Darkness at Noon

I must admit I’m pretty excited. The Australian Centre for Democracy and Justice has started work on Lobbyocracy.org: the Hypocrisy of Democracy.

It’s a wiki that we hope will provide a comprehensive database on the lobby activities of corporations and political parties.

I’ve started to dump some information in there from the AEC but would love any of you to contribute. We want the juicy stuff, John Curtain House being a front organisation for political donations, Bob Carr’s revolving door into the Macquarie Bank.

Long term we’ll develop policies etc, but for now we just want to expose the erosion of our democracy!!

It would be remiss of me, as someone involved in the Australian Centre for Democracy and Justice not to mark the passing off Rosa Parks.

There’s no doubt that she is a great symbol of the importance of civil disobedience – a particularly potent symbol as we see our civil liberties being washed away by a right-wing, often racist government and a compliant opposition in the name of a threat that does not exist. She reminds me to speak the truth and reclaim what we, as humans, have a right to: dignity.

Other tributes are here and here with more to come I’m sure.

There’s plenty of commentary on the various lawsuits against Google Print.

Over at Copyfight they have this piece which is simply a range of quote on the issue which I think provides quite a nice little perspective on it all.

Over at Moment to Moment, Kate states the glaringly obvious:

As employees, we can bargain away our holidays and sick leave for more pay, while our employers have to offer us good conditions because in today’s labour market, we can go and get another job like that. We will have choice.

In a way this sums up what is wrong with the new reforms. Every employee/employer relationship is one where the employer is in the position of power. Rarely does an individual employee have an muscle to flex. So instead our bargaining power revolves around our willingness to sacrifice the conditions that were so hard fought for. Then, to make matters worse you take away the only power an employee can exercise, which is that of the mass withdrawal of labour which is usually facilitated by the unions.

Over at Catallaxy, Andrew is calling the campaign against the IR changes all a bit of “hoo-ha”. He probably got a point. For most of us the world won’t collapse (although I do suspect that wages and condition will slowly deteriorate). However this is not the point. It’s the same with the Civil Liberties campaign. While these addition powers are probably not going to be used vary often and certainly the vast majority of people won’t feel the effects of them, the point is that we need to be protected from these abuses by law. It’s the ‘trust us’ defense and frankly I think it’s a weak one. Civil Liberties are the protection against government power – ‘trust us’ is not a very strong defense.

At the last ACDJ forum I asked the speakers if they thought there was a correlation between the neo-liberal economic order and the attack on civil rights. Greg premised his reply with something to the effect of ‘well I’m a liberal in the sense that I also believe in free trade and so on, so no, I don’t think there is a correlation’. Anne went on to say that yes there was a correlation and reminded Greg that we haven’t really seen free trade on the global scale yet and that it would be a different story if there truly was free trade.

This got me thinking and I found myself coming back to some pretty core philosophical issues around the best economic system. Initially I found myself agreeing with Anne and thinking that true free trade, implemented in an incremental sense so that majority world countries can nurture their industries behind trade barriers until they were able to compete on a global scale. After all, the market is often a very good allocator of resources.

Then I remind myself that capitalism is inherently exploitative – it relies on losers which makes it fundamentally flawed. Even if these majority world countries were able to build up their industries according to what the market dictates then they would become highly industrialised but then who would provide the raw materials?

So if our current system is flawed then what is the alternative? It’s certainly not Communism and state-focused Socialism doesn’t really attend to the needs of other sovereign entities that may be exploited. Do we just massively localise? Of course not, trade can be quite a liberating force and economies of scale are needed to both cater for highly specialised needs as well as making any number of things affordable (can you imagine the cost of cars if they weren’t manufactured at the levels they are) .

So having reminded myself that I’m a radical lefty opposed to capitalism, I find myself once again asking what the answer is, comfortable in my knowledge that Anarchism, Communism and Socialism are also all inherently flawed (despite having some very nice features). Roughly what I believe in can be found here: democracyandjustice.org/believe, however this is all about communities in control of their own destinies and multiple outcomes etc – which I fine and I very strongly believe that this is where the answer lies. However it’s a small sized cop-out because it doesn’t answer the larger structural/economic questions – at lease in full.

So increasingly I find myself moving towards a heavily regulated, yet market-based vision of a stateless globe. Only when all the nation states forfeit their sovereignty to a highly democratic global entity in order to create a global welfare system as well a supporting the various levels of industry and production will we be able to overcome the global (or inter-state) division of labor – or at least manage it so that no one lives in poverty. There will still be winners and looses, but I can accept that for now – lets take one giant step at a time. But without an international system it is virtually impossible to address this (for lack of a better word) ‘class divide’.

(cross-posted at Goonanism

The most common Google search that brings people to this site is ‘Geoism’. It is of course referring to this post.

