Tag Archives: economy

Tilting at markets

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by Economics, politics • Tags: , , , ,

Once upon a time I thought that Steve Jobs was an IT saint, put down on Earth for a little while to enrich the lives of ordinary mortals, and Bill Gates, well, wasn’t. Recent years have tended to almost, though not quite, reverse those judgements, though you would still have to pry my iPad and MacPro from my cold dead hands, and I have never bought a computer that uses Windows.

Still, Bill, and Melinda, Gates, having gained wealth beyond the dreams of anyone except Rupert Murdoch, the Koch Brothers, and Australian mining magnates, have been heaven bent (unlike Murdoch, the Koch Brothers, and Australian mining magnates) on putting their riches to good use. And good for them.

And good for Bill, on the basis of what he has learnt in his post-capitalist life, getting stuck into capitalism, “ripping it a new one”, as I would say if I was one of them trendy bloggers.

He pointed out:
“The malaria vaccine in humanist terms is the biggest need, but it gets virtually no funding. If you are working on male baldness or other things you get an order of magnitude more research funding because of the voice in the marketplace than something like malaria.”

While this example relates to a particular interest of Bill Gates, it obviously applies more generally. That is, you can’t rely on “capitalism” to provide any kind of services to a community because it will always focus on the profitable bits and ignore the unprofitable ones. Poor people, and poor regions, will always miss out, an observation that in itself makes nonsense of the libertarian free market neoconservative think tank demands to privatise everything up to the air we breathe.

But Bill’s observations, while absolutely correct and damning, are at the same time just a tad ironic.

One of the demands of conservatives of course is that we get rid of all social services, public support mechanisms, because the super rich, getting ever richer under neoconservative governments, will let a little largesse trickle down from the high table to the poor. Just as, once upon a time, king and nobles might allow the poor to fight over food scraps from their table, or over a handful of pennies scattered on the ground, or allow, graciously, hems of robes to be touched in a free medical service.

The irony is that even a benevolent billionaire like Gates, offering not robe touching but malaria treatments to the poor, is still working to the capitalist model. Not “The Market” but Bill’s own interests and inclinations decide what he will support and fund. Absolutely fair enough, it’s his money that we (well, not me, but you see what I mean) gave him, and he can spend it as he pleases.

But what pleases him is no more serving the whole community in the most effective way than the drug companies who put their mouths where the money is. What we need you see, is a system where the people of a country would elect some of their number to represent their interests. And that number would investigate the needs of the country, its people, and set priorities accordingly. Then there could be a mechanism whereby each citizen, and corporation, according to their ability, contributed a proportion of their wealth to a fund which would be used to pay for those priorities.

If only we were smart enough to invent something we could call, oh, I don’t know, “democracy”. Then we could get things like Malaria funded properly, and not at the whim of capitalists and capitalism, and capitalism could pretend to deal with hair loss.

We need to talk about Kevin

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by Environment, politics • Tags: , , , , , , , ,

The other day I saw the start of one of the Kevin McCloud lifestyle programs “Grand Designs” (a British series which follows people building unusual/interesting houses). I was struck by his opening scene. The camera ran a close-up on his face as he walked along. He said “What do you do in Britain if you want to build a house in the wilderness?” As he spoke the camera panned back to show that he was walking across a paddock, one of hundreds of acres of such paddocks as far as you could see, of pasture for sheep (which were, lambs at foot, dotted across the grass)! It would have been impossible to find a scene less “wildernessy”.

So pause for a moment, as I did, to absorb this incongruity. He isn’t a stupid man, Mr McCloud, so what on earth did he mean? Well, what he meant was that “wilderness” is anything that isn’t in a city. It’s like the ancient Greek sense of “Barbarians” meaning anyone who wasn’t Greek living in a Greek City State (a concept shared with most other cultures, everywhere from England, to China, to Aboriginal Australia, but I digress.

Let’s look at another, related, misused word, “pristine”. Once it meant what “wilderness” once meant – an environment unmodified by humans. Then it was turned on its head, by advertising agencies who decided it had a nice sound, to use, essentially, for a landscape with grass. As in a pristine golf course, a pristine housing development, a pristine farm (see the overlap with McCloud). But then it developed to pristine beaches (with added sand, breakwaters, carefully manicured by sand graders), pristine tropical islands (totally turned into tourist resorts) pristine snow resorts (trees and boulders removed from runs, ski lodges added, artificial snow created by machines), and so on. In this most recent sense it means something like “picturesque” “chocolate boxy” “place that photographs well” or, most simply “special offer, wouldn’t you love to have a holiday here?” Or, in a general sense, places that aren’t the city. Which brings us back neatly to Mr McCloud and his sheep paddock.

