This phenomenon all around the English-speaking (and much of the rest of the) world of two parties / blocs playing 'Tweedledee-Tweedledum', or as George Galloway put it "two cheeks of the same arse" Is not an aberration, It's a design-feature. The convergence is the inevitable outcome of the professionalisation of the left-political class, the continuum of selection of 'new entrants' by the 'old-guard' and the lack of responsiveness to change that the latter engenders.
The USA at least has a limited capacity for 'pre-selection' of candidates by the process of Primaries. I don't claim to understand it, because the idea that a person who's not a party member can register to vote for a candidate in the primaries from a range of names attached to a given party seems weird: what's to stop a hard right-wing voter registering Democrat then voting for a hard-right candidate that's standing on the Democratic ticket (or vise-versa for that matter)? Just a rhetorical question tbh.
At least the U.S. system has the 'advantage' of meaningless party-names. The country is indeed a Republic and also a Democracy (at least nominally). Here in the commonwealth we have to put up with 'Conservatives' that pursue radical neoliberalism, 'Nationals' that pursue global corporate interests at the cost of sovereignty, 'Labour Parties' that work hard in the service of the Party apparatus and the professional public service (PMC, more of which later) that forms almost all of their activist base and part of their financial base (though increasingly supplanted by corporate donors as convergence gains pace), while achieving the minimum possible for people working in non / low-level managerial waged / salaried jobs commensurate with obtaining their vote.
Names are important. As every practitioner of magic (the old name for 'mass-psychology') knows, being able to name a thing is a necessary precursor to controlling it, and maintaining these misnomers is vital to maintaining the useful ongoing public delusions of what these political parties actually stand for, and the vanishingly small size of the elites whose interests they actually serve.
Bijou, a few weeks ago we had a conversation after I used the term 'PMC', which, at the time, you styled as "just another term for white-collar workers, and I guess as an academic, I am one" (apologies for the approximation of your words-that's from memory) I note that in this post you use the term, and in the context I'm not sure if you've moved in your understanding. My understanding of the PMC is specifically that class of managers, usually in government service, that have significant control over the allocation of resources and/or influence on public policy (notwithstanding the general direction is in the domain, at least theoretically, of their political seniors). This class of people is, in fact, quite small. Given that public service personnel make up only 20% of employed persons in NZ, this might only be one percent of the population- not enough to make a political party in their own right.
This class largely came into existence as a result of the expansion of government services into the social realm after WW2, and those changes were brought about or enhanced by 'Labour' and similar social-democratic parties. It was thus perfectly natural that the managers should cleave to those parties. Given that managers have managerial skills, it's hardly surprising that they rose to positions of rank within those parties. However, as they ossified into a class of their own, with their own class-interests, it's hardly surprising that the party that they were now deeply embedded in became moulded to reflect those interests.
Despite the PMC being largely a creature of post-war social reforms aimed at improving the lot of the working class, there is no iron rule that interests will always be shared . Indeed, for centuries the Civil Service was very much the apparatus of the ruling class, shared their interests, and quite often managed to elevate themselves into that class. Thus, as power has shifted incrementally from more-or-less benign government to government on behalf of corporate interests, there has been no ideological barrier to the PMC moving in the same direction- they will always tend to attach themselves to the source of power. They may tell themselves that they are fighting a rearguard action against the worst excesses of corporate power, but fundamentally their interest is self-preservation, so in the present moment the policies of their party are convergent with those of the parties of corporate power. To maintain a semblance of 'difference', they tuck themselves up very snugly just to the left of the actual Right-wing parties and adopt the same policies with the caveat that they will make the same painful and entirely unnecessary changes that the Right ordains, but 'more slowly, more compassionately'.
On the Right, a process similar in outcome occurs, The Right recruits far fewer candidates who have studied PPE, public administration etc. Instead they parachute them in from corporate business a term or two before making them leader. To fill the lower echelons they just get someone who looks good in a suit and has a bit of local cred. to be a 'bum on a seat' and vote for the party whip. As public administration is an entirely different 'kettle of fish' to private business, they instantly find themselves out of their depth, particularly if they wish to defy the advice of their permanent civil service, which they seem to relish as a matter of course. Thus policy comes from 'think-tanks', which have a lot of 'big-picture' ideology, but no knowledge of administration, and to be quite honest, have an agenda to cause as much damage to the institution of government as possible.
