Stories We Live In

In the eighth essay in this series, I consider how learned stories circumscribe our attitudes and behaviours, and I endeavour to show that even the prized myths of nationhood are curated in service to power.

When Mark Fisher popularised Fredric Jameson’s aphorism that it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism[1] he alerted us to an important principle. We don’t engage with the world directly. We meet it through culture. There are boundaries to imagination, and they are policed.

Capitalism isn’t a natural phenomenon like entropy or gravity. It’s something people made up. It’s no less dispensable than the feudalism which preceded it. But if we believe wholeheartedly there is no alternative, we might as well resign ourselves to whatever damage it causes. The question then becomes who reaps the benefits and who must suffer the consequences.

But what do we mean when we speak of ‘capitalism’ anyway? The term once meant a system of private investment in production of goods and services to sell for profit in competitive markets. But some of the biggest companies in the world today produce nothing. Instead, they syphon off the profits from the enterprises whose stocks they trade in[2], or mediate producers and consumers to extract rents for access[3]. Others so dominate their markets that their margins are effectively immune to competition[4]. And some like fossil fuel producers have their profits publicly subsidised[5].

At what point do we admit that capitalism has become something else? Some influential economists believe that threshold has been crossed[6]. Perhaps the end of capitalism has occurred and we still can’t imagine it.

Moreover, our strangely self-defeating dogmatism overlooks a glut of proven alternatives. Generations of Australians have grown up on public health and education. Less advantaged people have been assisted with income support and public housing. Whatever problems afflicted our public services, defunding or privatising them has proven even less effective[7]. And there are many countries still achieving enviable results with public money[8]. Why then is it so hard to extrapolate public provisioning to more of our needs?

The collapse of the USSR and the universalising of neoliberal ideology in the late Twentieth Century, sponsored by American exceptionalists, magnates and market zealots, and propelled by globalisation, microprocessors and the internet, struck the Western postwar order like a giant socioeconomic snooker break. Titanic forces were mobilised beyond any entity’s control. The prosperous workers of the union era were suddenly an endangered species. But of course no politician or businessperson would admit that. So we carried on planning futures for ourselves and our children as if still involved in a process which was provident, orderly and dependable. It was wishful thinking. We were building playhouses in a world of make believe.

But what if this was all you ever ‘knew’? What if you were born into that story and spent your whole life inside it? Through education, news, opinion, and entertainment, the story would eventually shape the very language you use and the form and content of your social interactions. It would become a kind of internalised Rosetta Stone, a schema superimposed on every waking moment. The causes of upheaval in the Twenty-first Century might be no more intelligible to that worldview than those of plague and crop failure to the biblical literalism of medieval Europeans. You might resemble the eponymous character of The Truman Show[9], submitting your life to people you don't know and to purposes which may not truly be your own.

Edward Bernays[10], the father of modern propaganda, understood this, as have famous practitioners like the Nazi Joseph Goebbels[11], critics like George Orwell[12], and contemporary exponents like Rupert Murdoch. But it isn’t common knowledge. Many people know little or nothing of these figures and what they learned about human psychology and behaviour. And without that understanding, it may be hard to tell the inherited story apart from reality.

Nor is this unique to the modern world. Story is a feature of every human culture. But the stories of unmodernised peoples evince very different priorities from our modern story. Competition in markets for personal enrichment isn't a meaningful paradigm for people whose wellbeing depends on a complex web of interdependencies. And the present unwelcome suffusion of distressed people and damaged ecosystems suggests it's the paradigm which has changed, not human nature. The question isn’t so much why we live in a story, but why this one.

Australian Story

The obvious place to start interrogating the ideas you grew up with is the place where you grew up, which in my case is Australia. And if there’s a universal theme here it’s surely the idea of Australia as a site for human flourishing.

It must have looked that way to the first human arrivals 50,000 or more years ago, whose descendants have occupied the continent ever since. And it has more recently attracted European settlers, Chinese gold miners, postwar immigrants and Vietnamese refugees, among others. But if the desire for peace and plenty is universal, the design for securing them is less so. Recent arrivals brought with them beliefs, values and ambitions which had formed in the arena of conquest and capture, and these have never sat well with the custodianship of the First Australians.

