Written By:
notices and features - Date published:
5:30 pm, November 26th, 2021 - 49 comments
Categories: Daily review -
Tags:
The current rise of populism challenges the way we think about people’s relationship to the economy.We seem to be entering an era of populism, in which leadership in a democracy is based on preferences of the population which do not seem entirely rational nor serving their longer interests. ...
The server will be getting hardware changes this evening starting at 10pm NZDT.
The site will be off line for some hours.
Glen Eden gang stoush: Handguns, machetes in Head Hunter, Comancheros confrontation – NZ Herald
Police in Glen Eden are now armed full time throughout tonight. Never happened before there.
This is after the Commancheros attacked the Head Hunters on Tuesday.
This is on top of five further fire arms attacks in the New Lynn-Glen Eden area since the end of October this year. Four deaths, now six attacks.
Unprecedented in my lifetime in the west.
Do we need to underscore that Glen Eden has the Labour Minister of Social Development, New Lynn has a Labour MP?
And both have massive Labour majorities in their local boards?
And in Glen Eden we have a Labour Councillor?
Oh and we have a Labour government?
Are they incapable of organising together?
And a massively accelerating gang and illegal firearms problem in west Auckland?
Is law and order just too hard for Labour?
It's almost as if a once in a century pandemic might cause social unrest..
Is it the pandemic or the subjugation?
I'm sorry, I'd forgotten all about you poor dears being loaded into cattle wagons and sent east.
/
Fucked if I know why Sepulponi still has that job. From the WINZ side it's just daft. I'm guessing that transfers across.
Thanks Scomo.
Thanks Scomo.
Well the B11529 COVID variant looks like a barrel o'laughs.
What we know so far about the B.1.1.529 COVID variant causing concern in South Africa | Euronews
Yep and opening the borders without MIQ great idea.
As for gangs and guns we would have less police softer gun laws.
Since 501's have been coming from Australia gangs the anti has been upped.
Illegal Drug's are where the gangs are funding their lifestyle.
Until we decriminalise and supply by prescription with rehabilitation services the gang problem is only going to get worse.
The Police say they are making big inroads into supply ,they always say that and the problem only gets worse.
Every govt since back in Muldoon days has said its going to get tough on gangs none have succeeded.
With the housing crisis its going to get a lot worse and maybe not get better as intergenerational poverty ,abuse and neglect take decades to solve.
We're frogs in a pot. By the time most of realise that this pandemic has a long game (much longer than our feelings about Christmas) we will be used to death and disability and in adaptation mode. The government is easing us into it.
I just made a comment to someone that I do not know how people who are now age 35 – 40 are going to be like when they are age 60.
Madness to open up the borders when there is not enough information on how concerning, new variants could affect people.
the pull to BAU is strong. I think because people don't practicing imagining other ways of living that are good. We're focused on the bad stuff and it makes use afraid and reaching for the familiar. Lots of people see covid/let it rip vs covid/protect at all costs, and Labour are trying to find a middle ground. There are other options that we refuse to look at.
Falling further and further behind in managing Covid is the bit that unsettles me. Ad's comment @2 is the reality.
I have also been thinking about needing Covid hospitals, that Covid is a medical speciality of its own and who will and will not have access to ICU/HDU.
I thought about middle ground maybe there is no middle ground.
Covid variants of concern is what has taken freedom away. When a person's health is impacted, (chronic/just treating the symptoms) freedom becomes limited due to not being able to afford more than a basic existence.
To weka ,and everyone,apparently the "frogs in a pot" analogy is just an old wives tale. Experiments done have found the frogs jump out as the water heats. I was glad when I recently learned this because I like frogs.
💚
Yuss! New cartoon by First Dog on Moon! 🙂
https://twitter.com/firstdogonmoon/status/1464101679393951745?s=20
do I want to know what fairy bread is?
Well the fairy bread we had as a part of any childhood birthday party was white bread, thinly sliced, no crusts, lightly buttered with hundreds and thousands on it.
When having extended parties with dolls and other toys my Mum would make fairy bread AND rose petal sandwiches to be served. I made mud pies once and put them on baking trays and into a still warm oven. Not sure who was getting those!
Rose petal sandwiches is very cool. We had hundred and thousands on white bread, don't remember if we called it fairy bread. I was a fan of sliced banana in white bread.
At our exercise dance group this am the first two songs were
Hey Jude
and
Hit the road Jude
Nice!
I wasn't around yesterday, has Puckish Rogue been crying into his beer?
That would only dilute perfectly good beer.
He told me it was all part of a very long and cunning plan … and seemed quite perky about it.
good on him for putting on a brave face.
I'm sorry for your pain.
Some country music for a laid-back Friday evening.
I Like Smoking Pot (A Lot)
by Wheeler Walker Jr.
Not bad, getting a real Willie Nelson vibe. Hows this for a bit of life on the edges of society:
Look up Wheeler Walker Jr. "Redneck Shit" song on YouTube. (Warning: Adults only and will offend most people).
