Old Poverty vs. New Poverty

There is a popular distinction between Old Money and New Money.

Old Money is what everyone is familiar with. It’s what you have when you’re a prince or an aristocrat. It’s when you grow up learning how to manage an estate, rather than learning skills to trade for a wage. Old Money is when you have a pedigree. Most of your ancestors did well and most of your family are doing well. There are monuments/parks/buildings/roads named after your relations.

New Money is what you have when your parents escaped from the working class. Maybe one started a business and got rich, maybe one became a sports star, maybe one won the lottery. Maybe your parents are old enough that they could escape the working class by studying and working hard. Probably the rest of your family is poor, and you might have a lot of criminal cousins.

A behavioural difference is apparent. New Money is much flashier and ostentatious than Old Money. This is a function of New Money’s underlying insecurity – the inescapable suspicion that they achieved their position through luck, and that it won’t last. Being insecure, New Money is more likely to bully. It lacks grace, dignity, gravitas and the other qualities associated with good breeding.

Old Money is secure. Old Money knows that if it fucks up, some uncle or great-aunt will be there to provide a cushy job for a quick rebound. Even in cases where help from close relatives isn’t enough, it can usually rely on the reputation of the family name to seal a good deal. And if that doesn’t work, Old Money can always rely on the qualities of their breeding to see them through.

When the economy expands, the central struggle is Old Money vs. New Money. This occurs when the descending aristocracy, on the way down, meets the ascending merchantry. This is the same as what George Orwell called the High vs. the Middle. It’s a natural historical division that most people know about.

When the economy contracts, however, you have Old Poverty vs. New Poverty.

For example, I’m Old Poverty. I’m used to being poor. I was raised by a single mother on welfare, and although my grandparents were great people they were always broke. These grandparents brought me up on stories about the Great Depression, and how they learned to “make do”. Many of the stories began with “we didn’t have a…”

Old Poverty makes it easy to live on a Student Allowance or other benefit, as it usually isn’t much less money than you grew up on anyway. You naturally know how to make do when you’ve been raised by grandparents who were also poor. Poverty doesn’t cause as much anxiety when it’s the natural state, so is not resented as much. Actually having money, on the other hand, is seen as a bonus and is not taken for granted.

In coming years, we will see a lot more of a phenomenon that has hitherto been rare: New Poverty. This has never previously existed in any large number because the economy has kept expanding. But in coming decades, as we hit the limits of growth, we will have economic contractions.

New Poverty is when your parents were able to buy a house and raise a family on their wages – and you can’t. It’s when your parents keep asking you when you’re going to give them grandchildren, and you have to keep explaining that the maths doesn’t add up. It’s when you hit 40 and still haven’t paid off your student loan. It’s when you’re constantly asking yourself how things turned out so bad.

New Poverty is different to someone born into money who crashes out through their own bad decisions. New Poverty is when you do everything (or almost everything) right and still end up renting. You study hard, you don’t get a criminal record, you don’t do Class As, and you still find yourself making $60,000 a year and needing a $900,000 mortgage.

It remains to be seen how Western society deals with the phenomenon of widespread New Poverty.

One of the features of New Poverty is that it’s likely to lead to a massive increase in dissent. Not having expected to become poor, many of those falling from the middle class into New Poverty will become resentful about their miserable station. Already there is a widespread incel movement in the West comprised of men who demand the very best.

In the past, the coming of New Poverty portended revolution. Old Poverty can handle being poor, but New Poverty tends to become bitter. So in times when middle-class or upper-middle-class people are cast down into the working class, we can expect them to fight to get back to their original position. Here it’s worth recalling that many revolutionaries started out in the minor aristocracy.

If we don’t get revolution, we might get what Aldous Huxley predicted – a world where everyone is zombified by pharmaceuticals. Maybe the vast masses will be paralysed by a matrix of screen propaganda, prescription pills and long working hours, lacking the energy to revolt against the technologically-empowered ruling class.

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A System That We Can All Be Proud Of

In a fiery exchange between a mainstream media lackey and CounterSpin Media host Kelvyn Alp, Alp summarised the desire of the Wellington protesters and the freedom movement more generally: a system that we can all be proud of. In the absence of any better suggestion, this essay outlines what such a system might look like.