Every school dropout that sells second-hand cars or owns a coffee-cart franchise reckons that because they're now 'in business' they must vote National, cos 'party of business, innit?' with no concept that the think-tanks are pursuing policies designed to protect the status and assets of the already-wealthy and establish them as the sole font of political power. Unfortunately a great many lawyers, accountants, engineers etc. who do have the mental capacity to understand the issues do the same because they simply haven't heard the message.
Thus the working class and the small to actually-quite-large-but-not-corporate business owners that rely on their spending-power are entirely unrepresented in our politics. We desperately need a third party to redress the balance.
When you have the time. If fundamental economic metrics, and the model basis is itself premised on faulty math, what can we even say about the state of the profession?
Clearly, conservative economics is trash, even so, the debunking has not gone nearly far enough.
Yep. At the moment, simplifying a bit, the debunking has only reached the ears of those who were seeking debunking. One issue I have is the strange-right-left (The Duran, Alex Krainer, crowd, they defy my classification) and the marxist-left both groups who seek debunking but have only looked under their own lamp-lights.
I found another even naughtier paper by Fix. Unless there are holes in his argumentation, degrowth, a reduction in energy intensity and a saner world require one thing:
aggressive application of anti-trust.
Small is (more) beautiful
Energy = GDP = growing corporate size.
There are multiple pathways to this conclusion; from a physics / energy perspective; socially; and from an evolutionary point (evolution chooses diversity in form; it's existence is the engine of adaption)
Yeah, I mean I guess that's a fair assessment. But I think it can be accomplished more efficiently than enforcing anti-trust, because under all the other institutional arrangements there is a limit to how aggressive the courts can be --- available decent lawyers limit. I'd just fine the polluters out of existence.
Blair and other heterodox PK schoolers lack the full comprehension of policy options available for any leadership that actually honestly cares about the planetary ecosystem and the plight of the poor. Gotta eliminate poverty, not merely ameliorate. If we rely on private sector employment for that it'll just be more electricity down the drain of failed profit schemes.
Loads of other policy options that an MMT lens can also offer. I would say aiming to shrink welfare to near zero since *we will not need welfare* (under my dictatorship ;-) --- just ordinary social security and free healthcare etc. Give people decent public service job alternatives, let them quit working for the proverbial "bitcoin miners". (By which I mean literally every non-essential electricity guzzling firm.)
Antitrust has far more effect than whittling down polluters to size. it has far more to do with tearing apart the economic political consolidation national corporations create.
Blair’s paper implies at least to my fevered mind growth = corporate consolidation = energy intensity. The paper is just a different angle on the conclusion I have arrived at: deconstruction of the global economy is a must. It’s a must because extreme weather makes large scale, long-term investment financially insolvent; the expectation of a destructive event is pretty high these days and it’s only going to rise. There will be no there there of supply chains for a global economy to function with.. it is going to happen one way or another. That process is largely going to shrivel the energy intensity of any survivors.
One of the other problems about our ascendant plutocratic order, is they believe a catastrophe is inevitable. And they have contrived a perfect ideology to make it a self fulfilling prophecy.
I don't disagree. Will take your word on the effectiveness of anti-trust reg.s However, not all monopolies are bad. It's a value judgment, and we will need many economies of scale I think. There is a political problem of lifting billions up out of poverty while not having fascists and armies of libertarians and AnCaps storm the gates (unless it is Bill Gates). What I'd want is non-partisan large monopolies but under democratic oversight. So anti-capitalist. They could be nationalized. Nationalized energy grids, not market competition. Anything that is a public good/ public commons where price can and should be fixed and supply varied.
I've listened to the weird anthropologists advocating returning toe village life. It sounds idyllic to me (and if nature forces us to so drastically "return to the local' then ok), but how many people are prepared to by deliberate design give up their smartphones and gaming devices and whatnot? It seems far too utopian. (And one dudes utopia is another's hell.)