PR – I'll try to never say a bad word about you again now that I know your a Townes fan.
I came to him through the usual way of Steve Earle
Quietly scrolling down Stuff as one does at the end of a long day with only quick attention breaks, I saw an odd opinion piece:
Apparently one should treat people with courtesy and express gratitude because it can be profitable.
This struck me as odd- who doesn't know that people like working with people who are friendly and normal?
Then it struck me as odd – who is friendly just to make sales?
And why is this considered normal in today's society? Shouldn't gratitude and courtesy just be genuine expressions?
But viewing people (and every basic interaction with another person) primarily as opportunities to gain resources was described a hundred and fifty years ago: Marx called it "alienation".
His solutions to the problem of capitalism were wavy-handed, but his descriptions of the problems it causes have examples every day.
'the secret to selling is …sincerity…fake that ..and you've got ..it made'!
Ok, now I understand Marx and why I've never been impressed with what people say about his ideas. Your synopsis makes so much more sense (I hope it's true, lol)
That was my takeaway, anyway.
From a wider perspective, his predictions about societal progression aren't any more wrong than, say, Orwell or Huxley. Assuming we don't make ourselves extinct beforehand, there will probably be a time when we have the technology where scarcity becomes obsolete. And then there will be no objective for most competition and exploitation of others. Overconsumption would be encouraged because the profit it creates will be meaningless. The Star Trek original series (and Next Generation) was close to that.
But the problem is that Marx followed in the tradition of Hegel, which weirds me out. The upshot is that Marx had the endgame outlined (communist utopia), and some steps along the way, but the trouble is that there's no testability for each step as it progresses. Which means if it doesn't go on to the next step, it wasn't really a problem with marx's ideas about social progression, it was actually just a fraudulent regime masquerading as a step towards societal progression.
So every revolution is the communist revolution, then it massacres a bunch of folks (as most revolutions of any flavour tend to do), and good communists say "well, I guess it was a false start, #no_true_communist_society".
that makes sense too.
What do you think is going on with the false starts? Just that there is no testability? Or that the people with power don't really get it? Or human inclination to grab power?
Well, there's always a gap between the pre-revolution "the world would be much better if everyone did this", and the post-revolution realities of running a society and trying to get people to do it.
Especially if the revolution succeeded after a long and bloody civil war, there's a certain brutality of the spirit that taints the winners. Same reason cops and military should always be separate.
Then there are the opportunists and bad-faith actors who latch on to the winning side, say all the right things, but are all about benefitting themselves.
But actually pinning down when the thing goes awry compared to just being a tough bit of "the dictatorship of the proletariat" before everything becomes wonderful, there's no way to distinguish between them at that point. AFAIK, not Marx or anyone since has managed to make a checklist of features one way or the other, where someone can go "ok, the dude that suggested expanding the gulags? Bad idea, that's feature #5 of a false start rather than true social reform".
But I'm not even sure Marx was on board with the idea that a revolution would drive societal change. My vibe of it was more that society would change so much, and the elites would keep resisting it so much, that eventually the revolution would be forced up from society (rather than a cadre of revolutionaries changing the society). But again, good luck figuring out exactly when any society is precisely at that point.
Marx was very committed to the idea of progress, and that it is the modes of production throughout history that defines the way a society functions. This is now known as historical materialism and is essentially the reason there is a non-prescriptive or hand-wavy sort of inevitability to his idea of the transition to post-capitalist technological utopia.
Fair point, but it leads to the real-world conundrum of "we are the true socialist revolution" – "no, we are the true socialist revolution", etc.
Whereas capitalism is more "I haz all the gold, do what I say. Look, I used a small portion of my gold to hire men with guns, see? Believe me now?"
Absolutely, some of those who tried to theorise about the true socialist revolution were much more prescriptive and as you say, there was/is significant differences in approach.
That's why Marx was mostly concerned about critiquing capitalism, the idea being that people need to know about it's inherent problems.
Marx definitely thought capitalism, as it existed then, wouldn't be able to withstand it's own contradictions but it's obvious it has shown it's resilience and adaptability. Even Adam Smith thought it inevitable that as productivity increased people would need to work less hours for their living. That this isn't the reality definitely has it's roots in the decline of unionisation and the rise of globalisation. More democratic workplaces and more worker coordination would help us correct the ship back towards a more equitable shore.
Jono & Ben. Hey Judith song.
https://www.facebook.com/TheHitsNZ/videos/577448973533656/?
Brilliant.
'are we meant to take more than…we give.'
https://youtu.be/FFNXnd0cPb8
Normal self defence in Texas.
Texas man claims self-defence after shooting woman's ex-husband in filmed confrontation – NZ Herald
If the good guy husband with a gun threatened the bad guy ex and the bad guy ex was legally armed and shot the good guy husband dead, would the bad guy ex get off the hook pleading self defence?
Buckle up!! The new variant is in 6 countries already. We don't know how lucky we are.
Jim Boult will sort it.