There is one big problem with the current New Zealand system: the vast majority of the benefits from all the work performed go to a very small number of people. Under our current economic arrangement, the benefits of labour don’t go to the labourer but to the owner of the land upon which the labour was performed. This is called capitalism, and if you don’t like it you’re responsible for tens of millions of deaths by starvation in Russia and China.

It’s an ugly system. It’s not much different to medieval feudalism, in which the vast majority of people were serfs beholden to a lord. The serfs worked all day, and then the lord came in and took their productivity away for his own purposes, leaving the serfs with barely enough to get through to the next tax day (if they were lucky).

Being a New Zealander is a constant humiliation.

Not only must one deal with the fact that one’s wages hardly go anywhere, but one must also deal with the pettiness of average New Zealanders. This pettiness follows from being a small, isolated country infested with the slave morality of Christianity. There’s nothing we love more than ripping our neighbours down once they make something of themselves. Anyone with any self-esteem has to be destroyed.

Nothing about the way our system is run engenders pride. We have to aim higher.

A system that we can all be proud of would entail change from the ground up. It would require a total paradigm shift from a mentality of profit before all, to a mentality of alleviating the suffering of the New Zealand nation. It would require raising solidarity between the various communities of New Zealand, rather than setting them against each other.

The first step in bringing this about is to restore basic dignity to the average worker by making it possible for them to get ahead.

As of right now, the average New Zealand worker has no chance of ever owning their own home. Wages are so low in comparison to house prices and rents that the average house now costs over 25,000 hours of labour at the average wage. This contrasts rudely with the average house price in 1992: 7,000 hours of labour at the average wage. Not only does the average worker have trouble buying a house, they have trouble saving at all.

It’s impossible for the average worker to be proud of a system that exploits them to such an extent. It’s like asking a plantation slave to be proud of the plantation system. Our economy must be completely redesigned, so that it once again becomes possible for the average worker to buy a house and raise a family on their wage.

To this end, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand ought to be given an entirely new remit: to alleviate the suffering of the New Zealand people. This new remit would replace the existing focus on inflation and unemployment. The problem with this existing focus is that it inclines the Reserve Bank to drop interest rates to the floor for the sake of encouraging borrowing (and thereby spending), but these low interest rates just lead to ballooning house prices.

Also to this end, the mass importation of cheap labour must stop immediately. There is nothing that has lowered the standard of living of the average Kiwi worker more than having been forced to compete with imported cheap labour. Increasing the supply of cheap labour inevitably lowers the price of that labour, and New Zealand’s historical addiction to it is one of the prime reasons why our wages are in the toilet. We have to go clean.

A final step is that tax incentives must be used to attract investment in productive capital. A land tax must be introduced to shift investment from land banking to business. New Zealand’s productivity is infamously low, the result of many things, but foremost among them is the lack of capital investment. Because New Zealand employers have historically always been able to import cheap labour, they have not been incentivised to invest in productive capital.

None of these suggestions require jingoism, supremacy or xenophobia. New Zealand doesn’t need to denigrate other nations in order to create a system that we can all be proud of. But we have to give our own people a fair deal. And this starts with giving the everyday Kiwi a fair standard of living for full-time work. That a full-time worker can afford a decent house that they can raise a family in could be the basis of a system that we could all be proud of.

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Learnings From The Truckers’ Convoy And Parliament Lawn Protests

Now that the Police have broken up the freedom protest in Wellington, it’s time to look back on the past month and determine what can be learned from the experience. In the opinion of this author, four important lessons are immediately evident.

1. Establish a clear leadership structure.

The freedom movement needs to have established leaders who can be relied upon to give accurate information to supporters about the state of affairs. The February convoys were beset by misinformation and rumour-mongering, some of it deliberately stirred up by Establishment lackeys, mainstream media hacks and other tools of authoritarianism.

Some detachments of the convoys were sent down wrong routes by trolls pretending to be organisers, and a grifter pretending to be part of the movement was able to trick people into making donations into his personal bank account. A clear leadership structure needs to be established to avoid these dangers. The masses must be told who these leaders are so that they know not to trust rumours being spread by others.

These national leaders must be unifying figures who have broad support among alternative thinkers. This means no Brian Tamakis or Derek Taits. A person like Outdoors Party Leader Sue Grey would be ideal. This person would have to be responsible for delegating responsibilities to other members of the leadership structure, and would therefore have to be available full time.