This belated comment has just come to my attention so I thought it would be remiss of me to leave it tucked away in archives. So Karl, here’s your right of reply:

hammy you certainly raise some valid points but these are common misconceptions to this rather radical change to the way our activities are guided. Geonomics (my preferred term over geoism/ georgism) targets the most unique economic asset. Land. At present those wealthy enuff to own a piece of the earth are subsidised to own even more (negative gearing). This means land is hoarded. No wonder we cant afford to buy land i hear you screaming! A Resource Rental charge forces this land to be put onto the market. This increased supply pushes the price down. So land doesnt become too expensive.

There is enough wealth in the land (incl. oil, coal, water rights, electromagnetic spectrum) to provide more than enought for FREE health and education. check stats here: http://www.earthsharing.org.au/taxcom.html

Structural change like resource rents, combined with the more trendy behavioural change is what we need to make people accountable for the use of the planet. the fact that there is so much wealth hidden in the vast amounts of hoarded land means that we dont need to charge resources thru the nose, we just need to ensure it is included in the accounting equation. this avoids the danger of the poor not being able to pay for food/water. did some corporation create the value of the planet? or should this value be shared amongst the community, abolishing the need for taxation.

to answer another of your points, economies of scale wont be discouraged in productive activities, they will only be curtailed in speculative activities. this is the key difference in todays economics, some work, but the privileged speculate on our pyramid society.

no doubt it is arresting to consider this 1st off, but investigate 1 of the co-founders of the US greens, Jeff Smith and his fresh writing
http://www.progress.org/geonomy/
Einstein, alfred deakin and recents like joseph stiglitz and herman daly have all stated the effectiveness of this system.

ahh finally i get this off my list, email for more, what the future cant ignore!

I’m still not convinced and still think it falls down in terms of its conceptualisation of the environment (too resource for human consumption based) and I’m not convinced it passes the economies of scale test but I’ll have to read a little further.

As you may have noticed I’ve moved the blogroll to the front page. It also seems to display the list randomly. Not sure how I did that but I like it.

Anyway, if you’re not on the list and would like to be then please let me know in the comments and I’ll pop you up in exchange for a link at your site of course.

There’s been a bit of discussion about voting etc in the press and on this blog as well as others.

As a bit of an extension of this question, Guy, over at wsacaucus asks a question that has always intrigued me: Should we value diversity higher than stability?.

In other words, is the stability of the two party system more valuable than a multi-party system when more opinions are represented but governments tend to change hands more often, the extreme being Italy which has had something like 50 governments in as many years (I’ve a feeling I’m exaggerating a little here but you get my point none-the-less).

I used to sit firmly in the two party stability camp. However that was probably due to the narrow indoctrination that one is left with after studying year 12 politics. Now days, with ALP failing to provide any real opposition and the Libs having control of the Senate I think a multi-party system is preferable.

On that, I hope the Greens really take off as a serious political force in Australia. I’d love to see a revival of the Dems and with Barnaby’s latest antics I can’t help but feel the best thing the National party could do would be amicably depart from the Libs and start representing their constituents a little better. Perhaps there’s a five party system right there for you – all we need to contend with now is over 100 years of people being entrenched in their voting habits.

While we’re on that, over at Oz Politics Bryan has developed a new political test. It seems pretty accurate to me and I suspect there are many ALP voters out there who will be told that their views more accurately align with the Greens or the Dems – it would be lovely if they started voting accordingly.

It would seem that tonight’s forum is just in the nic of time considering the leak of the new Bill.

An excellent summary can be found here:

Anyone supporting the insurgency in Iraq, Afghanistan or any country where Australian troops are deployed could face a penalty of 7 years’ jail under the new terrorism laws.

Control orders of unlimited duration, secret preventive detention, the monitoring of lawyers, and life imprisonment for funding terrorist organisations are also suggested under the new laws.

The draft legislation, disclosed by Greens yesterday, details the far-reaching security regime proposed by John Howard for “very dangerous and difficult and threatening circumstances” in the wake of the London bombings.

New sedition offences will put big constraints on anti-war protests, familiar since the Vietnam era, and come down hard on those advocating violence against any religious, national or political group.

Those charged with sedition can argue they were acting “in good faith” but it is unclear how the courts will interpret this.

The bill sets out new federal police powers to detain terrorist suspects for up to 24 hours, and up to 48 hours with the approval of a judge or magistrate. Suspects will get access to a lawyer to challenge the detention order in a court or complain of maltreatment

Police do not need to give suspects or their lawyers reasons for the detentions and can monitor lawyers. All conversations lawyers have with their clients must be in English or translated into English for the police. Police are prohibited from questioning the detainees but that ban does not apply to ASIO officers.

And on and on it goes…

I’m certainly not the first to say it but congratulations are in order for John Quiggin. He has successfully argued that Bloggers should not have to give their names and addresses to make political comments during an election.