Feet-on-ground Utopia

Today, a mix of pieces from Webdiarists on everything from IVF to a working definition of the Third Way. To begin, Webdiarists recommend two ABC programs to lift your spirits.

Gavin Gamble likes “the current Books and Writing (Radio National – audio on demand) concerning the terrific and amazing story of the Borroloola Library and its cast of characters”.

“They include the various hermits of Borroloola – Bill Harney, Ted Egan (my fave for Australian President, singing heartfelt songs of social justice using a cardboard box) and, unbelievably but truly, David Attenborough.

“It’s a great Australian and human story exemplifying the antithesis of current Coalition values. It’s a vision of Australia combining the self educated noble stockman, Cunnamulla and an early Athens of the Gulf of Carpenteria and it’s a fabulous doco. I can’t wait for the book to come out.”

Lisa De Ferrari likes “The good citizen” series (abc), on Friday’s at 2.30pm.

“I think we will look back on the late “Howard period” (whenever it may finish) as to what it said about Australian democracy, the importance of the Constitution and of its principles of separation of powers and representative and responsible government. Just a brief look at issues in the last, say, 4 years, would give a list which included: the republic debate/debacle, the preamble to the constitution, reconciliation and a treaty/document with the Indigenous people, the attacks against the courts, the undermining of the independence of the public service, the “lead from behind” style of politics, the ever expanding power of the executive, the attempts against basic civil and political rights with the ASIO and anti-terrorism laws. Probably forgot a few, but you get the picture. Ah, yes, the role of the media.

“My view is that the debate should be one that looks at all the various strands together, and analyses events / trends / ideas in that context. This broader debate isn’t really happening in Australia – there’s bits of debate here, there and everywhere, but either there isn’t the time or the inclination to address the broader context. Whatever a specific issue is debated, it never gets put in a more general context of democratic principles and the rule of law.

“These programs on “The good citizen” are, I think, a very good start.”

TODAY’S ISSUE

1. Rod McIntyre says “I am beginning to find I have a lot to say”.

2. Sean Richardson is inspired by the census to resolve the IVF debate

3. Meaghan Phillipson on the youth vote.

4. John Wojdylo says The Third Way is about “keeping the feet on the ground while reaching for the open market Utopia”.

5. Roland Killick on ten ways to improve ourselves.

6. Professor John Quiggin king hits Aaron Oakley.

1. KIDS ARE US

Is this who we want to be?

By Rod McIntyre, Sydney,

When was the last time you watched little kids playing together? Preferably when there are lots of them and they don’t all know each other – like a community playground on Sunday afternoon. Preferably with a cafe right beside, so it’s an outing both for you and the kids.

Just watch them. It’s amazing really. They are so immediately social. Sure, sometimes there are dramas and falls and a tear now and then, but on the whole they are these guileless little people, sharing each others fun so enthusiastically. They compete to climb the highest, but you will notice that when one wins and the other stops short, the winner will climb down, because it’s no fun playing up there by yourself. You will notice on the big slide, the huge excited laughs are about the other kids slides just as much as their own. They share names, and point out their mums and dads to each other, they spontaneously launch into fantasy stories where everyone can be a superhero.

If you haven’t the opportunity to do the playground on Sundays thing, then take a bus from a busy suburb hub to a major shopping centre. If you’re lucky a Mum or Dad will sit close to you with a small child. Just watch the kid. You will be studied with huge inquisitive eyes. Smile, you will get a smile back. Say hello, you will get a hello.

Most likely by that stage, the ice will be broken. You might be introduced to the favourite action figure, or be offered a play with the racing car. Respond to this and you are a friend! You will be told with gravity and directness that Spiderman is sooooo way cooler than Batman, and that Obi Wan is better than anybody. Mum is going to make me a cape when we get home from the supermarket ! Bye, they will say as the bus stops, as if we will meet again for sure tomorrow.

These are beautiful little people. Rich/poor/black/white/ brown, that stuff isn’t important to our kids – hell, it’s not even considered. Beautiful, guileless, giving little people. A joy to have, a joy to watch, and my hope for the future.

My problem, and the reason I am writing this, is that when I look at all the things that make up where I live and how I live, this thing we call society , I don’t like what I see. I am not talking about not liking it as in `Oh, things are a bit rough but they will get better’, I am saying this is real bad, and I can see it getting worse.

What has happened to us? What kind of country are we going to leave for our precious children? The government is doing awful things in our names, and we are told it is what we want. We are told that a couple of thousand starving, broke, almost drowned refugees, whose home is so terrible they risk their lives to run away from it are a threat to our country. We are told that they are to be detained in a miserable place, indefinitely, or until we can send them back to the hell they have just escaped. The government tells me that this is what I want, what Australians want.

I saw a man on the news recently who said that those who are already in these miserable detention centres should be shot if they cause trouble. I was told by the news program that there were quite a few Australians supporting this man.

Before this I was shown pictures of little children in the sea, some about the same age as my son, I would think. I was told that their parents had thrown them into the sea, and for this, I should despise these cruel people. I was told that what I wanted was that we should treat them harshly and send them back.

Do you know what I thought? I thought what economic or military hell did these people come from that would cause them to do this terrible and desperate thing? I did not know that it was a lie at that time.

So here I am now, thinking about watching my son play on Sunday, maybe with your son or daughter. Here I am now, asking myself, is this who I want to be? When my boy grows to become a thinking person, with conscience and sensibility, am I the man I want him to see me as? The man who has been told I want to incarcerate woman and children, or even desperate men, but most likely desperate only to work, to feed their children, maybe to watch them play on a Sunday afternoon.

