I’ve not much to add to the decision by Toyota to end Australian car manufacturing today but I will note in passing that the consensus of media judgement has quickly moved to who gives a shit! Commentary is perfectly sanguine: Pascometer, Gittins, Mitchell, Carmicheal, Sampson, Creighton and others reckon it’s all good!
It’s so good, in fact, that nobody takes the alternative view, that I can find.
This is one of those marvels of Australian economic coverage that is under-examined. Our press is an economic factor in itself, capable of inducing and sustaining collective delusion with an intensity few countries can match. All debate is quickly bifurcated into the “all good” and “doomsayer” camps and the latter cast out. It’s so potent because it is an expression of our identities as well. Beneath the labels lurks an archetypal cultural construct that segregates battlers from bludgers, the doomsayers firmly fitting the latter mould. It’s a race to brand and marginalise, a conformity machine, deadly to intellect.
The impacts of such myth-woven exceptionalism should not be underestimated as a pro-cyclical force in the economy. Anything interfering with “confidence” can be swiftly rounded up and booted into the sea.
And why not? These old media organisations rely for their lifeblood upon the same system. They are hooked on pro-cyclical advertising, utterly inept in new media’s kaleidoscopic universe, fatuously general and bloated with a self-importance that renders vertical market delivery impossible.
The greatest of ironies is that this adipose creature, teeming with flab, harangues the rest of us about poor productivity while preening a legacy of absurd costs and spectacularly poor output (most senior commentators produce a couple of articles per week for $200k plus). These doyens of sloth are defending their own jobs!
We’d be far better off keeping Toyota and sending this blather factory packing.
Rant over!