Our modern story posits human flourishing as a quest for self-fulfilment. Unlike ancient stories, which typically feature a cast of cosmic actors bequeathing an intricately ordered world to human care, there is really only one character in our modern story: the human individual. And according to neoliberal economics, individual self-fulfilment is achieved through conversion of natural resources into private property. This makes Earth a kind of Aladdin’s Cave, less a realm of sovereign living beings than a trove of treasures waiting to be exploited.

In the last few centuries this idea has gone global. But there is a version of it with a distinctively Australian flavour. In this Australian story, arrivals from all over the world find a safe, free and modern country of such abundant resources they can readily achieve a way of life which is materially affluent yet relaxed and easy-going. Many of the immigrant families I grew up with fulfilled this promise, as have many later arrivals I’ve subsequently met. And for decades, we embraced a project of making this opportunity available even to the least advantaged among us.

But lately a disturbing new plot development has emerged. The trend of extending Australia’s bounty to more of its citizens has reversed. It’s now not only possible but common to ‘fall out’ of the benevolent Australia into another one which is harsh, unforgiving and at times even cruel. Why is this happening?

Resources

The Pacific Motorway on Australia’s east coast sweeps through great swathes of plantation and pasture as it links some of the country’s major ports, including the largest coal port in the world. A staggering tonnage of raw materials and primary produce leaves these shores, while farm-size docks fill with arriving foreign manufactures.

Yet, in one of the most populous parts of the country, it’s striking how much dormant productive capacity there is. Some land is national park, but there is also unused public land, unproductive hobby farming, land held by speculators for cashing in later, and state forest waiting to be harvested. Land that was actively cared for by occupying humans for millennia is now left to its own devices when it offers no immediate prospect of personal enrichment.

But while no one formally lives on this land, it isn’t necessarily unoccupied. It performs a secondary service as concealment for a swelling tide of unhoused people. They shelter in cars, vans, and tents, or in makeshift dwellings fashioned from tarps, plastic, and other recycled materials. We don’t know precisely how many there are but analysts estimate tens of thousands[13].

We might imagine the unhoused are drug addicts or vagabonds. But in fact some are elderly, there are single mothers with kids and even whole working families, sometimes on surprisingly high incomes[14], as well as those who recently escaped fire, flood or trouble at home. These are not ‘lifestyle choices’. These are desperate measures for want of viable alternatives. Like some of its land, modern Australia has abandoned some of its people.

If Australia’s population was distributed equally across the entire continent, you would be lucky to see another person with the naked eye from where you stand. That’s how big the country is, or, if you prefer, how few people inhabit it. There are inhospitable deserts, mountains and flood plains, of course, but there’s so much space, we could easily find room in the habitable half for everyone. Nevertheless, we don’t.

Further investigation reveals there’s a lot going on out there, but housing the homeless isn’t anywhere on the list.

Production

Although it contributes only 2.4% to GDP and 2.5% to employment[15], Australian agriculture uses half our land and a quarter of our water. Unlike many countries, Australia grows much more than it needs, exporting around 70% of agricultural production. In fact, we throw away around 5 million tonnes of edible food each year[16]. Mountains of fruit and vegetables, rejected by the supermarkets for minor blemishes, are ploughed under[17]. And overeating is now one of the biggest contributors to degenerative illness and medical expenditure[18].

Like shelter, however, food seems to be mysteriously scarce for some people. During peak Covid, it was discovered that at least one in six Australians regularly didn’t eat for a day or longer[19]. And that situation continues to deteriorate[20]. Millions of households depend to some extent on assistance from food charities, including well over a million kids and many people in paid work. It would be more, except that some would rather go without than ask for help[21].

The perplexing disparity in shelter and food also applies to energy. One in four Australian households now struggles to pay energy bills[22]. But Australia is one of the largest coal and gas producers. It’s also well-equipped to develop wind and solar power, having an abundance of both raw materials, plus much of what is needed for harvesting and distribution.

