Any aspersion that Woke is over, is overly optimistic. A view from the outside suggests that social movements aimed at toppling the hierarchy are still successful wealth creating strategies.
Emerging evidence suggests the outgoing US Democrat administration will learn little from their sound defeat in the recent 2024 US election. Elective polls suggest Australia’s ruling federal government, held by our socialist leaning Australian Labor Party will soon follow the same fate. Even a poll in the UK calling for fresh general elections after only four months of Labour (UK), has garnered 3 million votes.
It almost doesn’t make sense that socialist governments would be failing when social justice movements have been so successful infiltrating business. Why has idealism reared its head in secular democracies after two hundred of years of dormancy?
I nearly entitled this post 'The Age of Enshitenment'.
I have already written about the similarities between wokeism and religious fervour. This idea that wokeism has replaced religion for some people.
Let’s look at the emblematic topics one by one, this is by no means a comprehensive selection, just the subjects I know enough about to cover. It is likely this will be the first post in a series. I’ll grade them using the following factors at the end of each subsection.
Economic conditions are often touted as the grand champion of election issues. If you view the top 30 countries that offer state welfare and health services, with the exception of Greece, they are all economic titans. These services are enormously expensive representing somewhere near half of government spending. Governments must have increased revenue if they are to keep improving and expanding services. This means growing economies or higher taxes and/or higher government debt. Economics is a complex beast. Although primarily a social science focussed on human behaviour (the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services). It also requires the understanding of politics, government, law, and business and perhaps most importantly strong mathematics skills and data analysis techniques.
Today there are powerful software analysis tools utilising AI that make the work of producing graphics that communicate these complex relationships more palatable to the general public.
These tools give analysts access to datasets within a few clicks and allow them to move baselines, remove unwanted anomalies and preview different graphs styles to best support their narrative. I love them. But they are no less dangerous than a gun in the hands of a teenager. The sexiness of an infographic is not linked to its accuracy. Few of us have the time and discipline to identify errors in statistical modelling or resist our own bias. In fact, they are just as likely to convince us of something we already believe. I have written about this problem in the past: data in disinformation
Regardless of what socio-economical narrative aligns with your bias, In late 2024, many western economies are in fact holding up relatively well. You will hear people justifiably venting about the cost of living. The average household budget has shifted upwards with inflation hitting almost everything. The cost of rent has skyrocketed as have mortgage repayments. Few have escaped. Here we are bleeding money and staring down sovereign debt that could take generations to repay. It’s a real issue.
Yes. Economic woes will continue to feature in Woke 2.0. With austerity measures a real possibility to address high sovereign debt, this could provide a cauldron effect. Options to directly profit from economic woes remain unclear.
Animal behaviourists will tell you many species of animals possess a sense of justice. Justice matters in functional groups because it supports predictability in relationships. Social animals like us must know who an ally is and who isn’t. Justice is however not the same as equality, and this is where a lot of people are getting caught up. Equality unlike justice, does not exist in nature, it is a human aspiration. Anyone who works closely with nature understands nature can be an unpredictable purveyor of talents. Many people, especially from the left wing, will suggest talent does not supersede opportunity, all that is needed for everyone to be equal is ensuring equal chance. This the idea of a level playing field, where everyone wins a gold medal for simply participating. Aspirational yet irrational. A pseudo-religious ideal of heaven on earth. In reality the earth has finite resources so the ‘equality rapture’ will require a universal agreement on quotas. And as status anxiety is a real thing certain people will need to be restrained. Although the desire for mastery is the key motivator, wealth is often the indication of it. The counter argument invites us to revisit numerous failed socialist experiments. Equal outcome looked to many like an escalator to a summit powered by the effort of those prepared to climb.
Maybe. Addressing injustice seems to primarily emanate from educated liberals. Most western countries have strong discrimination laws. Only Human Rights lawyers and Celebrities have an opportunity to profit.
I’m a huge proponent of natural diversity but I can’t say the same about the unnatural form that has ousted merit like some deformed form of nepotism. If you were charged with conjuring up a plan to destroy western democracies, you couldn’t come up with a better one. You may have heard the term meritocracy, the idea whereby the best candidate, business, artist, worker, got the banana. Today you are just as likely to win if you put in a terrible performance, or worse, don’t follow the rules at all. It pays to remember our very societies were responsible for the concept of secularism, outlawing slavery, giving women the vote, and the independent judiciary. We value things that were hard won. Nobody like to play a game with no rules, or worse, different rules for different people.
Unlikely to be an issue in Woke 2.0. DEI has proven to impact business and government efficiency; many organisations are as a result winding down DEI programs. DEI has no credible supporting evidence and is only profitable to those employed in Diversity roles.
The natural world is a subject close to my heart. I’m a legacy environmentalist. I care about habitat and clean water. I aspire to free myself from status and virtue anxiety, especially waiting at traffic lights in my 10 year old diesel four-wheel drive. I don’t have Instagram or twitter. Whether or not climate alarmism and its sponsor renewable energy are saving the planet remains to be seen. What is less ambiguous is the degree this new social movement has driven up the cost of living. It’s way past any point where the two could be merely coincidental. We’re seeing higher prices for energy driving up the costs of almost everything via their supply chains. Record numbers of builders going bankrupt and new home builds at an all-time low. Having just recently project managed my own home build I saw no gouging. Yet wokism demands you to believe that green energy is cheaper, and the cost of living is caused from corporate greed. Sad truth is: the illusory truth effect works.