In the old days in Britain “wilderness” meant basically “places where we haven’t cut the trees down yet”. They were, consequently, dangerous, and might hide wolves, bears, brigands, ghosts, evil spirits and so on. A farm definitely wasn’t wilderness, but what lay beyond its fence line was.

The Romantics adopted this kind of definition, but turned it into a positive (following the original lead, in a different sense, of Rousseau). Wilderness was where we could get back in touch with nature, get away from the artificiality, indeed evils, of the city, where we were never meant to be, and get back to our roots. Now, instead of being feared, wild places of mountain or swamp or forest were celebrated in art and literature. People went hiking in them, climbed mountains, communed where the wild things were.

And then began creating “wilderness” on their estates – artificial waterfalls, clumps of trees, piles of rocks, fake ruins of temples, and so on. You could visit “wilderness” without the bother of travelling. And paintings, by Constable for example, treated as a single landscape the trees and rivers as well as the farm cottages or watermills or labourers in a field. At the same time the population was on the move as those same labourers tossed it in for more lucrative and perhaps easier work in factories and moved their families into town. The countryside was where they had escaped from, the primitive life, and they had no interest in it. If you needed a holiday from town then you travelled to a seaside resort which was a different kind of town, with a “pristine” beach, but with all the comforts of home. All views, and behaviour, which were exported to Australia with the first convicts and settlers.

So we come, gradually, to McCloud’s definition. Both symbolically, and actually, civilised life is in the city, and all that lies beyond is untamed, and rather threatening and uncomfortable, wilderness. Which people never really see, never want to see. Holidays still involve travel to artificial resorts (either in Australia, say the Gold Coast, or more often these days, in places like Thailand or Bali), the more “pristine” the better. They don’t involve contact with actual wilderness.

Does it matter? Of course it does. If wilderness is an undifferentiated “other” world out there beyond the outer suburbs, and a golf course or resort are “pristine”, then efforts at conservation will make no sense to you. Conversely nonsense like “farmers are the only true conservationists” or “miners restore the environment after mining” or “logging is good for forests” or “you got to choose between frogs and people” will seem to make perfect sense.

If you have no idea that what are trendily called “ecosystem services” these days – clean air, water, pest control, soil conservation – can only be provided by intact functioning ecosystems (wilderness), then you will see no problem in losing them. When populist politicians from Left or Right, or unionists, or big business, call for the felling of forests, the trawling of oceans, the complete use of river water for irrigation, the construction of huge open cut mines, the opening up of the North, shooting or grazing in forests, removal of marine reserves, the culling of bats or crocodiles, the public, in blissful ignorance, will applaud and vote accordingly.

Until the public understands that farmland is an environment little less degraded than cities and suburbs, and that actual functioning wilderness is consequently only in tiny, rapidly disappearing, areas, which are being woodchipped, mined, cleared, developed as I write these words, then there is no hope of trying to develop a public, and therefore political, conservation ethos.

Perhaps I could start with Kevin McCloud. Get him to make a program.

People like us

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by politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

It is often remarked that people in different political parties can seem more alike and be more comfortable with each other, than with members of their own parties. The reason is simple. Political parties are composed of no more than three kinds of people (what follows is based on Australia, but with minor variations could also be used for US and UK) – idealists, ideologues, careerists.

The careerists of both sides have little interest in policy or ideology. Such people join the Liberal Party in a natural progression, just as they might join the Melbourne Club. A brief stint as a lawyer, into politics, on to diplomacy, into lucrative seats on the boards of big companies. It’s just what people like us do, dear chap, what our families and friends do, have always done. One expects, naturally, to be a minister, but the purpose of being so, except for providing mates’ rates on government projects for friends, is of less interest than the tailor who has made one’s suit. Just give them the party platform, whatever it is, and they’ll go along with it and be sure to stick their hands up at the right times. In return the lucrative business opportunities to make serious money will emerge naturally from the contacts made.

Much the same on the Labor side. Some university training, perhaps in Law, activity in a suitable Union involving administration in some way, into politics, into diplomacy perhaps, on to Boards of medium-sized companies and statutory authorities. Friends and family will have often followed similar career trajectories. If you are smart you’ll become a minister, but apart from making decisions that will benefit causes you and your friends hold dear, just give them the party platform, tell them which faction they are in, and the hand will be raised at the right time. In return, after, or even during political life, business opportunities will arise that make poor boys from the wrong side of the tracks or the wrong side of the ocean, rich almost beyond the dreams of avarice.

