Social issues « I may be wrong but . . . .

Mixed feelings on Occupy movement

January 5, 2012

I’ve been pondering my attitude to the “Occupy” demonstration movement, given my history of taking part in demonstrations in my 20s and 30s and my empathy with people who are prepared to take an unpopular stand and be abused for it.

The curious thing for me is that I don’t seem to be able to muster much feeling about it, one way or the other. Why would that be?

Hopefully it’s not that I’ve passed a certain age when the discomfort of unpopular protesting is unattractive; when the people seen on the TV in their occupation tents look scruffy, insincere or thoughtless; when I think I have better things to do with my limited time. Pity help me if I’m letting that level of superficiality affect my judgment!

My first problem (and that of so many other people who are not up with spontaneous social media networking and the like) is that the target of the Occupy movement – especially in New Zealand – is not clearly defined. On the Vietnam war and the Springbok tour, we all knew precisely what the issue was and what we protesters (and our opposition) wanted. With Occupy, the target appears to be the ultra-rich 1% of the capitalist world. Or is it the capitalist system as a whole? Or is it the establishment? I guess the ambiguity reflects the difference between a “campaign” and a “movement”.

And if the target of the occupiers is one or all of these, exactly what is it that they would rather do and how would they start to achieve it. Unlike Vietnam or “the tour”, there is no single action or policy change that will stop excessive greed/wealth/capitalism.

So I find it difficult to rouse a feeling of solidarity with the occupiers as they camp out on public land in Auckland, Wellington and several other centres. Also, compared with the size of the occupying “forces” and the policing responses in America and the UK, the Kiwi groups are pretty ineffectual, apart from causing some short-term damage to grass cover, some health issues and general annoyance to a minority of opponents.

It’s actually a problem for protesters if no-one is inconvenienced or angered by them, so it is to be expected that the occupiers will persist and try new tactics even when many think they’ve had their fair time. But in the end their gains will be small, if any.

On the other side of the coin, the right to protest is in my opinion absolutely vital to any healthy society. Near the top of my list of life’s guiding principles will always be the knowledge that all it takes for a dictatorship to be established is for good people to say and do nothing. To not stand up against bad policies is to pay no respect to the people over the centuries who fought for democracy and individual freedom.

So the occupiers are right to keep before our faces one of the biggest societal problems the world is now facing – the growing gap between the ultra-wealthy 1% and the so-called 99% who must show restraint in their life choices or are simply too poor to have any economic options at all. The issue should be something we are all aware of and prepared to think about.

Is the wealth gap one of our biggest problems? Like an increasing number of commentators in recent months, I believe it is. Particularly the notion that the gap between the top few percent and the rest is actually widening. It’s a huge problem – and a potential time bomb – because the consequences affect every part of every society – even, eventually, the top 1%. But that’s too big an issue for me to tackle in this article, so I’ll give it some further thought in a separate post soon.

1 Comment | Community living, Economics, Social issues | Tagged: Communities, Democracy, Demonstrations, Occupy movement, Protests | Permalink
Posted by David Armstrong

Rising executive salary levels cannot be justified

December 20, 2011

Along with most Christchurch people, if this morning’s letters to the editor are any indication, I am appalled by their city council’s decision to give its CEO Tony Marryatt a 15% pay rise to well over $500,000.

I won’t argue the merits of his salary in his particular setting, apart from agreeing with sentiments in the scores of letters which filled the opinion pages of The Press. So many people in that quake-broken city are hanging on by a thread, financially and emotionally, and the rest of the country is being reminded ad nauseum of the need for restraint in wage expectations and government spending.

This decision is an insult to all except the upper clique of officials and corporate bosses who increasingly are losing contact with the rest of the population.

Executive salaries have bothered me for years. I’ve tried to keep an open mind, aware of the arguments of supporters generally along the lines of (a) you have to pay what the market demands, and (b) you suffer from wealth envy. But it just doesn’t wash.

1. The “market demand” argument is run by the people who benefit most from it. The “market” for senior executives is small and created by the senior execs themselves. They maintain it by bidding each other up. Each new position is filled by someone who is already in the clique but who demands or expects more money. The whole thing must be unsustainable – you just cannot keep bidding up the rewards at a rate faster than the underlying rate of economic growth without the system ultimately falling apart through its own illogicality or a rebellion by “the masses”.

2. That so-called market is rarely tested. With most workers, excessive wage demands lose you the job. The labour market works pretty efficiently, be it fairly or because of ruthless control from the bosses. But when hiring a new senior executive no-one seems to have the guts to say, we can get someone else if you demand too high a salary. There really is no effective market for the top dogs, so they cannot justify it through “market forces”.

3. One would like to believe that quality senior executives would see job satisfaction, their leadership status and the knowledge that they are useful as part of the reason they take on such positions, not just the pay. Many people do outstanding work of great benefit to society without the motivation of being paid an obscene fortune to do it.

4. In Christchurch in particular, the recovery process is clearly reliant on many people in leadership positions going the extra mile without expecting big money in return. That’s how the city will rebuild. It’s insulting and depressing to the ordinary people who are making this extra effort that their leaders are seen to be doing it mainly for the money.

5. In Marryatt’s case, it has long been known that he desperately wanted the job anyway. He and his supporters reportedly fought tooth and nail to retain his position. It’s not as if the council needed to give him a big pay rise to keep him.

