The Greens vs Labor

[pietillidie]

I part ways with "classical liberals" because they're no longer liberal; instead, they're the new ultra-conservatives, and are fast becoming the Taliban of the 21st century.

While the world has marched on, they've been wallowing in mothballs and lavender talcum powder. Thus:

1. A focus on shared history and institutions, while always essential in an obvious sense, is the very last concern at the moment contrary to popular hysteria. The urgent priority is to upgrade to a more global, multi-polar agility quick smart. Forget things like quaint debates about multiculturalism; such discussions are the stuff of the 1980s.

2. The individualism story is quite similar: Essential in the broad movement of economic development, but hopelessly out-of-date in postindustrial society. Current libertarian notions are rooted in decades-old geographies, technology, and economics, and centuries-old philosophy; essential in its day, in reality it went the way of the Dodo when we were kids.

While a collectivism of any kind certainly won't do either, a more sophisticated individualism which recognises the highly-integrated nature of local, regional and global socio-economies is essential. Individualist Darwinianism is the punch card of socioeconomics in 2015.

3. The backward software of (1) and (2) is beginning to reflect in the economies of high-income countries, which are emotionally far more stagnate and set in their ways than what you find in the driven BRICs and other hungry countries. You can't live off the philosophical musings of nineteenth-century empires on the one hand, and 1950s suburban American tele-ads on the other, in 2015.

Unfortunately, the great post-war mass of wealth now sits in the accounts of dated, misery gutses who have lost track of the broader world and now can't cope with it. The old farts are like a millstone around the necks of those trying to get on with the reality of this century.

The Greens understand some of this, but they're still falling for the trap of arguing with the outdated old bastards as outsiders and radicals, rather than just assuming control. This says to me they don't quite grasp how much the world has changed, and what their role is as inheritors of that change. The old bastards they're arguing with don't need defeating; they're already finished. Gone, kaput; too staid to catch up. Now they're just spoilers; annoying, to be sure, but still on their way out.

And this lack of inside stance; this inability to assume mainstream responsibility for the world shows in the Greens' lack of practical economic clout. Conventional economics and old hierarchical business is laughable; it is going the way of the Dodo, but there's not a Greens-styled business in sight to replace it. If you can't re-write economics for the times, and if you can't embrace the new opportunities of business for the times, then you can't re-write employment, health, housing and education for the times, either.

That's my problem with the Greens. So, with the bumbling old denialist farts on one side, the yapping teenage rebel alternative on the other, and sheepish, cowardly ALP in between, I've basically wiped the lot of them as a waste of time. I'm personally looking for solutions elsewhere now.

[Tannin]

Mars?

[pietillidie]

^Mars is a hell of a lot closer to us than the nineteenth century, and even 1950!

[Mugwump]

[stui magpie]

[HAL]

My pleasure.

[3.14159]

[3.14159]

Lifted from the "Liberal cess-pit" thread.

[David]

You write as if I'm some kind of representative of the party. I'm not even a member!

While I find Bishop's bizarre behaviour amusing and am happy to see it costing the government credibility, it's still a bit of a sideshow, really. When she steps down (as she most likely will, given her lack of support in the party room), I won't be surprised if the Liberals find someone just as one-eyed and unreasonable to replace her. That's why I'm advocating structural reform. I also have a general distaste for individual scandals and argued as much during the Thomson and Slipper affairs, because I think it's a distraction from the important stuff.

But those are just my views, not necessarily those of the Greens. If anything, I expect they'll back the no-confidence vote, and there have already been Greens politicians speaking out about her behaviour:

http://m.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/bronwyn-bishops-5000-helicopter-ride-to-liberal-fundraiser-fails-the-sniff-test-joe-hockey-20150716-gidee9.html

What more do you want them to do, exactly? In what way are the Greens 'on the fence' regarding Abbott when it's Labor that happens to be supporting some of their worst legislation (data retention, refugees, whistleblower legislation etc.)?

[3.14159]

[stui magpie]

[HAL]

Are they exactly the same? Oh you can, can you?

[David]

What makes you think I'd allow this stuff to occur? Of course I think she should walk the plank over this. I just don't see it as an issue with the fraction of national significance of, say, the TPP or funding for renewables (two areas in which the Greens haven't taken their eye off the ball these past few weeks).

As for Shorten, I do actually share much of your disgust with the Royal Commission charade. But it just so happens that it's overridden by my deep feeling of despair about the direction of the ALP at the moment, much of which can be lain at the feet of its leadership. If nothing else, Shorten is Abbott's greatest chance of winning the next election right now.

You misread my desire to get rid of Shorten at all costs with a desire to destroy the ALP. On the contrary, I think if the party is to survive it needs to wrest power from the Bill Shorten types in the party ASAP.

[Tannin]

Lay off Bishop, fellers. B. Bishop has done more good for the country in the last three weeks than in the entire remainder of her career. Thanks to her, the Abbott misgovernment is hopelessly unelectable now, and may never recover. Let's show her our gratitude and give her a free helicopter, all expenses paid!

(Yes, I know, she's already got one. Lets give her another one.)

[3.14159]