Strypey
@openrisk
> The fediverse is full of "rage", some of it reflecting what is happening in the world but a lot of it performative
... and mostly imported from Titter or other DataFarms. I've been here long enough to have seen at least 5-6 distinct waves of arrivals from those shores (at least 3 from Titter itself, Eternal November being only the last) and the pattern is always the same. Once they're been here for a while they either calm down, or bugger off someone more ragebaity.
Strypey
@SuperDicq
> they actually added this restriction to the copyright license of MidnightBSD as well, making the entire project nonfree software
🤦♂️ How exactly did they do that though? Devil is in the details, especially with legal stuff.
Adding the Commons Clause to a package under a free license doesn't actually change the license terms and can be ignored, unless you're a risk averse corporation. So it does it's job, without really make the software nonfree.
Strypey
#KieranMcAnulty loyally towing the Starmerist party line for Hipkins' ;
"If you're talking about the top end of town, then choose the other lot. If you're talking about everyday working NZers, then don't look at them, look at us. And if you give Labour the most votes then we'll have the most sway in govt, and we won't make the same mistakes that Luxon made and just give the small parties everything they ask for."
(1/?)
Strypey
McAnulty doesn't deliver the script with much conviction. What interesting though is that he sounded much less like a talking-point-chanting zombie when he said this, just before the bit I quoted;
"If we had to have a coalition partner I'd pick the Greens."
As with Tama Potaka, I suspect we're hearing a loyal party man, who is nevertheless deeply unsatisfied with the current direction of his party, and thus it's current leadership.
(2/?)
Strypey
OMG somebody slap me. I think I kind of agree with #MatthewHooten here. 😬
"Now we just heard form a very senior Labour party person - Kieran McAnulty, a potential [future] leader ... - and they don't want to raise taxes. The only tax they want to raise is the CGT, and they want to spend all that on doctors visits. So ... We're trapped."
That said, I disagree with the claim he snuck in ahead of this.
(1/?)
Strypey
Not just Hipkins, the whole cabal of self-serving, centrist carpetbaggers who refuse to let Labour act like a left-wing party, in case they lose their seat. Or whatever table scraps the 1% are offering them to keep Labour hamstrung and useless.
Maybe one day the party membership will get back control of their party from these careerists. But I'm not holding my breath. Just as Hipkins is taking a lead from his UK counterpart, I think the NZ Greens could learn a thing or 2 from theirs.
(3/3)
Strypey
A somewhat higher estimated future cost for interest payments, relative to certain other countries, is *not* a good reason for governments not to borrow for spending on infrastructure. Which can create some slack in the current budget, to be spent on restoring the properly fund universal public services. Something we had in this country when I was a child, so anyone who says it's a utopian pipedream and can't be done is denying history.
(2/?)
Strypey
Presuming it's maintained properly, public infrastructure can be useful for generations to come. I think our grandkids will be happy to share in the cost of building it, by having government budgets cover some interest payments during their working years.
Especially when the alternative is to live in a country where infrastructure and essential services are available only to those who can afford to "go private". As we do now.
(3/?)
Strypey
The right talk a big game about the cost of public borrowing to future generations. Then borrow anyway to give tax cuts to the landlord class (Willis bugets have borrowed more than Robertson's - fact).
But they never seem to be very interested in talking about the cost to future generations of *not* borrowing. Maybe that's something the left need to talk more about?
(4/4)
Strypey
This is handbag economics at it's best. Completely ignoring the economic fact that the role of a government in an economy is fundamentally different from that of a citizen, a household, or a business.
Democratic governments of sovereign countries are not big, compulsory-membership co-ops, as Hooten implies, bound by budgets. They are the organised expression of how citizens want our country to be organised. Or at least they're *meant* to be, and if they're not, maybe we don't need them?
(2/?)
Strypey
I think it's worth deconstructing another bit of propaganda Hooten tried to insert into the Feb 24 edition of the Bradbury Group;
The absurd claim that the reason our public infrastructure and service struggle, while governments borrow to keep the wolves from the door, is that we're not a wealthy country. We can't afford nice things, you see, because we're 5 million (or so) people looking after a country the size of the UK. "Middle class" by world standards.
