The Decadent Society
Updated: Sep 20, 2020
Last weekend I described Australia as a land of lotus eaters.
A bit tough I thought, but perhaps helping a few key Australians to see more clearly the weakness of our potentially great nation.
Today I find Greg Sheridan reviewing a book by an American who tackles a similar subject on a western nation basis. ‘The US and the West are caught in the slowly asphyxiating grip of a decadence they do not understand, leaving us with a paralyzed dystopia that is slowly getting worse’.
The author is one Ross Douthat, his latest book, The Decadent Society.
If you only have time to read one newspaper article this weekend, this is the one I rate highest.
My favourite economic writer these days is Adam Creighton.
Here is the first few paras from his latest offering: ‘Thirty years ago Bob Hawke hoped Australia would grow out of simply being the “Lucky Country”: 'Australia must become the clever country, he said. Surveying the scene right now, it seems we’ve become the stupid country."
‘Surveying the scene right now, it seems we’ve become the stupid country. Most of our celebrated growth since has been via importing people.
‘A quarter of the nation is in a vicious, extreme lockdown, among the longest in the world, causing enormous economic and social damage that dwarfs the threat posed. Most of our states’ borders are closed, potentially illegally, and the High Court seems not to care.’
‘The federal government is buying French submarines, which aren’t even nuclear-powered and won’t arrive until the 2050s, at an astronomical cost of more than $100bn.’
Read on here. More Aussie decadence will be revealed.
The Australian’s great guru, Paul Kelly addresses the Morrison government’s proposal to build a government funded gas fired electricity plant if private enterprise fails to come to the party. Laura Tingle is less generous, but Morrison’s bold proposal cannot be ignored. At last we have a sensible way forward with what might break the government’s alleged overreliance with coal and Labor/Green’s excessive push for wind and solar electricity.
All in all, one of the year’s most interesting set of newspaper articles.