Did You Ever Get That Feeling?
Navigating the Minefield of Short-Termism
Its disappearance went largely unnoticed. There was no post mortem, no eulogy, no deep sighs for what had been lost. Posterity slipped from our consciousness as we ushered in the neoliberal era 40 years ago. Populations would now be administered, not led. Grand vision was a quaint artifact of generations past. Besides, the invisible hand of the marketplace would see to all our needs today, tomorrow, forever. Politicians grew smaller and smaller until they shrunk to fit the mold of technocracy. Like sheep being dipped we were plunged into a world of supply-side economics in which lower taxation and deregulation would deliver manna from heaven. We focused on skinning the economy, and society, right to the bone. Everything would be maximized, nothing would be wasted, not even the offal. We were surrendered to a world of short-termism. We elected governments of technocrats - grey suits stuffed with wet cardboard - whose horizons were measured in electoral cycles. They would do what they
Today's Nat Post has one of those 'Poor little Alberta' epistles.
ReplyDeleteIt ends with a self-own, boom/bust delusional and oblivious bit:
“No one in Alberta cared much about slagging Ottawa, because we were having a big party.”
https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/alienation-is-fuelling-a-new-bigger-alberta-agenda-we-wasted-the-last-20-years
I came across that headline the other day but decided it probably wasn't worth my time. It wasn't. It's the now standard Alberta drivel. Their grief and woes are all the work of "the other" - i.e. Ottawa.
DeleteOttawa can't fix what Albertans broke. They chose not to adopt Peter Lougheed's prescription for petro-prosperity in favour of the "pigs at the trough" policy under Klein and all of his successors. If they're looking for their 20 lost years, there it is.
From the energy giants' perspective it's a bit like that Gordon Lightfoot song, "That's what you get for loving me." It's that line, "Everything you had is gone, as you can see. That's what you get for loving me."
What are they left with? About 8,000 abandoned oil wells and those magnificent bitumen tailing ponds visible to the naked eye from space. There's your 20 lost years. A classic 'boom and bust' economy that has sucked the life out of the province.
Now they're snapping and snarling like a pit bull. Only it's a dog with no teeth, none.
What are they going to do, leave? And go where? They keep their fantasy alive by assuming British Columbia would throw in with them. Why? Perhaps they imagine that the US would be a better suitor because it needs a supersized Love Canal. Who cares? Not I.