A goal might be to find a trusted representative from each leg of the route to stay in touch with the national leadership, as well as the Logistics Committee and Media and Public Relations Committee (see below). The ultimate goal would be a structure that protected the movement from false rumours, outside agitators, mainstream media lies and the machinations of Establishment politicians.

2. Establish a Logistics Committee.

At one point, rumour had it that the viability of the Parliament lawn campsite hinged on whether the protest organisers could arrange Portaloos for the protesters. This is an example of the logistical considerations that protest organisers need to consider. Next time, a Logistics Committee needs to take care of any issues relating to providing the basic needs of thousands of people.

As Kelvyn Alp mentioned on Counterspin the other night, the convoy participants were met along the way by people handing out bread and other food. A large number of people suddenly descending on a city will inevitably require large amounts of food and drink. A Logistics Committee is needed to help deal to this suddenly increased demand for basic needs. Arranging shelter is also vital work.

Logistics also includes the provision of a public address system. The PA system for the speakers outside Parliament was provided by a church group, which soon refused to let anyone else speak except for preachers. The freedom movement must try to supply everything needed for its purposes without relying on outsiders who may have other motives.

3. Establish a Media and Public Relations Committee.

The mainstream media’s coverage of the protests was little more than an effort to smear the protesters as white supremacists. All throughout, the mainsteam media spread rumours of neo-Nazi involvement, sexual assaults in the camp and violence against bystanders. The mainstream media is an arm of the control system and the enemy of the New Zealand people, and they need to be considered as such. Therefore, they must be dealt with intelligently.

To this end, the freedom movement needs a Media and Public Relations Committee to deal with media interactions.

One important part of this is to provide press releases to scoop.co.nz and to other journalistic sources. This will get the true message out about the motivations, intentions and aspirations of the movement and will pre-empt the authorities and the mainstream media from smearing us as racists and white supremacists. We must speak for ourselves so that our enemies are prevented from doing so.

These press releases must serve the imperative to win the propaganda war. Winning this war also involves getting the message out through channels other than the mainstream media, who will twist and spin things to serve their masters in the Establishment. Close liasons with alternative media must be maintained. Freedom movement leaders must get themselves interviewed by, and get their opinion pieces published by, the alternative media.

4. Keep the Christians and other fanatics out.

VJM Publishing has long made the argument that the freedom movement cannot include Christians for the simple reason that Christians do not support freedom, as evidenced by Christian opposition to cannabis law reform, prostitution law reform and homosexual law reform, and Christian support for the legal right to hit one’s children and to rape one’s wife.

These five strikes do not mean that Christians should be made to feel excluded, but it means that Christians cannot be allowed into influential positions within the movement. They will sabotage the movement to the benefit of their cult if any opportunity arises, and will always cause infighting as they inevitably seek to impose themselves upon and exclude non-Christians.

To this end, Destiny Church and Brian Tamaki have to be completely excluded. Destiny and Tamaki claim to be freedom fighters, but they recently campaigned for the New Zealand Government to destroy cannabis users in the 2020 cannabis referendum. Therefore, they do not understand freedom. They are simply grifters using the freedom movement to promote their cult, and need to be utterly shunned.

Any religious fundamentalist who has previously campaigned to take freedoms away from the New Zealand people must be excluded from the freedom movement. This means anti-cannabis fanatics like Tamaki, Elliot Ikilei and Leighton Baker. The freedom movement has to be smart enough to tell the difference between people who truly stand up for freedom and people who just say that they do.

This goes for all other fanatics. No Communists, no Nazis, no “you should be allowed to buy children on the free market” libertarians. Anyone who thinks they can decide for other people what’s right for them has to be excluded. They will only cause infighting.

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What We Need For A Successful Revolution To Be Possible

It has been obvious since the cannabis referendum that modern democracy is a failed system. In practice, democracy amounts to rule by the owners of the mainstream media, i.e. the international banking and finance interests, who tell the people what to support. The ongoing Parliament lawn protests are the most vivid manifestation of this fact. But it can’t yet become a full revolution, on account of missing a vital element.

The protests contain many of the necessary ingredients for a successful revolution. This is why the New Zealand Establishment is currently shitting its pants, sending all of their soft power (in the form of the mainstream media and the intelligence services) after the protesters. They’re afraid that a Mussolini might stand up and incite the crowd to storm Parliament.