These statistics leave affluent Australians shaking their heads. Surely the numbers can’t be right. How can a sparsely populated major food producer and energy juggernaut leave thousands without shelter, millions with insufficient food, and a quarter of its population short of power? Where does that fit in our proud Australian story?

Industry groups insist it’s a supply problem. According to them, we need to build extra McMansions on city outskirts, clear more native habitat for cash crops and extract fossil fuels wherever they can be found. If you believe that, as George Galloway likes to say, I’ve got a bridge I can sell you. But how else can we explain the scarcity experienced by so many Australians?

Trade

Our Australian story tells us we’re rich because other countries buy our exports. It seems strange then that while we export more than ever millions of us are worse off. But who is the ‘we’ in this story?

Suppose a multinational company buys a large area of Australian farmland, obtains a right to extract scarce water, drenches the land in fertilisers and pesticides, harvests a crop of cotton, and sells that cotton on international markets. Few Australians are going to become rich from this. Some may be shareholders in the farming enterprise, or one of the partner companies supplying the machinery, chemicals, and consultancy services. But most shareholders are probably citizens of other countries, and even those in Australia have no obligation to spend the proceeds here.

It used to be that mining and agricultural ventures would employ many thousands of locals who would in turn support local businesses. And the tax and royalties those companies paid would be allocated to public services. But that era is long gone.

These processes are now heavily automated. Giant machines with lone operators dig and haul hundreds of tonnes of ore at a time and others plough, plant, irrigate and harvest thousands of acres in a day. And these companies are now adept at evading tax[23], sometimes assisted by the same consultants paid to advise governments[24].

Australia’s royalty system is feeble compared to most other countries[25]. And any proceeds are unlikely to find their way back to the source[26]. But what will likely remain[27] are the mining scars, tailings dams, depleted soils, poisoned rivers, social problems and increased incidence of illness[28] in the formerly cohesive communities[29] upended by the ‘gold rush’ effect and shattered once it’s over. If that isn't bad enough, Australia pays more in subsidies on fossil fuels than it earns in royalties[30].

Michael Parenti observed there are very few poor countries. Nearly all countries are rich in resources of some kind. What makes the difference is how those resources are governed. If they're extracted by foreign entities in collusion with corrupt local elites, the majority ends up poor. In Australia today, despite continuing demand for our resources, conditions for the majority are deteriorating and for the worst off are no better than in the world’s poorest places[31].

What happened to ‘the lucky country’? And what about our famous ‘egalitarianism’?

A Day at the Beach

Just north of the headland which overlooks the mouth of the Nambucca River, almost at the midpoint of the Pacific Motorway, is the arc of Shelly Beach. The headland and its offshore rocks create a protective barrier from wind and waves. There’s good swimming year-round.

From your beach towel in the sun, you can watch little children playing in the shallows while their mothers chat. Elderly swimmers relax in the calmer water behind the sandbar. Younger ones catch waves further out.

On a busy day you’ll see every kind of person here. The darker skins of local Gumbaynggirr mob mix with pale city dwellers on holiday and travellers from overseas. Fishermen back their boats in from the ramp. Van lifers park overlooking the beach. This recreation is available even to unhoused people, as long as they have transport.

Successive generations of kids in colder climes viewed scenes like this on Australian TV shows and dreamed of one day moving here. And many did. The warm sun, the fresh breeze, the crystal waters of the Pacific, and the happy smiles on people of all colours, shapes and sizes conspire to convince you there really isn’t much difference between us, nor much to get upset about.

For many, this is the Australia that’s worth preserving. But history tells us we shouldn’t take it for granted.

Equality

Australia once advertised itself as a ‘workers’ paradise’, where pay and conditions for ordinary people were the envy of the world. And the notion that our larrikin forebears cast off the chains of class to create a society of equals still infuses our story. But in modern Australia, as in Orwell’s Animal Farm, if we’re all equal, then some are “more equal than others”.

In fact, the ‘workers’ paradise’ occupies a brief window in our history. It opened when ordinary Australians became preeminently valuable as 'workers' and 'consumers'. But it shut again when public and private investment in domestic productivity was diverted into popup parties in foreign trade and real estate.

