There’s a very interesting analysis of Newspoll voting intention data from 1987 to 2007 by Macquarie Uni Visiting Senior Research Fellow in Politics Ian Watson at Australian Policy Online. After crunching the numbers, Watson argues that the ageing of the baby boomers has removed the electoral advantage the Coalition formerly enjoyed among older voters.
It appears that voters aged in their 50s are changing their electoral behaviour, but this has only happened for the last three elections. They have turned away from the Coalition and this coincides with a change in the composition of this age group: they are now made up of people born in the late 1940s and 1950s. In other words, the shift away from the Coalition among this particular group of older voters coincides with the arrival of the political generation based on the early baby boomers.
If the sentiments of these baby boomers are still Whitlamesque, if they can remember an era when social reform flourished, and if their aversion to economic rationalism and hyper-individualism remains intact, then one can easily imagine that many of these voters will be hostile to the Coalition. The data in these graphs seems to fit this interpretation.
In summary, while in general older voters favour the Liberal–National Parties, the greying of the baby boomers appears to be overturning this truism. This may well signal a demographic shift working against the Coalition in coming years.
Update: More commentary from Tim Dunlop and Andrew Norton.
There is also a connection which can be made between generational change and gender in impacting voting patterns. Women of baby boomer years would have had greater experience of paid workforce participation (and thus of unionism, workplace issues, etc.) than women of previous generations, as well as being the generation in which second wave feminism was born. Therefore they would tend to be less amenable both to social conservatism and to union-bashing, and to tactics such as Bob Menzies’ appeal to stay-at-home mothers as a constituency of the “forgotten people”. As we know, the secular trend of greater workforce participation and attachment – with all its consequences for social and political attitudes – has continued amongst younger generations of women, and would not be without some influence on the attitudes of the significant others in their lives.
Good point, Paul.
Yep. I was born in January 1945 which probably makes me a baby boomer. I’m 63. I don’t know anybody aged from their early 60s to say 45 who would vote for the coalition apart from one well known Armidale right wing troglodyte for whom there is absolutely no hope. (He’s so bad I write to the local papers to bait him, and he falls for it almost every time.)
So I’d say this research is pretty right. Happy days are here again.
I don’t think there is much explanatory power in suggesting that boomers are somehow inherently anti-Coalition: these are the same people who voted for Howard when they were in their 40s.
What the article is saying, Klaus, is that the swing away from the Coalition coincides with the entry of a new cohort into the 50 something bracket over the last three elections. You’d have to have a look at a demographic breakdown of the 96 vote to sustain your point, and the thrust of this sort of analysis is that it looks at longer term secular trends and smooths out peaks and troughs in the political cycle.
Perhaps Watson may be overstating his results a tad, but I don’t think that “inherently anti-Coalition” is what he’s suggesting – he’s admittedly speculating, and if you wanted to do some data matching between attitudinal and voting questions in the AES you could test the hypothesis, but that would be a much more extensive research project.
I wonder if this bodes well for the Democrats in the U.S., where the first Boomer Social Security claim was filed only last year, perhaps indicating the commencement of a similar demographic shift.
The baby boomer cohort looks pretty consistent at 40 percent intending to vote coalition if I’m interpreting those figures correctly, which is interesting to me because I saw a lot of people of my parents age change their support from Howard to Rudd at the last election.
I guess I find the age categories pretty empty of interest: I mean, of course the over-50s voting now aren’t the same over-50s voting ten years ago. I can see how comparing them to the broader intentions of the electorate can yield cohort information, but I don’t see how holding a particular age bracket signals any particular advantage/disadvantage. Boomers have been voting for decades, it’s not like they suddenly have more say. More significant, perhaps, is the fact that pre-boomers are dying out!
Greg,
The difference is that in America the Democrats started the Vietnam War and the Republicans oversaw the end of it. In Australia it was the reverse. While Paul is right about feminism being one factor, and there are many others, a huge part of early Baby Boomer politics was set in stone by the desire of the incumbent governments to send half of them off to die in the jungles before they even had the vote. For many of the women having their husbands and boyfriends sent off this way, or under threat of being sent, had a similar effect.
There is some evidence (albeit patchy) that the younger boomers are less anti-coalition than the older ones, and its very likely that this can be attributed to the fact that they were not personally at risk of being drafted.
Klaus, obviously when you talk about a particular demographic favouring one side, that’s all that’s meant – not that there’s an overwhelming advantage to one party.
I think there is value in this sort of analysis because assumptions like “older voters favour the Coalition” are very sticky – and get repeated again and again in the meejah regardless of their continued veracity.
A lot of generaliationalism is bullshit, but there’s well established political sociology research that demonstrates meaningful partisan identification and political attitudes are formed early in life and have a tendency to persist, and that there is real variance between different age cohorts.
If in a few years we have a situation where older voters favor Labor by a majority, then you do have a distinctly different political conjuncture.
KK, these figures measure tendencies.
Of course, many BBs have voted Coalition all their lives and will probably continue to do so until they die.
But the point is that there are smaller proportion of BBs of that ilk than in the previous generation.
And it would seem that there is less coincidence between the process of greying and the process of saying “I’m too old to vote ALP or Green, I think I’ll plump for that nice Dr Nelson.”
Well this is one baby boomer whose marble came out in the ballot and who voted Liberal from first vote through to my mid 40s, then voted Democrat for a few years but has been a solid Greens voter for at least the last ten.
Yep – that’s one of the very interesting aspects of this – the potential overturning of the belief that conservatism increases with age. Be really good to see an expanded and deeper stufy on these questions.
Then again it could also reflect the fact that the Howard government was in certain respects one of the least conservative governments in Australia’s history: ripping up an IR system which had worked fairly well for most people for decades; privatising and deregulating in areas which had functioned tolerably well under public ownership and/or regulation; destabilising the world’s climate and denying that this was happening; undermining principles of accountable government, the rule of law and citizens’ rights which have developed over several centuries in the Anglosphere; disrespecting multi-millennia-old indigenous cultures, etc.
To the extent that it’s about combating the idea that the over 50s vote for the coalition, then I can see the value in making it clear that that is not the case. As far as ‘removing advantage’ goes, I’m not so sure that the aging of the baby boomers changes anything. It seems, from what you’re saying, that it’s about removing the perception of advantage and changing how we think about the relationship between conservatism and age rather than about any real changes in who votes for who.
No, there is a real change in who votes for who. You have to look at two things:
(a) The size of the various cohorts relative to the overall voting population and who has the advantage in each;
(b) The overall change as a generation which did favour the Coalition consistently begins to shuffle off this mortal coil.
Paul, a lot of those things really only became evident to the general population in Howard’s last term. That’s relevant because the vote in question appears to have started to decline much earlier.
But the people who were over 50 in ‘96 are over 60 now: they’re not the same people. From what I can see, the baby boomers – ie a single cohort – have consistently held to 40% intention to vote Coalition between ‘96 (when in their 40s) and ‘07 (when in their ’50s). I’m going to have to assume I’ve misread the figures, because it just doesn’t make sense to me that the default position should be that particular age brackets will stay consistent, even if that is the dominant perception.
It’s a bit difficult to follow his graphs – not the best graphic presentation to support his argument, I’ll grant you.