No. It is not who I want to be, and I don’t like being told that this is what I want, because it isn’t. The saddest thing is that I don’t understand why you all do.

2. ALL CARE, ALL RESPONSIBILITY

Find a friend, have a baby

By Sean Richardson, Sydney

I first dreamt up this idea in response to the IVF/single women/lesbians debate we nearly had earlier in the year. To begin: I have a problem with the idea that government funded IVF should be seen as an absolute right.

On the one hand, any unbiased person who knows more than two gay people (of either gender) will have realised that many would make fine parents, probably in about the same proportion as the rest of us. I was going to make a smart arse comment about an exception regarding tackle practice for junior, but then again, Ian “Iron” Roberts. And in this day and age we all know any number of well adjusted adults who come from divorced and therefore “single” parents. Although it would seem that ready access to the parent who isn’t at home (or a committed substitute) does help.

On the other hand though, it is also true that having no knowledge about half of your biological ancestry hurts the kids involved. There are on-going legal struggles by “test tube babies”, as they used to be known, to gain some knowledge about their biological dads. Anyone who’s been to the doctor should know why: “is there a history of X in your family?” The now young adults involved also describe emotional dislocation, not to mention the nightmare scenario of innocently entering upon a romantic relationship with a half sibling.

And it really is a patent load of crap to assert that single parents don’t require more welfare support. This is especially true where the non-resident parent is completely out of the picture and therefore not making any support payments. As one of those weirdo married heterosexuals, I and others like me will find it a bit annoying if we have to make all the compromises of marriage, and work our butts off to support our own kids, and on top of that pay enormously increased taxes so that women who’d rather not have to put up with shavings in the sink can be supported from consolidated revenue.

What? Well, to hopefully enrage the right wing economists who’ve started hanging about the page with the temerity to compare themselves with empirical scientists (fnar fnar!), economies always come down to the collection and distribution of resources, and the money has to come from somewhere. Some will call for the disbandment of the defence forces but, while much of the world is still safe from democracy, I’d rather find another way to pay for a broadening of the idea of “family”.

Recently we’ve had one NSW MP saying that the problem is that old male commitment phobia. Whilst it’s great to see public policy ideas based on a Bett Middler movie, the actual statistical truth is that, for whatever reason, most divorces are initiated by women, so begging men to hang around wont solve anything. And of course Mr Anderson now asks the country to have a cup of tea, a Bex and good lie down. You don’t need the Oracle of Delphi to see the potential of this movement whilst ever women keep the vote.

But the Herald did say,in response to the census, that traditional political fixes weren’t going to work as society rapidly changed. And changing rapidly it is. Teleportation recently happened, and in Canberra! I bet Star Trek didn’t see that coming. We may be among the last humans for whom dying is not optional. And there’ll be no way to get chicks back in the kitchen now. Given the interests of the child and the constraints of the budget, public policy needs to get inventive.

To get the ball rolling on the family issue, heres my 2 cents which can be officially labelled Richo’s Nutty Idea.

It seems to me that there is a reason that human reproduction (no discussion of those femmo bonobos or nasty patriarchal chimps please) has always been a two person job well beyond the really fun part at the beginning.

Raising humans requires care, ie feeding, supervising, and teaching the ways of the world. It also requires the collection of resources for food, shelter, clothes, tools. Both of these are nearly full time jobs, and all of our advances do not seem to have changed that fact. So, although men can now feed babies with the amazing high tech of bottles and formula, and women can just buy red meat from the supermarket and don’t need a mighty hunter in the household, it still requires at least two adults to raise kids self sufficiently. The extremely rare “private income” aside, single parenthood and the constraints of the 24 hour day necessitate outside help.

Importantly to my proposal, I really think general self sufficiency is extremely important, as it underpins freedom and the very right to chose that has lead to this debate. Put very basically, if youre dependant on someone, they can tell you what to do. This is why employment opportunity is so central to feminism. As soon as we allow a system where certain people are required to live on hand-outs, liberty begins to erode: Structural unemployment to long term dole to work for the dole. And possibly: State supported single parenthood as a right to unsustainable welfare to no breeding without a licence.

So, given the accepted nature of even traditional marriage as a “contract”, how about this: For non-married persons to gain access to the IVF programme, at least two adults (“the Parents”) have to sign a Parenting Agreement. Neither of the Parents will be required to be of a particular gender or marital status, or be heterosexual.

One person agrees to be Parent A. Parent A agrees to take the Child into his or her physical care upon its birth, and to provide for it to the best of their ability, including financially, until majority.

Parent B also signs. Parent B need not be in a husband-and-wife style relationship with Parent A, they could even just be friends, but they must have known each other for a certain period of time. Parent B agrees to take the Child into her or his care and custody if Parent A can no longer care for the Child. Parent B agrees to make themselves known to the Child. Parent B agrees to support the Child financially until the age of majority.

Parents A and B work out a visitation schedule between them PRIOR to signing, which can be amended in the usual contractual way (by consent, or order of an appropriate court if necessary).

That’s the basics. I think such an agreement could also be applied to non-traditional families who don’t require IVF. For example, people who didn’t want to marry someone of the opposite sex for whatever reason, but who did want children and could find a like minded friend or lover could gain access to family tax benefits, allowances and so on by signing such an agreement. Perhaps as importantly, it would be a public, legally recognised commitment to becoming a parent, without having to pretend to be straight or married or whatever.