(1/?)
Strypey
Hooten is right that there are only 5 million of us to supply all the goods and services we need, or exports to trade for them. But that means supplying universal public services is much cheaper than it is in the UK or other countries with much higher populations.
He's right that our population is small relative to our land space. But there's no cost per km2 of doing public administation. Most of that land is mountains and forest that mostly maintains themselves at no cost to the public.
(3/?)
Strypey
When I was a child we had a comprehensive social safety net, with the same land space to look after, and only 3 million people. Anyone who thinks either of these things are the reason for the poverty of everyday life in contemporary Aotearoa they're deluded, or lying. I'll leave the job of evaluating which of these applies to Hooten to the reader.
(4/?)
Strypey
We have about the same amount of real wealth in this country as we did in the 1980s. When we didn't have mass unemployment, and homelessness, and malnutrition, and diseases of poverty.
All the land is still there. As is most of the infrastructure. While some of it has been severely undermaintained (railways, ferries, public media), much more has been built (roads in particular, fibre optic networks). We still have a few million people's worth of labour, world class universities, etc.
(6/?)
Strypey
The real cause of our apparent poverty can be seen in the rapid and ongoing increase in inequality, or income and wealth, that we've seen in the this country since the 1980s. Caused by austerity policies justified on the basis of the very handbag economics Hooten and his ilk and pimping.
(5/?)
Strypey
What we don't have is a public policy framework that makes sure everyone has fair access to that wealth. For citizens to supply themselves and their families with their basic needs. For communities to supply basic services, to everyone who needs them. For businesses to create new goods and luxury services for those who want them and are prepared to pay.
The same amount of wealth still exists, but it's all been hoarded by the 1%, here and offshore.
(7/?)
Strypey
As I've said here before, if you dig into the fine print, a lot of the "imports" we supposedly have to export stuff to cover, are actually economic rents we pay to offshore extractors to use our own infrastructure. Which was built at public expense, and we used to own it, but it got corporatised and sold in the 1980s/90s (and a bit more in the late 2010s).
To put it bluntly, as a country we sold the farm to pay the mortgage, now we're selling our organs to lease the farm.
(8/?)
Strypey
The problem is not a lack of resources. It's not, as Hooten claims, that we're not a wealthy enough country to have nice things, like 21st century infrastructure and functioning public services for those who need them.
The problem is, economically speaking, we're not actually a sovereign country. We're not free. We are economic slaves, both to the domestic 1% and the offshore extractors they curry favour with. That's what we need a radically democratic form of public governance to solve.
(9/9)
Strypey
I just remembered one other thing I wanted to comment on from this edition of the Bradbury Group;
Which was Bomber's advocacy for a state-backed supermarket chain. With all due respect to Comrade Bradbury, this is right up there with GST off fruit and veges as far as uninspiring policies.
(1/?)
Strypey
For one thing, this would involve risking huge amounts of public money on a business venture. One that no corporate extractor thinks is viable enough to invest in.
Until we can get a stake into the heart of corporatist policy ("neoliberalism", "Washington Consensus"), and kill it dead for good, even success would be failure. Because if it worked, it would be sold off to said extractors by the next NatACT government, on the basis that the state has no place in the supermarket business.
(2/?)
Free human being of this Earth. Pākeha in Aotearoa.Be excellent to each other!BTW When I say Trained #MOLE, I mean generative models, what the hype bubble calls "AI", see my blog post;https://disintermedia.net.nz/invasion-of-the-mole-trainers/Email: strypey @disintermedia.net.nzJabber: strypey@jabber.orgMatrix: @strypey:matrix.iridescent.nzAll posts here CC BY-SA 4.0 (or later).#Vegan #Permaculture #PeerProduction #SoftwareFreedom #PlatformCooperatives #FreeCode #CreativeCommons #SciFi #Comedy #Juggling #fedi22
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