Some compromises must be made, and the bullies will have to be given some hamburgers. I don't want to fight internecine wars because the Vegans claim a lifestyle choice can save the planet.
I got off topic. But basically I find your comment compelling.
Some monopoly may not be bad. Natural ones are given special consideration in the courts, but I think it’s fair to say that the tech giants finance, media, oh baby media, the food processing sector Cargill and Tyson are the most notorious conglomerates in that sector, they need to go. There is so much work to be done
And I think it’s about time to re nationalize MaBell.
Now that slouching towards fascism… Even suggesting this should send chills down the spine of every ally. Macron is there at least. Also I bet he is still salty about the sub deal with Australia.
My view is primarily driven by the assessment that extreme weather makes large scale, long-term infrastructure economically (operationally and financially) non-viable.
One of my major objections to the notion of a national response "like WWII" effort is that it was a monolithic response appropriate to the challenge. Regional conditions will be quite distinct and mercurial. The only consistent strategy process is going to be: let's find out what we have available locally and let's figure out how we can make the most of it locally. This will be the center of future human innovation.
Expect that non-market utilities (which may be monopoly) scale only up to local or regional level because of climate constraints, which will be a moving target for the foreseeable future. One size fits all economic products (eg: standard housing materials) won't work.
A federated system of mutual aid and trade should also be a component of all this and the one sense in which "national" effort remains useful. This form of organization is consistent with regional and national disaster relief agencies; they coordinate mutual aid.
And in some ways, it is the greatest engineering, organizational and creative challenge of our time. Sort of like being the McGuyver dropped onto a desert island with a safety pin and a paper clip and made to sustain himself, or the challenge faced by astronauts and ground engineers during the Apollo 13 disaster but with far more relaxed constraints.
Our towns and counties/provinces, will rise in importance. Governments to the scale of smaller US states may represent the largest viable scope.
The Tweedledee Tweedledum fascist versus enlightened neoliberalism, getting really old.
One of the greater absurdities being voiced by the Democratic patronage, trash, political consultant ecosystem, is their idea the party needed to turn their backs on the trans community tack hard right in order to capture GOP voters. What the F. Trump got fewer votes this election in 2020, but the Democratic party lost more votes, even though ballot people were voting to preserve abortion rights.
The dynamic itself I think is as symptom of too much f-cking wealth consolidation. Plutocracy is just too rich (lol) and they can buy off opportunists (Starmer) in the more us-liberal party while the conservative parties send their libertarian vat hell spawn on pilgrimage to the Heritage Society, to come back and give speeches about how the heads off of children is really actually an act of kindness.
Fascism is a symptom of way too much wealth concentration. Neoliberalism has always been an ask that a people surrender their sovereignty to totalitarian wealth, creating that consolidation. Billionaires and corporatists bribe a lot of people to make that ask.
Plutocracy is trans international; god the world is in such deep Doodoo.
Deep foofoo. Couldn't have outraged more appropriately myself. I feel the weight of social obligation to ramp up education efforts. It always seems like a drop in the ocean, but I try to keep telling myself those drops count. Like phreakin votes count!
I believe voting for Jill Stein would have been better re-education for the Democrat elites than non-voting. The signals are all there for them to read, should they choose. I think they should read the non-votes as basically lazy Third Party votes. But I doubt they will. I suspect several more rounds of neoliberal revolving chairs will occur. Perhaps. Until some sort of more massive conflagration.
We are not going to have more rounds. With total control of government there is no check and there is no balance against the GOP doing exactly what their donors want. But there are definite conflicts in purpose between this mob. The fissures between the religious nuts, the corporatists and the plutocrats will be coming to the foreground. But democracy, and what remains of a market economy are all on the chopping block.
The only thing is this past election that was meaningful was to prevent the GOP from gaining total control, if not entirely repudiate them.
The choice was not between the liberalism and fascist liberalism, but between totalitarian dictatorship, and a center right gov, with lashings progressives.
https://www.harperwest.co/demanding-civility-narcissistic-gaslighting-abuse/
Indeed. Only demand civility in response to someone who is civil. The problem is, liberals think they are civil.