So the agreements could be yet more flexible. For covering the classic “two lesbians, a gay friend and a turkey baster” situation: Biological mum is Parent A, her lover is Parent B, Gay Friend and Biological Dad is Parent C. C’s agreement might be to be third in line for custody should the need arise (or the Family Court order), to provide financially jointly and severally with Parents A and B, and to make himself and his biological relationship to the Child known to the Child.

It wouldn’t take a doctor or lawyer to explain the level of commitment that went with the agreement. A simple low level briefing by a clerk somewhere (“18 years mate!”), followed by a compulsory one month cooling off period, would seem to make it unlikely that people would enter such agreements lightly or for the wrong reasons. At least as unlikely as entering marriage in the same way.

People having entered the agreements with eyes open, specifically because they want to be parents, there would seem to be less risk of one of the Parents becoming a “deadbeat”. Those who do could be dealt with in the usual hetero-divorce style. This would mean more work for child support enforcement agencies, but only because there would be more families. And those extra families would be as self-sufficient as the average married couple, and therefore usually net tax contributors (not to mention breeders of that important next generation).

As the census tells us that more people are choosing to live alone, never get married and so on, might not something like this proposal preserve the best aspects of family into the increasingly weird future? The offspring of such an agreement would know they were wanted, where they came from, and that they have the security of at least two parents, rather than one stressed, depressed and broke parent, constantly being persecuted by Centrelink for filling in the forms wrongly. I’d be interested to hear what people think: The target is up, please start shooting.

3. FOLLOWING IN OUR FOOTSTEPS

Know more, care less?

By Meaghan Phillipson

In his keynote speech to the International Democratic Union (IDU) in Washington, Prime Minister John Howard noted with some glee the rise in conservative voting amongst young voters in Australia. For Howard, this shift to the right is resultant of a broader shift by younger voters away from what he terms political party “tribalism” and towards materialistic or aspirational ends that are dependent on party performance rather than party loyalty. An interesting if not slightly self-conceited interpretation of why under-25 Australians are slowly trickling over to the right.

While Howard’s speech concerned itself with the converted, analysis over the voting habits of under-25s is largely punctuated by a belief in negative motives. If young people aren’t too apathetic to vote then they’re voting out of ignorance, insularism or materialistic reasoning. Yet these claims of why young people vote (or don’t vote) the way they do belie the complex nature of voting behaviour and that much of it is actually the result of an increase in awareness.

Judging by the tone of Ryan Heath’s article on the issue, Insulated against ideologies, the young have been captured by cynicism (smh, June 13) it must be a very bleak political landscape that he surveys. For Heath, a quarter of young people don’t participate out of ignorance and the rest are so riddled with mislaid cynicism that they can’t muster enough loyalty to stick with one political party for longer than the latest onslaught of media soundbites from Canberra.

While Heath rightly noted that any swing is cold comfort considering the high level of voter non-participation amongst under-25’s, he somewhat condescendingly used this trend of political disengagement to proffer the conclusion that this is indicative of ignorance amongst young voters. I for one have greater faith in the reasoning behind the actions of voters and non-voters in the under-25 age bracket, of which myself and (I suspect) Ryan Heath is a part of.

Non-participation should not automatically be equated with ignorant indifference but rather can be indicative of a refusal to choose between the major parties, which often don’t even acknowledge let alone represent young people in anything more than symbolic gestures.

Similarly, Heath’s concerns with a higher interest in issue-specific parties does not rightly lead to his conclusion that such groups should be denigrated to the harbingers of doom for liberal democracy. Since when has democracy been definable purely in terms of a straight two-party system? The rise of issue-focused parties and non-government organizations should be perceived as a celebration of a robust democracy that is able to accommodate dissenting views in the face of an increasingly stale and barely dichotomous relationship between the two major parties.

I think the interest in issue-specific political groups and non-participation amongst the young are closely linked as symptoms of a deeper dissatisfaction born of greater awareness rather than ignorance. We are a generation taught to question rather than believe or follow without reason precisely because we grew up watching our parents lose faith in loyalty when retrenchments and mortgage rate hikes dominated the early 90s.

We learnt of the struggle of Aboriginals for reconciliation and justice in school only to later discover the hard-heartedness of a government who could not acknowledge past suffering and, more recently during the last election campaign, we witnessed political opportunism overriding the basic tenet of civic duty, namely the protection of society’s most vulnerable.

On this point, it is important to emphasize that the loss of loyalty during the crash of the early 90s has left an indelible mark on the voting patterns of not only those who witnessed it but also the older generations who experienced it.

In this respect, the absence of “rusted-on” party loyalists is not anything peculiar to the young and should not be portrayed as so – one only needs to look as far as John Howard’s electoral 1996 election coup, in which he won over disaffected “aussie battlers” on a wave of anti-PC sentiment and promises of a brighter economic future.

Ryan Heath is right to worry about the future path of liberal democracy in this country yet this danger does not originate from ignorance or a lack of political passion among young Australians. Rather, the danger lies in the people who are really in most in need of civic education in this country – the members of the two major parties.

For the continued failure to rise above cynical politicking, which no longer passes undetected, and an inability to display compassion and integrity can only threaten to consume grassroots belief in democracy regardless of civic ignorance.

4. FREE TRADE, THE THIRD WAY

Sunrise of the Autocrats

By John Wojdylo

“Proponents of free trade should be outraged.” Indeed. Tim Dunlop’s excellent piece in Free trade: Nice work if you can get it (June 11) summarises much of the problematic side of world trade practice today. I have heard similar stories and points of view from a former US economics adviser and a Japanese economic adviser (who happens to be Australian), whose vantage point outside the U.S. economic dominion gave them a clear view of the brute force that often characterises American economic involvement in Asia.