However, you have to remember two things about partisan choice:
(1) Most people don’t change their vote from election to election, and the contest is over those that do (a minority);
(2) As I said, the corollary of this is that partisan identification for most people tends to persist – and be formed relatively early in life. Thus you do get distinct generational tendencies.
It’s very old now, but Aitkin’s Stability and Change in Australian Politics demonstrated this very comprehensively wrt Oz, though much the same phenomenon has been documented in the literature for comparable countries. Paul might know a more recent reference.
I wish I could remember where I saw but read a discussion of this stuff in the American context a while back. Basically the idea that people tend vote more conservatives more as they get older is a bit of a myth. I think there was a study (I’m sorry I’ll try and find the link) that found that they key indicator of who someone will vote for as they get older is their voting patterns during their twenties. Vote for the same party three times in a row when you’re young and you’ll likely vote for them for the rest of your life. The interesting thing about this is that it results in a very long lasting effect for leaders who disproportionately win or lose the youth vote. For instance I think Reagan was pretty successful with young voters and this helped Republicans all through the 90’s and 00’s. Alot of people believe Bush will have the opposite effect because so many young people are voting against him.
In the Australian context this is really interesting. The conservatism of older voters can be explained as people becoming rusted onto the Liberal party when they were young by repeatedly voting for them during Ming’s long era. Throughout the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s Labor had Gough, Hawke and Keating who won elections and (I believe) also won the youth vote. So we can expect Labor to get a pool of natural voters out of that. Howard’s success also starts to look like it has a sting in the tail for the conservatives. He performed so poorly with the youth vote for so long that the he may have gifted alot of the 96 to 07 generation of first time voters to Labor for life.
Another demographic that might be making a difference is immigrants. Whitlam’s end to the White Australia Policy is starting to bear an awful lot of voters whose parents are the very people who Howard attacked for so long. Not to mention the number of genuine skips who have now grown up with migrants and found Howard’s anti-immigrant attitude repulsive.
Yep, swio, that’s right – and like I’ve been saying that’s the conclusion of all the political sociology literature on this question.
Paul – Your list of Howard’s radical conservatism is apt except:
“(2) As I said, the corollary of this is that partisan identification for most people tends to persist – and be formed relatively early in life. Thus you do get distinct generational tendencies.”
I agree, and I think that this makes sense. My problem was with the way that it seemed to be implied that holding ‘key’ age brackets – in this case the over 50s – is somehow electorally important, when the continuity of people’s voting habits as they age says the opposite.
Feral, I’ll take your point for what it’s worth, but this time the U.S. is in a war started by Republicans, with Democrats openly advocating its cessation. I might further point out that the anti-Vietnam protesters weren’t, by and large, Republican in their political leanings, one of the reasons Johnson decided he couldn’t win and didn’t run. Those protesters were, however, Boomer kids/young adults, now grown and forming a substantial part of the voting population.
As a member of exactly the demographic under discussion, I’m not surprised. I (and I’m sure I’m not alone) decided in general terms who I’d vote for in 1968 – there’s nothing that concentrates the mind like waiting for your birthday marble to be drawn out of the Barrel o’ Death.
Since then, the Libs and Nats have consistently lived down to my expectations (Iraq being merely a recent example). I must admit I haven’t voted Labor since Hawke’s first term, though – they’ve moved too far to the right for my taste, so I vote Green now.
That’s all very well, but what about the new generation of young Tory fogies who will undo the long standing tradition of the yoof voting Left?
Here’s a theory: as a greater percentage of kids get educated at private schools, then a greater percentage of 18-25 year olds will vote conservative.
Whaddya yez reckon?
No? You probably get a similar spectrum of political orientation reoccuring in each generation but generation have different experiences and therefore different expectations and priorities.
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The generation born in the 20s experienced depression and war. Many of them were well into their 30s before enjoying what we would regard as an acceptable standard of life. The baby boomers took this for granted and they had priorities that differed accordingly. The Gen X/Y divide would have something to with the former being raised in tough economic times and the latter not even knowing that there is such a thing as a recession. This must affect political opinion somewhat surely.
I will wait until I’ve seen the demographic breakdown from November before I put much stock in the “young fogies”, Spiros.
If you remember back to the polls before the election, Spiros, Rudd and Labor had astonishingly high levels of support (as did the Greens) among young voters.
I’m not sure there’s any association between attending a low fee private school or a Catholic school and conservative voting.
Adrien at 26, I think you’re just expanding on what I meant rather than contradicting me coz I agree with you!
Klaus, point taken, but I imagine that’s because what he’s trying to do is dismiss the assumption that this age cohort was “key” because the Coalition could rely on a large margin among them.
Kim – Yeah pretty much. I hadn’t read your original comment ’til now as I was busy reading 5 things at once.
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Some people call it attention deficiency disorder. I call it multitasking.
Kim Says:
There is definitely something to the Baby Boomer Cohort theory of (ALP) partisan re-alignment. The replacement of the “Doomers” (the Depression & WWII cohort) by the “Boomers” (Boom & VN War cohort) is obviously a great turn around for the party of the young at heart.
The LN/P lose, through death, a voting bloc that tended to be rusted on supporters. And the ALP maintain a goodly portion of reliable voting bloc into old age, as Boomers seem most reluctant to age gracefully or even die.
The most obvious electoral fact supporting this hypothesis is that when the “Bopmers” voted en masse for the first time they voted for the ALP. The coming of age of the last baby boomer (born c 1965) coincided with the election (in 1983) and then re-election of the most successful ALP govt in AUS political history.
Also, all state govts have fallen into the ALP’s control since 2002. Which is roughly the year that “Boomers” started to squeeze out “Doomers” in the ranks of the 55+ yrs of age.
THe only problem with the cohort theory of ALP partisan dominance is the inconvenient fact that the LN/P did win the 2004 election. And did not do all that badly in the 2007 election, considering a fourth term govt running on a self-inflicted wound of industrial relations policy.
All sorts of excuses can be advanced to explain away this empirical inconsistency. But the simplest explanation is that the LN/P still has legs. ANd every four=legged dog as its day.
Kim quotes:
I laughed heartily when I read the first word of this par. “If” is such a tiny word, but it manages to convey such vast hopes, mostly vain. Its hard to see how “the data in these graphs” can be made to fit such a tendentious “interpretation”.
The most ironic thing about the ALP’s psephological dominance in the post-modern era is the swamping of the ideological by the anthropological. Or, to put it less pithily, the ALP has gotten a lock on govt to the extent that it has turned away from much of the Whitlamesque fantasies. And turned towards satisfying the Boomers more basic desires, such as filling their bulging coffers, in superannuation and accommodation.
Whilst at the same time pandering Boomer moral vanity by ostentatiously polishing their treasured ideological hood ornaments (Sorry Day, Earth Hour and so on).
Boomers nominal political allegiance appear to be a kind of status-symbol, the most important function of which is to distinguish themselves from the archaic views of their parents (”Sorry” about them!). But Boomers actual policy preferences are pretty uncompromisingly bottom-line: a boom in white-picket fenced properties and beware of any “there goes the neighborhood” tendencies.
Recall that the Hawke govt moved away from the Old Left and towards the New Right in economic policy: cutting back on Big Government and deregulating like crazy. This stimulated the first real property boom as well as establishing a treasure trove of super for those first in and best dressed.