The ideologues who join the Liberals do so because this is the Party that will, for purely pragmatic reasons, support them. A gaggle of true believers in one or more of Libertarianism, neoconservatism, union-bashing, fundamentalist religions, racism, climate change denial, anti vaccination, guns, anti-environmentalism, war, the rich, anti fluoridation, misogyny, anti-abortion, xenophobia, creationism, gay bashing, the 1950s, find a warm and welcoming roof over their heads in the Liberal Party. They come from small community groups and even smaller astro-turf groups. Once they would have found themselves on the very back seat of the very back row of the Back Bench, these days they find themselves as Shadow Ministers and Ministers. And where once ministers might be selected for their expertise in, say, education or health, these days the ideologues will find themselves in charge of that which they hate most – climate change deniers as environment minister for example, xenophobes in immigration, religious fundamentalists in science, union bashers in workplace relations, anti vaccers in health, creationists in education, and so on. In later life they will go back to doing what they were doing before political life, listening to shock jocks and taking part in virulent demonstrations outside abortion clinics or refugee bureaus.

The ideologues who join Labor often do so from Union backgrounds. They do so because of the chance to sing “solidarity forever” out of tune at union meetings, and to be totally supported by fellow colleagues, while having a platform to rant about their particular obsession, which may be total support for union activity regardless of any other consideration, fundamentalist religions, racism, climate change denial, anti vaccination, guns, anti-environmentalism, war, the rich, anti fluoridation, misogyny, anti-abortion, xenophobia, creationism, gay bashing, the 1950s. They rarely seek ministerial glory (and would be seen as too loopy to get it), but are much happier in the back rooms deciding who does get the ministries and what policies are followed. They can it seems block environmental action, same-sex marriage, serious climate change moves, compassionate attitudes to refugees, while supporting chaplains in schools. Later life will be the same.

The idealists in the Liberal Party hark back to the golden age of small-l liberalism, back to the time of Menzies, and believe it still forms the core of the Liberal Party. They imagine the Party as a “Broad Church”, one where many voices and points of view are welcomed, indeed encouraged, where one is free to be an individual (unlike of course the regimented group-think of Labor), where merit is recognised. There may be small-l libertarian, small-b business, and small-r religious beliefs involved. They believe, or believe they believe, in science, rationalism, humanism, and that they are the children of the Enlightenment. In spite, or rather because, of these beliefs, in government they find themselves shunted into low status soft ministries (like arts or environment or social services) or left on the back bench, where they may occasionally consider crossing the floor in relation to issues such as refugees. In later life they find themselves heading community service organisations, or becoming professors of public medicine, or practising pro bono legal work, or working for causes such as refugees or Aboriginal people.

The idealists in the Labor Party are drawn to it, moths to a flame, by the Light on the Hill, believing that the Party is still that of Curtin, Chifley, Whitlam. They come into it not via the unions but via universities and community organisations. They imagine Labor is a Broad Church where a diversity of ideas and opinions are encouraged, individuality welcomed, unlike the Liberal Party with its iron party discipline. They believe in small-s socialism, small-e environmentalism, small-a atheism. They believe, or believe they believe, in science, rationalism, humanism, and that they are the children of the Enlightenment. In spite, or rather because, of these beliefs, in government they find themselves shunted into low status soft ministries (like arts or environment or social services) or left on the back bench, where they may occasionally consider crossing the floor in relation to issues such as refugees. In later life they find themselves heading community service organisations, or becoming professors of public medicine, or practising pro bono legal work, or working for causes such as refugees or Aboriginal people.

Clearly, those within each category, irrespective of party, will have a lot in common. Labor and Liberal careerists may combine on a more or less shady business deal; Labor and Liberal ideologues opposing abortion will find themselves at the same rally or prayer meeting; Labor and Liberal idealists will find themselves signing the same petitions, joining the same university departments. Each pair may well find themselves complaining about how bad their careerist and ideologue colleagues, say, are.

What is needed, clearly, is a mechanism for converting the two parties into three.

Yes Prime Minister

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by Media, politics • Tags: , , , , , , ,

I wrote the original version of this piece in July 2011, at a time when Julia Gillard had been PM (and won an election in her own right) for less than a year. Now as we approach three years, and the next election, I thought it was time (also prompted by the excellent recent post by Rodney Lever on the same topic) to re-evaluate, see if my view had changed. And to spell out in more detail my reasoning. See what you think.