A common (but not universal) view in Asia of how aid should be managed is to allow benefactor nations leeway to implement their own reforms. In a sense, this respects the “individuality” of the nation. After all, each nation has its own particular hurdles to overcome. Their message was, as long as it is acting responsibly, don’t bully the country into accepting your methods, which work for you in your circumstances. In this sense, this common aspect of Asian thinking is better at protecting individual rights than the reality of Western business practice!

The Americans are not alone, though, and it would be foolish to demonise the United States or the West. (Tim does not do this.) The former Soviet bloc, for example, is full of despotic economic players, and this is a reason why most of those economies are a shambles 12 years after the fall of communism. Perhaps the Americans have merely learned the lessons of the jungle, like everybody else, and wield their power accordingly. (Which doesn’t make it right.) Abuse of economic power is a world-wide epidemic: it has become accepted behaviour to screw weaker parties while bitterly defending one’s self-interest, in hundreds of modern instantiations of the Unequal Treaties. Autocrats do indeed play for keeps.

The EU, for example, is acting more and more dishonourably in expansion negotiations with accession countries. According to the International Herald Tribune (June 13), “Poland has absorbed so many exports from Western Europe that when the trade imbalance is added up for the last decade, Poland has bought about E60 billion more in goods from the EU than the other way around. Western European and American companies now control almost every major bank in the 10 accession countries and are profiting from the higher profit margins that the growing markets offer.

“A key mistake: Kalinowski, Poland’s deputy prime minister, says his country’s all-out rush toward the market economy left Warsaw without its principal bargaining chip – access to its market of 40 million people. `On a general level, as a country we made a mistake,’ he said in a recent interview at his Warsaw office. `We thought that the more we opened our economy the faster we would enter the EU. Now that I am active in the process and speaking with people from Brussels, I realize that without a doubt the only partner they respect is a strong partner’.”

At the negotiating table, power is all that counts. The law of the jungle. Pure utilitarianism, pure unthinking, short-term self-interest. Many – including George Soros – believe that without the current expansion round, the European Union experiment will fail. Europe cannot remain divided into rich and poor countries; it will just fall apart internally from the tensions.

But any sort of long-range thinking has vanished in EU debate these days. Moreover, historical memory has been wiped from the consciousness; all that remains is the bright future of our own prosperity. And the historical debt? How much more expensive would it have been for the West if Poles hadn’t stood up to communism and instigated the fall of the Soviet bloc? If the capitalist economy hadn’t been freed from the chains of the Cold War to pursue its golden calf?

Tim Evans (The Australian, June 11), incoming president and director general of the Centre for the New Europe (a market-oriented think tank in Brussels), is chuffed about the “new dawn”, and is delighted that “the sun is rising no matter how tightly [the reactionaries] close their eyes.” He is referring to the rise of the right across Europe. It is far from coincidence that simultaneously along with the rise of the right, we’re seeing a rise of shameless self-interest across the world.

What a tragedy it would be if the momentum against EU expansion continues gathering pace – the French because they feel their importance in Europe threatened; the Portuguese because they will lose a part of the giant subsidy they get from the EU; the Austrians because they fear that half the population of Poland will emigrate to their boring country; the Irish because a small, vocal fraction of the constituency can be bothered to turn up and vote against the Nice agreement in a referendum that can veto the entire EU-expansion process.

What a tragedy if Poland’s bid – in particular – is rejected or substantially delayed, after the country’s commercial institutions and market have been handed over to western European interests, under false pretences. Another great con job of history against the Polish people.

The pattern is a general one. In negotiations of any sort of business agreement, our debt to the weaker party – whether in recognition of our disruption of their way of life when supplying us with cheap labour; or for their rebellion against our enemy and creating the conditions for our prosperity – is as distant from our minds as yesterday’s news. We look forward, towards the future – our future prosperity.

Tim Dunlop quotes Nobel laureate, Joseph Stiglitz: “The issue that is commonly debated – namely, whether we should be “for” or “against” globalization – is not the salient one. As a practical matter there is no retreating from globalization. The real issue is the conduct of the international economic organizations that steer it.”

This has been obvious for a decade, yet the view has barely penetrated Western media. Simplistic “for” or “against” debate makes for sexier headlines, while perpetuating the dead issue ad infinitum, and guaranteeing more sexy headlines. Globalisation is a reality – the problem is to make the process more just.

After giving plenty of background, Tim writes, “Under such circumstances, free trade agreements are nothing of the sort: they are instruments of power, used by corporations and governments to enforce conditions favourable to the wealthy few, not the dependent many. When they don’t work as intended, the more powerful partner can just choose not to play by the rules.”

The conduct of rich countries – their companies as well as organisations like the World Bank and the IMF (Stiglitz gives the example of the IMF’s behaviour in Ethiopia) – too often smacks of colonialist arrogance. But the word “colonialism” springs to mind only because we’re looking at conduct across national borders (eg German supermarket giants in small Polish towns). The problem is more general than “colonialism”. The will to corporate power, to expansion at all costs – including breaking rules and agreements whenever one can get away with it – begins within national boundaries. This is part of the world view of too many corporate executives and government officials, and gets applied wherever they exert influence. It’s a problem of corporate culture. And a problem of democracy – voters let it happen. How do bad corporations get away with it?

