Yesterday my son said to me “you know, wearing a mask is the right thing to do. But it doesn’t feel like the right thing to do.” He was talking about being the only kid at school masked, and the social pressure to conform. This is key to understanding ‘freedom’. /1
When politicians and others say people wanted freedom back, from public health measures, they really meant they wanted society to go back to social conformity, and away from regulatory guidance. Removing Covid rules gives no individual freedom, it just shifts the regulation…/2
…from a considered, legislative and regulatory mechanism to a social ‘peer pressure’ conformity mechanism. Humans do not, ever, exist as isolated ‘free’ individuals. Those who delude themselves that they do are freeloading off society, and don’t recognise the work of others. /3
I tweeted a few months ago that laws and rules are the only true enablers of freedom, which is the complete reverse of libertarian fantasy politics. They give people *permission* to escape social conformity. School uniforms a classic example. /4
The function of school uniforms is to free people from the intense social pressure of what to wear. Kids and families. It also then saves everybody money, by not having to engage in continuously escalating games of fashion imitation. The political libertarians have sold us…/5
…complete nonsense about the origins of society and how it works. Society is always groups of people, behaving, believing and thinking according to the laws of social life. Social conformity. It’s only the invention of law, regulation and religion that allowed humans to…/6
…be free of the rigid and oppressive conformity of social groups. Which is what my son was commenting on, he feels the pressure all day every day of not conforming. He knows surrendering to the groupthink of living with the virus would ‘free’ him from that pressure. /7
He also knows it might kill him, and others he would then infect too. We need to stop interpreting this pandemic as forces of freedom fighting forces of oppression. It’s a battle between forces of conformity, and freedom. Freedom is rational law and regulation, giving people…/8
…permission to do things that the group itself will never do. Why i always say society is now a high school, it literally is. It’s the law of the playground, overpowering public health law. /end
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An example of how election-based democracy is really just cronyism with added spin. My local council like many others is looking to dramatically increase rates, to provide basic services. They've hired a company to survey residents about the change, and they rang me yesterday. /1
The key question was 'would you prefer that council significantly increase rates to retain basic services, or cut services to keep rate increases lower?' I said 'neither'. Silence on the other end of the phone line. Then, 'um, what would you prefer?' /2
'I'd prefer State and federal governments funded local government adequately to meet the basic needs of people who live in towns and cities, rather than piss away $250 billion in tax cuts to people who don't need them, and then expect ratepayers to pick up the shortfall.' /3
There’s something so important about this photo, a window into most Western countries and why they’re failing badly to do the most fundamental thing - end a pandemic. A thread that’s an update to my pinned thread about how societies are now high schools. Not an analogy. /1
I say not an analogy because this is actual anthropology, a comment about the cultural form and structure of our lives. We’ve had more than 50 years now of a politics that I call N=1 politics, to separate it from all of the hobby horses like ‘capitalism’, and ‘neoliberalism’. /2
Those other concepts have too much baggage. Best I think to stick to the fundamental fact, that it’s a politics that focuses on the individual, thus N=1. Or at least it says it does; it actually does nothing of the sort. Understanding the gap between the claim and the reality…/3
Dramatic waning of effectiveness of vaccines, in a public health strategy that is vaccination only. The herd of elephants in the room for our Covid ‘strategy’. UKHSA data (see link at end). Symptomatic disease first. (Experts welcome to comment!) /1 #auspol#covid19aus
This data suggests it makes little difference if you were boosted, if AZ was your first 2 shots. Effectiveness against symptomatic disease near zero after 20 weeks in both cases. This was also the vaccine given to highest risk, older Australians. /2
Pfizer followed by Pfizer booster seems even worse than no booster. A little better with Moderna booster, but remembering again many Australians are still at 2 doses of any vaccine, thanks to the previous PM’s election campaign. And 20% effectiveness either way i.e. very low. /3
Watching the government tie itself in knots over Stage 3 tax cuts shows two critical things.
1) How issues are framed determines political outcomes, across elections. Conservatives have spent decades creating a frame that says tax is a type of theft. /1 #auspol
That frame works for them even as they sit on the opposition benches.
2) The only way frames get their power is through popularity mechanisms, like polling and elections. Populism. They shift popularity preferences. /2
I’m a broken record, but get rid of elections. Put the focus on what objectively needs doing in government, not on who can sell ideology in the most popular way. Most of the complexity of modern societies far outstrips all of the populist ideologies elected politicians apply…/3
The default state of society is social conformity. Proust studied it in forensic detail in the Parisian salons. Without regulation, all social activity, including against Covid, will follow the laws of social imitation, conformity. Libertarians know this, when they call for…/1
…individual freedom, they don’t actually believe that exists. They know it will appeal to disaffected people, who will then happily fall in behind (conform) with the leadership offered by libertarians. As a corollary, if we want social change, it’s worse than pointless to../2
…ask individuals to make it happen. They’ll support change if it’s led by somebody they want to conform with. Status. Also how libertarians get working people to support tax cuts, by making it about aspiration, status. ‘You can be rich too’. Why the conservatives use the…/3
This is an important argument to continue. Technology is meaningless without a context. The US, with its extreme libertarian beliefs, mostly invented social media. Think about how it taps into all that idealistic tosh about ‘the people’ creating ‘bottom-up’ change. /1
Nearly everybody I know believes some version of that ‘the people’ rubbish, trapped inside the libertarian spider web of beliefs that is also woven into the DNA of social media. They seriously feel we can use social media to build social change. McLuhan always got it. /2
‘The medium is the message’. It’s not all that important what content circulates on social media, it’s the nature of the medium itself that creates the actual social change. If you provide widespread access to tools that allow the mobilisation of every belief, completely…/3