The Standard

Open Mike 22/12/2025

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, December 22nd, 2025 - 19 comments
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Open mike is your post.

For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.

The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).

Step up to the mike …

19 comments on “Open Mike 22/12/2025 ”

  1. gsays 1
    22 December 2025 at 8:20 am

    In a recent post by Mike Smith, he made us aware of the book Privatisation and Plunder: Neoliberalism – causes, costs and alternatives.

    https://thestandard.nz/privatisation-and-plunder/

    The book has arrived and so far (2 chapters) and it's a great read. A lesson for undoing the damage done so far is repeat some of the tactics. Move fast and wide and (most importantly) have no regard for re-election.

    Workers (precariat especially), the poor, Maori, society and the environment have far too much to lose if incrementalism is part of the strategy.

    Reply
    • Karolyn_IS 1.1
      22 December 2025 at 9:16 am

      Move fast and wide and (most importantly) have no regard for re-election.

      Absolutely agree with that.

      Reply
    • Drowsy M. Kram 1.2
      22 December 2025 at 9:39 am

      Re 'fast and wide', there’s also "juggernaut reforms" from a recent report in The Spinoff.

      The international media view on the big ‘Kiwi experiment’ [24 Nov 2025]
      How the juggernaut reforms of the 80s and 90s played out in the pages of the Economist and other foreign outlets.

      Last month the Economist published one of its big, chunky “special reports”, cheerfully titled “Governments going broke”. And, yes, New Zealand gets a cameo, but not for the brokenness or otherwise of 2025. Instead, there’s a fleeting reference to the reforms of more than 30 years ago, and our brave nation’s greatest contribution to global fiscal lexicon. “New Zealand, in its 1991 ‘mother of all budgets’,” says the Economist, “responded to sovereign ratings downgrades with deep austerity, then wrote strict budget rules enforcing long-termism.”
      …
      [comments]
      “What we’ve been doing for 40 years isn’t working, so we must keep doing it harder until it does” – mainstream political view on the economy, poverty and crime, apparently. – It’s so weak and discouraging. At least the Greens believe we can improve society somewhat.

      Reply
      • greywarshark 1.2.1
        22 December 2025 at 1:30 pm

        The Greens have kept us on point with thinking about the environment and is an outlet for people trying to save the environment from ending up like Mars. But when it comes to people they are more than the sort who always have a clean hanky in pocket, but they couldn't literally embrace Metiria T becqause of some nonsensical economic stricture, and settled for a personal triumph of getting a Maori and a woman as leader, and politically trumpeting that women were not to be called rude names.

        So small a move in the face of such overwhelming political odds. Greenpeace I support with incremental payments, they persist and achieve at hitting their targets. What unswerving ones have the Greens in favour of people? I don't want to wait till we clearly see that we are in the same state as the cows kneedeep in winter mud down in rural-rich foreign ownership. We are being farmed and don't know – it hasn't showed up on our hand-held devices yet. I think our brains are shrinking from lack of use; the meme of working in teams? This quote may apply:

        https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7-it-is-not-the-critic-who-counts- (Theodore Roosevelt USA President – serving from 1901 to 1909. He is known for his progressive policies, conservation efforts, and for expanding the powers of the presidency…)

        “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat…

        And (all I'm seeing are USA people, is that noteworthy?) Ruth Bader Ginsburg Associate Justice in USA Supreme Court. “Fight for the things that you care about. But do it in a way that will lead others to join you.”

        UK!: (Bertrand Russell offers philosophy as a tool; wise man no fool!) – "To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it." https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1167354-a-history-of-western-philosophy

        My end thought – how fast the change – tool from fool! Way to go I think pp – philosophy pondering.

        Reply
      • gsays 1.2.2
        22 December 2025 at 6:58 pm

        Those ratings companies are a joke.

        I think it was just before Sth Canterbury Finance collapsed they got an enthusiastic pass mark from those grifters.

        It isn't just The Greens, TPM, when they aren't caught up in power struggles and utu, believe we can do better too.

        Reply
    • Dennis Frank 1.3
      22 December 2025 at 10:31 am

      Let us know if it tells us something we don't already know. A positive alternative is available courtesy of Google's AI:

      Alternatives to neoliberalism are diverse, ranging from reforms within capitalism to models that propose a complete break from it, often focusing on social justice, environmental sustainability, and reduced inequality. Key alternatives discussed in academic and political discourse include:

      • Neo-Keynesianism / Social Democracy: A return to government intervention to stabilize the economy and promote social welfare, as was common in the post-WWII era. Key policies include:
        • Fiscal activism to stimulate full employment.
        • Progressive taxation to redistribute wealth.
        • Robust social safety nets, public social investment (education, healthcare, housing), and strong labor rights.
        • Regulation of the financial sector and capital controls.
      • Socialism / Eco-socialism: Fundamental systemic changes, such as public or cooperative ownership of the means of production and a planned economy designed around human needs rather than profit.
        • "Real Socialism" and 21st-Century Socialism: This refers to traditional state-led socialist models and modern variations seen in some Latin American countries, emphasizing communal production and democratic control of the state.
        • Specific experiences: Examples often cited include the worker self-management model of the Mondragón Corporation in Spain and the state-administered, people-participatory development approach in Kerala, India.
      • Global Green New Deal (GGND) / Degrowth: These approaches prioritize the climate crisis and environmental sustainability.
        • GGND: Advocates for massive public investments in renewable energy, sustainable infrastructure, and "green jobs".
        • Degrowth: Argues for a deliberate and equitable reduction in material consumption and economic activity in the Global North to radically reduce carbon emissions, focusing on well-being rather than GDP.
      • National Developmentalism: This focuses on advancing national economic welfare by prioritizing productivity, innovation, and competitiveness. It advocates for carefully crafted government policies that align private enterprise interests with national goals, often through public-private partnerships, rather than a focus on consumer or worker welfare alone.
      • Justice for the Global South / Post-Colonial Approaches: These focus on redressing historical power imbalances and include demands for debt forgiveness, fair commodity pricing, technology transfers, and reform of international financial institutions like the IMF and World Bank.