But well-located property and prestigious private schools only hold their value so long as civil order is conserved. That means successful political parties have to enforce traditional “corporalism”, not fashionable liberalism in order to win over the newly well-heeled.
And now the popular Rudd govt, having learned from the New Left cultural disasters of the Keating govt,is me-tooing Howard’s Old Right-ish cultural policy: re-affirming the Aboriginal intervention, strengthening border control, clamping down on youth drug abuse, downplaying multiculturalism. The ALP govt is now even considering banishing African refugees to the countryside! Howard must be green with envy at the thought of getting away with such black-hearted reactionary stuff.
So Boomers flatter themselves if they think that their ALP political allegiance implies a genuine Left wing policy preference. In almost every respect the LN/P voting Dooomers were well to the Left of their fortunate sons and daughters.
Klaus K,
I agree with your stance of scepticism. People move steadily throgh “age brackets” as time goes by. You must remember this, a kiss is still a kiss, and Gough was just sheer bliss! The world will always….”
nuh
“Klaus, point taken, but I imagine that’s because what he’s trying to do is dismiss the assumption that this age cohort was “key” because the Coalition could rely on a large margin among them.”
As I’ve said, I agree with the need to dispel these kinds of lazy assumptions.
Reviewing the thread, my first comment was misleading and misinformed. I hadn’t at that point read the actual piece referred to, only the excerpts.
Jeez Jack, just when you showed you’re capable of writing perspicuous and to the point comments, you go and spoil it all by saying something stupid – because you can’t resist putting the spurs to your personal clapped out old bete noire.
Did you even bother to read properly the newspaper article you linked to @33?. There was only one provable fact in it. That some Sudanese blokes killed some poor bastard. The rest was your standard MSM mix of conjecture, attention grabbing phrases followed by weasel words and vested interests hauled in for a quick phone quote.
And despite your saying:
“The ALP govt is now even considering banishing African refugees to the countryside!”
not one person from any current level of government anywhere at all in Australia is quoted at all in that article. Or even referenced as possibly expressing those opinions.
Even News subbies wouldn’t so egregious misframe such a headline.Or at least show some wit if they did so.
Incidentally was just up Mildura recently. Where a Sudanese-based pick up band proved very popular with the locals at the Grand Hotel. Also the Mildura Lawn Tennis Club still maintains some of the finest grass courts in the world. The three biggest problems the place seemed to be facing now were water, water, water and water, crappy broadband access and home-grown Anglo-Saxon hoons binge drinking.
Oh dear again, Strocchers.
“Genuine left wing”? The boomers were never overwhelmingly “genuine left wing” according to your procrustean categorisation even before they got rich on property deals.
The coming of age of the BBs coincided with the final collapse of Old Left political parties.
In their place arose issue-based, shifting alliances and a redefinition of politics and political action.
Left libertarianism became for the first time in Australia a discernible political ideology. And it has remained a powerful impulse ever since.
Who is to say the left libertarianism isn’t “genuine”?
The problem is not with the BBs, but with your narrow, dwarfish procrustean definitional bed.
And these baby boomers went on to jobs teaching the next generation in schools and universities, indoctrinating them into believing the US is a force for evil in the world, capitalism is at best a cloud with some silver lining, and all that other 60s hippie garbage.
Thank God I was able to form opinions independently of my teachers, mostly all born between 1945 and 1963.
Ah, the Grand Hotel in Mildura, Nabakov [27]. Thank heavens that old-era place is still going. New parts to keep the customers interested, old parts for nostalgia; and Sergio in the basement for the folk who can afford a posh meal.
If you’re implying that city folk often have a distorted view of rural life and agriculture (and drought and bushfire …) I agree wholeheartedly.
Obviously this sort of theory can only really be tested by in-depth quantitative research and time-series studies tracking voting behaviour and relating it to childhood and adolescent educational experiences. Then there is the need to consider the effect of confounding variables, principally those related to the class position of students and their parents – material privilege being a factor tending towards conservatism, information privilege being a factor tending towards progressivism.
owever, if I can be forgiven an excursion into the impressionistic and the anecdotal rather than the social-scientific, I have a non-trivial number of friends whose experience of private schooling radicalised them by producing a deep-seated resentment of traditional authority and hierarchy.
Anyone know where’s good for a proper fine meal in Bendigo?
Sorry, that’s a bit off topic…
Any ageing pinko baby boomers know where’s good for a proper fine meal in Bendigo?
This rural/regional Vic dustbowl my lady just moved to for 3 months is proving less fun to visit on weekends than I hoped.
“Anyone know where’s good for a proper fine meal in Bendigo?”
Whirrakee’s is pretty damn good. Nice old building, fine food, excellent wine list and right in the middle of town, next to the big fountain.
Bendigo Art Gallery is definitely worth a look and there’s some good second hand bookshops on the road into the city centre from Melbourne.
And yes Ambiglous, the ole Grand in Mildura still retains her charms. The only place where I ever woke up to find I’d set the bed on fire. (Cigar, drunk, wedding.)
Yeah, I’ve had a good look at the art gallery. Probably the best rural/regional one I’ve seen. History and nature (crunchy nature at least) is taken care of. It’s really just the decadence and debauchery we’re after now.
Is it possible to get a good pizza in Orbost and Goulburn these days? A cafe in the former, in 1986, served me something which consisted of lard and cheese on a thick crust; a cafe in the latter, in 1981, served me an Aussie Pizza with a raw egg in the middle.
Update: More commentary from Tim Dunlop and Andrew Norton.
Paul, in Goulburn there’s a brilliant bikeshop-cafe-delicatessen-greengrocer that turns into a woodfired pizzeria at night. Don’t belive me?
http://www.greengrocercycling.com.au/cafe.html
Courtesy of the Aust. Politics Forum are these sets of voter/party profiles related to various criteria including age.
http://aussiepolitics.proboards51.com/index.cgi?board=polls&action=display&thread=1179641606
Interesting, check it out.
Me, I was born in ‘46 [which makes me much younger than Paul Burns] and I gave up voting for the right wing ALP a decade or two ago and never never considered voting ultra right wing Coalition.
Class? Experience? Socialisation?
Whatever.
Greg,
Yes I suspect that the US Democrats will, in the long run, benefit from a generation put off by Iraq. I doubt it will have as strong an impact as Vietnam did here for two reasons: No draft and an American death toll (so far) less than a tenth that in Vietnam.
On the other hand, Bush has certainly done plenty of other things to put young people off his party. I saw a graph a few years ago showing the proportion of newly enrolled voters registering as Democrats over the last 70 odd years. The Democrats had hit the highest level on record – beating the New Deal era. Would love to see a current update, but Obama has probably continued the trend.
On the point about those put off by Vietnam not being Republicans, that’s certainly true. However, I supsect part of the fall in voting in US elections over the last 40 years can be attributed to people who were otherwise natural Democrats losing their faith in the party and consequently staying home. It wouldn’t surprise me if this has cost the Democrats a percent or two at each election over this time – certainly enough to matter in 2000.
A bit off-topic, I know, but when I lived in Bendigo (around 1980), the Copper Kettle was considered to be _the_ place for elegant dining. Does anyone know if it’s still there?
