Jim Chalmers had a piece in The Monthly in February 2023 “Capitalism after the crises,” in which he invented a new form of capitalism; namely, “values-based capitalism.” Before Jim’s new form of capitalism we have had inclusive capitalism, conscious capitalism, cooperative capitalism and stakeholder capitalism (courtesy of Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum). Thus Jim is within a tradition of those on the left, communists in drag, who despise free-market capitalism; which, in fact, is the only capitalism. The rest are bogus. Imaginary if you like; akin to imaginary friends, which children might make up. And therein lies a tale of arrested-development.

Take the Prime Minister’s claim and Chris Bowen’s that Australia will become a renewable-energy super power and, within that ambit, a green-hydrogen super power to boot. Clearly, this is quite fanciful. It is not real. It is childlike thinking.

Arrested development, childlike, put it as you will, explains a lot about the policies which emerge from the left side of politics and from academia. They are often grandiose, lacking in detail and, most particularly, free of any comprehensive consideration of downstream consequences. That is why we are stuck with the NDIS for example. It is why the building of redundant school buildings and the pink batts scheme in the Rudd / Gillard times were so misconceived, and why the asylum-seeker boats started arriving in numbers. Incidentally, I said the left side of politics. That most certainly includes many in the Liberal Party, as it excludes pragmatists inside Labor. Bob Hawke and Peter Walsh come to mind on a federal level. I am not sure whether any like them are still around.

Anyway, how else can you explain Bowen’s obsessive delusional thinking? Sure, he is a fully-credentialled member of the climate cult. But then who joins cults but those whose brains have not yet fully developed?

Generally, the human brain is not fully developed until people reach their mid-twenties. For example, this is from the Health Encyclopedia, University of Rochester Medical Center:

It doesn’t matter how smart teens are…Good judgment isn’t something they can excel in… The rational part of a teen’s brain isn’t fully developed and won’t be until age 25 or so… In teen’s brains, the connections between the emotional part of the brain and the decision-making center are still developing—and not necessarily at the same rate.

Fine, but Bowen is 51 not 18 or 21. Still, if he walks and quacks like a duck. I can only assume that an undiagnosed mentally-arresting morbidity causes many brains to cease developing prematurely. And those to whom they belong then naturally gravitate to the political side which offers quick emotional gratification without consequences. It explains the otherwise inexplicable.

Watch young children. They take each other deadly seriously; however silly are the goings on. That’s the world they occupy, as they should. Infants and children and young adults pass through stages before reaching a stage when their intellectual and judgmental development is complete. But if you get stuck along the way then you might well end up regarding childish views as being instructive.

You might end up, for example, as an ABC or Guardian reporter. Or a Labor cabinet minister. And you associate, in your mind, with people whose views are similarly underdeveloped. Hence the Greens want to give the vote to those aged sixteen. I think they should go for those aged twelve to better hit the mark. Labour leader Keir Starmer in the UK favours it, and moves are afoot more generally among leftist activists in Australia to lower the voting age.

Ayanna Pressley (D., Mass.), of unmatched progressivism among progressive members of the US House of Representatives, proposed lowering the voting age in the US to sixteen in 2019. She managed to get 125 Dems to support her, no Republicans. “Elections are about the future and no one has more at stake in that future than our youth,” said Barbara Lee (D., Calif.), in support of the proposal. “Often the objection is simply that 16-year-olds are too young to exercise good judgment. This is really a patronizing thought.”

Good judgement? Ms Lee thinks 16-year-olds make good judgments because they coincide with hers. She suffers from arrested development. That’s the world she lives in. That’s the world that those on the left live in. We? We in Australia are in very chop waters with gale-force winds and icebergs ahead; and remember, when Bowen next announces his intention to replace fossil fuels with wind and solar, he is one of those the kids on the bridge steering the ship of state.