Home
Creators
Search Recent Random
Posts
Search DMs Popular Hash Lookup Tags Random
Importer
Import FAQ
Register Favorites Keys Review DMs Logout
Community
Telegram ThePornDude
Home Creators Posts Import Register Favorites Logout

/358/ Lucky, Meaty Nations (II) ft. Shahar Hameiri & Tom Chodor (Patreon)

Published:
2023-08-15 14:07:01
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Downloads

Content

On Australia and New Zealand at the end of the end of history.

[Patreon Exclusive]

The second part of George's interview with Shahar and Tom in which they explore why Australia and New Zealand have avoided the turbulence of the end of the end of history. Is it as simple as uninterrupted growth and high wages? How well is the political system able to respond to people's frustrations, and have there been any populist breakthroughs there? 

And what happens if China's slowdown brings the Antipodes down? We discuss all this in the After Party.

Readings:

Australian Labor’s hollow victory, Shahar Hameiri & Tom Chodor, UnHerd

Jacinda Ardern still haunts New Zealand, Tom Chodor, UnHerd

Files

Comments

Davka Smolah Collective

Yeah I can see why you kept this for the patrons if step 0 for the plan to build a worker's paradise is to be a racist settler colony. (And I don't mean this in a moralizing way, just that "open up a new continent as a British Dominion and then restrict to 'white' immigrants" is obviously not a replicable model.)

Gabriel L

Another potential element to NZ's resistance to TEOTEOH is the ease by which NZers can hop elsewhere – many 'tradies' and younger NZers go to AUS for the higher wages and better welfare there – anecdotally, I know of teachers, nurses, roadside workers, architects, and engineers all doing this – and many others slide to the UK, elsewhere in Europe, or Hong Kong (maybe less now), Singapore, or Shanghai for a few years or more, earn a haul, and then come back and settle (again). If you can somewhat easily escape stagnancy, less reason to be up in arms about it, maybe? This has been joked about with the current National leader’s promises to help NZers succeed overseas – a mutation the previous National leader (and ex-PM, Key) who rhetorically leveraged his ‘success’ overseas to argue he was bringing these skills back. Whilst, on the other side, the ex-Labour PM (Clark) is devoting a lot of time on discussing NZ’s diaspora and how to attract them back (about 1mil NZers live overseas; 5mil total in NZ).

Jack Barry

As an Australian, thanks for covering some Australian (& New Zealand) subject matter, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I look forward to hearing Shahar & Tom discuss Covid in a future episode. I’ll have a crack at Phil’s challenge regarding a historical comparison of Argentina and Australia and their divergent fortunes despite some similarities. In ‘Why Australia Prospered’, Ian McLean argues that the Australian colonies still being ruled by the British Empire for the first half of the 19th century acted as counterbalance against the squattocracy from consolidating power, as landowners did in the self-governing countries of Latin America. This set the stage for institutions to develop more democratically in the latter half of the century.

Jack F

Interesting discussion. Hameiri and Chodor's argument about high wages doesn't hold up in NZ, though. While NZ has a high minimum wage, it has a very low median wage - lower than most other advanced economies. Average (mean) wages are also low, with NZ in the bottom third of advanced economies by that measure. Australia, on the other hand, is a relatively high wage economy. The freedom of movement for labour between NZ and Aus works to siphon younger NZers - who might otherwise become resentful of the low wages and lack of social mobility - out of the country, as Gabriel L notes in the comments above.

Jack F

I may have missed it, but I was surprised that Aus and NZ's experiences of the GFC were not discussed, especially given the importance of the GFC, bank bailouts, and austerity in sparking populism in the UK, Europe, and US. Compared to the UK, US, and Europe, Aus and NZ were not particularly damaged by the GFC. No major banks collapsed and there were no politically toxic bailouts. Unemployment only rose moderately, and came back down reasonably swiftly. And austerity wasn't a feature of the 2010s (NZ got a very light version of austerity under the National government). This, I think, is a simpler explanation for why TEOTEOH has not materialized in either country - rather than the high wage/economic growth argument, which doesn't work in the NZ case at least.

Andrew Scerri

Interesting discussion, maybe check Louis Harz “The Founding of New Societies” 1964 on the “dominion mode of development”.Harz practically argues as much and the book contains a response from an Australian Marxist who elaborates, I can’t remember his name. Also, I think the view that OZ didn’t have populist moments misses the fact that Howard invented the dog whistle in the 1990s and Morrison threw away the whistle and just appealed directly to the blue collar tradie vote by evoking populist nationalist themes. There was a Quarterly Essay on him a while back.

Blake

One good anecdote about Australia is from the end of Capital Volume I, where Robert Peel tries to export capitalism to Australia by building a factory and bringing workers, only for all of them to run away to become farmers instead, which Marx uses to illustrate that Capital as ultimately a social relation between people.