Howard C @38 you must have had far different teachers from any I’ve known or who taught me. They were all Liberal voters to a man/woman with a very few exceptions, and interestingly enough, the same went for nurses. You must have run into the entire population of Labour voting teachers in the country!
But, you know, I never came across a teacher of any political stripe who attempted to brainwash me or my fellow classmates with Labour or Liberal propaganda, they were all too professional.
37 Katz Mar 28th, 2008 at 5:45 am
[Strocchi Grand Theory alert]
The Boomer demographic shift triggered a sea change in ideological function which brought forth a change in political form. What you term, “issue-based, shifting alliances and a redefinition of politics” is a functional definition of the post-modern political modus ie end of Grand Narratives.
The rise of the New Right not coincidentally corresponded the rise of the New Left. Same uni demographic, similar urge to “do your own thing” and “I want it now”: fast bucks, cheap thrills and wrapped up in a self-righteous halo.
Towards the end of the sixties New Left Boomers had taken the initiative in the cultural political agenda. Whitlam buried most of the Old Right’s sacred cows esp White Australia. Holt-Gordon-Fraser assiduously courted the Boomer demographic, which goes some way to explaining the savage reaction under Howard.
Towards the end of the seventies New Right Boomers turned on the Old Left economic agenda (and the union class warriors who drew it up). The amazing thing about that process in AUS was that it emerged from the ALP, the party of the nominal Left, rather than the L/NP, the party of the nominal Right.
But the new-style ALP, we can all agree, was the party which tended to court the Boomers. Mostly catering to a certain parricidal urge present in this demographic Push always had “problems with Authority”. Something they seem to now regret going by the “Greatest Generation” nostalgia trip.
Whereas the old-style LN/P, without doubt, tended to appeal to Doomers of all ideological persuasions. That demographic liked Authority, no doubt because it delivered the goods, recovering from Depression and winning the War.
This proves that partisan political alignments have very weak conditional relation to ideological policy preferences. A fact that will not be news to Machiavellian political analysts.
But the wheel has turned. The New Left has hit the skids, given the manifest failure of the rainbow coalition to do anything better than muddy the waters with political correctness.
And the New Right is surely heading for a day of reckoning. The rolling financial crisis that its “innovations” set in train means it is reduced to providing cover for a white-collar crime wave in money markets.
Both parties now agree that the state should act to promote cultural integration to dampen New Left cultural differentiation. And its way past time for statist fiscal progression to compensate for New Right financial regression.
Welcome to the Era of Partisan Great Convergence, a moveable feast always focusing on Boomer cultural and financial interests. .
37 Katz Mar 28th, 2008 at 5:45 am
Left-libertarianism is the most superficially attractive form of post-modern liberalism. It is also the silliest since it fails the reality test to anyone who believes their own ‘lyin eyes on the street.
Liberal politicians in the US unleashed cultural liberalism in the mid-sixties in the wake of JFK’s assassination. Undoubtedly with much social justice. It took less than five years for the right-wing backlash against cultural anarchy to bring Nixon to power. And 300,000 homicides later Clinton finally neutralised the issue for the Democrats.
Libertarianism has two ideological inflections seeking more freedom for both tails of the SES distribution.
The New Left sought to empower the cultural under-dogs (non-males, non-Caucasians, non-Christians, non-straight, non-human biota). The New Right sought to empower the financial top-dogs (WASPs, Jews and Asian nerds).
In the heady days of the cultural and financial revolution the tails (unter- and uber-class) of the distribution were given free reign and escaped accountability. This happened notoriously with remote indigenous communities and is happening now with the Masters of the Universe.
The Boomers are largely an educated middle-class demographic. So their late political dominance is largely a good thing since a capable educated middle class is foundational for liberal democracy.
Katz at [37]
““Genuine left wing”? The boomers were never overwhelmingly “genuine left wing” according to your procrustean categorisation even before they got rich on property deals.
The coming of age of the BBs coincided with the final collapse of Old Left political parties.”
Do you equate “genuine left wing” with the Communist Party then? I was under the impression that (even in Australia) there were other strong left-wing traditions such as Trotskyite, IWW, radical social democrat, anarchist, etc. My recent reading suggests that to say otherwise is to accept merely the CPA view of Australian political history [or more widely the CP or Comintern/Cominform view of history].
That seems not only exceedingly limited but wilfuly ignorant, and astonishing.
I await the next instalment. But Katz, please don’t adopt the role of “The Second Lenin” if you don’t feel comfortable in it. Don’t do it just to entertain GregM.
Well since you profess yourself to be a left libertarian and yet say, at the same time, that no-one can criticise Castro (a notorious dictator) unless they have overthrown him, who is to say , on the evidence you afford us, other than that left libertarianism is a pursuit of the trivially minded and unworthy of being considered as genuine by serious minded people?
However, left libertarianism may be a serious intellectual position, in which you have no part, in which case we may afford it respect.
But you are in no place to tell us that.
Tsk, tsk.
A regrettable recrudescence of the dreaded ideational inflexibility, I trow.
While, naturally, I’m enormously gratified that GregM has obsessively repeated something that he thinks I wrote, still I’d be still more gratified had I actually written the sentiment that has evidently caused him to lose his equanimity.
Unfortunately, I can’t claim that credit.
For the record, I believe my statement about Castro ran along the following lines:
“It’s idle (as opposed to illegitimate) to criticise a person like Castro if you have the means to overthrow him but merely choose to point out his moral dereliction.”
The question may well be asked: “What sort of ideational inflexibility causes an inability to recognise the difference between futility and illegitimacy?”
The answer, of course, is the kind of ideational inflexibility exhibited by GregM.
I can’t say that I look forward to further evidence of GregM’s ideational inflexibility.
“Lies” is such a nasty word.
But thanks for going to the trouble of digging out those quotes GregM.
(Did I ever doubt that you would? You are nothing if not predictable. But I supppose that predictability is the less retarded first cousin of indeational inflexibility.)
Now to cases.
Where in this is there the slightest hint that I believe that folks who want to give vent to their squeamishness about Castro are doing something “illegitimate”? My only objection is that these folks are doing something boring.
Boring ≠ illegitimate.
Ideational inflexibility should not hamper an any material way that perception.
Again GregM, thank you for your abiding interest in this fascinating issue. I wish you all the best in your future endeavours. Truly.
I’ve read enough of your screeds to know how you go about defeding this thesis.
But let me simply observe that just because something is “silly” doesn’t mean it isn’t genuine.
Incorrect. 1960s cultural liberalism arose from the streets, college campuses, US Army draft camps, and the ghettoes. Cultural liberalism was a multi-headed force long before any mainstream US politician took any serious notice of it. A few of these mainstream liberal politicians ran to the front of the parade after the parade had already started.
Mainstream politicians took very little interest in Blacks and Youth at that time because they were disenfranchised, and they took very little notice of women at that time because theiy believed, probably correctly, that women voted the way their menfolk told them to vote.
Left libertarians helped to change all that in the US. And the echoes of that struggle were heard all the way to Australia.
Telling lies is such a nasty thing.
Lying to cover up your lies is, well in your case, what we have come to expect of you.
But GregM, as you can see from my post #58, my argument and my reasoning behind it are an open book.
I therefore ask with unfeigned surprise where my forensic or even moral flaw may be in the presentation of my case.