Hi Bijou / Ghost:
This phenomenon all around the English-speaking (and much of the rest of the) world of two parties / blocs playing 'Tweedledee-Tweedledum', or as George Galloway put it "two cheeks of the same arse" Is not an aberration, It's a design-feature. The convergence is the inevitable outcome of the professionalisation of the left-political class, the continuum of selection of 'new entrants' by the 'old-guard' and the lack of responsiveness to change that the latter engenders.
The USA at least has a limited capacity for 'pre-selection' of candidates by the process of Primaries. I don't claim to understand it, because the idea that a person who's not a party member can register to vote for a candidate in the primaries from a range of names attached to a given party seems weird: what's to stop a hard right-wing voter registering Democrat then voting for a hard-right candidate that's standing on the Democratic ticket (or vise-versa for that matter)? Just a rhetorical question tbh.
At least the U.S. system has the 'advantage' of meaningless party-names. The country is indeed a Republic and also a Democracy (at least nominally). Here in the commonwealth we have to put up with 'Conservatives' that pursue radical neoliberalism, 'Nationals' that pursue global corporate interests at the cost of sovereignty, 'Labour Parties' that work hard in the service of the Party apparatus and the professional public service (PMC, more of which later) that forms almost all of their activist base and part of their financial base (though increasingly supplanted by corporate donors as convergence gains pace), while achieving the minimum possible for people working in non / low-level managerial waged / salaried jobs commensurate with obtaining their vote.
Names are important. As every practitioner of magic (the old name for 'mass-psychology') knows, being able to name a thing is a necessary precursor to controlling it, and maintaining these misnomers is vital to maintaining the useful ongoing public delusions of what these political parties actually stand for, and the vanishingly small size of the elites whose interests they actually serve.
Bijou, a few weeks ago we had a conversation after I used the term 'PMC', which, at the time, you styled as "just another term for white-collar workers, and I guess as an academic, I am one" (apologies for the approximation of your words-that's from memory) I note that in this post you use the term, and in the context I'm not sure if you've moved in your understanding. My understanding of the PMC is specifically that class of managers, usually in government service, that have significant control over the allocation of resources and/or influence on public policy (notwithstanding the general direction is in the domain, at least theoretically, of their political seniors). This class of people is, in fact, quite small. Given that public service personnel make up only 20% of employed persons in NZ, this might only be one percent of the population- not enough to make a political party in their own right.
This class largely came into existence as a result of the expansion of government services into the social realm after WW2, and those changes were brought about or enhanced by 'Labour' and similar social-democratic parties. It was thus perfectly natural that the managers should cleave to those parties. Given that managers have managerial skills, it's hardly surprising that they rose to positions of rank within those parties. However, as they ossified into a class of their own, with their own class-interests, it's hardly surprising that the party that they were now deeply embedded in became moulded to reflect those interests.
Despite the PMC being largely a creature of post-war social reforms aimed at improving the lot of the working class, there is no iron rule that interests will always be shared . Indeed, for centuries the Civil Service was very much the apparatus of the ruling class, shared their interests, and quite often managed to elevate themselves into that class. Thus, as power has shifted incrementally from more-or-less benign government to government on behalf of corporate interests, there has been no ideological barrier to the PMC moving in the same direction- they will always tend to attach themselves to the source of power. They may tell themselves that they are fighting a rearguard action against the worst excesses of corporate power, but fundamentally their interest is self-preservation, so in the present moment the policies of their party are convergent with those of the parties of corporate power. To maintain a semblance of 'difference', they tuck themselves up very snugly just to the left of the actual Right-wing parties and adopt the same policies with the caveat that they will make the same painful and entirely unnecessary changes that the Right ordains, but 'more slowly, more compassionately'.
On the Right, a process similar in outcome occurs, The Right recruits far fewer candidates who have studied PPE, public administration etc. Instead they parachute them in from corporate business a term or two before making them leader. To fill the lower echelons they just get someone who looks good in a suit and has a bit of local cred. to be a 'bum on a seat' and vote for the party whip. As public administration is an entirely different 'kettle of fish' to private business, they instantly find themselves out of their depth, particularly if they wish to defy the advice of their permanent civil service, which they seem to relish as a matter of course. Thus policy comes from 'think-tanks', which have a lot of 'big-picture' ideology, but no knowledge of administration, and to be quite honest, have an agenda to cause as much damage to the institution of government as possible.