Business rhetoric is still strong on jobs for ‘workers’ and value for ‘consumers’. But after sitting in enough conference rooms with senior execs, it's obvious these are no longer strong determinants of profits for their shareholders or bonuses for themselves. The 2023 Qantas fiasco[32] was unusual only in having come to light.

Employees and customers feature in corporate public relations because they matter to the public. As Joseph Goebbels recognised, a lie repeated often enough becomes accepted fact[33]. Behind the facade of social responsibility, corporations offshore and automate jobs, absorb competitors, coopt regulators, and buy political influence.

The ‘winners’ in this version of the story naturally prefer to explain their success with traditional virtues like hard work or business acumen; “wealth for toil” as our national anthem proclaims. Even plain old luck is a popular protagonist. But the bitter truth is that much of it derives from the very conditions which pushed the ‘losers’ into poverty. Those with property portfolios, including many of our parliamentarians, have done well out of the housing ‘shortage’. And those with shares in the ASX, either directly or via bulging super funds, are beneficiaries of frozen wages and price gouging across most sectors, including food and energy.

Although ‘mateship’ remains a central motif in our story, Australia now ranks second only to the US for individualism[34]. And while we still like to talk up the presumed virtues of hard work, anyone who attends a ‘wealth’ seminar, as millions of Australians have, is likely to hear that the work which makes us rich is the work performed by others, as we harvest their surplus in rents, profits and capital gains. And the champions of this system offer a menu of reasons to decline sympathy for the ‘losers’. Call them ‘lazy’, ‘entitled’ or ‘financially illiterate’. Anyway they’re not 'our' problem.

Democracy

One commodity in genuinely short supply in contemporary Australia is integrity in public office. Many Australians recognise this. But most aren’t too worried because they believe they live in a ‘democracy’, an impression reinforced by voting every few years. And although millions spend whole lives in menial servitude just to secure food, shelter and care, the 'democracy' in our story has become synonymous with ‘freedom’, ‘choice’ and ‘human rights’. At any moment the government may send troops to another country to ‘defend’ it.

Anyone with a more active interest, like the people spreading these fallacies, knows that real democracy depends on much more than voting. Politicians should work for their constituents, not private interests, so constraining lobbyists and donors is essential. Constituents need to know what’s going on, which depends on muscular journalism delivered via independent media. And the public service must be insulated from political interference.

'Relaxed and comfortable' Australia allowed these safeguards to atrophy. It's as if we fell asleep on the beach and woke up with our valuables missing. And while we slept, our skies were darkened by acrimony. Malicious voices divided us into ‘lifters’ and ‘leaners’. Benevolence and compassion were replaced in our national aspirations with tax cuts and a budget surplus.

The Predicament

We have reached a stage where we retain ideals of democracy but lack the means to apply them. What’s left is a gameshow. Teams of tribally themed performance artists vie for titles which are largely symbolic, while the mechanisms of practical governance are directed by consultants and political appointees in the interests of the gameshow’s private sponsors. We could ponder how much was coincidental or opportunistic and how much premeditated. But it hardly matters.

Those who look beyond the misleading headline numbers of GDP, inflation and employment to the fine print of economic performance discover that Australia is becoming a poor country in a rich country’s hand-me-downs[35]. Australia’s bounty has been leaving our shores by the shipload for a smattering of jobs and royalties. And Australians have allowed this to happen because so many have seen their personal ‘wealth’ increase, with many new and young Australians hoping to emulate them. But in fact these two phenomena are largely unrelated.

The ‘wealth’ accrued by ordinary Australians is mostly a result of asset price inflation. It depended not on productivity, but on artificial scarcity. What already existed simply became more valuable, enriching the ‘haves’ to the detriment of the ‘have nots’. It was delivered neither by the export boom, nor by a flourishing domestic economy, but by skewed government policy. And the assets in question are predominantly the houses in which Australians live.

That ‘wealth’ was borrowed from the future, the diminished, more difficult one our children and grandchildren must now face. And to make matters worse, while mesmerised by this fool's gold, we allowed the industry which built our true prosperity to dissipate.

