What Have You Done for Me Lately?
That whacky renegade, Nationals Senator Barnaby Joyce, shows his iconoclastic side again, proposing that Australia mine Antarctica before everyone else gets in there first and takes all the gold and fish and stuff. This government is all about “show me the money.” Whatever they can get now, without any consideration for the future, is where their policies will be directed. Sell Telstra – now! Sell Medibank Private – now! Dump coal in favor of nuclear power – now! Dig up Antarctica – now! There are two rationales operating here. The first is that what’s good for business is good for the nation. The second is keeping the economy running with low inflation and low unemployment keeps the voters on-side. There’s truth in both things, but both operate ultimately in service to corporate control of government. Businesses, big businesses, are who’s being kept on-side, not the lower or middle classes, and business operates on the principle of “what have you done for me lately?” and that’s never been quite so true as it is now, where so much of any businesses revenues must be spent on shareholder return and executive compensation instead of on the business itself. So long as this government operates in service to that structure, they will sell out the future. (Maybe Joyce should start looking off-planet for commercial opportunities, unless it’s just about the fish.)