In the last 70 years (a period which neatly uses the war years as the start of modern Australia, and allows me to consider only prime ministers serving in my lifetime) Australia has had 13 prime ministers (excluding the temporary Mr Forde, Mr McEwan) just as both the US and UK have had 13 leaders each. You would have to say by any objective measure, and ignoring sniping by people like me, we have been by and large very lucky and very well served by our baker’s dozen. We have avoided having any real dunces (unlike the US with Ford, Reagan, Bush and Bush) or crooks (Nixon). Our 13 also exceed the average quality of 13 British PMs (who avoid the US highs and lows) over that period.

I have, in the past, tried to separate out tops and bottoms. But this would be invidious among a continuous spectrum, and besides I find my opinion alters over time (Fraser up and Keating down for example). So let’s try to assess them over a range of qualities (not including IQ which I reckon averages high and pretty even).

OK, how might we judge the best of these thirteen? Lack of ideology; flexibility of mind; ability to relate to people; difficulty of political circumstances faced; ability to work with colleagues; concern for ordinary people; concern for minorities and the powerless; awareness of the big picture; ability to embody some aspect of the country; hard-working; willingness to take expert advice; someone I can imagine having an intelligent conversation with; someone I could imagine having a beer with; someone who can achieve outcomes; someone who can stand up to vested interests.

Applying those filters quickly begins to whittle down the big thirteen. McMahon, Holt disappear immediately, lightweights who were barely up to ministerial level, let alone PM. The next seven go for different reasons. Rudd and Gorton because of inability to work with colleagues; Howard because of his narrow-minded stubborn ideology; Keating because of his obsession for free markets and against environment; Fraser because of the unprincipled way he seized power, all go out in the first round. Then it gets hard Whitlam and Chifley are reluctantly, because of the magnificent achievements of both, eliminated in the second round. Chifley because of the miner’s strike. Whitlam because his best days were the duumvirate with Lance Barnard. After that he saw himself as the Emperor leaving his cabinet to do their thing, which after 23 years they were mostly not up to in the face of the Murdoch onslaught.

Which leaves just four in the grand final of Australia’s Got Prime Ministerial Talent – Curtin, Menzies, Hawke and Gillard. Now any of those would be a Winner you could argue for, give a standing ovation to, and I reckon you, my fellow judges, might easily disagree with me. Curtin is there because he seems by any measure one of the most decent, and  was the only one faced with stopping Australia being invaded in wartime in face of the self-interest of UK and US. Menzies, not because I think much of him (or his over-rated wit), but because you simply can’t ignore 18 years in The job. Hawke, again not because I think much of him but because, in contrast to Whitlam, he put together an extraordinarily good team, arguably the best in Australian history, and kept the public and media onside 

But, drumroll, my Winner is, on the basis of consistent performance overall – Julia Gillard. Yes, I know, I was surprised too. I fed all the data back into my PM “Difference Engine” (the very latest from Mr Babbage), and waited while the cogs whirred and spun, differences calculated, levers pushed for carries. Yes, it was still Julia by a nose. Do the calculations yourself (and get Ms Lovelace to double check, be analytical) I am sure you will agree.

So, what did the print-out show? That she’s really the only one who has had to deal with complex minority rule (Curtin did briefly in simpler circumstances). That she has had to deal with an Opposition determined to smash parliamentary conventions, and also in extraordinarily unprincipled moves force out two members of parliament to try to destroy the majority.

She has had other problems shared with other PMs, for example family difficulties (eg Hawke, Chifley), a persistent rival (again Hawke, plus Howard, Gorton), virulent press opposition (Whitlam, Keating, but I’ll come back to this), difficult world financial circumstances (Keating, Hawke, Rudd, Chifley), but no one else has faced them all simultaneously. Nor carried them off while remaining calm and pleasant and working well with all her colleagues except her predecessor and several of his supporters, and succeed in passing record amounts of legislation, much of great importance (carbon price, NBN). A number of them have given fine speeches, but none perhaps as significant as Gillard’s now world famous “misogyny speech”, the response to the constant nasty misogyny from the Opposition, outraged that a woman dared to be in charge.

Oh, look, I am no longer the starry-eyed boy who has political heroes like I once did (Jim Cairns, JFK). Julia Gillard is no Chifley or Whitlam in terms of Labor values. Her lack of interest in environmental matters is stunning. Her approach to asylum seekers leaves Fraser gasping. Her hard line on unemployed and single parents would have had her thrown out of Chifley’s cabinet. Her unconscionable pursuit of the Religious Right, in such matters as same sex marriage and school chaplains must have Whitlam and Hawke shaking heads. And so on and so on. Some of that has been forced on her by circumstances, some seems to be flaws in her thinking. But then all of them have had flaws of various kinds. If there is to be the perfect PM we haven’t quite found him or her yet.

