In the Financial Post we find Harper era cabinet creature Joe Oliver expounding on the future of the economy - and the evils of "progressivism".
I'll give you a minute or two to read it ...
Before we examine it more closely:
You're probably feeling like you lost a few IQ points after reading that.
He starts off with a bang - essentially asserting that there is a bunch of "isms" that constitute the "vast left wing conspiracy":
That would be possibly one of the most incoherent paragraphs I've ever read, but just wait, Oliver goes further, and no, he doesn't become more coherent.
More seriously, what is "wokeism"? Well - basically it's the conspiracy theory that the right wing has dreamed up to attack anyone who believes in equality, non-discrimination, and social justice. "Oh, you're just being 'woke'". Frankly, I don't see anything wrong with that - but apparently Oliver does.
As for "Climate Alarmism", I'd like for Mr. Oliver to recall what happened in BC in 2021 - record breaking heat waves followed by multiple atmospheric river events causing flooding. That wasn't "a coincidence", that was climate change coming up and kicking us collectively in the backside.
The concept of "Stakeholder Capitalism" is more subtle, but basically ends up boiling down to people demanding that businesses act in a responsible manner towards the people affected by their activities. Capitalism has always been terrible for this, but in the 19th century, the actual capitalists lived close to, or among, the communities where their businesses operated. Accountability was always "at hand" - today, not so much. Consider that the UCP government in Alberta is all in favour of letting Australian mining magnates strip mine the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains, even though that would almost certainly pollute the headwaters of the river basins that the residents of the prairies depend on. Where's the accountability when the business is owned by interests on another continent?
Alex Epstein? Who is that? Oh - an American climate change denier and proponent of expanding fossil fuel production. Yeah - not exactly an objective source of expertise on the subject of climate science - his academic background is philosophy, and most definitely not in the relevant sciences.
Oliver then goes on to argue that nuclear energy is "clean" (it's not - it just produces radioactive waste we have trouble storing), and that somehow opposition to nuclear energy makes people somehow culpable for the current horrors unfolding in Ukraine, and that Putin is trying to provoke in the rest of Europe. No, Mr. Oliver, the person that you hold responsible for that is currently residing in the Kremlin in Moscow. Activists are not the problem here.
Then, in a fit of blaming the woes of the world on progressives, he turns everything that isn't "mom and apple pie" enough for him into "virtue signalling":
There's an interesting sleight of hand here - he quietly twists from advocacy for things that would in one way or another improve the overall state of the world's energy and pollution crisis to those with great wealth - as if the two are one in the same group of people. Of course, that isn't the case. Yes, there are those who are very wealthy on both sides of the current arguments, but it is incorrect to assert the equivalence that Oliver is pushing here.
The days when you could claim that capitalism "lifts people out of poverty" passed when big business started to engage in wage suppression, and refusing to pay workers a wage they could actually afford to live on. Today's capitalism is predatory, and willingly shoving many people into positions of poverty in the midst of great wealth. Holding capitalists accountable to social goals is badly needed to bring to heel the monster let loose in the 1980s when someone said "Greed is Good". It isn't, and the consequences of it are becoming increasingly unmistakable.
The "invisible hand" of the free market is clearly not adequate to restraining the worst excesses of greed. Mr. Oliver's desire to maintain the status quo while the world slides into poverty, chaos, and potentially unliveable climate conditions so that a few can benefit speaks to an intellectual and moral bankruptcy on his part.
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