Dr Dickson, I beg to differ.. our current coalition of cronyism have hacked, taxidermied, double-spoked, impostured, faux-equalised, Stockholm-syndromed, our comprehension, our rights, our regulations, even to the extent of constricting our courts. This is NOT a normal government. Voting for the Opportunity Party will be a wasted vote and could well shepherd these agents of tech broligarchs back for another term. The only party to vote for if seeking meaningful change is the Green Party.
I agree with strengthening democracy - but do you really think either of the three parties currently governing us would be interested in supporting Op party's goal on that score? This upcoming election is so important if we are to retain any of our public services - what is left of them!
I am one of those Educated and informed former Labour/Greens supporters. I've become increasingly disillusioned with the Labour Party and what I see as its reluctance to upset centrist voters. In my view, it no longer feels like the party of working people. They have become so focused on chasing the centre they have lost sight of their traditional base.
I'm tired of the lack of progress on meaningful tax reform and being part of the "squeezed middle." We keep hearing about fairness, but little seems to change with either Labour or National at the helm. .
Some will probably call me delusional for considering voting TOP, but from my perspective they're at least trying to think beyond the next election cycle. Their policies appear more focused on long-term stability rather than the constant policy reversals that come with governments swinging between left and right.
I know there's a risk that voting for TOP could indirectly help the right. But I also see TOP as a potential moderating influence in any future coalition, one that could act as a handbrake on more extreme policies. Yes I understand that some of their policies will unlikely be picked up initially, but just having them at the table, for either the left or right could be a stabilising influence. Who knows I may be wasting my vote, but I am prepared to go there and I am happy to see many other NZers are considering it too.
ADDIT: Also I would love to see another Kingmaker in the mix.
Labour will keep shedding voters to Opportunity between now and the election. BUT it is inexperienced (exclude the turncoat Lee's Galloway) and likely to be ineffectual whoever Qlee supports.
As for ACC kudos. I wrote a paper on it in 1972 when it was intended to be applied for medical treatment for illnesses as well as injuries. It reached $10b last century and now, at $50b plus, it should be invested in public health and buy up the private hospitals
Excellent analysis, Andrew. ‘My politics, if it needs a label, is pro-enterprise and anti-accumulation: for profit in the classical sense, the return on making, risking and working; against rent, the return on merely holding. This is the old distinction, George’s, and before him Smith’s and Ricardo’s…’ I could not have put it as well myself, so well done Lacan, Zizek, and Dickson!
And for those tempted to vote Green: their hearts are in the right place, but without the pragmatic James Shaw, their policies tend toward the unimplementable.
Partisan politics is largely a dead end, imho. We all need to get down to basics of community organization, and forcing 𝘸𝘩𝘰𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 has a vote in Parliament to do the right thing.
The Opp Party is ꕒꗍꖀ𐝥ꗍꘝꕯꖡ in terms of half-arse understanding MMT, yet still having a UBI policy — a giant 𖨨ꚶ𖥐𖢉ꚲ𖥕ꚶ to workers, a claim the State makes on other people’s labour, and a Trojan Horse for the rentiers. We can do heaps better. At least some in the Green Pty know a decent meaningful Job Guarantee policy is far better, and that society must somehow evolve away from rentier capitalism.
Bijou, you know I’m totes with you on the job guarantee being the way rather than UBI. But how much concern should we have about the job doomerism re AI? I’m genuinely uncertain about it all, figure you’ve got a much better handle on the tech potential?
Are you familiar with Cory Doctorow and his take on AI, Doc? A brilliant commentator and kindred spirit, for sure:
“AI cannot and will never render us obsolete, Doctorow says. “It’s a conjuring trick. That’s probably the most important thing to get across.” A machine has been invented that is really good at building sentences by predicting what word would usually come next, and we invest it with meaning, insight, omnipotence.”
But we’re “imputing intentionality to this thing that intends nothing. It’s not because, objectively, it seems intentional, but because, in a state of nature, we don’t encounter sentences that don’t have sentence writers, we don’t encounter images that don’t have painters, and so on.” We marvel when it does things right, and conveniently ignore what it gets wrong, or indulge its “hallucinations”, which is just a fancy word for “errors”.
