Oddbean new post about | logout
 #AUStriches descent into socialism is accelerating.

“Mr Albanese will declare that the free market can no longer be relied upon and that Australia needs “sharper elbows”.”

Government intervention is not the answer. Particularly when that government is filled to the brim with retards.

https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/protection-is-the-new-competition-20240409-p5figs 
 Oh FFS...

That is a game governments have played and won - Singapore and RoK come to mind.

But they were small, politically stable dictatorships with cheap, responsible, numerate labour and a high degree of popular patriotism.

We are zero of those things.

South Africa and Argentina, hold my slab! 
 Greens calling for rent freezes/cap too. Between them and Labor dragging the political Overton window left, things gonna get bad https://i.nostr.build/DjA98.jpg https://i.nostr.build/XVGol.jpg  
 Our most anti-market Party is the Nationals, by a wide margin. A monopoly Board for every commodity and every service, and "annual certification" for everything if they ever rule alone. My late grandfather was unironically a far-right Socialist, and at one point rather prominent in National Party internal politics in this state. (Sorry!)

The Greens are a mixed bag of Communists and crony-capitalists, but mostly just very irresponsible and stupid.

Teals and Liberals are pure crony-Capitalists, who love regulating and monopolizing to benefit donors, and Labor sits between them and the Greens.

We had one actual market capitalist party - the Liberal Democrats - but the unelected AEC bureaucrats deregistered them after they started winning senate seats... 
 The Nationals problem is they already sold out their constituents long ago, so now they don’t have enough people to actually give them any power because yeah they would be fucking ludicrous if they got any in this day and age. 
 They've been selling out consistently since the 1920s, shamelessly, but they still hold seats.

Unfortunately their vision is still popular among farmers. 

"The Board will do all my paperwork, transport and marketing for me, certification will magically handle my quality control issues, and the police will suppress those labour unions and keep wages low. I'll just have to drive the tractor and watch porno all day..."