What was convenient for a previous generation of politicians is a crisis for the current one. If house prices continue to rise faster than incomes, which are increasingly linked to low wage jobs in the service sectors, eventually there will be too few native-born Australians capable of buying property at all. Add to that an aging population which means fewer workers and more retirees requiring care and you have a recipe for sleepless nights in Canberra. Without intervention, the illusion of prosperity could be punctured even for property owners.

The Plan

In 2022, the newly elected Labor government devised a plan. First some funds would be set aside for speculative investment, with future yields ostensibly committed to affordable housing. But who knows how long that might take, or what other priorities might lay claim to them. And given the government’s track record with speculative investment, it was almost guaranteed to fail, ensuring that increased housing availability wouldn’t lower property prices anytime soon.

After their devastating election defeat in 2019, Labor lost courage for ending the tax loopholes which contributed to the housing ‘shortage’. But they also resigned themselves to ignoring other housing solutions. And this pattern of contriving to make a bad problem worse is evident at local and state government levels too. As Saul Eslake has suggested, as long as homeowners outnumber buyers, many of whom are already owners, and the spread of hardship and homelessness doesn’t bother them too much, expanding the crisis will garner more votes than resolving it, and our de facto housing policy will be The Hunger Games. Although office holders must look like they’re doing something, no one is game to burst the bubble. But housing scarcity alone wouldn’t keep it inflated. Hence the second part of the plan.

By accelerating immigration, the government increased demand, maintaining heat in the market, propping up the powerful construction industry and collecting a gratuitous boost to GDP, handily disguising the per capita recession which was the true condition of the economy. This helped to placate the business lobby, who crave a ‘big Australia’, replete with avid ‘consumers‘ and eager and pliable ‘workers’. It also contributed to the immiserating unemployment they had called for in order to quell homegrown demands for better wages and conditions[36]. And well-heeled Australians could be proud of our multiculturalism while enjoying the continuance of cheap labour in the service sectors.

Inevitably there is a price to pay. And it's paid by the millions of Australian citizens foregoing shelter, food and energy. A different story is entirely possible. We could resume building an Australia where everyone has enough. But the kind of leader posterity will praise now faces the herculean task of staring down the most powerful forces in the country while summoning courage and compassion from a public conditioned to think they live in a Monopoly game. That kind of leader is thin on the ground. But there’s another kind slouching toward Canberra.

Terror Australis

The neoliberal story is spoken most candidly in boardrooms and financial circles, while in public it appears in the sanitised euphemisms of 'econobabble'. But it also registers in damaged lives and grim statistics. And these will soon be too big to ignore.

Looking toward the US, as we often do, we can see the kind of solution which sometimes proves irresistible to legislators in a quandary. A constituency groomed for docility with false prosperity in a competitive culture is unlikely to accept any loss of privilege for the sake of the less advantaged. But, when frightened by instability, that same constituency can be steered with ‘tough on crime’ rhetoric towards greater public investment in a militarised police state.

In an economy that’s become sclerotic, the alternative to constructive public investment isn’t productive private enterprise, it’s crime and its official partner, punishment. As the US demonstrates, ‘correctional services’ can perform triple duty as a restriction on the right to vote[37], a growth industry for private operators[38] and a source of forced labour for other sectors[39] such as the ‘defence industries’ which also do good business in times of widespread fear. And this augurs well for the kind of increasingly authoritarian regime which will be needed to protect the status quo for a shrinking constituency in a deteriorating global environment.

Without a truly new story for all we will most likely witness a violent defence of the old one for a few. Umair Haque calls this “the rationing of personhood”.

Back to the Beach

Down at Shelly Beach this discouraging vision seems remote. Standing beside another person in a swimsuit, as you look together at the shimmering vista, it’s hard to tell what history, assets, or political persuasions he may have.

More than any other cherished symbol in the mythopoesis of modern Australia, including the sporting contest, the horserace and the backyard barbecue, more even than such foundational allegories as the pioneer saga and the landings at Gallipoli, the beach and its subculture seem to genuinely bring inhabitants of the island continent together. Here we most readily set aside the trappings of race, class, wealth and status. But beyond the beach, this spirit is in jeopardy.