“Where I think the word ‘hallucination’ is useful,” he says, “is not to describe what the AI is doing, but what we do when we encounter a word salad, and we impute a writer to the word salad.” If you think AI can become conscious, he suggests, it’s because you’ve forgotten what consciousness is.
The “jobs loss” story is a complete neoliberal misdirection, sadly parroted mindlessly by otherwise good lefties, like Karen Hao. Most “job loss” commentary by tech industry talking heads and fear-mongerers is completely backwards. Every robot automation frees up human beings to do much nicer things. The critical issue is not “jobs” but can we get enough robots working sustainably for social benefit? (I do not think we can, to make redundant most human workers we would need so many data centres we’d likely suffocate the planet? But, replacing human workers is a good thing, if we do it without suffocating the biosphere.)
((Marx got it wrong. Humans are the source of social value, the only source, but after we’ve automated production we are not of much economic production value per se, we are maybe 10% of the input to production?))
We nevertheless wake up every day to severe labour shortages, and always will. This is the socially valuable output. The story here is the opposite of “taking away jobs.” There is no way anything can possibly take away all the desirable jobs people could be doing. The issue is the private sector cannot ever guarantee full employment, but the monopoly currency issuer can, and without inflation bias. So it is total ignorance for anyone to be worrying about “job losses.” Every “job loss” is typically a good thing, to first or zeroeth order. Unless it is an offshoring so that we are, via importing, exploiting cheap underpaid labour in a foreign country due to exchange rate & labour condition differentials.
The other secondary issue is who gets to control all the robots? We should want sustainable fully automated production of essentials, so that people are not working in factories (unless they desperately want to for some reason). But then who gets to control the production system is the issue, they could be techbro rentier monopolists. That’d not be good. But it is not an unemployment story.
Unemployment is in all cases an unspent income story, not a productivity gain story. Unemployment is caused by government policy, and so should be reversed by government policy. Why? Because the real lost output due to unemployment in a mere decade today exceeds the real losses of all wars in our history. Worse losses— in terms of lost output and crippling social pathologies — than a hundred genocides.
A well-put case, but (having personally spent previous elections working closely with senior TOP candidates) I now view the party as another row of bricks inside the left-hand Overton Window frame.
I had a conversation with exactly the kind of wavering Labour-to-TOP voter the other day, trying to get them to give me a single (enacted) coalition policy that TOP would have actively fought against, and we reached no conclusion. TOP have indeed come out against policies that failed anyway (Treaty Principles), or are set to fail (the gender bill), but where are their promises to actually undo NACTF policy, given the chance?
We'd have to be deluded to believe their pitch deck—a UBI plus a bunch of other stuff, all funded by a land tax—will even be opened during coalition negotiations with either party, so what are they actually offering? In-house management consultancy? Don't we have enough detached neoclassical thinkers in politics already?
There are certainly parties I'd like less to see in the next government, but I personally don't feel we need more centrist-circumscribed decision-making as we slowly circle the drain.
I've just read much of Todd McGowan's new book Self Sabotage (on the emancipitory potential of Freud's discovery of the primacy of self-sabotage for the psyche) - particularly the chapter on FAFO as the contemporary form of liberal schadenfreude. Perhaps this helps explain the dread of the so-called wasted (could we call it ethical?) vote, and the opprobium that is heaped on the potential TOP voter (but not the potential Animal Justice Party voter). I anticipate the possibility I will rue the very day I used my vote for a flutter on TOP - I will have been the dupe who fucked around and found out, with rent garments and wailing and gnashing of teeth.
"Party vote for the party that wants what you want" is hard to hear because for me that would be the Animal Justice Party. And I feel the abhorrence of the dread "wasted vote" which seems to prohibit voting ethically.
Dr Dickson, I beg to differ.. our current coalition of cronyism have hacked, taxidermied, double-spoked, impostured, faux-equalised, Stockholm-syndromed, our comprehension, our rights, our regulations, even to the extent of constricting our courts. This is NOT a normal government. Voting for the Opportunity Party will be a wasted vote and could well shepherd these agents of tech broligarchs back for another term. The only party to vote for if seeking meaningful change is the Green Party.
