The EFB is a symptom of the Left's Crisis

http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominionpost/4293298a6483.html

They say it better than I can.

Interested in the fact that the Standard completely ignored this article today.

I saw acouple of interesting posts today on kiwiblog:

tom hunter Says: November 30th, 2007 at 12:58 pm
Since we’re mentioning Schumpter you all might be interested in this review of a recent biography of the man - Prophet of Innovation: Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction:
http://www.powells.com/review/2007_07_12
With regards to his views on democracy the following quote is probably appropriate:
He was not a democrat by instinct or by reflection. He had little confidence in the ability of the average citizen to vote intelligently, or even in his own long-run interest. His book asks if democratic socialism is possible. The conclusion is that perhaps it is possible in principle, but almost surely not in practice. Democratic capitalism is what we have, but democratic resentment and demo- cratic ignorance tend to work against capitalist success, either by accepting socialism or by fostering over-regulation.
For these reasons, Schumpeter could not conceive that a permanent mixed economy was a viable proposition. He called it “capitalism in an oxygen tent.” For him, capitalism is the civilization of a few family fortunes and broad inequality. Democracy, he thought, must turn out to be “laboristic,” and therefore inimical to capitalist success. This conclusion was a major error, as McCraw says. It has been soundly contradicted empirically by the sixty years and counting since World War II. Nor was this a mere slip of judgment. Schumpeter’s mistake was rooted in his political and social attitudes and even, to some extent, in his characterization of entrepreneurship and the dynamics of capitalism.

This ties in with some of the ideas I have been workign on about acrisis in 'the left:

Lee C Says: November 30th, 2007 at 10:34 am
I think there is a crisis in the left, which is that are refusing to accept that their drift rightwards no longer quaiifes them as ‘left’ in the old fashioned way it was used. This results in many people occupying a kind of moral high-ground that comes with beigng ‘left-wing’ (ie anti right-wing’) but they fail to acept that they are now closer to the right wing in their attitudes and opnions than they would wish to accept.The Third Way has a dodgy provenance as an economic theory, it has equally been used by Mussolini, Peron Balir and Clark, while the tension between trying to balance capitalism and forward thinking ’socialist’ policies has resulted in a harder right wing attitude towards ploicy-making - by this I mean an attitude of ‘authority is best, and if you don;t like it, then tough luck’. This is apparent in the way the EFB has been formulated and promoted as a ‘we know best’ policy, regardless of how people may feel democratically that they have a right to oppose it. Another example of this is the way that Unions are now handf-in-glove with the oligarchy in New Zealand, and less attentive to workers’ rights than they are to the ‘end justifies the means ‘ attitudes of the legislators. It results in less of the old-fashioned ‘left’ attitudes of debate and vote and more of the old rights attitude of ‘do as we say’.

I also raised the question with The Standard:
Lee C
Nov 30th, 2007 at 9:08 am
ps on reflection R0b is it not possible for the philosophy of ‘Tyranny of the Majority’ to be hi-jacked by an unscrupulous minority as a justification for passing laws that are undemocratic? (In the public good, as it were?)In the same way that ‘Third Way Politics’ can als end up with a dichotomous relationship between ‘laissez-faire capitalism’ and ’socialism’ which inevitably leads to more restrictive law-making by a social-democratic government as a means to try and redress the tension?Would the EFB rank as such an example?