3 Comments | Business, Social issues | Tagged: Christchurch City Council, christchurch earthquake, Communities, executive salaries, Tony Marryatt | Permalink
Posted by David Armstrong

“Matters to a Head” – a book review

September 29, 2011

I’ve just finished reading a most remarkable book. It wasn’t that the writing was exceptionally polished, or the editing, though both are well above average for a self-published book. It wasn’t that the plot had any great unexpected twists and turns, or a cast of notable characters. What made it remarkable to me was its unabashed truth-telling and unapologetic rawness. No euphemisms, no hedging; just telling it as it was.

The book is Matters to a Head, written by Kate K and set partly in my home town Motueka, and published last month. Many locals know Kate, the daughter of a past mayor, who went off the rails in her later teenage life. Some of them may not know that she has been able to turn her life around since then. This book is a straight-up, almost humourous at times, account of the downward slide to the absolute pits and the struggle back up.

Being a relatively recent “immigrant” to Motueka, I didn’t know Kate before now, but I had the honour of meeting and talking with her and her mum (whose long-suffering role figures often in the book) recently, a face-to-face which made the subsequent reading so poignant. I’m an exceptionally slow reader but once I got into this book I found it hard to put down.

The plot is simple. Kate became totally addicted to cannabis and alcohol and also developed bipolar depression. (She is not certain of the cause and effect, if any, between the two diagnoses, but is not afraid to consider the possibilities.) As a result, she spent some time in psychiatric institutions.

For the first two-thirds of the book she traces the events and actions which drew her to the absolute rock bottom. The remarkable thing to me is that during the process, over several years, she was sufficiently self-aware of the damage she was doing to herself that she could remember it so clearly to write about it afterwards.

We gain detailed insight into the state of mind of a drug addict, and painful views of what it’s like in a loony bin (my words). Like many readers, I imagine, I have no strong addictive traits so find it hard to see why someone can make such poor decisions and knowingly allow their life to be so damaged. As Kate tells you of the next time she got into a stoned existence yet again, just as you thought she was starting to work her way upward, you find yourself being like the kid watching the puppet show, yelling out “The monster is just behind you!!”. No Kate, don’t go back there!

If this sounds like a gritty drug expose, it’s actually very readable because, thankfully, Kate has a playful, wry sense of humour which she lets flow through some of the sad parts of the narrative.

The final one-third documents the seven-year (so far) struggle back to a degree of wellness, thanks largely to Narcotics Anonymous and supportive friends – and her great talent for direct, fearless writing. She talks of her growing awareness of the healing process which has been working for her.

She also writes about her hard-learned opinions about the way mental health services are provided in New Zealand, where it is damaging and why, and where new improvements are being made, in some places thanks to her own recent work as a registered nurse and advocate for peer support structures.

I spoke to her wonderful, long-suffering mum the other day and she said that Kate still had times when she could be vulnerable to depression, but that with support she now has the tools to make sure it didn’t happen. After reading of so much carnage and despair, it’s heartwarming to know that there can be happier endings.

Matters to a Head is available online at matterstoahead.co.nz

Leave a Comment » | Health, Social issues | Tagged: addiction, book review, cannabis, Matters to a Head, Mental health | Permalink
Posted by David Armstrong

It’s the tide we should be reacting to, not the waves

August 3, 2011

One of my favourite beach activities as a child, and even more so as a young father, was defending sandcastles as the tide came in. The drama of building temporary walls and channels to deflect the next encroaching wave was always very entertaining for me and the (other) kids.

In the end, of course, the construction was washed away and we settled back to swimming or ice creams. (Unless, that is, the sandcastle is constructed above the high tide mark. But then where’s the fun in that?)

Watching the temporary fixes being set up in recent months in many of the world’s most powerful economies to avert or postpone debt crises has much the same feel about it. Watching the short-term, narrow-focus reactions of our own consumption-addicted citizens, and of many politicians and business leaders, to the adjustments makes us look more like the children than the grown-ups in this game-changing drama.

America’s shameful political confrontation this week over its unthinkable debt situation is the ultimate in wake-up calls. But what do we in New Zealand learn? We worry that interest rates may go up a bit, or the cost of milk may rise, or some other relatively minor effect. We see the waves approaching and build little protective walls (if we care at all), but we still refuse to see the tidal advance.

Economies around the world are becoming less stable by the month, but we continue on our merry way in the hope and expectation that the little adjustments our governments make will sort it all out or at least protect our little castles. Our leaders feel happy if they can divert the waves one by one hoping that the citizens are not disconcerted by the real global picture – at least until after the next election.

The metaphor of waves and tides applies equally to climate change, which advances even more slowly than economic collapse. Weather events become a little more extreme each year, small ecological changes are seen over observable periods of time, but still in everyday living these seem like series of waves to be deflected and we cannot see the tide advancing.

So we tinker with policy decisions such as emission trading systems and carbon taxes, recycling and energy saving. Meanwhile populations at large, encouraged by the mantra that economic growth is everything, see such initiatives as obstacles to progress. We cannot see the larger picture – the tide coming in – over a longer time period.

Pessimistic, yes. But societies based on both corporate capitalism and environmental disinterest will, if there is no commitment to change but only to tinker, eventually be washed away. And it will be a painful process.

Trouble is, apart from trying to avoid or minimise personal debt, I have little idea what ordinary folk can do about the economic situation, except to keep our eyes open and hope for the emergence of more business and political leaders who can put real sustainability into practice ahead of the growth imperative.

2 Comments | Business, Climate change, Economics, Environment, Politics, Social issues | Tagged: Climate change, debt, Politics, sustainability | Permalink
Posted by David Armstrong

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