Every school dropout that sells second-hand cars or owns a coffee-cart franchise reckons that because they're now 'in business' they must vote National, cos 'party of business, innit?' with no concept that the think-tanks are pursuing policies designed to protect the status and assets of the already-wealthy and establish them as the sole font of political power. Unfortunately a great many lawyers, accountants, engineers etc. who do have the mental capacity to understand the issues do the same because they simply haven't heard the message.
Thus the working class and the small to actually-quite-large-but-not-corporate business owners that rely on their spending-power are entirely unrepresented in our politics. We desperately need a third party to redress the balance.
I think you've convinced me PMC is small and I am not in that class. Thanks for the comment!
When you have the time. If fundamental economic metrics, and the model basis is itself premised on faulty math, what can we even say about the state of the profession?
Clearly, conservative economics is trash, even so, the debunking has not gone nearly far enough.
https://masto.ai/@GhostOnTheHalfShell/113459341686286768
Yep. At the moment, simplifying a bit, the debunking has only reached the ears of those who were seeking debunking. One issue I have is the strange-right-left (The Duran, Alex Krainer, crowd, they defy my classification) and the marxist-left both groups who seek debunking but have only looked under their own lamp-lights.
I found another even naughtier paper by Fix. Unless there are holes in his argumentation, degrowth, a reduction in energy intensity and a saner world require one thing:
aggressive application of anti-trust.
Small is (more) beautiful
Energy = GDP = growing corporate size.
There are multiple pathways to this conclusion; from a physics / energy perspective; socially; and from an evolutionary point (evolution chooses diversity in form; it's existence is the engine of adaption)
http://media.wix.com/ugd/b54439_267380ad034f49ba9bf7308404545716.pdf
Yeah, I mean I guess that's a fair assessment. But I think it can be accomplished more efficiently than enforcing anti-trust, because under all the other institutional arrangements there is a limit to how aggressive the courts can be --- available decent lawyers limit. I'd just fine the polluters out of existence.
Blair and other heterodox PK schoolers lack the full comprehension of policy options available for any leadership that actually honestly cares about the planetary ecosystem and the plight of the poor. Gotta eliminate poverty, not merely ameliorate. If we rely on private sector employment for that it'll just be more electricity down the drain of failed profit schemes.
Loads of other policy options that an MMT lens can also offer. I would say aiming to shrink welfare to near zero since *we will not need welfare* (under my dictatorship ;-) --- just ordinary social security and free healthcare etc. Give people decent public service job alternatives, let them quit working for the proverbial "bitcoin miners". (By which I mean literally every non-essential electricity guzzling firm.)
PK? Post Keynesian?
Antitrust has far more effect than whittling down polluters to size. it has far more to do with tearing apart the economic political consolidation national corporations create.
Blair’s paper implies at least to my fevered mind growth = corporate consolidation = energy intensity. The paper is just a different angle on the conclusion I have arrived at: deconstruction of the global economy is a must. It’s a must because extreme weather makes large scale, long-term investment financially insolvent; the expectation of a destructive event is pretty high these days and it’s only going to rise. There will be no there there of supply chains for a global economy to function with.. it is going to happen one way or another. That process is largely going to shrivel the energy intensity of any survivors.
One of the other problems about our ascendant plutocratic order, is they believe a catastrophe is inevitable. And they have contrived a perfect ideology to make it a self fulfilling prophecy.
I don't disagree. Will take your word on the effectiveness of anti-trust reg.s However, not all monopolies are bad. It's a value judgment, and we will need many economies of scale I think. There is a political problem of lifting billions up out of poverty while not having fascists and armies of libertarians and AnCaps storm the gates (unless it is Bill Gates). What I'd want is non-partisan large monopolies but under democratic oversight. So anti-capitalist. They could be nationalized. Nationalized energy grids, not market competition. Anything that is a public good/ public commons where price can and should be fixed and supply varied.
I've listened to the weird anthropologists advocating returning toe village life. It sounds idyllic to me (and if nature forces us to so drastically "return to the local' then ok), but how many people are prepared to by deliberate design give up their smartphones and gaming devices and whatnot? It seems far too utopian. (And one dudes utopia is another's hell.)