The first necessary ingredient is a tyrannical system.

As mentioned previously, the Sixth Labour Government has an atrocious human rights record. They are currently violating most of Kiwis’ enumerated rights from the NZ Bill of Rights Act. Despite the excuses made by the mainstream media, New Zealanders no longer feel like a free people. We work long hours but still have no chance of making enough money to buy a home that we can raise families in. We are slaves.

Emphasising the tyranny is a horrifically arrogant and out-of-touch ruling class. Labour MP Michael Wood recently described the protesters as a “river of filth”. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is nowhere to be seen. Supposed Leader of the Opposition Chris Luxon threw his weight in behind the Establishment. The political class in Wellington don’t care at all about the suffering of Kiwis. They are above the law and rub that fact in our faces.

The second necessary ingredient is the people coming together despite all the attempts to divide and conquer them.

In principle, a ruling class can act as tyrannically as it likes, as long as it can keep the people too divided to form any solid resistance. Traditionally, religion was the divider, with barbaric or irrational religious practices deliberately promoted in order to sow discord. Today’s ruling class use identity politics to achieve the same ends.

What has really terrified the Establishment about the Parliament lawn protests is that the divide-and-conquer tactics pushed by the apparatus of propaganda have not divided the protesters. Whites and Maoris stand side by side, men and women stand side by side, young and old stand side by side, working-class and middle-class stand side by side. It’s the Establishment’s worst nightmare.

If a dedicated nationalist would stand up right now, and take command of the various strands of dissidence swirling around the Parliament lawn, they could easily command enough support to win a seat at the political table. But it won’t be a simple matter of storming Parliament with rifles and heaving the politicians out of windows. The alternative political movement is missing the third necessary ingredient: an alternative philosophy to replace globohomo.

There are two parts to this needed alternative philosophy. The first is an alternative political philosophy detailing how society ought to be run. The second is an alternative political structure. To both ends, this essay makes two suggestions.

A previous essay here described the two major political questions: for who and how much? This essay suggests that we ought to radically change our approach to the first question by replacing our current globalist orientation with a nationalist orientation. As for the second question, no change is necessary. We don’t need either more government or less. A change in orientation would be sufficient.

This leads us to national alt centrism. This political philosophy believes that globalism has failed, that the Establishment has failed, and that the alt left and the alt right are both dangerous extremists. National alt centrism is sometimes described as the “temple whore” of political philosophies on account of that it samples all of the other positions, and subordinates them all to spirituality. But it is the alternative political philosophy that New Zealand needs.

This subordination to spirituality is the second suggestion of this essay: that we base our alternative political structure on the Elemental Mysteries, in much the same way that the ancient Greek Golden Age took inspiration from their mystery schools such as the Eleusinian Mysteries.

Thus, in order to be taken seriously as a leader in the new century, a person will have to have been initiated into the Elemental Mysteries. The logic is that the ruling class must understand the Will of God before they can justly rule. Without this understanding, the ruling class will be motivated by base, materialistic concerns such as wealth, power or status.

A ruling class whose wills have been brought into line with the Will of God through the use of spiritual sacraments and initiation into the Elemental Mysteries will naturally comprise a true aristocracy. This aristocracy can be left to lead society into the future without getting hamstrung by pointless charades such as democratic elections. Plato was correct when he wrote in Republic that democracy was rule by lowest common denominator, and a ruling class comprised of a spiritual aristocracy would overcome the problems with that.

Of course, this essay is far from a complete alternative political philosophy. But it serves as a preliminary suggestion as to what such a philosophy might look like.

Ultimately, there would be one main purpose to developing this alternative philosophy: to convince the Police to join the side of the people and abandon the side of the tyrants. The Police are already aware that New Zealand is poorly governed and that a broad cross-section of society is united in disapproval of Jacinda Ardern. If they could be convinced to join the people, a successful revolution would be possible, and an alternative political philosophy is necessary before they could be so convinced.

If you enjoyed reading this essay/article, you can get a compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2020 from Amazon for Kindle or Amazon for CreateSpace (for international readers), or TradeMe (for Kiwis). A compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2019, the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2018 and the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2017 are also available.

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