So unless you have some other means besides that you have already adopted to prove your charge that I deliberately committed an untruth, then I respectfully suggest that you desist from making inflammatory statements.
On the other hand, I’ll always endeavour to answer any substantive accusation you may make, defending my position to the best of my modest ability.
Your first trawling for evidence appears to have come up empty. Can you find any actual quotes from my comments to support your contention that I have lied about what I said in relation to Castro all those many weeks ago?
Any chance of a negotiated peace in the GregM/Katz war? Or at least trying to keep it within bounds?
59 Katz Mar 29th, 2008 at 7:14 am
No doubt cultural liberal ideology emerged from the grass-roots of American politics. It was sold as an extension civil rights to socially disenfranchised minorities. Boomers were receptive to this message, given the prominence of Boomers amongst the minorities, and a certain sense of fair play in the more educated majority.
But the demographic momentum of liberalism was carried forward by the great wave of urban immigrants from the southern parts of the Western hemisphere: desegregated African-Americans moving into the cities and immigrating Hispanic=Americans crossing the Rio Grande. This followed LBJ’s civil rights act in 1965 and EMK’s Immigration Act of 1965.
But the new freedom came at immense cost. Gene Expression calculated almost 300,000 excess homicides mostly committed during the liberal fall-out period (mid-sixties to mid-nineties). Largely inflicted by, or on, minority groups. The social problems associated with settling these people under relaxed cultural conditions inflicted a great wound on US liberalism, from which it has barely recovered.
If you want an explanation of the Culture War, and the resurgence of conservative Republicans, you dont have to go far past that civil Holocaust – three times as long as the VN war and twice as bloody per time period. It is why the US white majority voters, with a large Boomer segment from the seventies onwards, started to lean towards the Republicans or conservative Democrats.
Katz says:
Left-liberalism is the gift that keeps on giving to advocates of Right-”corporalism” (such as myself). We would be, politically speaking, desperate and dateless were it not for the constant stream of falsity, fallacy and folly that comes “straight outa” the pinko-liberal corner.
This usually follows the cultural cringe format. In the USA during the sixties LBJ/EMK’s Left-liberalism brought forth Reagan in the eighties. This was “echoed” in AUS during the seventies when EGW’s Left-liberalism forth Howard in the nineties. Cultural revolution spawned cultural reaction in both cases.
THe major difference b/w the USA and AUS is that the USA cannot really avoid dealing with the political fall-out from socio-biological diversity. Whereas AUS has a choice. And the Boomer-led electorate has chosen to follow a more conservative Right-corporalist cultural policy, either industrial strength under Howard or lite under Rudd.
37 Katz Mar 28th, 2008 at 5:45 am
No. I am not saying that the Boomers are “genuine Left-wing” or Right-wing. They are disingenuously both.
A demographic groups such as the Boomers have no permanent ideological preference. But they do have permanent interests, largely governed by their demographic life cycle.
In the AUS case, the Boomers also have a permanent partisan inclination, towards the post-Whitlam ALP. I take this to be partially to the credit of Whitlam’s enormous personal charisma. And partly to the credit of his far-sighted socio-political agenda, esp in health and education.
But mostly the Boomer’s ALP bias represents a certain chronic political immaturity. They are unwilling to forgive their parents their sins or let them fall on their own shoulders. Also they have issues with traditional authority, which require at least a token protest. Someone has to take the blame history’s bad calls. Who better than the party of their parents, the LN/P?
Timing is everything. In politics, as in every other sphere of life, the Boomers normally get what they want. Since Whitlam first entranced them in the seventies the Boomers have made every political post a winner.
Personally, they got their jollies off during the New Left seventies. Professionally, they made it during the New Right eighties. Howard and Rudd have both been busy incubating golden nest eggs for them, in the form of massive tax breaks on their portfolios of residential investment property and superannuation contributions.
Politically, the Boomers are now indicating that the LN/P should be wound up. Too many “”bad vibes from the past, man”. This is one form of cultural genocide (memocide?) for which they will not be seeking an apology.
But for all the huffing and puffing of the Right that they’d take their countries back to a “mainstream” (or whatever) Golden Age, it never happened. The most the Right did was nibble round the edges of the huge reforms and revolutions in lifestyles and ethos driven by the New Left moment of the late 1960s and 1970s.
At worst (for the Left) the Right from the 1980s onwards used this rhetoric as part of wedge politics to keep themselves in power.
At best (for the Left) the Right plumped up the national cushions so that the Left’s cultural party could continue.
Meantime, markets were opened up and the citadels of capitalism’s self-perpetuating plutocracies came tumbling down. And they are still tumbling to this day. In Marx’s evocative phrase “all that is solid melts into air”. Now surely, Jack, you have no time for lazy, stupid, self-perpetuating plutocracies.
Amd, right on cue, who better than Ms Tracee Hutchison to provide the authentic voice of the Boomer zeitgeist on the issue of Boomer generational hang-ups and political preferences.
This weeks contribution is a treat for connoisseurs of white liberal generational status-climbing.
Tracee chides Kevin Rudd for the unpardonable sin of…sounding like her father. Get a load of the way she snubs her parents generation for being so outdated and criminally unfashionable.
I take Ms Hutchison’s admonitions to be greatly to the credit of Mr Rudd. And yet another point in favour of my theory of major party “Great Convergence” in the age of Boomer indulgence.
In other words you like a PM that acts like Dad Jack? Personally I’d like a PM that acts like what s/he is: my employee. And yours too of course.
Most of the Saturday columnists in The Age are designed to go with all day breakfast and a latte at an inner city cafe. No more, no less. Purely commercial proposition. Not sure why anyone expects any particular political or social comment in them above and beyond the trivial and easily digestible.
66 Adrien Mar 29th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
Your Dad, under a version of principal-agent theory accepted by the courts, is your employee or service provider. You can sue him if he fails in his duty of care, or he can be relieved of his duties by court order.
But in answer to your question – yes. I want the state act like a force to be reckoned with, exercising traditional paternal authority towards some of its more wayward charges. THese include both under-dogs (remote indigenes) and top-dogs (information high-way robbing financial marketeers etc).
We all end up paying for the mess that unruly citizens create. So it would be better if these wayward folk felt “the firm smack of government” before they got up to too much mischief.
The metaphor of the Mummy Party on the Left v Daddy Party on the Right is broadly applicable to AUS. (This is similar but not quite identical to the Santa Claus progressive v Scroge regressive metaphor that I occasionally try to shove down peoples throats.)
The maternal ALP has the electoral advantage on soft distributive/nurturtive issues relating to welfare and workfare. The paternal LN/P party has the advantage on hard productive/protective issues relating to wealthfare and warfare.
That goes some part of the way to explaining the tendency towards the ALP dominance at the state level. Community services are superior goods, taking up a larger share of income with the growth of prosperity. The states do much of the community service provision.
Community service provision is a natural ALP issue. So the ALP will tend to be the natural party of government at the state level as prosperity-driven handouts grow.
Conversely, there has been a tendency for the LN/P party to dominate at the federal level where Big “Daddy” issues of protection and provision are decided.
National security protection and financial prosperity provision are natural LN/P issues. The LN/P does well using scare campaigns to exploit martial, material and moral panic.
But its likely that the Feds will take over more and more responsibilities from the states, particularly health and environment. This is probably going to improve the ALP’s federal electoral chances over the longer run.