So, best PM in 70 years, but there is another unique feature that distinguishes Ms Gillard from all her predecessors. No, not the size of her ear lobes, her hair colour, her clothes, her voice, her glasses. Give in? She has been subject to more personal abuse, vilification, hatred, death threats, than all of her predecessors put together.

At the same time she has been subject to the most one-sided unfair media coverage and constant virulent media attacks we have ever seen. The move by John Howard to not merely “neutralise” the ABC, but move it so far to the Right as to be able to run in harness with News Ltd has been decisive. As has the role of other media barons, their tame shock jocks, and their supportive “think tanks”. Not a government decision goes damningly uncritised, not a move is fairly reported, not a motive nastily unquestioned, not a fake leadership challenge left unturned. At the same time, the most incompetent, secretive, and low target Opposition in our history, has been not only left unchallenged, unquestioned, but praised in glowing terms, given dream runs, soft interviews, prominent soapboxes, on media outlets.

Both media and Opposition are determined to remove a vaguely left wing government and replace it with a hard right one which will undo all the advances Gillard has made and turn Australia into a ground as fertile for big business profit as America. If they succeed, and I reckon the chances are they will, then the baker’s dozen will end with her, a unique sequence come to an end. If Tony Abbott seizes the top job, then we will have not only taken on Tea Party politics from America, but their roller coaster leadership sequence in which some excellent, or at least above average, Presidents, can be succeeded by real dickheads, people who struggle to read a children’s book about a pet goat.

Anyway, over to you. Have I gilded the lily, overegged the pudding?

Ill wind

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by Climate Change, Economics • Tags: , , , , , , ,

This month, once again, air pollution in Beijing has been in the news again. The only new part was that some enterprising fellow was selling bottled air to the public! Let’s leave that for a moment to sink in.

Yes, bottled air. I mean, once upon a time bottled water seemed the ultimate in environmental madness, but we as a species have now really excelled ourselves.

Still, an ill wind and all that, the right-wing think tanks of the US and Australia will be pleased. You see their major task, and this of course has nothing, I repeat nothing, to do with the big corporations that fund them, is to get rid of all regulations in their respective countries. “The Market”, they profess to believe, and I am sure, almost sure, this is a genuine belief they would hold even without funding, will take care of the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness, once freed of the terrible burdens of red, black, green, purple tape.

And here in China (just a touch ironically, but never mind) is the perfect example of their belief in action. Allow business to pour fumes into the air unchecked and, cometh the hour, cometh the libertarian, someone will be ready to sell bottles of less polluted air to twenty million people.

Not saying their beliefs haven’t been proved correct over and over. Here the collapse of a building erected without the burden of building codes provides work for bulldozer drivers in the clean-up; there people burnt in a factory with no fire escapes or sprinklers will provide work for undertakers. Polluted drinking water provides work for medical personnel, as do train and plane crashes, and cigarettes.

In fact scarcely a day goes by but somewhere in the world someone, as well as the owner, is making money as a result of regulations unwritten or unenforced. And, thanks to the think tanks succesful fight against any action on climate change, the whole world is still the oyster for energy companies as well as forestry industries, fisheries, agribusiness.

What’s the old Yorkshire saying – ah yes, “Where there’s muck there’s brass”.

Je regrette tout

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by Climate Change, Economics, Environment • Tags: , , , , , , ,

Whenever a young person comes to me and says “Listen, wise old man, what career should I think about? What occupations are going to be most needed in the next twenty years?” I am always happy to help.

“Young Person” I say “you have come to the right man. There are just three occupations you should consider:

1. Plastic Surgeon specialising in tattoo removal. There are going to be hundreds of thousands of Australians, millions perhaps, who are going to reach the age of, say, sixty, and say to themselves ‘What the hell was I thinking? What is all this rubbish on my arms and legs and back and neck? Who is this person whose name is on my arm in big letters? And are those Chinese characters? Really? A tiger, a motor bike, the Southern Cross? FFS’ And then they will be desperately searching for someone who can remove all this rubbish, which once seemed like a good idea (perhaps under influence of alcohol) when they were younger and smoother, from their now wrinkly skin.

2. Financial Guru specialising in the return of privatised companies to public ownership. Australia, like a number of other countries, tattooed its economy with once public utilities turned into glossy private companies. What seemed like a good idea (under the influence of neocon think tanks) in those carefree days of the 1980s and 1990s now is revealed as a terrible error of judgement. Smart people are going to be needed to undo the thatcherite damage, and return railways, water, telecommunications, airports, wharves, hospitals, schools, energy, to public ownership.

