AWOL_muppet

Hell yeah! Let's have a politician pureé to go with our billionaire bbq

I've been thinking about this a lot, cos while I understand the privatisation in the 80s of rail (and electricity generation?) was largely understood to be an unmitigated disaster it also happened in context with the stock market crash and whatever else - I just don't know much about that time, being a kid back then, and all...

Does anyone have a good story to simplify it? Someone pointed me to a great podcast (the spinoffs juggernaut) about it, but it's about 8 hours long, so I haven't had a chance to dip my toes in...

I think Seymour's being a fuckin Looney, but that's because it's not ownership that matters - it's the service that's important, not the profits. Once profit steps in, it takes over the other priorities, plain and simple. The govt might be a clunky tool for running things, but it's sure better than private enterprise (or worse, state-sanctioned monopoly!)

Fair point - I'd moved on from this example of the tiered pricing to the big picture of 'how does a society eliminate racism' in principle.

You are right about this.

I do wonder what might the future look like though, when we're all trying to 'get one back' either due to responding to the systemic racism or ...bear with me here, the hypothetocal is a little gross: counter-responses: lets imagine pakeha with perceived past hurts in response to similar gestures? (as im sure there are quite a few completely blind to their privilege and so on...). I'm not saying they did the wrong thing at all with the gesture, I'm merely trying to find ways to avoid escalating things (which in hindsight sounds dangerously like 'peace at any price', but I don't think it is...).

Yeah, I get what you mean.

I'm hoping somehow there's a way where we can get to some sort of parity and then work to de-escalate from there, but I actually just don't think humans can do that.

We really need better tools to handle our insecurities, as a species...

So, what's the answer then - woukd it be just declaring there is no racism in NZ and trying to keep everything 'level'?

Charming... The main rule is 'don't be a dick', no need to come in strong.

You are correct that they had an 'emotional argument' (as opposed to a rational one - I'm sure there's better terms for these), but need you be so obnoxious about it?

I suspect there's a lot of this going on: https://mander.xyz/post/21175408

It's a fairly profound contrast, I gather, between the urban/young vs. the rural/aged.

Dunno what we can do about that, really - but it's looking more and more like the divide in America, unfortunately (and I think Seymour butts is consciously pushing for that, sadly)

I've had good luck with windy

Good point, the travel disruption and congregation on parliament grounds was the protest

I have a random brain fart, that in trying to measure just how curmudgeonly it is: going to the hikoi today was great, but I seem to have trouble accepting protests having live performance and other 'party atmosphere' elements.

Presumably the party elements attract hangers on and waters down the focus (but I'm a grumpy old bastard that doesn't enjoy fun, for perspective)

Random... I've always felt like the metservice is just another get scenario where the app is cancer and the website (again, with adnauseum of multiple layers of ad blocking) is perfectly adequate