If the issue, as Stiglitz suggests, is the conduct of economic organisations that steer economic activity, then the political-economic problem is how to enforce the agreements. The elements, then, of the solution to the “Third Way” question that we’re discussing in the Webdiary lie not in discovering a new economic theory, but in making better agreements (in the sense of being fairer to the workforce and environment; to the weaker party) and applying the law. The problem is getting the rich countries to lift their game.

Underlying this is the assumption that an open market is desirable. Maybe it’s desirable in some cases – after a nation gets to a certain point in its development, for example – and not others – when a national economy is in its fledgling stages, and too vulnerable to fend for itself in the jungle.

So we get back to the issue of corporate responsibility. Or, in the more general picture, the moral and ethical responsibility of the rich democracies. Relying on the ethics of shareholders, and the hope that shareholders are properly informed, is undoubtedly a recipe for corruption of corporate ethics. Corporate accountability – accountability of executives to the shareholders – is a bad joke if equated to “responsibility to be a good citizen”. However, the law cannot force people to become better ethical and moral human beings. So the problem is, at its core, a moral and ethical one. It is about the moral and ethical state of individuals of our society.

A brief note: there was a business conference (in Melbourne?) a couple of weeks ago, in which the question, “Should companies be forced to play a socially responsible role?” was debated. (I’m paraphrasing, as I don’t have the reference with me.) The “nays” won the day, scoring most points with the business audience through the assertion, “If executives have to factor in altruistic community support, then they will eventually cease to be responsible to their shareholders. And this is bad for accountability, bad for democracy.”

To give just one counterexample out of thousands – it took a major court case before BHP was made accountable for Ok Tedi: shareholders either didn’t know or didn’t care until the consequences of their company’s actions were stuffed in front of their noses and they were forced to watch. Entirely predictable. And a national shame.

Tim Dunlop writes, “It is not adherence to the beauty of neo-liberal prescriptions that matter, but how such agreements allow key governments and corporations to exercise control.” In a purely pragmatic sense, this is true. However, the “beauty of neo-liberalism” plays a great role in giving governments and corporations (through voters and shareholders, respectively) the mandate for striking the agreements.

In Australia, the Liberal Party is in power because it is seen as the best economic manager. Free market, conservative governments around Europe are being elected after proposing radical privatisation, low taxes and free trade – even though what they deliver is often something completely different.

Today, a particular busy reformist and good management image is given great credibility, while anything to do with unions is viewed with cynicism, even though the idea of unionism is certainly partly responsible for our high quality of life. Tim Evans (The Australian, June 11), writes: “Consider continental Europe, long considered a permanent stronghold of the Left. The EU presidency is held by Spain’s Prime Minister, Jose Maria Aznar, whose record of privatisation, deregulation and tax cuts has won his party two elections. In Italy, Silvio Berlusconi – who has pledged to trim taxes and dismantle the boot’s archaic labour laws – now rules with a huge parliamentary majority. Even left-wing journalists believe that he will stay in office for a full five-year term – a rarity in postwar Italy.”

Evans neglects to mention that all the right-wing governments in continental Europe today – apart from the French – were elected following populist, anti-foreigner election campaigns. Most are in power in coalition with right-extremist parties (Italy, Portugal, Austria). They owe their success to deliberately attracting voters with most abhorrent views. The centre-right leaders are deliberately unlocking a Pandora’s Box, for short-term electoral gain.

The irony is that despite the image these governments project – good managers, laissez-faire goals, all the good neoliberalist values – their actions often grossly contradict the image, in keeping with the authoritarian roots of at least the coalition partner. And voters accept the contradiction unquestioningly. Indeed, voters are even happier with government performance when it is merciless and authoritarian.

One example of such an economic contradiction is Costello’s spending spree on Fortress Australia announced in the recent budget: several billion dollars to hermetically seal Australia’s borders. Such a level of government spending ought to be heresy in the neoliberalist religion. But it is accepted by the general public because, as I argued in Rousseau and the Third Way (June 3) good neoliberalist management is a theistic belief, and whether it’s corporate imperialism or nationalism, or pure greed, or a belief in the Christian God, one form mutates into the other with consummate ease, and any one of them crush the individual, and all counterexamples from the “coal-face”. The theistic idea explains why Hitler and Stalin are two sides of the same coin, even though their paths converged from opposite directions. Brute force is given wings by ideology and Utopian visions.

Another example is Austria’s university reforms. Under the explicit and oft repeated slogan of making universities autonomous, the Austrian government is in fact about to impose a regime of control unseen in the history of the Austrian university system (apart from World War Two). The system that produced Ludwig von Mises’s “Austrian economics”, the psychoanalytic school of Freud and others, and an astounding variety of momentous intellectual achievements, is about to be destroyed. In its place, a system will be enforced that promotes pragmatic, short-term gain, and other utilitarian horrors.

More than any other example, the Austrian university reforms show that we are dealing with an ideology that is not interested in winning through fair and free competition; rather, it seeks to impose itself by bludgeoning its way into power. The character of what we’re seeing is that of revolution – “the biggest grab for power since the Russian Revolution”. It has its own momentum, its own logic.

How can governments preach, on the one hand, free competition, while on the other, aggressively carry out programs that completely contradict their professed good management values? Look at the history of the Soviet Union. Intellectual, as well as mundane, corruption (eg possession of vast amounts of personal property) was virtually universal in the elite ranks of the Soviet Union, even though all the elite were devout communists. They preached communism, applied some of its tenets when it benefited them, ignored other tenets when they did not fit their purposes. Communism is what they thought they believed in. But in fact, the words, symbolism and ideology were a ruse for grasping and holding onto power. The “religion” blotted out human compassion, to the tune of 50 million who perished in the Gulag Archipelago.

