Friday, 12 March 2010

Grievance Mode

Kate Wilkinson, Minister of Labour.






















Olwyn said...

Well said, Chris. If anyone succeeds in running this country into the ground, it is far less likely to be the poor layabout who thinks the world owes him subsistence than the passive, incompetent businessman who thinks the world owes him status and all that goes with it regardless of his actual contribution.

Victor said...

New Zealand's business class is like a George Grosz caricature of capitalism; myopic, vulgar, mentally-lazy, arrogant, pompous, ignorant, brimming with faux machismo and fixated on the fast buck.

Why are they like that? I used to think it had something to do with the pre-1984 concordat between the state and business, which may have discouraged innovation and encouraged sycophantic conformity.

But 26 years down the track, that line of reasoning no longer holds water. Our economy has been turned inside out but the old faults remain, with brass nobs on.

Apart from the generic evils of capitalism, do you have a theory about this, Chris?

Anonymous said...

Few in the New Zealand business community are involved in the instructive activity of exporting things, unlike their less insular counterparts overseas. The role of supporting the country is left to the farmers.

Victor said...

Anonymous, I think you have at least half the answer here. We continue to have a 'business culture' without much in the way of a real economy, at least outside the rural sector.

The business class is therefore focussed even more exclusively than in more successful economies on extracting short term profit at the margins.

It does this, for example, by ripping-off consumers or financial legerdemain. Given half the chance, it will also seek to reduce labour costs, even at the expense of depriving itself of a competent skills base.

The object of the exercise is not to build successful companies or industries but to shut the door of the office on a Friday afternoon for a weekend of conspicuous and ego-expanding consumption, whilst funding one or more excessively-large mortgages.

It's an approach that appeals to hollow men and women. No wonder, then, that they proliferate. And no wonder that we have a business culture of non-accountable mediocrity.