The politics of housing

[David]

[Wokko]

[Morrigu]

^ at least we now know why David was asking about joining the Freemasons

Either that or the bath water is being drunk on a regular basis

[stui magpie]

[Mugwump]

^ David, we're nothing like European aristocrats. They lived by owning the land that the others farmed, and there was a direct transfer from their tenant farmers (who did the work) to the men in the mansions (who lived off them).

In fact we have little control or over the way people live in other countries. The majority of poverty and disadvantage in the world is a product of lousy government and cultural mores that do not promote economic development. Thankfully, slowly, large parts of the world are getting better in this regard - notably in SE Asia, but also in parts of Africa. The result is that jobs are moving from the West to those places. That transfer through trade is the source of wealth to developing nations.

Those who hate Capitalism have to wrestle with the fact that it is lifting an enormous number of people out of poverty now. It's not foreign aid that does it. It's trade plus decent government. The advocates of more government intervention are more likely to cause or prolong poverty than solve it.

[pietillidie]

^David, I think that part is right enough. But the key here is to avoid these terms like capitalism and communism. They really don't capture anything realistic, and brush over a whole host of potentially useful variations and strategies.

In fact, "strategies" is the much more productive mindset because it is focused on fixes without the ideological connotations. It is every bit as much a grand delusion to think that declining living standards will end up good for anyone, as it is to think the wealth gap can be wound in endlessly.

Things can be left run here, and wound in there; the point being maintaining a healthy mindset and a productive direction for the times.

Currently under external competitive challenge, and leaky revenues due to global mobility and political capture, both sides of politics are offering nothing. In this vacuum of idea and policy leadership, hysterical nonsense from Muslim panic to Trump takes over as a distraction to the real economic task confronting developed nations.

Continuing on with what are childish, discredited and plain inaccurate Cold War left/right language won't do. But that's all the twits in office know, Mal being one of the very few not inculcated with that rubbish, which is why I like him. His vocabulary shows the capability for a more complex dialogue, but there's no one else there to give him the content and platform to work with.

Above all, developed economies are out of ideas; as if everyone's brains stopped working at the end of the Cold War because some imaginary pinnacle had been reached.

[Mugwump]

^ Sssshh.. rebranding at work. If was on the Left, I'd want to abolish the old ideological categories because they represent the brand collapse of the Left's statist project. The Left's historic project failed, but the core Leftist demand for ever-increasing government direction of the economy remains in business, as a few minutes of VPT reading demonstrate.

That is something like a petty aristocracy - taxes compelled from the people to feed the technocrats and their organisations, from Australia to the EU. It is always noteworthy that the technocrats have better pensions and usually higher wages than they could command in a competitive market. It's what they do for a living.

[pietillidie]

^Well, yes, trying to help the Left and have been for years now, dumb arses. I also spent many years trying to help the idiot right churches frame their religion more productively, too. Next for detached and aloof business, I guess, if I can wade through the cadres of musty Cold War minions who haven't learned anything new since 1967.

David, you have to take those ideas and frame them usefully in the working world. The simplest example at the moment is the climate change/air and ground pollution/respiratory illness/vile living conditions nexus, and economic modernisation. As you know, I also put terrorism clearly in that group, but even I know that bit is too far as a popular plank because it's not intuitive enough�though plenty of respectable people, such as an Elon Musk in business and tech, get it.

In the same way, climate change is obviously a potential disaster, and species extinction is without question a silent horror, but they're also difficult to grasp intuitively. Alternative energy and pollution work as themes for everyone, and will get the support of an Asian population suffering under their weight in the process (energy as a regional economic constraint; pollution as a health and quality of life issue).

So, there's plenty to work with right there without reinventing political conceptions in a beige cardigan, outside-in, reminisce on May '68, movement.

At the same time, Mugwump, if people think a Tony Abbott or a George Bush isn't both dangerously incompetent and dangerously ideological, or the US right is not a flying fruitbat factory, or Balloonhead and Count Clueless have any insight to offer the UK and wider world beyond a laughable, evangelical prayer meet combination of VAT rises and EU chest beating, they're clearly not ready to embrace the future, either.

The world is infinitely more complex than the tiny, narrow learnings and dated Cold Warrior mindsets of both groups concerned.

[HAL]

The whole world?

[Mugwump]

[pietillidie]

^Yes, that ousting of Abbott was an affirming win for sanity�but let's not forget it was a Westminster thing; consider the large percentage of idiots who voted for him and would've again, much like the ones who voted for Bush twice!

On the US right generally, you're surely joking, aren't you? Have you seen the Republican freak show over the last 15 years? They make the institutional shell of emptiness which is Hillary Clinton seem substantial!

And beyond Turnbull and Penny Wong, Australia has about as much political leadership talent as a bone Jeremy Corbyn cable-knit cardigan.

It's an horrific spread of political options across Oz, the UK and US. (South Korea is as bad, but in quite a different historical context).

[HAL]

Oops. Too much data.

[Mugwump]

[David]

[stui magpie]

India is a democracy. The poverty stricken far outweigh the wealthy in numbers yet they haven't managed to vote for massive wealth distribution, have they?

The people in Frankston can vote, and they may want to have the lifestyle and money of the Toorak and Sth Yarra populace, but it aint gonna happen.

Think about your little fantasy a bit more deeply. Say it was a whole world government with locally elected members yo a central parliament. The bangladeshis may want to vote for a local member who promises to divide up Australia's wealth for them, assuming any party would run such a candidate, then if that person gets elected they are but one person in an overall parliament. You reckon any party with a platform of wealth redistribution would actually get elected?