The world’s “pin-up boy of conservative, open-market politics” (our very own John Howard, no less, according to The Australian’s editorial, June 11) has just assumed chairmanship of the International Democratic Union (IDU). Tim Evans writes: “[Howard’s] speech before the US Government may capture headlines, but the chairmanship of the IDU may shape history. The IDU was founded by Margaret Thatcher and today is home to more than 80 Centre-Right parties from across the Western world. It is the communist Internationale in reverse – and future historians may well conclude that it ultimately had even more impact. Since 1983, the IDU has provided a little-noticed forum for free-market parties to exchange vote-getting strategies, revolutionary policies and organisational know-how. Over the years, visitors to the IDU would often rub elbows with Thatcher, then-vice-president George Bush, Jacques Chirac, now President of France, and many other of the great and the good.”

You can almost see the Pioneers of the open market holding hands at the IDU and singing Vstavai Firma Ogromnaya.

In fact, the impact of communism was to leave 50 million dead in the wastelands of Vorkuta and the basement of Lublyanka. The frightening thing is that Evans – and probably the vast majority of “future-oriented” new capitalists – don’t have a mind to know what might constitute the real impact of one’s actions. But this does not stop them, in the meantime, from deeply desiring to be part of a long march that changes history. To believe in something big and powerful.

How do economic organisations and governments get away with their poor conduct to such an extraordinary degree? It’s because enough voters fall for the image of responsible management, and the dream of economic prosperity for all – but especially for themselves. It’s because people are desperate for something to believe in.

Therefore I cannot agree with Kieron Convery in How many economists does it take to… , who asks me to provide him with an outline for a future and rational answers to all of Australia’s ills. “Give me real, workable solutions that outline what your `certain risks’ are.” I cannot agree that when I propose that one goes beyond theistic constructs, that one considers the individual as the measure of all things, I am giving “glib denunciations and smug-git philosophies.” In fact, I’m arguing against cop-outs like the sort of religion Kieron wants me to give him. It is much harder to live without the brain-deadening crutches of religion.

This does not mean I’m arguing blindly against everything. I am for intelligence, for human dignity. I am for understanding when, for example, interventionism is likely to work or fail – this requires economic knowledge, as well as historical, social, geographical insight.

I am against blanket prescriptions, such as that of Ludwig von Mises, founder of the Austrian school, who railed continuously against government intervention, saying that it amounts to “sabotage” of the economy.

I’m for knowing the limits of theory, and the distance between theory and reality. I do not believe that the tragedy of Australia’s Aborigines can be solved without interventionism; indeed, I believe that laissez-faire policies serve to strengthen the enemies of the Aborigines, which threaten to wipe out the culture within the next decade. On the other hand, I believe that if their culture is to be saved, then at some point, Noel Pearson’s view that Aborigines must learn to respect and help themselves, has to come into play. The Aboriginal tragedy is not going to be solved by a new economic theory: it needs a pragmatic idea and the political will. An economic theory will not stop the mining company K. from funding opposing sides in land rights claims, just to prove its thesis that Mabo is unworkable; nor is it going to stop publicans, pursuing the dream of personal empire, from destroying entire Aboriginal communities. Laws and positivist theories – like Ludwig von Mises’s Theory of Human Action” – will not make people morally and ethically better.

I’m arguing for a sort of street-wise intelligence that doesn’t pin its hopes on some master theory. (Keynesian as well as Austrian, and other, schools can give insights into economics. I want to know the strengths and weaknesses of various formulations.)

I’m for narrowing the distance between my vision of how things are and reality. If I implement an economic plan, I want to know the details of its consequences at ground level, at the coal-face. I want to be alert to injustice caused by my plan – and injustice is inevitable in the implementation of every public policy – I want to understand how I can alter the implementation to minimise the injustice.

I want to maximise prosperity for individuals, including myself, while minimising the misery I add to the world. But causing misery is sometimes necessary.

And herein, possibly, lies the criterion that sets conservative open-market reformers apart from social-democratic open-market reformers. Open market conservatives implement their market reforms in great swathes of destruction, as if believing that the neoliberalist Utopia is already a reality – as if living the dream of God – and they pay scant attention to the view from the coal-face. The master plan takes precedence over the misery it causes; knowledge of misery makes no impression, it is rationalised away, never to be felt again, never to add to the foundation of moral experience. The wheels grind on, regardless of the skulls being crushed in the name of democracy. The conscience is obliterated by belief in God.

Social-democrats have the vision of the open market Utopia in mind, look up at it as a distant goal, while trying to keep their feet on the ground. Their conscience – insofar as it is not obliterated by leftist theism – is still sensitive to the misery they cause. They implement reforms in gentler steps, trying to hang on to social justice. In trying to remain aware of the view at the coal-face, they drag their feet and appear bumbling. They’re condemned by those who believe that power – in fact, the plausible facade of power – is more important than ethical and moral good.

Here is what part of the Third Way must be, if the Third Way is to meaningfully differentiate itself from neoliberalism: the essential difference lies in the implementation of measures that are supposed to make society head towards the open market Utopia. Believers in the Third Way have to accept that different mixes of interventionism and open market policy are desirable, depending on national circumstances. The Third Way must hold that it can be desirable that the open market Utopia is never be realised, even in “advanced” societies. Different national circumstances (historical, cultural, geographical) allow for different optimal end states. The Third Way is about keeping the feet on the ground while reaching for the open market Utopia.