Some compromises must be made, and the bullies will have to be given some hamburgers. I don't want to fight internecine wars because the Vegans claim a lifestyle choice can save the planet.
I got off topic. But basically I find your comment compelling.
Some monopoly may not be bad. Natural ones are given special consideration in the courts, but I think it’s fair to say that the tech giants finance, media, oh baby media, the food processing sector Cargill and Tyson are the most notorious conglomerates in that sector, they need to go. There is so much work to be done
And I think it’s about time to re nationalize MaBell.
Now that slouching towards fascism… Even suggesting this should send chills down the spine of every ally. Macron is there at least. Also I bet he is still salty about the sub deal with Australia.
https://mastodon.social/@GottaLaff/113472185099746026
My view is primarily driven by the assessment that extreme weather makes large scale, long-term infrastructure economically (operationally and financially) non-viable.
One of my major objections to the notion of a national response "like WWII" effort is that it was a monolithic response appropriate to the challenge. Regional conditions will be quite distinct and mercurial. The only consistent strategy process is going to be: let's find out what we have available locally and let's figure out how we can make the most of it locally. This will be the center of future human innovation.
Expect that non-market utilities (which may be monopoly) scale only up to local or regional level because of climate constraints, which will be a moving target for the foreseeable future. One size fits all economic products (eg: standard housing materials) won't work.
A federated system of mutual aid and trade should also be a component of all this and the one sense in which "national" effort remains useful. This form of organization is consistent with regional and national disaster relief agencies; they coordinate mutual aid.
And in some ways, it is the greatest engineering, organizational and creative challenge of our time. Sort of like being the McGuyver dropped onto a desert island with a safety pin and a paper clip and made to sustain himself, or the challenge faced by astronauts and ground engineers during the Apollo 13 disaster but with far more relaxed constraints.
Our towns and counties/provinces, will rise in importance. Governments to the scale of smaller US states may represent the largest viable scope.
The Tweedledee Tweedledum fascist versus enlightened neoliberalism, getting really old.
One of the greater absurdities being voiced by the Democratic patronage, trash, political consultant ecosystem, is their idea the party needed to turn their backs on the trans community tack hard right in order to capture GOP voters. What the F. Trump got fewer votes this election in 2020, but the Democratic party lost more votes, even though ballot people were voting to preserve abortion rights.
The dynamic itself I think is as symptom of too much f-cking wealth consolidation. Plutocracy is just too rich (lol) and they can buy off opportunists (Starmer) in the more us-liberal party while the conservative parties send their libertarian vat hell spawn on pilgrimage to the Heritage Society, to come back and give speeches about how the heads off of children is really actually an act of kindness.
Fascism is a symptom of way too much wealth concentration. Neoliberalism has always been an ask that a people surrender their sovereignty to totalitarian wealth, creating that consolidation. Billionaires and corporatists bribe a lot of people to make that ask.
Plutocracy is trans international; god the world is in such deep Doodoo.
Deep foofoo. Couldn't have outraged more appropriately myself. I feel the weight of social obligation to ramp up education efforts. It always seems like a drop in the ocean, but I try to keep telling myself those drops count. Like phreakin votes count!
I believe voting for Jill Stein would have been better re-education for the Democrat elites than non-voting. The signals are all there for them to read, should they choose. I think they should read the non-votes as basically lazy Third Party votes. But I doubt they will. I suspect several more rounds of neoliberal revolving chairs will occur. Perhaps. Until some sort of more massive conflagration.
We are not going to have more rounds. With total control of government there is no check and there is no balance against the GOP doing exactly what their donors want. But there are definite conflicts in purpose between this mob. The fissures between the religious nuts, the corporatists and the plutocrats will be coming to the foreground. But democracy, and what remains of a market economy are all on the chopping block.
The only thing is this past election that was meaningful was to prevent the GOP from gaining total control, if not entirely repudiate them.
The choice was not between the liberalism and fascist liberalism, but between totalitarian dictatorship, and a center right gov, with lashings progressives.
We got totalitarian dictatorship cued up.