Guest Post: Social Democracy and the Next Settlement, by James Cone

Intro by Tim



I attended a public meeting organised by Generation Zero about New Zealand's lamentable record on greenhouse gas emissions, and the current Government's obsession with building motorways at the expense of all other transport option - which reminds me to say: please write a submission against the Government's proposed Basin Reserve flyover! (Submissions close Friday.)



At this event, James Cone asked a question which I thought was very interesting, but which it was hard for him to get across briefly. Talking to James afterwards, I suggested that the issue he raised might go better as a blog post - and here it is! See what you think.













Social Democracy and the Next Settlement 




Social democracy, the way the
English-speaking countries were governed
after World War II, until the first
peak oil in the 1970s, was a deal.
 Government authorised unions to
bargain and strike, so workers got
paid well, so they made things for
manufacturers to sell, so
manufacturers made a profit, so they could pay
workers well.




To understand how deals like that work, it's probably
worth-while to
take a short side-trip into what 'because' means.
 Aristotle
recognised four kinds of cause.  A final cause is what
something is
for.  A formal cause is what plan it follows.  Efficient
causes are
the ones that we take for granted now, where the ankle-bone moves,
because
the hip bone is moving, and they are connected via the knee
bone.
 Material cause took me a long time to understand; it is where
an object,
such as a table, is there because it's outline is full of
stuff, such as the
wood that it's made of.




Social settlement have to satisfy needs for final
causes (often
expressed as people thinking they're fair), formal causes (the
rules
can be written) and efficient causes (the manufacturer, worker and
customer
in my example are all well-enough off).




That deal makes two assumptions: that
having more suff is good for
people, and that there is no constraint on the raw
materials and
energy that go into making it.  The second is now definitely
false,
and the first is being re-examined.




In the new conditions, I do not
know what the next social settlement
is, yet.  I think that I'll recognise
it when I see it.  I'm looking
for a plan where the children of
beneficiaries and minimum-wage
workers eat a diet with enough first-class
protein and no unavoidable
conspicuously harmful features, as a natural
consequence of the way
the rest of the political-economic world is organised.




Bio: James Cone




James is a 'lost', a magpie, and a
cognitive barbarian.  So far, he
has studied four years of Computer
Science, had one career in
computing, completed two thirds of a sociology
degree, and now walks
someone else's dogs (names removed to protect the guilty)
on a
voluntary basis.  He has been collecting small, shiny ideas since
almost
before he could talk.  Given a situation that resembles a
Gordian Knot, he
thinks that the right response is often to imagine a
novel slice through it.
 If you ask, he may talk to you about
non-violence theory and wicked
problems, but this will not make your
life simpler.



You can buy books by Tim Jones online! Voyagers: SF Poetry from NZ from Amazon.Transported (short story collection) from Fishpond or New Zealand Books Abroad.