At the end of a comment yesterday on Macrobusiness, PFH007 concluded with

Wake up ALP

Wake up Greens.

Yes but how do we do it 007!

Pfh007     November 27, 2016 at 7:47 am

EP,

How do we do it?

By going straight to the folk they need – voters – and making it clear we are doing exactly that.

That is ultimately what populists like Trump and Bernie did. Bypass the political machines.

Keep in mind that both of those parties – ALP and Greens – are chock full of bright ‘progressive’ folk who fancy themselves as the solution to the world’s problems.

So while they will scratch each others eyes out in a nano second in a branch stack or an internal fight for power they are still desperate for the confirmation that comes from electoral success. They want power so much it hurts.

No different to the LNP /IPA drones in that respect.

If you want to change what they say and do, you have to change their perception of what will motivate a voter to vote for them. But that also means changing what voters are thinking as well.

That takes time – especially changing what voters think – but fortunately, finally, the voters are thinking ‘differently’ or at least are increasingly fed up with the status quo.

The GFC was not enough to destroy faith in the “neoliberal consensus”.

The neoliberal economic consensus defended itself by quickly flooding the system with cheap bank created money or CB money. That money mostly just propped up asset values but the trickle out wealth effect kept regular folk from revolting as well. A process of “cake” distribution that made asset holders very rich and pleased as punch and kept the peasants in line.

But this approach was not cost free as it was very inefficient, bloated asset prices around the globe, misallocated resources, malinvestment in commodities and other industries and involved lots of people and governments remaining deep in debt or getting further into debt and the trickle out of wealth from wealthy assets holders gradually ran dry and deflation appeared across lands as people found their disposable incomes being consumed by interest payments.

People are fed up with the “cake” dished out after the GFC by the neoliberal consensus.

Almost 10 years later the public around the globe is starting to understand that the issues that caused the GFC were NOT fixed and are now worse than ever.

.

The globalist neoliberal economic model is continuing to run out of control.

If the ALP and the Greens are to wake up they need to get their heads around a few points.

.

• They must abandon their project for some international technocrat run world order / brotherhood of ‘expert’ men/women as that sounds to voters much the same as the international world corporatist order promised by neoliberalism. I suspect the similarity – administration of society by a vanguard of experts – is why so many members of the ALP and Greens have sadly become neoliberal true believers and support stuff like unrestricted capital flows, unregulated trade,  ChAFTA, FTAs and the TPP.  The idea of international centralised expert control appeals to their utopian vision splendid.

• They must shift their focus back to the local and concentrate on fixing our bit of the ‘neoliberal infection’.  People want to hear that their local and national concerns are taken seriously.

That means re-asserting Australian economic independence by weaning the country off currency manipulating unproductive capital inflows, fixing our banking and monetary system and by doing so rebuild local industry, production and employment.

That means talking about Australia as a sovereign independent nation.   People want to hear that their politicians are interested in the home front. If you think that the home front is ‘sorted’ and we should spend our time on ‘global’ issues, that just means that you live in a bubble in the inner suburbs of Sydney, Melbourne or Canberra.   Fixing the local ‘neoliberal infection’ is more likely to encourage people to think beyond their own front yards.

• This does not mean economic isolationism or tariffs and quotas – it simply means protecting Australia from the cheap predatory inflows of unproductive capital from our trade rivals that drive our exchange rate above what our trade performance warrants and in doing so destroys local business, jobs and production.   At the moment gooses like Senator Penny Wong don’t even understand the differences between productive and unproductive capital inflows – she thinks it is all ‘investment’. We can have trade and the relatively free movement of people without freedom for predatory unproductive capital inflows to gut the economy.

There is a huge opportunity at the moment for social democratic parties but they must be prepared to let go of their globalist technocratic world order pretensions, focus on the local and the national and understand the difference between competitive and free markets, productive and unproductive capital inflows and the extremism of neoliberalism.

The Glass Pyramid is not very interested in trying to convince some condescending party drones that they have got it wrong.   Look at the US presidential election – social democratic party drones are often in the smallest and most sound proof bubbles of all.

The focus must be to try and raise the level of general understanding so that people can articulate what their gut instinct is telling them.

Let the pollies know what you are doing in the hope that some young bright spark will pick up the ball and run with it.

The ALP and the Greens can avoid becoming ‘popularist’ electoral road kill but they need to start thinking about why calling a large part of the population, racist, deplorable …… [insert preferred insult]…. is not the way to go about it.

There is a very real and long over due reaction to global neoliberalism underway and the ‘progressive’ side of politics is at risk at being left behind in the dust.

Just like Hillary.