Modern macroeconomists “solve” the problem [of market imbalance] by assuming it away: the standard models assume that somehow the economy is in equilibrium, with demand for labour and goods somehow just equalling supply. That we achieve this beautiful equilibrium is, like the belief in market efficiency itself, a matter of deep religious conviction, and the path we take to get there a matter of mystical revelation. If a problem crops up in this all-encompassing theory – if there is unemployment, for example – the response is simple: blame the victim, meaning workers, for demanding too-high wages, or migrants, for flooding the job market. If only wages were sufficiently flexible, the theory goes, or borders sufficiently forbidding, the economy would always be at full employment.
Genocide is not just a murderous madness: it is, more deeply, a politics that promises a utopia beyond politics – one people, one land, one truth, the end of difference. Since genocide is a form of political utopia, it remains an enduring temptation in any multiethnic and multicultural society in crisis.
It seems to be mostly the far-right fruitcakes who are scared of the imposition of Sharia Law in Australia. People like One Notion’s Pauline Hanson ramble on about it seemingly…
Australia was one of the first nation states to give (white) women the vote (in 1902), nearly a decade after New Zealand did so, in 18931, and we often pride…
Greg Sheridan, one of the religious nutters at Murdoch’s The Australian ‘newspaper’, has written an opinion piece entitled ‘Hands up for your faith’ with the subtitle ‘With Christianity under siege,…