3. Landscape ecologist specialising in revegetation. Australia has tattooed its landscape (under the influence of agribusinesses, forestry companies, coastal developers) with the scars of bulldozers and fires and chain saws. What seemed like a good idea thirty years ago has left a barren landscape, erosion, loss of biodiversity and species, and contributed to the terrible consequences of climate change, and the public will soon be demanding that sand dunes, water courses, grasslands, ruined farmland be returned as far as now possible, to the habitats they once contained (not totally possible of course, land, like skin, loses its elasticity).”

So there you have it. Where once, devil-may-care about future consequences, singing along with Edith “Je ne regrette rien”, young people and politicians gaily jumped into decisions with little thought for how hard they would be to later reverse, soon all of us will be trying to undo them now the consequences are clear. And there will be plenty of jobs for young persons.

Budge it on Budget

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by Economics, Media, politics • Tags: , , , ,

You may remember a year or so ago, enormous pressure on the Australian government, by the Opposition, with the full support of a baying pack of reporters, to “get the budget into surplus”. Failure to do this, it was said, no matter the economic circumstances, would brand the government as hopeless economic managers, spendthrifts, in contrast to the wise money managers of the Liberal Party. A failure to slash everything in sight (but certainly not increase revenue, any hint of which, like a super profit tax on miners, being blocked by Opposition, and howled down by the Media). It was clear the campaign of denigration would carry on and on.

OK, said the government, you want a surplus, we’ll give you a surplus, somehow. If we are not permitted to tax the rich a little more then we need to slash programs, and, as economic conditions worsen overseas, slash some more. Outrage from Coalition, media, interest groups. How dare you cut this, that, the other program? What’s wrong with you? The Coalition never specified an actual program it would cut, merely said it would cut “waste”, and the media accepted this unquestioningly.

Meantime, as the damage austerity programs were doing elsewhere in world became more obvious, economists began saying to the government, hey, you don’t need a surplus, really, a surplus is surplus to requirements, take it easy, go for a reduced deficit by all means, but a “surplus” is not only meaningless but would be economically damaging. Immediately media joined in, yes, what are you aiming for a surplus for? Just a “political” move, not an economic one. Silly incompetent government chasing a surplus, what useless economic managers they are. But, a mere hint from the government that, yes indeed, surplus chasing was as irrational as UFO chasing, an instant chorus from media and Opposition, see, we knew you couldn’t get a surplus you hopeless economic managers.

Finally, faced with the inescapable reality of world economic doldrums, falling resource prices, and coalition premiers sacking thousands of workers, government says, you know, you are right, chasing a surplus was an albatross around our budget necks. All the economists agree, silly to go on with it. Maybe next year if things improve. Okay? Immediate baying for blood from Coalition and media. Broken promise. Bad economic managers. Hopeless government. Can’t even get a surplus. Throw them out.

And so it goes.

Bound for Botany Bay

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by Climate Change, Environment • Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Ah, Xmas, mistletoe, Xmas trees, snow, hot roast dinners with Yorkshire pud, plum puddings with threepences in. Could be at Manor Farm with the Pickwick Club could we not? Except we’re not. We’re in Western Australia in the 1950s. The temperature outside is 40 degrees C, inside hotter as the wood-fired oven cooks the roast chicken and potatoes. The “snow” is artificial, powder sprinkled on a northern hemisphere pine. The assembled family are sweating with the heat. The children are demanding to go to the beach but being told to shoosh because it was Xmas. Ah yes, the Dickens Xmas, the Prince Albert Xmas, just one of the many inappropriate things exported from Britain to its former colony in the south seas.

It would have been better for the Australian environment if, on 26 January 1788, the ships rounding the Heads into Sydney Harbour, had contained not English, Irish, Scots and Welsh soldiers and convicts, but settlers from southern Africa, Middle East, western China, or Chile.

Thing is the British soldiers, convicts, and later free settlers all brought with them a great deal of cultural baggage. It wasn’t just that the seasonal greetings and celebrations of Xmas were taking part in a totally inappropriate environmental setting, so was everything else. The heavy clothing that was worn, the inappropriate housing that was built, also would have been better discarded on the London or Liverpool docks. Those things, like Xmas celebrations, didn’t matter much, apart from generations to come feeling discomfort, especially in Summer. They were retained, like the monarchy, long past their rational use-by dates as a way for strangers in a strange land to cling to their heritage.