Our democracy is little more than theatre. Our economy ails under the weight of rent seekers and extractive multinationals. And the unfinished project of independence languishes in the wrecker’s yard of national ambitions beside Aboriginal reconciliation.

Our Australian story was always problematic. It denied the dispossession and attempted genocide of the world’s most enduring cultures. It overlooked the fierce struggles of generations of ordinary Australians to wrest a fair go from our self-appointed ruling class. And it failed to ward off fresh invasion by a rapacious ideology which would install personal enrichment as our national religion. It did, however, preserve a few seeds of revolutionary consciousness.

Since the Keating government, new citizens pledge commitment “to Australia and its people“. But while we wait for those seeds to germinate, our parliamentarians, heads of state, and armed forces personnel still swear allegiance to the British Crown. And in practice, neither pledge is well demonstrated in the conduct of Australian leadership.

The great powers in the western world today are the corporations, who have recolonised us with support from public sector careerists and a new gimcrack ‘squattocracy’. The people who for much of human existence were the only human inhabitants of this continent are condemned to further ignominy. And joining them is a growing underclass of the newly discarded. Far from securing our future, we are in the midst of a great leap backwards.

Noam Chomsky recently said this is not the time for telling truth to power. The powerful already know the truth, at least in the limited sense of what’s causing the damage. It’s everyone else who needs to hear it, because we’ve been lied to for so long by the powerful. There’s a lot more of us and if we ever realise how much common cause we have there’ll be no stopping us from claiming back what is truly valuable.

The stories of how we might do that are the ones I most want to tell. But first there are further stones to turn in our understanding of the present predicament. In the next essay I will consider the effects of one of our biggest uninspected presumptions.

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[6] Varoufakis, Y. (2023), Technofeudalism, UK, Bodley Head.

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[8] Kull, M. and Moodie, J. (2021), Public service delivery in the Nordic Region: An exercise in collaborative governance, Nordregio Policy Brief 2021:2.

[9] Weir, P. (Director). (1998). The Truman Show [Film]. Paramount Pictures.

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[12] Orwell, G. (149), 1984, UK, Seker & Warburg.

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[25] Chang, C. (2019), “Tax and royalty systems for Australia’s gas and oil industries need reform, experts argue”, news.com.au, Nov 22.

[26] Beavan, K. and Morris, N. (2022), “Coal exports, royalties booming, but communities say reinvestment falls short”, abc.net.au, Jun 1.

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[29] Sincovich, Alanna & Gregory, Tess & Wilson, Ashleigh & Brinkman, Sally. (2018). The social impacts of mining on local communities in Australia. Rural Society. 27. 1-17. 10.1080/10371656.2018.1443725.

[30] Foote, C. (2021), A Fair Share? Royalties in Australia, Michael West Media.

[31] McGuire, A. (2021), “‘Life and death’: new report shows dire conditions for remote Indigenous communities”, The Sydney Morning Herald, Jan 25.

[32] Addis, J. (2023), “Lessons from the ethical collapse of Qantas”, Intelligent Investor, Sep 8.

[33] Stafford, T. (2016), “How liars create the ‘illusion of truth’”, BBC Future, Oct 27.

[34] Hofstede Insights (2023), Individualistic Countries 2023, worldpopulationreview.com.

[35] Davidson, P; Bradbury, B; and Wong, M (2023), Poverty in Australia 2023: Who is affected, Poverty and Inequality Partnership Report no. 20. Australian Council of Social Service and UNSW Sydney.

[36] Grant-Geary, B. (2023), “Billionaire blasts ‘lazy tradies’ and calls for 275k Aussies to lose jobs”, yahoo! Finance, Sep 13.

[37] Gross, D. A. (2020), “Why Shouldn’t Prisoners Be Voters?”, The New Yorker, Feb 27.

[38] Wright, L. B. (2018), “The American Prison System: It’s Just Business”, Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law, Dec 9.

[39] ACLU and GHRC (2023), Captive Labor: Exploitation of Incarcerated Workers, University of Chicago.