Put on your lifebelts, Kids on the Bridge


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.


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GreyRanga
GreyRanga
June 8, 2024 4:03 pm

Peter 16 yo kids could not make a worse mess than the rabble that cough, govern, cough, the majority of countries in the world. The Lord of the Flies comes to mind with the current lot.

johanna
johanna
June 8, 2024 4:15 pm

Well said.

Leftism is an eternal state of the triumph of hope over experience (and history).

Zippster
Zippster
June 8, 2024 4:58 pm

oh oh. pick me pick me. I know I know.

values based capitalism: that’s where we create the value and the state steals it!

Bazinga
Bazinga
June 8, 2024 7:43 pm

Everyone not signalling the PC values will not be allowed to participate in capitalism.

Rabz
June 8, 2024 9:04 pm

Dim Chambers’ knowledge of capitalism could be transcribed on ant’s bottom, with infinite room to spare.

thefrollickingmole
thefrollickingmole
June 8, 2024 10:04 pm

With all their advisors none seem to employ anyone capable of thinking beyond the ” this sounds good” stage.

There should be someone to play Judas to every mong idea and try to pervert its outcome before it reaches the light of day.

If only someone had said ” NDIS sounds like a honeypot for grifters, and you haven’t stipulated hard enough guidelines” …

Roger
Roger
June 9, 2024 11:04 am

I can only assume that an undiagnosed mentally-arresting morbidity causes many brains to cease developing prematurely. 

The other option is that leftists are not mad, they are just bad.

Seriously, don’t medicalise what is essentially an ethical problem rooted in poor philosophical assumptions.

Last edited 4 months ago by Roger
Fair Shake
Fair Shake
June 9, 2024 1:35 pm

Voting age is a bit like the NDIS spendathon. Who is the baddie who will say no, no vote for you. Why stop at 16yo? Why not 14? Why not 12, 10? I saw preschoolers proudly chanting anti-semtic slogans. That says greens voter right there.

Personally id prefer voting to be 18yo+ and paid a min $2000 tax (excl GST) in the past Fin Year.

Alamak!
June 10, 2024 11:26 am

Wishing for a Milei to abolish 5 useless agencies (state, federal) each year and proscribe $2 savings before $1 spending rule be made part of the constitution with %of failed estimates (e.g. NDIS) to be clawed back from pollie pensions.

Aligning incentives and outcomes is hard but cannot be avoided if we are not to go bust handing out “free” $$$ to all (as Plato predicted for democratic systems)

Told myself I was dreaming, tho.

Mother Lode
Mother Lode
June 10, 2024 2:16 pm

Great post.

Thanks.

Bruce
Bruce
June 10, 2024 2:49 pm

Another H. L. Mencken observation:

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

Frank
Frank
June 10, 2024 5:44 pm

Bowen looks like he would reek of goon at most times of the day. I have never met the man to be able to check but it would explain some things.

Bungonia Bee
Bungonia Bee
June 10, 2024 10:11 pm

Bowen is an extreme example, but the organisation which coughed him upwards to Ministerial rank and which has tied itself to the Greens, has to be seen in much the same way; he is an outgrowth of it.
Labor, Greens and Teals all owe much to an immature brain cohort in the mass media. It is a large cohort, and it has no interest in “keeping the bastards honest”.
There used to be a saying that “worse things happen at sea”, and indeed worse things continue to happen in the USA for much the same reason.

Min
Min
June 12, 2024 7:55 am
  • Bowen has come up with disastrous policies before Grocery watch Open borders , he was in charge during all those deaths at sea.

it would be interesting to see his score on The Millon or other such personality tests . Mads ,bads and sads

  • I have proposed testing for all politicians before selection usually done for positions above middle management these days Too many narcissists in politics these days
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