I don’t disagree! Instead I present the enticement…
Over my dead body, Mr/Ms Logan! Please see Oppy’s policy on strengthening democracy.
I agree with strengthening democracy - but do you really think either of the three parties currently governing us would be interested in supporting Op party's goal on that score? This upcoming election is so important if we are to retain any of our public services - what is left of them!
I am one of those Educated and informed former Labour/Greens supporters. I've become increasingly disillusioned with the Labour Party and what I see as its reluctance to upset centrist voters. In my view, it no longer feels like the party of working people. They have become so focused on chasing the centre they have lost sight of their traditional base.
I'm tired of the lack of progress on meaningful tax reform and being part of the "squeezed middle." We keep hearing about fairness, but little seems to change with either Labour or National at the helm. .
Some will probably call me delusional for considering voting TOP, but from my perspective they're at least trying to think beyond the next election cycle. Their policies appear more focused on long-term stability rather than the constant policy reversals that come with governments swinging between left and right.
I know there's a risk that voting for TOP could indirectly help the right. But I also see TOP as a potential moderating influence in any future coalition, one that could act as a handbrake on more extreme policies. Yes I understand that some of their policies will unlikely be picked up initially, but just having them at the table, for either the left or right could be a stabilising influence. Who knows I may be wasting my vote, but I am prepared to go there and I am happy to see many other NZers are considering it too.
ADDIT: Also I would love to see another Kingmaker in the mix.
My sentiments exactly🙏
And, not delusional!
Labour will keep shedding voters to Opportunity between now and the election. BUT it is inexperienced (exclude the turncoat Lee's Galloway) and likely to be ineffectual whoever Qlee supports.
As for ACC kudos. I wrote a paper on it in 1972 when it was intended to be applied for medical treatment for illnesses as well as injuries. It reached $10b last century and now, at $50b plus, it should be invested in public health and buy up the private hospitals
On ACC, absolutely! That’s a fine idea. Then they can get rid of the floor of traders they have landing ‘their’ loot.
Excellent analysis, Andrew. ‘My politics, if it needs a label, is pro-enterprise and anti-accumulation: for profit in the classical sense, the return on making, risking and working; against rent, the return on merely holding. This is the old distinction, George’s, and before him Smith’s and Ricardo’s…’ I could not have put it as well myself, so well done Lacan, Zizek, and Dickson!
And for those tempted to vote Green: their hearts are in the right place, but without the pragmatic James Shaw, their policies tend toward the unimplementable.
Partisan politics is largely a dead end, imho. We all need to get down to basics of community organization, and forcing 𝘸𝘩𝘰𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 has a vote in Parliament to do the right thing.
The Opp Party is ꕒꗍꖀ𐝥ꗍꘝꕯꖡ in terms of half-arse understanding MMT, yet still having a UBI policy — a giant 𖨨ꚶ𖥐𖢉ꚲ𖥕ꚶ to workers, a claim the State makes on other people’s labour, and a Trojan Horse for the rentiers. We can do heaps better. At least some in the Green Pty know a decent meaningful Job Guarantee policy is far better, and that society must somehow evolve away from rentier capitalism.
Bijou, you know I’m totes with you on the job guarantee being the way rather than UBI. But how much concern should we have about the job doomerism re AI? I’m genuinely uncertain about it all, figure you’ve got a much better handle on the tech potential?
Are you familiar with Cory Doctorow and his take on AI, Doc? A brilliant commentator and kindred spirit, for sure:
“AI cannot and will never render us obsolete, Doctorow says. “It’s a conjuring trick. That’s probably the most important thing to get across.” A machine has been invented that is really good at building sentences by predicting what word would usually come next, and we invest it with meaning, insight, omnipotence.”
But we’re “imputing intentionality to this thing that intends nothing. It’s not because, objectively, it seems intentional, but because, in a state of nature, we don’t encounter sentences that don’t have sentence writers, we don’t encounter images that don’t have painters, and so on.” We marvel when it does things right, and conveniently ignore what it gets wrong, or indulge its “hallucinations”, which is just a fancy word for “errors”.