The last best hope for the LN/P is the capture of the ALP by minority groups trying to re-fight the Culture War. This is bound to annoy the majority. And, under populist democracy, the majority have the numbers.
I don’t want a PM to be my Mum or my Dad. And to suggest that’s they’re role is bizaare.
But then so is suggesting that my father is my employee. That kind of seems ruder to me than anything Hutchison’s written. But as Mark says, it’s just light entertainment and nothing to be worried about. A bit like you Jack Strocchi.
Well, grand theorising keeps Jack off the streets, I spose.
Tracee Hutchinson’s from Melbourne and she doesn’t remember Kevin Sheedy? Pull the other one. Nor can she have hung out with the boys from St Kevin’s. I know you’re supposed to have a “hook” for your articles, but furrfu.
65 Katz Mar 29th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
But for all the huffing and puffing of the Right that they’d take their countries back to a “mainstream” (or whatever) Golden Age, it never happened. The most the Right did was nibble round the edges of the huge reforms and revolutions in lifestyles and ethos driven by the New Left moment of the late 1960s and 1970s.
Which “lifestyles and ethos” have more or less gone up in smoke by the time the 24/7 nineties rolled around. There is no time or money for indulging in eztended bouts of hanky panky for those intent on clambering up the greasy pole of status succes. Which class covers most educated Boomers.
There was something of a Golden Age of cultural policy in AUS when the Doomers were still in the saddle – it lasted about ten years from the early-sixties through to the late sixties. The more with-it faction of the LN/P (Wets) responded to legitimate demands of the minorities and perhaps could not be blamed for the enthusiasms of their erstwhile clients.
But then the Boomers started to get into the saddle from the mid-seventies onwards. They became political tools of the minorities, as per “Mau Mauing the Flak Catchers”.
The ALP is their natural party, since it is the party of the educated bourgeois. The LN/P tends to attract non-educated bourgeois – self-made men who make it, small-time or big-time.
Katz says:
At worst (for the Left) the Right from the 1980s onwards used this rhetoric as part of wedge politics to keep themselves in power.
At best (for the Left) the Right plumped up the national cushions so that the Left’s cultural party could continue.
You could neatly divide the US culture war into two halves over the 1965 to 1995. The high tide of cultural liberalism lasted from about 1965 through to 1980.
Then we got the counter-tide of cultural “corporalism” from about 1980 through to 1995. Interestingly it was Clinton who introduced the key social policy measures, “ending welfare as we know it” and “three strikes and you are out”.
THe US put about two million minority group members, mostly young males, in jail. That, above all else, ended one key battle in the Culture War with a temporary victory for the cultural Right (Dries).
You’re conflating very different tendencies within the Left. Left libertarians are no more interested in funding a vast nanny state than the libertarian right.
Whereas the libertarian right can swallow its core principles when it comes to issues of punishment, the libertarian left reject repressive penal systems because they recognise correctly that they don’t work. Jails become colleges for crime, and the collateral damage done to society by locking up millions of angry young minority men vastly outweighs the benefits to be derived from the policy (except, of course the immediate electoral boost that law’n'order attracts from pavlovian voters).
The long term consequences of the penal/industrial state are soon to be visited upon the US because many prisoners jailed during the 1990s are beginning to be released.
In an era of economic failure it won’t be pretty.
Sadly, age and infirmity have precluded the boomers from enjoying much of their youthful syllabus of pleasures. However, new opportunities constantly arise. Large numbers of boomers have more or less got to where they want to be — cashed up, asset rich. Now the task is to lever the kids out of their rent-free rooms and to accept the challenge of the SKI holiday (Spending Kids’ Inheritance).
So as far as boomers are concerned, new stages of life simply present new challenges to be met.
Mark @ [62] I appreciate your desire Mr Umpire. But at risk of creating another skirmish, would you mind asking Katz if he/she would care to respond to my questions posted @ [54]? They’ve been there for about a day now, or 23 hours if we subtract Earth Hour.
“tsk, tsk” indeed Katz.
And may I remind you that at [54] I specifically asked you NOT to play Lenin, just to entertain GregM? And what did you do???! You entertained GregM. You have been VERY naughty. But I doubt that you’re in danger of feeling anyone’s firm smack.
BTW, if some can be interested in citizen journalism, or Boomer-blah, why should GregM not be interested in the misrule of the Castro Bros? It seems to be quite a rich source of ideational protein.
Dictatorships are not in themselves boring, IMHO. They are most of all very boring to those subjects who finish up staring at a prison cell wall for decades, provided by the dictator of excellent munificence, with nothing to read….. then again, the unjailed may have only government-approved reading material, in which case the cell wall may be preferable.
Ever lived under a dictator Katz?
cheerio
71 Fine Mar 29th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
Its not all about you. Read what I wrote not what you felt.
In an earlier comment I said state paternalism was justified to control the unruly members of the population yanking the tails of the SES distribution. QUoted below to enforce some intellectual honesty, with relevant qualifier bolded just to ram home the truth:
Earlier still I contrasted the social pathologies of the unter- and uber-classes with the general social benevolence of the inter-class – made up mostly of “educated middle-class demographic…foundational for liberal democracy”.
Obviously the “foundations” are not in need of external support or control by paternal authority. They are the source of authority, under democratic rules.
I could be miles off but I am guessing that Fine is neither an unruly remote indigene nor an information high-way robbing financier. In which case he is probably a middle-aged member of the educated middle class, not in need of paternal intrusion.
Although he does seem to be in need of remedial education to improve his comprehension.
Fine says:
Your understanding of modernist principles of institutional accountability is shallow and obsolete. Children are principals in the familial institution, in which the parents act as agents. THere is a rough analogy b.w this form of accountability and that which exists b/w a professional (eg doctor) and and his client (patient), shareholders and the board, or voters and the parliament.
Parents are charged by the state to produce children in the proper way, following duty of care. Courts now insist that familial decisions should be made “in the best interests of children”.
Failing that responsibility the state steps in, acting as alternative agents for the children. If you think that is far-fetched then I suggest you take a look at some of the DOCS, whose officials can literally sack parents who fail to lawfully discharge that responsibility.
Of course post-modern liberals went overboard in this cultural revolution, in way they always do. Which is why many parents complain about “kids ruling the roost”.
72 Mark Mar 29th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
And keeps you on your toes, when you are not on the ropes.
I have concentrated on two areas of “grand theorising”, or explaining and predicting as scientists sometimes call such things. In both areas my models show the antiquated Bahnisch jalopies a clean pair of heels.
The first was macro-economic psephology, where I resorted to the despicable strategy of employing standard econometric modelling to predict the re-alignment of marginal voters. This was a key blogosphere debate as it is the one where we have a comparative advantage over the MSM.
I correctly predicted the results of the last federal election, reckoning that Howard would lose, but not by as much as the polls showed, due to his economic record. The biggest factor in his defeat was the one substantial area of policy difference he had with Rudd, in IR, where Howard ditched his successful, largely conservative, governing MO.
Mark gave up the race at the starting line. No prizes for the early scratchings or those who call the race just before the finish line.
The second is political socio-biology, where again I applied standard ethnological theory of culture to model the AUS version of the Culture Wars. This because the Culture War is driven by fundamental ethnological factors, not superficial governmental ones.