Yes, Climate alarmism will stick around in Woke 2.0. Green energy is a multi-trillion-dollar industry, it employs millions of people. Retirement funds are deeply exposed. Cancel culture cannons are charged and ready for firing.
I spent some time browsing possible topics that might get picked up, and the best place to find something is at its source. You need only look for organisations that do not generate income, employ highly educated people that don’t do anything important.
I imagine browsing these sites gives any elite left winger party conversation gold. A cynical person might suggest the intention here is to be deliberately vague. Identify aspirations that could never be realistically achieved because there is no way of measuring success or failure. Yet I confess openly to holding sympathies for idealism. As long as we are honest, realistic and pragmatic about the problems and solutions. Yet wokeism isn’t about any of these things. It’s a production house churning out emotive disaster-porn. Its audience is the comfortable people who need to feel guilty about their success.
Food production and distribution is a genuine issue making it potentially dangerous in the hands of the ultra-left. Globalised food chains and mono-cropping has made certain counties vulnerable to pandemics, regional conflicts and crop disease.
Australia is especially vulnerable since our major food retailers hold a duopoly and local food has less margin than imported food. Ripe ground for building fear.
It’s equality possible the need to secure local food production may cause internal conflicts within the left due to farming land competing with renewable energy generation space. Agriculture cannot compete with energy raising money to fund think tanks. It does have a card up its sleeve in the respect there have been numerous food shortages throughout history.
Yes, food security/insecurity could feature in Woke 2.0. There is potential to build public awareness as food is a core need. There are opportunities for profit as food has a complex supply chain. It does run the risk (as mentioned) of clashing with green energy’s solar and wind farms on space.
Uncontrolled immigration has had a spotlight tuned on it recently and It’s clear it’s not popular with the majority of voters. It places pressure on health services, education and housing at a time when many households are doing it tough. Migrants understandably gather in specific pockets and form enclaves to gain support when there isn’t support for the existing wider community. The US, UK and Canada and Australia have profited from immigration in the past. Immigration was seen as a stop gap measure for declining birth rates ensuring there were ready made workers for certain sectors. Both side of politics saw the need to keep the economies running and the factories full. The reality today is millions of refugees and immigrants are awaiting citizenship in western democracies. We are the countries with the best human rights, part of the appeal, but not the major appeal. The major appeal is economic. Is this enough to hold us together?
Maybe. It’s hard to make a call on refugee rights. Certainly, the industry supporting them is full of highly educated people, sometimes powerful people. I would watching how the Starmer UK Labor government fairs.
The success of the Covid pandemic response for many organisations and advocates is likely to work against them in the next. Prior to the pandemic arbitrary shutdowns were specifically advised against because economic and social damage was well understood. Restrictions to free movement were supposed to be used only on localised regional outbreaks. As it stands today with public debt levels, most countries would be unable to afford another pandemic with arbitrary lockdowns. Surveys conducted since Covid are unambiguous, the majority of people would not tolerate the same approach and don’t believe the virus was dangerous enough to warrant the extraordinary economic damage. Many younger people believe their future has been taken away from them so that old people could live another 5 or ten years. That’s not completely untrue.
No. While there is favourable sociopolitical context for pandemics, it has lost all momentum. Financial support is exhausted having been entirely funded from (now critically high) government debt. Whilst there is strong scientific evidence supporting timely action the general public will be shy from 'cry wolf' and economic shock.
We have always been victim to our bias, what’s changed are the tools used to identify and manipulate it. Mainstream news organisations have destroyed their reputations attempting to ‘argue with and idiot’ and as we know, the idiots always win from experience. Progress might suggest the new media organisations will develop the same processes and inefficiencies that made the old media wheezy and slow to respond on trendy topics. I’m certain someone has already discovered debunking Joe Rogan is also a meal ticket. The growing cost of higher education saw universities pushed into self-funding models having to widen their appeal to students that had access to credit but not the appetite for science. Diversity mandates saw boards appointed with individuals harbouring social agendas rather than intellectual ones. We now have a plethora of pseudo-science degree educated young people with student debt, without careers outside of related government back social programs. Unable ever to contribute to the economy. The way to deal establish the truth was academic rigour, discussion, debate. The current socialist leaning ALP government has opted to appoint a single eSafety Commissioner to determine what is true and what isn’t, presumably because it’s already been determined by whomever won the past election.
Maybe. I can see a future for disinformation. It provides its own sociopolitical context. There’s momentum, the trick is going to be making money out of it without getting sued.
Sovereign debt, government debt, public debt… call it what you may. Whatever side of politics you subscribe to; government debt levels should be of concern to you, it’s your government, it’s your debt.
Few governments seem to be willing to set sensible levels on public debt. All levels of government in Australia are free to issue bonds without an enforceable limit. MP’s in Australia, and much of the world are not held criminally accountable for their actions with regards to economic mismanagement. This should make you uncomfortable.
Most published lists of sovereign debt compare countries in a table as ratios of debt to GDP. I’d suggest comparing different countries ratios is like comparing mortgages between households. Everyone has different earning abilities.
For instance: Australia’s sovereign debt ratio is lower than the US’s, roughly a third, although the US has the size and ability to manipulate markets. Australia has a massive dependency placed on trading commodities with a sometimes-abusive neighbour whose economy is by all accounts collapsing. We have a long history of laziness because of our accidental mineral wealth.
Unlikely to be picked up by Woke 2.0, because left and right wing governments borrow.