Another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please.
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John Quiggin 
It looks like commentary on Australian and world events from a socialist and democratic viewpoint is pretty much dead. I mean “commentary” in the sense that laypersons engage with each other and specialists in places like this blog and/or care about where their entire society is going. It’s all atomised self-interest now.
Capitalism has won and is destroying everything, as Marx predicted. However, Marx’s prediction of a worker or solidarity movement of some kind that would save society, recover matters in some way or or move us to a new stage of history has failed entirely to come about. Most ordinary people have given up or are too busy / too stressed trying to survive financially or even existentially in terms income, accommodation and food.
I am not sure how other countries are going but Australia is basically rooted, to use an old colloquialism. Yes, I am calling it early but all trends are worsening in Australia: climate, weather, environment, society, economy, health, welfare, education, housing, crime, human behaviour, ethics etc. Nothing is getting better, absolutely nothing that I can see.
US partial elections
“You go to war with the army you have” – Donald Rumsfeld. Paul Krugman as usual gets it right. https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/which-party-is-in-trouble-again The elections were an unalloyed victory for Democrats, for mayor in New York, governor in New Jersey and Virginia, and apparently also in dog-catcher minor offices all over the place. The winning candidates were representative of the flawed politicians the Democratic party actually has, not the imaginary bipartisan Johnny Unbeatables that the liberal consultant class pines for. Spanberger and Sherrill are on the right of their party. Sherrill is a former naval pilot and prosecutor, Spanberger a former CIA officer. Mamdani is flamboyantly left-wing, though far from the communist of Trump’s ludicrous claim. All three will necessarily govern closer to the centre of their respective coalitions. Sherrill opposes New York’s traffic congestion charge, which Mamdani supports. That’s normal politics.
FWIW, I share the reservations others have expressed about Mamdani’s platform. He has five main policy proposals. Two are sound – child-care subsidies (already in Kamala Harris’ platform, though nobody noticed) and taxing the rich. Rent control addresses a major problem of affordability, but is is unsound, compared to building public housing. Free public transport and publicly-owned grocery stores are inefficient answers to imaginary problems. The former will attract the homeless and joyriding teenagers to the detriment of other passengers at peak times. Better spend the money on electric buses and limit the free travel passes to pensioners, who will travel offpeak (hence at very low system cost) for their own comfort – this works fine in London. Mamdani is by all accounts a populíst pragmatist in the FDR mould of “try anything once”, not a wonk deeply committed to specific policies.
The election has highlighted the fragility of Trump’s coalition, It confirms that he and his policies are deservedly unpopular, and an electoral threat to many GOP politicians. Many Hispanic voters who bought his snake oil in 2023 are suffering buyer’s remorse (Krugman again). The Supreme Court Republicans are now fairly likely to rule his tariffs unconstitutional.
Contrast the many photos of Hitler riding unprotected in an open-topped car through German cities in the 1930s, six feet from the cheering crowds of Germans: https://www.usnews.com/object/image/00000160-c795-dcd5-abee-cfb7ee7a0000/180105-hitler-editorial.jpg
That was real popularity.
We must resist the temptation to oversell one piece of good news, but the odds for the survival of American democracy have ticked up a smidgen.
I agree, James – this was a good week for us. And boy howdy did we need some good news.
Mamdani seems to have solid character and temperament, so it seems likely he will do a decent job. Yet I am a tiny bit disappointed with New York voters for choosing style over substance – since they had more qualified candidates in the primary who were overlooked because they aren’t exciting. People like free stuff – it’s not news. I think that kind of politics tends towards lesser results. But, I should probably just give up this idea entirely. I feel like voters are getting dumber. Maybe more accurately, I am just getting older?
And I still am really annoyed by the whole DSA thing. They aren’t even real socialists, so why do they bother with the stupid label? Not to mention that it misleads many people and totally distorts the conversation. Oh whatever. Bernie is right about a lot of things, but I don’t see socialism ever having legs here. I think it is just to get attention.
Quote of the day from Will Lockett on Substack:
“The logic surrounding the AI boom is utterly moronic. The idea is to gamble the entire Western economy by heavily investing in technology that will wipe out almost all jobs. It is a lose-lose scenario. If the bet fails, the economy crashes. If the bet succeeds, the economy crashes. And [….] this is precisely what is happening.”
James W.,
Yes, the logic is that of capitalism. Capitalism is utterly moronic.