I predicted that Rudd was going to stick to Howards cultural “corporalist” policy settings. (Token symbolism to appease Wet moral vanity aside).
Rudd has more or less conformed to my prediction, styling himself as a Christian and a conservative. And he has me-tooed Howard in the indigenous intervention, African refugee settlement, youth binge drinking, border protection, downplaying multiculturalism, the list goes on.
Mark still forlornly hopes that Rudd will usher in a new dawn of cultural liberalism. Dream on.
Mark, a word of advice. If you want to go beyond being a third tier academic you need to stop indulging your weakness for so-called “qualitative research” (ie tendentious opinionating). You need to move into the second tier of social science: quantitative testing of standard theories using empirical controls.
I think we can leave the first tier of academia, creative grand theorising, to intellectual demi-gods such as Pr Q et al.
75 Katz Mar 29th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
I think you mean “conflating very different tendencies” amongst “libertarians”. The New Right are libertarians in cultural and financial matters, generally opposed to welfare and lawfare statism. The New Left are libertarians in cultural matters, but opposed to lawfare statism but generally support massive welfare states.
Both Left wing and Right wing libertarians are equally silly about irresponsibly giving liberty to those not culturally equipped for citizenship.
Left-libertarians dream that minorities will magically behave themselves due to their intrinsic good nature, without the need for paternalism.
Right-libertarians dream that the majority will sit back and watch unruly elements in the minorities engage in self-destructive acts without paternalism.
Katz says:
Spoken like a true Left-liberal, learning nothing but apologising for everything.
Locking up hordes of angry young men (mostly minorities) cut the crime rate in half over the nineties, as urban crime hot spots also incubate crime.
The voters, far from being Pavlovian, showed amazing forbearance given the length and intensity of the crime wave, at least in the US. But patience can be tested for only so long.
The mass incarcerations has also given society breathing space until it can figure out what to do with them once they get out. Fortunately everyone is getting older and wiser so it is likely that these men wont be so angry once they get out.
You also need to know that the major victims of crime were the (vast majority) law-abiding minorities. I visited Harlem & stayed in Brooklyn at the height of the Crack Wars in 1993 and again in 2006 and I can vouch for the benevolent change.
Familial decisions by order of the state Jack?
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/nsw/consol_act/caypapa1998442/s9.html
Can you point me to the part of this Act or any other Act, prior to removal of a child into care, in any state or territory which gives power to the state through the courts to enforce “proper way” familial decisions “in the best interests of children.”???
Your understanding of law and legal accountability in this area is not merely shallow, it’s clearly wrong, Jack, (unless of course you can show me where we can find the Kids Rule the Roost (Prohibitions Against Wet Families/Stinky Nappies) Act)
If you toss 2,000,000 people into jail, of course crime rates will fall temporarily.
But the problem is that as more have been tossed into jail since about 2000 the crime rates have stopped falling and are beginning to rise.
So by Strocchers’ bizarre lights another 2,000,000 should be turfed into the hoosegow. I’d have thought that even Strocchers would perceive the lunatic impracticality of that proposal.
But apparently not.
Tossing millions into jail so that you can think about what you might do next is like continuing to hit yourself over the head with a shovel until you work out what is causing your terrible migraines.
(But then again, I guess the “Surge” in Iraq is defended on a similar Through the Looking Glass syllogism.)
“Can you point me to the part of this Act or any other Act, prior to removal of a child into care, in any state or territory which gives power to the state through the courts to enforce “proper way” familial decisions “in the best interests of children.”???”
I might be confusing the issues here but my experience in the Family Law courts has shown me that the the state can directly intervene in the way a family lives – specifically where the parents are allowed to live and retain access to their children.
The justification is that the children have access to both parents as this is in their interests.
Mass incarceration is only one of numerous reasons for lower rates of crime in the USA – and not the biggest. The temporary effect of lower crime will also be mitigated in the long-term by the tendency for harsher punishment to produce higher rates of reoffence.
It is worth noting that “three strikes and you’re out” is an unsustainable public policy disaster that is destroying state government budgets – eg. California. Far from being a temporary breather, it will create a financial black hole for decades to come as an ageing prison population causes costs to rise exponentially. You also need to consider the indirect costs of increasingly costly trials, losses in people’s lifetime taxes, and the financial and emotional harm caused to the family of the person imprisoned.
It is also worth noting that politicians on all sides – eg the Governator himself – are doing everything they can to water down the harsh law and order initiatives. Think of all that money – how many more lives could be saved, how much more trauma could be prevented, if only it was spent on the medical system. None of this takes into consideration the inherent injustice of arbitrarily sentencing someone to life in prison based on a catchy baseball metaphor rather than proportionality.
Guys! Guys! Please! While it’s certainly healthy and important for people to often think out loud, and to shoot from the hip if need be, on a wide variety of topics, nevertheless I feel duty-bound to point out that what the bunch of you (J. Strocchi, Katz, and David) are saying on the subject of crime patterns and incarceration patterns in the US is, is… –how can I put this gently?– it’s just… not… accurate.
Well, it’s kind of half-right (or half-wrong) in places, but you’re just not going about this in a manner that lines up well with reality. It would take a month to explain why. Meantime, put it this way: some problems solicit interesting analyses on the abstract surface of a chess board (and I’m rather fond of those muhself), but for other problems, you just have to look at an actual map of the actual terrain, in order to determine anything useful.
80 Peter Kemp Mar 30 at 5:18pm
The power of the state to undertake “the removal of a child into care” is more than sufficient, in most cases, for “the courts to enforce “proper” familial decisions “in the best interests of children”. Just the threat of being stigmatised as an “unfit mother” is enough for most carers to lift their game.
There are minimum community standards, drawn up by professional agencies and enforced by political authorities,. for child care in matters of sleep, supervision, physical security, nutrition, education etc. These are proscriptive to wards the unruly underclass rather than prescriptive towards the ruly middle classe.
The politics of child care is going to become more contentious as concern for “multicultural sensitivity” comes into conflict with monocultural standards. This is obvious to anyone with more than an ounce of common sense, not a commodity found in abundant quantities in the typical Wet.
Peter Kemp says:
Like most lawyers, you limit your instititutional analysis to a narrow-minded construction of the black letter of law. So your understanding of social accountability is “not even wrong”. As Marx said, in similiar context, “it is the mark of fools to analyse social and political systems on the basis of their formal constitutions”.
Awww, c’mon Japerz.
No pullin’ the “if only you knew what I know card” outta yer sleeve.
If you look closely enough at anything nothing is what it appears. We’ve known that since the invention of quantum physics, but despite that planes don’t just randomly fall out of the sky.
Most carers Jack at the bottom of the socio economic ladder are oblivious of the relevant legislation til it bites them, especially the power to remove without a warrant, before applying for a care order from a court.
“Well to do” people rarely get caught up with care applications for child abuse, they can fight back. In my experience it’s the poor and uneducated who are selectively targeted. And FYI the ‘black letter law’ in care matters is more a sea of grey.
In any event, I’m talking about legal accountability, the foundation of your “social accountability” and there’s a world of difference despite your attempts to conflate the two. I’m well qualified to analyse “social and political” systems BTW because I act for people in care matters, interpreting the law and dealing with all the institutional jigsaw puzzles which represent the state’s “social and political system.”