“Where I think the word ‘hallucination’ is useful,” he says, “is not to describe what the AI is doing, but what we do when we encounter a word salad, and we impute a writer to the word salad.” If you think AI can become conscious, he suggests, it’s because you’ve forgotten what consciousness is.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jun/24/cory-doctorow-on-elon-musk-ai-bubble-bosses-cruel-fantasies
I agree 100% with Fred below. 👇🏼(Or above? 👆🏼) 🤣
The “jobs loss” story is a complete neoliberal misdirection, sadly parroted mindlessly by otherwise good lefties, like Karen Hao. Most “job loss” commentary by tech industry talking heads and fear-mongerers is completely backwards. Every robot automation frees up human beings to do much nicer things. The critical issue is not “jobs” but can we get enough robots working sustainably for social benefit? (I do not think we can, to make redundant most human workers we would need so many data centres we’d likely suffocate the planet? But, replacing human workers is a good thing, if we do it without suffocating the biosphere.)
((Marx got it wrong. Humans are the source of social value, the only source, but after we’ve automated production we are not of much economic production value per se, we are maybe 10% of the input to production?))
We nevertheless wake up every day to severe labour shortages, and always will. This is the socially valuable output. The story here is the opposite of “taking away jobs.” There is no way anything can possibly take away all the desirable jobs people could be doing. The issue is the private sector cannot ever guarantee full employment, but the monopoly currency issuer can, and without inflation bias. So it is total ignorance for anyone to be worrying about “job losses.” Every “job loss” is typically a good thing, to first or zeroeth order. Unless it is an offshoring so that we are, via importing, exploiting cheap underpaid labour in a foreign country due to exchange rate & labour condition differentials.
The other secondary issue is who gets to control all the robots? We should want sustainable fully automated production of essentials, so that people are not working in factories (unless they desperately want to for some reason). But then who gets to control the production system is the issue, they could be techbro rentier monopolists. That’d not be good. But it is not an unemployment story.
Unemployment is in all cases an unspent income story, not a productivity gain story. Unemployment is caused by government policy, and so should be reversed by government policy. Why? Because the real lost output due to unemployment in a mere decade today exceeds the real losses of all wars in our history. Worse losses— in terms of lost output and crippling social pathologies — than a hundred genocides.
All seemed ok to me.
Until the final question.
About which I am puzzled.🤔
Me too! Che vuoi?!!
Probably what I’ll never get!
Probably what I’ll never get!
Probably what I’ll never get!
Once upon a time my iPad was sooo sensitive. Now not do much
A well-put case, but (having personally spent previous elections working closely with senior TOP candidates) I now view the party as another row of bricks inside the left-hand Overton Window frame.
I had a conversation with exactly the kind of wavering Labour-to-TOP voter the other day, trying to get them to give me a single (enacted) coalition policy that TOP would have actively fought against, and we reached no conclusion. TOP have indeed come out against policies that failed anyway (Treaty Principles), or are set to fail (the gender bill), but where are their promises to actually undo NACTF policy, given the chance?
We'd have to be deluded to believe their pitch deck—a UBI plus a bunch of other stuff, all funded by a land tax—will even be opened during coalition negotiations with either party, so what are they actually offering? In-house management consultancy? Don't we have enough detached neoclassical thinkers in politics already?
There are certainly parties I'd like less to see in the next government, but I personally don't feel we need more centrist-circumscribed decision-making as we slowly circle the drain.
I've just read much of Todd McGowan's new book Self Sabotage (on the emancipitory potential of Freud's discovery of the primacy of self-sabotage for the psyche) - particularly the chapter on FAFO as the contemporary form of liberal schadenfreude. Perhaps this helps explain the dread of the so-called wasted (could we call it ethical?) vote, and the opprobium that is heaped on the potential TOP voter (but not the potential Animal Justice Party voter). I anticipate the possibility I will rue the very day I used my vote for a flutter on TOP - I will have been the dupe who fucked around and found out, with rent garments and wailing and gnashing of teeth.
"Party vote for the party that wants what you want" is hard to hear because for me that would be the Animal Justice Party. And I feel the abhorrence of the dread "wasted vote" which seems to prohibit voting ethically.