Zardnaar
Deity
So here we have had a smaller version of the Ottawa protests. They're an assortment of people with a grudge against vaccine mandates etc but a few are there to burn everything down or alternative types. In America you get a rise in extremism on both sides.
I suspect things are gonna get worse before they get better. Inflation plus economic disruption plus surging house prices. The US is starting to catch up to NZ in that regard 4-5 years ago. We had two years of back to back 20%+ surge in house prices.
So there's a lot of pissed off people out there. My theory is this is caused by three primary factors. Covid is just the ignition point it's been brewing for years.
1. Economic equality. The rich get richer the poor get poorer. The faith the boomers had in the system since the 1980's in effect has seen a massive intergenerational transfer of wealth. The boomers essentially pulled the ladder up behind them.
2. Backlash against globalization. In the boomers day the world was a lot less globalized. China and the Soviet Union and much of the third world weren't that involved in the global economy.
3. Out of touch global elites. Basically they're in on it (the right) or are unable or unwilling to deal with increasing amounts of inequality. What should gave been a short term emergency economic shock in the 80's has morphed into a new (old repackaged) economic orthodoxy.
In the USAs case you have a choice between conservative and liberal plutocrats the key problem being different flavours of plutocrats. In all cases eroding living standards.
The culture war is mostly a distraction. Get people angry about social issues that would largely solve themselves in a system where inequality wasn't so baked in.
Ah Zard you stupid idiotic kiwi you don't know what you're talking about we need to fix the social stuff first!!! Well we have things here that people in the USA want and a lot of those things were passed by people who would fail all sorts of modern purity tests.
Visitors here seem to like our culture as the extremes of Europe and America are not present because of what those people achieved. Civil rights in the 60's were also achieved by people who would fail modern tests.
If the economy is failing people resort to extremism (see Germany lead up to 1933 or Russia 1905-17, France 1789 etc). People lose faith in the government and will overthrow it or be indifferent to it's fate.
Bernie Sanders is essentially correct.
So that's what you need to fix first imho anything else is just window dressing. If things fall apart (revolution, collapse, slide to autocracy etc) all those social policies are immediately at risk of being revoked, replaced or just ignored as state control collapses.
The right actively makes things worse unless you're further up the food chain while the left has been hijacked by urban liberals often middle class or better with a lack of perspective for the struggles of the working class who often respond with F you I'll vote for the other guys.
So you're getting screwed over or betrayed by your elected representatives or they're to incompetent to fix things or prefer to focus on easier social issues which are a reasonably simple bill/act of parliament to enable if you have the numbers to pass them.
As an added bonus most of them are out of touch being on six figure incomes often from reasonably well off back grounds to start with. Here parliament is more "diverse" than the USA in terms but all of them apart from maybe 1 are not from a working class back ground and 115/121 have investment property.
In the USA some have been in government since the 70's. France you have to attend the right schools, Britain well enough said and it's probably similar in most countries.
Solutions. In US terms progressive economic policies, term limits for Congress/senate, overhauling electoral laws, hard look at taxes, immigration, housing etc.
How much will actually get down in any democratic country? Probably not much at least in the short term. After the boomers families got smaller so less voters proportionally to their generations, not all support solutions either.
I suspect things are gonna get worse before they get better. Inflation plus economic disruption plus surging house prices. The US is starting to catch up to NZ in that regard 4-5 years ago. We had two years of back to back 20%+ surge in house prices.
So there's a lot of pissed off people out there. My theory is this is caused by three primary factors. Covid is just the ignition point it's been brewing for years.
1. Economic equality. The rich get richer the poor get poorer. The faith the boomers had in the system since the 1980's in effect has seen a massive intergenerational transfer of wealth. The boomers essentially pulled the ladder up behind them.
2. Backlash against globalization. In the boomers day the world was a lot less globalized. China and the Soviet Union and much of the third world weren't that involved in the global economy.
3. Out of touch global elites. Basically they're in on it (the right) or are unable or unwilling to deal with increasing amounts of inequality. What should gave been a short term emergency economic shock in the 80's has morphed into a new (old repackaged) economic orthodoxy.
In the USAs case you have a choice between conservative and liberal plutocrats the key problem being different flavours of plutocrats. In all cases eroding living standards.
The culture war is mostly a distraction. Get people angry about social issues that would largely solve themselves in a system where inequality wasn't so baked in.
Ah Zard you stupid idiotic kiwi you don't know what you're talking about we need to fix the social stuff first!!! Well we have things here that people in the USA want and a lot of those things were passed by people who would fail all sorts of modern purity tests.
Visitors here seem to like our culture as the extremes of Europe and America are not present because of what those people achieved. Civil rights in the 60's were also achieved by people who would fail modern tests.
If the economy is failing people resort to extremism (see Germany lead up to 1933 or Russia 1905-17, France 1789 etc). People lose faith in the government and will overthrow it or be indifferent to it's fate.
Bernie Sanders is essentially correct.
So that's what you need to fix first imho anything else is just window dressing. If things fall apart (revolution, collapse, slide to autocracy etc) all those social policies are immediately at risk of being revoked, replaced or just ignored as state control collapses.
The right actively makes things worse unless you're further up the food chain while the left has been hijacked by urban liberals often middle class or better with a lack of perspective for the struggles of the working class who often respond with F you I'll vote for the other guys.
So you're getting screwed over or betrayed by your elected representatives or they're to incompetent to fix things or prefer to focus on easier social issues which are a reasonably simple bill/act of parliament to enable if you have the numbers to pass them.
As an added bonus most of them are out of touch being on six figure incomes often from reasonably well off back grounds to start with. Here parliament is more "diverse" than the USA in terms but all of them apart from maybe 1 are not from a working class back ground and 115/121 have investment property.
In the USA some have been in government since the 70's. France you have to attend the right schools, Britain well enough said and it's probably similar in most countries.
Solutions. In US terms progressive economic policies, term limits for Congress/senate, overhauling electoral laws, hard look at taxes, immigration, housing etc.
How much will actually get down in any democratic country? Probably not much at least in the short term. After the boomers families got smaller so less voters proportionally to their generations, not all support solutions either.
Last edited:
.