Until you’ve run a care matter Jack, got your mind around all the case law of children’s court including child criminal matters as against adult criminal law, I don’t think you have much status to lecture me on institutional understanding and “social responsibility.”
In the day care centres and schools Jack, NOT IN PRIVATE HOMES.
Katz: “We’ve known that since the invention of quantum physics, but despite that planes don’t just randomly fall out of the sky.”
That’s only because you haven’t grasped that in physics, when taken as a whole, there’s a… (SIGHS, GIVES UP)
You see? This is exactly what I mean!
“A law of averages?”
QED
*Strolls away whistling jauntily*
Hee hee.
Only if you’re glib enough to suggest that an airplane behaves in the same way as a subatomic particle. Non demonstrandum erat, I’m afraid. Ora et labora — and stop that whistling at the back of the classroom.
On a lighter note, your riposte was very effective indeed as a matter of comedy technique. Well done! Keep trying!
SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING: since you read above your grade level, you might enjoy trying Douglas Adams!
?porque “ora et labora”? j_p_z ?
Why you say “pray and work”? …..
was it a quote from a physics classroom?
or from some other source? just askin’
Try the rule of St Benedict, Ambigulous.
To the contrary, my nitpicking friend.
All that would be required is a small number of crucial sub-atomic particles on the plane to behave in some quantum manner prejudicial to the orderly running of the complacently newtonian plane for the whole assemblage of particles–first-class, business-class, and sub atomic–to plummet out of the sky.
While I thank you for your appreciation at my attempt at humour, its frankly acknowledged model is older and better than anything Douglas Adams had to offer:
http://www.thegoonshow.net/scripts_show.asp?title=s06e04_napoleons_piano
Pay particular attention to Bluebottle.
Read and learn.
Why thank you Father Bahnisch @ 1.40pm
My upbringing was not Roman Catholic and therefore sadly deficient. Do you recommend penance?
Katz @ 3.37pm… it’s not going to happen. Even the recalcitrant Albert Einstein would have admitted that a plane with mass (at least) several tonnes would not behave in a non-Newtonian “quantum” manner. Just doesn’t happen. Not in the physical world.
cheerio
Albert Einstein said, “God doesn’t play dice with the universe.”
Trouble is, he was wrong.
Einstein spent the majority of his professional life failing to disprove quantum physics.
Sorry Katz, I shouldn’t have mentioned Albert, he wasn’t sufficiently pertinent. Newtonian physics is perfectly adequate for planes. You don’t need Quantum Mechanics = QM (and I was trying to indicate why). Neither do you need either Special or Genneral Relativity (but j_p_z didn’t mention those). Damn that Albert and his photoelectric effect. Damn his bloody miracle year in 1905.
The mass of the plane is relevant.
The internal consituents of the plane include huge numbers of atomic and sub-atomic particles, but so do you and I and the keyboards, desks, buildings nearby. The behaviour of these massive objects is accounted for by Newtonian physics, Maxwellian electromagnetism, etc. QM is not needed. No quantum effects affect the gross motions (though quantum processes occur incessantly).
Yes indeed, God DOES play dice, over and over again; but her dice games don’t cause airplanes to plummet downwards. If this sounds pedantic, sorry ’bout that.
QM is good for a H atom (one proton, one electron); explaining the aufbauprinzip for shell structure of chemical elements etc. I’m not saying QM is useless.
Yes, you are talking about the law of averages.
And if you trace this digression beack to my original point about the “average” effect of the US penal system on US society, you’ll see that the point you have just made is structurally identical to the one I made.
Thus, to restate my point, it is possible to look through all the random, quantum effects of 2,000,000 US citizens at any one time rotting in jails to the overall, “average” effects of anger, dislocation, bitterness, blighted lives, and delayed social disruption.
You know what sort of bugs me? Everybody always remembers Einstein’s rather banal remark that “God does not play dice,” but people usually forget Heisenberg’s wittier and more interesting reply. It went like so…
EINSTEIN: God does not play dice.
HEISENBERG: Einstein, don’t tell God what to do.
So apparently now, here on LP, quantum mechanics and probability theory can be used to formulate sound policy advice on air travel and US crime and incarceration rates. Mr. Rudd, are you listening here? If not, you’re really missing out on the good stuff.
KING ARTHUR: This new learning amazes me, Sir Bedevere. Explain again how sheep’s bladders may be used to predict earthquakes.
For our next trick, Johnny Cash explains String Theory…
I keep a close watch
On this heart of mine.
I keep my eyes wide open
All the time.
I keep my pants up
With a piece of twine…
I sincerely hope somebody’s getting all this down. We could make millions! Millions, I tells ya!
Thanks JPZ
>
I never understood string theory before. But now I do. The universe is basically a bunch of vibrating strings. And the kind of stuff the string makes depends on whether the string’s into country or hip-hop or Beethoven sonatas right?
Well Japerz, if only you’d been more explicit in the first place why absolutely no thesis can possibly explain adequately the ineffably wise condition of the US penal system in that at any given time there are precisely the correct number of persons locked up for precisely the correct length of time.
But wait! I feel a lyric coming on:
A law was made a distant moon ago here:
2,000,000 cons is exactly on the spot.
And there’s no legal limit don’t you know here
In Camelot
All parole is forbidden you’ll remember
And exits by needle we like an awful lot.
We wish we could burn them to an ember
In Camelot
Camelot! Camelot!
I know it sounds a bit bizarre,
But in Camelot, Camelot
That’s how conditions are
All escapees we’ll happily gun down.
Though liberals shed a sissy tear.
In short, there’s simply not
A more penological spot
For three strikes your in, than here
In Camelot
Katz, in all seriousness, I never said that the system was wise, or just, or good, or that I agreed with its particulars. I simply said that the kinds of arguments all you guys were making, on all sides, were pretty off-base with respect to many factors and conditions here. (Reading the comments, they just sort of failed my arched-eyebrow test: my eyebrows were poking holes in my ceiling on every second sentence, you oughta see my contractor’s estimate for the repairs.) By which I meant, among other things, that all of you were using too few variables, too spare a conceptual vocabulary, and seemed (by the visible evidence at least) too unfamiliar with the actual local circumstances and history, to generate any grand inclusive theories or thoughts that were usable or relatable to our particular reality. That’s all pretty understandable and it’s not an indictment, after all this is a very big place and it’s far away. I’ve never been to Melbourne, so I don’t think I’ll be formulating any grand theories about the structure of Victoria property taxes on inner-city condos, any time soon.
Nice song, though. I like songs.
Katz maaaaate
I wasn’t responding to your comments on the US penal system; rather I was attempting to summarise a bit of QM and other physics.
It’s not the “law of averages”, it’s physics. There’s a distinction. But I see you’d rather discuss the US legal & penal system, which is fine by me. Shucks, Camelot sure sounds swell.
j_p_z, partly in view of your comments a few weeks ago about LP posters’ evident ignorance of US politics (context was a Hillary/Obama thread I think), I suggested an apt blogger acronym:
WTFWIK?B
“What the Hell Would I Know? But ….”
a prefatory acronym to be employed before sounding off about capital gains tax on Manhattan condos, or Mrs McCartney, or Iran, or Pakistan, or……
cheerio
!Muchas gracias por: ora et labora!