The model is a fallible construct; its implementation must emerge from below. The purely metaphorical picture I imagine is that the Third Way reform process is like a blanket of mist that rises gradually from the ground upwards, then disperses. In contrast, neoliberalists act as if their model can be implemented without taking immediate human concerns into account; as if the social fabric does not exist so it is meaningless to claim it is being torn to shreds. Sometimes they try to patch things up later. The model is God, and God’s will is to be enforced from above.

None of this is supposed to answer whether the open market Utopia is a desirable goal.

Finally, returning to mundane matters – but it is actually part of the bigger picture I have been trying to present – I want to address Gerard Jackson’s reply in How many economists does it take to… to my comments apropos his article published in an Internet magazine called the “New Australian”.

In my article, I was concerned with exposing pitfalls of economic theism. I had written, “The economic model becomes an ideal in the true sense of the word, itself sealed off from reality, apart from humanity and individuals’ lives – it becomes a deity. [The economist’s] faith is then theism.”

I cautioned against believing in the infallibility of one’s economic methodological prescriptions, lest a great distance arise between the conclusions of the model and the human reality. In particular, I was concerned that the vehemence of Gerard Jackson’s piece, in expressing his belief to the effect that “interventionism has caused Singapore’s economy to be a failure”, could not be justified, on two grounds:

1) Jackson had failed to consider Singapore’s broader historical and geographical context, therefore his model lacked realism;

2) as lynchpin of his rebuttal of another author, Jackson had assumed as an inviolable economic truth a statement (“savings fuel investment”) that is clearly false under certain circumstances. “Savings fuel investment; … They are economic facts”, wrote Jackson.

None of Jackson’s reply requires me to change my position. My charge of economic theism requires no retraction. He still has little idea of Singapore’s (and Hong Kong’s, for that matter) history, society or geography – the close-up view from ground-level, the view at the coal-face, a concerned interest in the destiny of a people, rather than a hodge-podge of context-free facts and statistics gleaned from cursory reading.

I only address the point about “savings fuel investment” in a small amount of detail, since this is a direct economics issue. I firmly believe it’s important that the general public not by cocooned from professional-level debate done at a generally understandable level – we have too much compartmentalization of knowledge in the media and society already; the intelligent layperson ought to be given the means and opportunity to form their own point of view.

I’m concerned with identifying theism, which includes models and conceptions that are “sealed off” from reality because one or another belief obliterates the process of information acquisition. But this does not imply a view with no perspective, where anything goes: one has to learn how to judge what’s important, what gets you closer rather than further. The challenge, when understanding a society and a people as an outsider, is to form a view, decrease the distance between conception and reality, to strive to see things from ground level, while also discerning the principles.

Regarding Jackson’s view that “Malaya, of which Singapore was, a part, was saved from General Peng’s barbarism by British, Australian and New Zealand troops”, all I can say is that he has his geography wrong by about 5,000km, as General Peng Dehuai commanded Chinese communist forces in Korea during the Korean War, not in Malaya. There was no “Korean War” in Malaya. Moreover – perhaps this is what he somehow meant – there were no Chinese forces fighting the Allies during World War II – they were on our side, remember? They weren’t all commies back then.

As for the heroism of Australian and British forces “saving Singapore”, Mr. Jackson has forgotten the most humiliating defeat in Australia’s military history, the fall of Singapore. Or perhaps Mr. Jackson somehow construes the fall of Singapore as “saving Singapore from General Peng’s barbarism”, so that, “In other words, it was because of the British that Lee survived to implement his interventionist policies.” The British returned to Singapore only after the Japanese surrendered, in September, 1945 – the Singaporeans were abandoned in 1942 to bear the brunt of Japanese atrocities alone. They did; and understood that they could not rely on others: they knew their destiny was in their own hands. This is why social stability and fair distribution of prosperity is a high priority in Singapore. Independence shapes the mentality fundamentally – as does being a colonial or religious subject.

Also, a long tour through Hong Kong’s New Territories – its deserted beaches, plains and national parks with often gently undulating hills – would cure Mr. Jackson of the belief that there is little room in Hong Kong suitable for housing. It was only in the last couple of decades or so (especially after the electrified railway was built) that the New Territories – which themselves have a land area of over 700 sq. m., compared to Singapore’s 638 – were settled, and now 3 million people (half of Hong Kong’s population) live there. And one can still visit secluded beaches and empty plains – and a national park comprising 60% of the land area of Hong Kong.

The overriding reason for Hong Kong’s immense population density is urban planning, together with people’s desire to live (and consume) in the city. It is certainly not an excuse for Hong Kong’s home ownership rate (55%) to be half of that of Singapore (a staggering 93%). Moreover, as Mr. Jackson points out, the average size of living quarters in Hong Kong is about 7 sq. m., compared to about 23 sq. m. in Singapore. The reason is pure and simple: the Singapore government cared more for Singaporeans’ quality of life than the British did for their colonial subjects.

Now to the main point. A streak of dour contrarianism is evident in Mr. Jackson’s alternative view of economics, which, though seemingly well-developed, rejects as “bilge” elementary definitions that the corporate world takes for granted. The term, “recession”, is used officially in the U.S. to denote two consecutive quarterly decreases in GDP. Looking at the 1990 figures, the annual change in GDP was, respectively: 19 (2nd quarter), -29 (3rd), -63 (4th), -31 (1st, 1991), 27 (2nd). Two decreases in a row happened twice in 1990-1991. So that was officially the U.S. recession of 1990-1991.

