What’s going on, over at Stuff? Are the work experience kids on holidays and the grown-ups back in charge? How else to explain something like this slipping through?
We’re following in Sri Lanka’s footsteps.
Boy, are Cressida, Titania and Duncan (They/Them) going to be mad when they get back from their mental health days and see that. Not only criticising the magic fairyland of the Fairy Princess, but quoting that wicked witch Ayn Rand while he’s at it! (I’m not a huge fan of Rand, but her ability to trigger leftists, even when she’s been dead for 40 years, is impressive on its own.)
Even worse, this extremist, fact-based journalist is telling the truth about the collapse of Sri Lanka — and its ramifications for New Zealand.
Ayn Rand wrote that we can ignore reality, but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.
There is an awful tragedy unfolding in Sri Lanka this week that is the end point of three years of ignoring reality […]
Today the country is a failed state. It is a remarkable transformation in such a short time. What went wrong?
Leaving aside the nepotism (because, since when has a politician appointing their family members to plum government jobs ever been a problem, eh, Nanaia?), there’s a raft of policy prescriptions which might sound awfully familiar to BFD readers.
Tax cuts (OK, Ardern hasn’t cut taxes, but she backflipped spectacularly on her promises to raise new ones) in tandem with an explosion in government spending — mostly on the public service and on useless “infrastructure” projects.
When bond markets declined to lend money to fund such lunacy, the Rajapaksas family (President, Prime Minister, Minister of Finance…) turned to the very thing that’s been steaming the knickers of the green-left, the last few years: “Modern Monetary Theory”.
Or, what you and I would call, “printing money”.
Boy did Sri Lanka’s love MMT. It’s estimated that they printed equivalent to a third of the nation’s GDP over two years. Now, you and I would see that as a recipe for disaster, but an MMT enthusiast would patiently correct us: because the government controls the money, the government can theoretically never go bankrupt, because the government can always print more money.
Who do you think was proved right, though?
Then the Sri Lankan government went full green-leftard. Climate change, organics, taskforces, working groups, environmentalists, oh, my! (That faint thud was Chloe Swarbrick swooning.)
Claiming that he was worried about a rise in kidney disease caused by chemical fertiliser, a dubious and possibly bogus claim, the president made a virtue signal out of necessity and declared his country would be going organic.
He established a taskforce to create sustainable solutions to climate change. Everyone loves taskforces.
He was embraced by the environmental elites and had the added benefit of not having to find foreign currency to pay for expensive imported chemical fertiliser.
All of which won glowing endorsement from the Great Resetter himself.
Sri Lanka earned a stellar ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) score from the World Economic Forum, making them a stand-out in this metric of idiocy.
Oh, come now: if we can’t trust Klaus the Kallous, who can we trust?
The move to organics had predictable results. Production sank precipitously. Food, it appears, comes from farmers and not supermarkets. When output falls, prices rise.
According to the New York Times, rice increased in price by a third and other staples like tomatoes and carrots now cost five times what they did a year ago.
By late 2021 things were desperate. The organic mandate was scrapped, but the damage was done. There were no stockpiles of chemical fertiliser and no cash with which to buy any. The country ran out of petrol and couldn’t afford to import food to replace the failed domestic crops.
Three quarters of its population has been forced to reduce their food intake. Inflation is out of control. The government has ceased to function. The president fled to the Maldives.
Stuff
I wonder where Jacinda Ardern will flee? She has lots of friends in the Solomons, or so she says. But we all know she’ll be taking a Business Class flight to East 42nd Street, where Aunty Helen will be waiting with open arms and a cosy sinecure.
Nanaia Mahuta will just have to settle for a luxury pa in the newly-established ethnostate of Aotearoa.