. All the same I got emboldened by the freebie I saw last time which was 'Eye in the Sky' and thought I may as well catch up with GS again and catch what Michael Moore had to say this time.



What's Good About It

As polemical tirades from Michael Moore go, this one's a lot gentler and perhaps more probing. The central idea is what is it that the European states got going so well that the USA doesn't but from which it could easily learn. The premise takes him to a series of countries where various policies are explored in context of the people they serve. Moore then throws the American political discourse at the locals to see if it sticks and in most part it doesn't seem to gain any traction at all.

In most parts, what Michael Moore is recommending is common sense through to a little bit extraordinary. That would be my own cultural spyglass distorting my view of what Moore uncovers in Europe. Surely no state - certainly not America - and probably not Australia could adopt all those things and keep a balanced budget. I'll get into it bit more in a moment but suffice to say the survey is optimistic about what can actually be done.

Also, the film gets out to Iceland where they jailed the bankers and makes its strong case for totally equal rights and access for women, where the Icelandic women have some choice words for America. When asked for 2 minutes to advise America, the female CEO of a company tells Moore that she would not like to move to America because they would make bad neighbours and they treat their fellow Americans badly. She says she can't understand how Americans live with themselves knowing how badly they treat one another. It's a corker of a moment when an ethos borne out of a deeply cohesive culture slams the rampant individualism of America.

What's Bad About It

Michael Moore is cherrypicking the good things from these countries without going into how those things are being costed. He talks a little about the history of how some of these admirable institutions came into being, but the potted history is so abbreviated it lacks a logical persuasiveness. He also basically meets people who want to show off their best and he accepts these things without much critical assessment.

The film is also a little long-winded. by the 5th country being introduced, we're sort of tiring of the ruse. They could have sharpened the film more in the editing suite. It's not a bad film by any stretch of the imagination, but it isn' as sharp as his more polemic films and maybe a little tired in parts.

What's Interesting About It

Some of these European countries Moore visits - Italy, France, Germany and Portugal - have serious economic problems. Part of the problem is that all of these countries have large deficits they cannot rein in. Italy and Portugal in particular, as part of the PIIGS, are in danger of sovereign default. France's Debt to GDP ratio is above 100%. Germany is sitting on Deutsche bank which might blow up with $60 trillion worth of bad derivatives has written - many on the back of Greek Government debt. Should Deutsche Bank blow up, Germany might embark on a massive bailout instead of letting the banks fail like the Icelanders did, and give rise to more massive government debts. These are things that were not being discussed at all in the film, and gets to the crux of the argument.

America by comparison runs a much smaller government if you exclude its extraordinary military spending. The argument can be boiled down to whether the states carrying out these wonderful programmes really can afford to keep carrying out these wonderful programmes. It is arguable that the Italian regime of holidays is costing the government and economy too much; or that the French lunch at schools programme is too expensive; or the work conditions in Germany are too lenient. The poster child for such arguments is actually Greece, where after the GFC, they became known to France, Italy and Germany for having too many perks.

Greece is of course paying a terrible price today, just to preserve the Euro. The countries that benefit the most from this arrangement also happen to be France, Italy and Germany, while Portugal is staring down the barrel at becoming like Greece. It is easily argued that France, Italy and Germany get to preserve their wonderful entitlements at the expense of the Greek poor. France, Italy and Germany also get to export their goods denominated in the Euro, which allows their produce to be more competitive thanks to the Euro depressing their prices. If they had to do it with their own currencies, they would be much less competitive. It's an arrangement that works doubly better than it does for Greece that has no benefits in trading on the Euro, has no significant export industries except tourism, and carries its massive government debt in Euros, all of this just to preserve the Euro.

For a more balanced argument, Moore needed to go to Greece and get their story.

What Windfalls Buy

Another interesting topic of note was Finland's education system, which has shot to the top of the world in the last 15years. As Moore notes, for much of the Twentieth Century, Finland's schools and students did no better than the Americans. Then, it reorganised its educational system, giving rise to the tremendous results it boasts today. The thing is, Finland did on the back of the economic windfall from mobile technology. The temporary but significant popularity of Nokia phones gave rise to a massive rise in revenues in Finland which could then afford to re-organise its schools.

The parallels there would be with Australia which had its once in a lifetime commodity super-cycle, giving rise to the revenues from the mining boom. Of course Kevin Rudd tried to harness those revenues with a Mining Tax which ended up getting him removed. Julia Gillard then went and instituted the NAPLAN based on the Gonski report. While it is horses for courses, the one recommendation the Fins give to Americans in this film is to not have a national standardised test.  And not to have private schools that reinforce class differences. They're great suggestions that will doubtless fall on deaf ears in Australia as well as America.

The status quo in this country at least says private education is here to stay, so within it we can see it is our State's commitment to preserving class stratification. They can say whatever they like about Gonski and NAPLAN and whatever it is they think they're doing - the government is building a patchwork quilt of bullshit to paper over the stark reality that they are willing to accept class stratification in our society, with all the ills it presents. It's disappointing, and more so when it comes from the ALP on the centre-left. If anything is for certain, this film convinced me to hate private education even more than I do already.

Legalising Drug Use

Portugal's contribution to Michael More's haul is about legalising drugs. This one stands in stark contrast to the other policies Moore brings back in that it would cut law enforcement costs significantly to stop criminalising drug use and medicalising it. The Portuguese police argue that it has to do with human dignity, but as with all things it is probably rooted in the economics of the drug trade.

A good portion of the drugs our societies worry about come from plants and farmed plants at that. Even LSD was originally extracted from a plant. Marijuana, Heroin, Cocaine are all grown in quantities by farmers under the control of warlords. They do so because together, they can produce a substance that returns multiples on investments. The nexus of drugs and arms is possible only because of the large margin in the drug trade - and what enables this large margin is the scarcity created by the states who try and block supply.

The criminalising of the demand is a complement to the blocking of supply which Moore's film argues is actually a racist ploy to decimate the Black leadership in America. All the same, the prices go up because the war on drugs makes the value of illegal substances higher, which benefits the drug lords and warlords in central America and Afghanistan much more than it benefits the citizens of the first world.

What the Portuguese example illustrates is what happens when the state refuses to cooperate with the marketing plans of the drug lords and reduces the margin. The flow of drugs falls to a level that matches the natural demand for them, which turns out to be much lower than when the state is policing the users, criminalising the demand. The crime rate goes down because it is less onerous to service the drug money. As with ending prohibition of alcohol, the violent crime relating to the drug trade goes down because it becomes less valuable. Illegal motorcycle gangs would fear the decriminalisation of drug use the most because it would decimate their margins.

You'd think after 40 years of Nixon-ian racist paranoia that our society could find the simple courage to do what Portugal did.