But there was other cultural baggage, unrecognised for many years, which was much more important and damaging. They were coming from a small island country which had, in no particular order: plenty of water; managed forests of deciduous trees; deep soils; island climate with the added impact of the Gulf Stream; no catastrophic events, notably drought or fire; a fear of “wilderness”; the removal of any animals perceived as a threat; the presence of a number of species which had, it would turn out, enormous potential to become pests in a new environment.

People were coming to a country where those things were not true, the reverse in fact, but they would perceive it through eyes conditioned to the natural world of Britain. Just as they brought hot Xmas dinners and three-piece woollen suits, they also began stocking the country with British animals so they would feel at home, could continue hunting. In came (almost unbelievably) foxes, rabbits, hares, sparrows, starlings, blackbirds, most of which would go on to become pests that would damage the environment on a catastrophic scale. In came willows, poplars, pines, oaks, elms, to replace the despised native trees cut down and burnt. Anything un-Australian was prized.

They would clear land whose thin top soil was only being held there by vegetation; pump water from streams that were only seasonal, from rivers whose flow was very irregular; stock land at high rates according to what a really good season could support, as if the good times would never end; plant monoculture crops over huge areas; pretend that eucalypt forests could be “managed”, initially by cutting down trees, later by use of fire; hunt and wipe out thylacines, and so on. [Oddly perhaps, they didn't bring with them the one practice, hedgerows, which would have been a plus in Australia]. Farming practices that had evolved over thousands of years to suit British conditions, were applied indiscriminately to a continent that hadn’t evolved to cope with them. But people were comfortable with retained Britishness in land management as in everything else, and so forests were cleared, land was overgrazed, rivers and irrigation basins were drained, topsoil blew away, species became extinct.

Things have gradually changed. Hot roast dinners have mostly given way to backyard barbecues, or salads and seafood at the beach. Houses are better designed for climate extremes (and are beginning to incorporate energy-saving and solar panels to make use of the Australian sunshine). Still have suits and ties of course (in spite of the efforts of one state premier in the 70s to popularise light “safari suits” for business wear), and still have the monarchy, but hey, some things take time.

Land management change takes time too. Oh a lot has been learnt about dry land farming, preparing for droughts, stocking rates, crop and stock varieties, working thin soils, being more efficient with water and chemical use, and so on. There has been a big development of wind breaks, equivalent in a sense to the British hedgerow. On the other hand forests and woodlands are still being woodchipped or cleared at high rates, with massive outcries at any attempt to slow down let alone stop it; irrigation, including, astonishingly, for crops like cotton and rice, is still full steam ahead, again with massive reaction whenever there is a suggestion it might be reduced; killing of native species goes on as frequently as it ever did; people are still talking nonsense about using fire and “thinning” to “manage” forests; and many farmer’s organisations are still hotbeds of climate change denial (change that will decisively demonstrate that we are not living in Britain). A long way to go, and no time.

Time we became un-British (well, except for cricket of course).

The Hucksters

18
by Economics, Media • Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Parents, let us safely assume, have been always pretty much the same – concerned about children’s safety, learning, nutrition, clothing. So why the childhood obesity epidemic, and why suddenly, in 2012, in the view of shock jocks and food lobbyists, have parents stopped caring about, being responsible for, their children’s well-being, to the extent that they are to blame for this obesity?

What nonsense. Whenever you hear the words “Nanny State” and “personal responsibility” reach for a metaphorical gun. Here is the argument – parents have suddenly stopped being responsible for what their children eat, and their health status (not sure why, but there it is, inarguable fact), and must be bullied into being so again by shock jocks. Nothing else has changed in society so it is obviously the fault of parents, who must pull themselves together and once more accept their responsibility. Any suggestion of any other action would be “Nanny Statism” and none of us want that, do we (said somewhat menacingly).

But wait, what is wrong with this picture? Society has extensively changed in the way that food is produced, packaged and promoted. When I was growing up in the 1950s there were no fast food outlets. I’ll say that again, NO fast food outlets. There were no supermarkets. There was very little processed or packaged food. People bought, or grew, fresh ingredients, and made stuff.  Freshly made bread was delivered to the door each morning, as was freshly made milk.

Nor was there much advertising of food, though there was, of course, of cigarettes, what would have been the purpose? As a consequence, none of us copied each other in eating certain foods, nor nagged parents to get them. Food was, well, just food, and you ate it, of necessity, just like you drank water and breathed. Conversely, glamorous cigarettes, promising a world of maturity and sophistication, were massively taken up by young teens, imitating each other, and the cool cats in adverts and movies.

But about this time, as my teenage years succeeded each other, a change came over the food industry. Corporations realised that “supermarkets” could make far more money than the old corner grocery store (which had also, incidentally, because taken for granted as customer service, delivered to the door, in fact delivered to the kitchen table, groceries too heavy for customers like my grandmother to carry home). The supermarket would also send out of business the greengrocer, and end for ever home deliveries of fresh milk and bread.