Mr Jackson may claim to have deeper insight into economic workings, but to reject out of hand a completely standard view accepted as an official definition by the vast majority of professionals in the area smacks of stubborn and petty contrarianism.

But this would no doubt explain his passionate embrace of the libertarian cult guru Ludwig von Mises – and of his disciples – who, from his Austrian (and later American) vantage point, in all ignorance of Asian culture, blindly denounced government interventionism as “sabotage of the economy”, even when it is clearly the best option for fledgling economies as well as more developed ones when the circumstances demand it.

More important than just working definitions are dynamic relationships that might cause a recession. These are often open to interpretation. What is indisputable, though, is that “consumer confidence” crashed during this period – and Jackson agrees that consumer confidence crashes signal recessions (“In any case, if an increase in saving were the cause then consumption would have been hit first, followed by the higher stages”). Let’s have a look at the figures, and see if they support Jackson’s view. For the same time period as above, the consumer confidence index reads: 105, 90, 61, 65, 77. In the standard model – it seems to capture at least a grain of truth – savings is defined in such a way that lower consumer confidence, at the same disposable income, means more savings. (“Consumer confidence” is gauged in the U.S. from a monthly survey of 5,000 households. There has been some debate as to the usefulness of the concept – see the IHT, June 10.) In any case, Americans indeed saved more during the Gulf War – and through mechanisms that are fairly well known, this – as far as economic analysis can be certain of anything – led to an economic slowdown, and worse.

That Jackson has a broader – perhaps even deeper – definition or explanation of “recession” than that held by most of the rest of the world may well be commendable, but before he rudely rejects fairly well-known stories, he’d be better advised to check his facts.

***

5. JUST DREAMING

Ten home improvements

By Roland Killick, Sydney

Following Tim Dunlop’s suggestion and Tony Scanlan’s imperative (see Free trade: Nice work if you can get it) , I made a list of “10 things we should think about to improve the way things are”. Obviously there are many supporting events which would need to occur in order to make these practical, and perhaps identifying them is more interesting than arguing the merits of each.

(1) Start an “Indian Ocean Alliance” to change the “United Nations System of National Accounts”. For example: http://unstats.un.org/unsd/sna1993/introduction=.asp

Assets Definition: “Assets are entities that must be owned by some unit, or units, and from which economic benefits are derived by their owner(s) by holding or using them over a period of time.” (Paragraph 1.26).

Change the definition to “Assets are entities which, if they were absent or destroyed, would require human labour to restore or replace.”

John Wojdylo in Rousseau and the Third Way (June 3) reminded us that economics of whatever colour or numerical order is an artifice. Based on mathematical foundations no doubt, but with human choices at the core of them. We can therefore change them to produce different outcomes. (Hope for Africa?)

(2) Create an “Australian People’s Institute” to advise us all on which cultural values have been neglected in the framing of our Constitution and Laws, particularly in respect of those held by Australians who do not share a Western, Christian background. And furthermore, to suggest changes to the Laws to make them compatible with these different values.

(3) Empower members of the “Order of Australia” [AC, AO] to appoint and dismiss judges and senior officers in the Armed Forces. Remove this right from Parliament.

(4) Develop a “Citizens Concord”, being an individual agreement between the State and an individual, whereby the individual agrees to certain duties, (like avoidance of sedition or masquerading as another) and in return receives certain privileges, (like freedom of speech or a legally protected identity) Have a special concord for children, and another for guests.

(5) Make all voting accountable, (no secret ballots.) If we don’t like the bullying and stand-over tactics (as demonstrated in Parliament) make all voting private.

(6) Scrap the role of Governor-General. Appoint the GG of each State in turn, (or say the PM, a man, and a woman,) to act for 5 years as “Grand Steward(s) of Australia”. Limit the role to protecting the land and peoples of Australia, as well as representational activities. Better still, do as the English did, and invite a foreign, penniless princeling to be King (but not hereditary please).

(7) Describe a way to identify National Assets (such as roads or the telecommunications infrastructure) and promote legislation to protect them. Also to limit the charging of them to cost recovery from all beneficiaries without invoking the silly “user pays” mantra.

(8) Recognise that the rearing of a socially adept and emotionally secure generation to secure our future is probably the most important Public Service job in the country. Establish a Department, with management structures and training programmes and meetings for which one parent in a family can work, receiving a decent wage, at home, raising their children.

(9) Scrap the HSC altogether. At 16 make all children go walkabout in the Bush learning traditional skills and to do without modern technology for a year.

(10) Limit the total number, (or maybe the density,) of people at offices and work sites in one city to 50,000.

PS: Here’s a book for all Webdiary economists. “The crisis of Vision in Modern Economic Thought” Robert Heilbroner / William Milberg Cambridge University Press 1995

6. RIGHT OF REPLY

John Quiggin, Australian Research Council Senior Fellow, Faculty of Economics and Commerce, Australian National University

Aaron Oakley wrote: “Why is it that people with little understanding of economics like Tim Dunlop feel free to give economic advice? Perhaps he should also be telling brain surgeons how to do their jobs.” (For those who give two hoots, May 10).

The same Aaron Oakley took violent offence when I pointed out that most of the thousands of `scientists’ touted by The New Australian and others as sceptics on the subject of global warming were totally unqualified to comment and that, of the few who had relevant qualifications, the majority were affiliated with right-wing thinktanks and/or paid consultants for the fossil-fuel industry. His diatribe is at newausProfessor Quiggin’s green McCarthyism. Apparently it’s OK to comment from a position of ignorance as long as you agree with Oakley.

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