At the same time, to make the supermarket work profitably, much of what was sold had to be processed, preserved, packaged, to make it last, to make it appealing, to make it a little addictive. Meanwhile, fast food makers of various kinds were realising that if they created a market for their product by making, for example, a certain kind of hamburger as appealing as, say, Peter Stuyvesant cigarettes, huge profits were assured. Fast food, which also, uncoincidentally, required to be processed, preserved, packaged, and made addictive by the addition of salts and fats.

Convince people to buy food that was convenient for the corporations but bad for them, how could you do that?

Well, cometh the hour, cometh the adman. As early as 1957 Vance Packard (as was Frederic Wakeman  in fictional form in “The Hucksters” in  1946) was detailing the sophistication with which advertising was already operating, a world away from the simple informative ads before WW2. The psychology of human beings and how they could be made to respond, unwittingly, to colours, sounds, smells, shapes, shop placement, were all carefully studied and applied. Even subliminal advertising was tested.

In the last half century the sophistication of the psychological analysis in advertising. Whole teams of psychologists examine every detail of human perception and how to manipulate it. Every age and socio-economic group in society is individually targeted with finely tailored advertising. Down to children, where there is both big money, and future customers.

So everything is thrown at children, once and future customers. Every trick learnt over 50 years is beamed at them in advertising blitzkrieg. Not just colours, shapes, smells, sounds, shop placement (though the latter is particularly a science for children) but all sorts of extras.

Most important is to develop the most powerful force in children’s lives – peer pressure. Make something so apparently desirable that its ownership by one child will make it an imperative for others to own and you have a licence to print money. Add in the linkage of products to popular films or games, and make gifts available with, say, hamburgers, and you have a bigger licence. Ensure products made attractive by such methods are placed at children’s eye level in supermarkets and you multiply your sales even further.

So, half a century of development, tens of thousands of psychological researchers, designers, film makers, all aimed at making children both want and demand things from their parents which they must have or their lives will be ruined.

And yet, in the face of this highly sophisticated industry worth billions of dollars, individual parents are supposed to be able to resist the enormous pressures. Be “responsible”. No difference between parents caring for their children 50 years ago and now, but the big difference is the food and advertising industries and their effects.

But after all, reining in this advertising onslaught on children, and its disastrous effects on their weight and health, would be “Nanny State” right?

My way or the highway

17
by Atheism, Media, politics • Tags: , , , , , ,

We pride ourselves as Australians on being open, happy with diversity, respecting other opinions, fair go, all that. But it is an illusion, the freedom only applies to those who repeat the standard memes, follow the party line, accept the Australian mythology about who and what we are. Deviate from that and the gatekeepers will come down on you like a ton of bricks.

Express a belief that the environment must have some protections and a shock jock newspaper columnist will call for you to be strung up from lamp posts. Point out the scientific evidence for climate change and receive hate mail and death threats prompted by the shock jocks. Have a long ago family background in communism like Senator Lee Rhiannon and you will be subject to constant vile attacks.

Oppose some actions by religious organisations and fundamentalist pastors will call for your head on a platter. As they will if you support marriage equality, or abortion, or admit to being an Atheist. Question the economic orthodoxy of continuous growth, austerity, public asset sales, removal of workplace regulation, and growing gap between rich and poor, and neoconservative editorial writers will abuse you for living in the past.

Question Australia’s military record, and its American links, and be prepared for accusations of unAustralianess. Same will happen if you suggest Australians are just a teeny bit racist. And if you suggest farming has contributed not insignificantly to Australian environmental problems. And if you dare to question whether the “War on Drugs” might be a little counterproductive. And if you dare to ask why so many guns in society.

Ask why the government funds private schools, why billionaires don’t pay more tax, why the coal industry gets massive subsidies, and you will be treated with contempt and scorn by the mainstream media. Question the role of vicious shock jocks in coarsening political debate and they will turn on you in a second screaming “free speech”.

In short. You are free to say whatever you like, of course you are. March along the broad highway constructed by Murdoch and friends and they will cheer you on like a winning football team. Dare to investigate side roads, bush tracks, little diversions under bridges, and the opinion muggers will beat you up and leave you bleeding by the roadside.

Of course many of the unspeakable opinions above are specific to Australia, but others apply more generally, and individual countries will have other additions related to history, culture, religion.

I suspect everywhere, to greater and lesser degrees, freedom of expression is really the freedom to conform.