      The gizmo has summarised alt ethos well, I reckon. I've never seen any leftist do it that well, so credit due to its tech designers and engineers, eh? Also noteworthy is the pentad framing it used (5 types of altpolitics).

      Reply
      • weka 1.3.1
        22 December 2025 at 2:25 pm

        next time, please supply the references from google's AI, and keep the copy pasta short. We want people's opinions, not google's.

        Reply
      • gsays 1.3.2
        22 December 2025 at 6:54 pm

        I've only just dipped my toes in so far but the observation of being aggressive and give no thought about re-election is a circuit breaker.

        If we had a government that genuinely was there for the most of us, which includes the have-nots, re-election should take care of itself.

        Reply
  2. aj 2
    22 December 2025 at 8:32 am

    Deepfake videos are here and infecting YouTube now in big numbers. Will AI ever be able to reproduce an authentic Winston Peters? Hard to imagine. Not so hard with Seymour.

    Novara Media have a brief discussion on this issue.

    The comments are interesting, why wouldn't video streaming platforms protect their integrity by taking action if this is correct?

    E.g.

    Engineer here. You guys are on point – this is short term thinking on YouTube's part. They'll lose trust long term. What's frustrating is I can come up with simple, low-stakes solutions off the cuff.

    Video/recording-level signals:

    – Audio fingerprints (spectral artifacts, unnatural prosody/pacing, breathing patterns, tone-content mismatch, audio-visual desync)

    – Frame-level signatures (temporal noise patterns don't match real camera sensors)

    – Compression artifacts (AI-generated exports have different fingerprints than real footage)

    – Shape detection (text-like patterns that aren't actually text – watermark/caption mimicry)

    – Temporal consistency (objects that leave/re-enter frame change – clothing, accessories, background elements shift)

    Many ways to classify fakes that don't require genius-level solutions – which means YouTube is choosing not to tackle it.

    Account + engagement signs:

    – Upload velocity (new account, 10+ vids in a day, etc)

    – Engagement ratio anomaly (100k views, 12 comments, disproportionate # of commenters as new accounts, comments not specific to content or "botlike")

    – Bot comment clustering (multiple comments in 5-second windows, same structure, esp fresh accounts)

    YouTube already tracks all of this. The tools exist. Not using them is a choice.

    UI/UX fixes they could deploy tomorrow:

    – "Unverified source" on risky videos (new account + spam upload + no context)

    – Account age tooltip ("Created 3 days ago, 47 uploads")

    – Notification if you engaged with a removed video

    – Channel strike visibility ("This channel had 3 videos removed for AI content in 30 days")

    And then we can decide to engage or not.

    The frustrating part for me is that YouTube has the data, the models, the infrastructure, amd the cash. They're choosing not to act – probably because of a the cynical calculus that moderation cost > perceived risk – at least in the short term. That calculus flips when trust craters.

    Reply
    • Dennis Frank 2.1
      22 December 2025 at 10:03 am

      Yet humanity has always used a blend of realism and imagination. Truthiness, as a concept, is merely a contemporary riff on that.

      Politics as light entertainment has been trendy for a while now – probably because it engages folks more naturally than serious shit that chronically shows up as if it were a credible option. DMK's cartoon reprints exhibit this nicely onsite here.

      Think of deep fakes as propaganda that works somewhat. Polls will never measure the extent well due to natural reluctance to self-identify as suckers who got sucked in.

      Reply
    • KJT 2.2
      22 December 2025 at 5:15 pm

      I thought Peters is a "deep fake"?

      Seymour one of the Alien lizards, sent to expedite the collapse of humanity, before they invade.

      Reply
  3. mikesh 3
    22 December 2025 at 9:26 am

    Yanis Varoufakis has a website. One might assume that any u-tube videos he makes would also be published there (yanisvaroufakis.eu). Would that not be a useful check?

    Reply
  4. Subliminal 4
    22 December 2025 at 12:15 pm

    I heard Guyon interviiewing Gary Stevenson this morning. Guyon of course was more infatuated by his life as a stock trader.
    Garys big thing these days is the importance of narrowing the wealth inequality gap and his vehicle of choice is a wealth tax.
    I went to his youtube channel and found a video a couple months old with Chloe Swarbrick. It is impressive how focused she has become on economics that also close the gap and that she understands that nothing substantial can be accomplished unless this work happens.
    Gary is coming to NZ next year. Not sure if that is something the Greens organised but Chloe obviously related well with hiim.
    Oh, and the video is only about 37 mins long

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zl_LgDjpzxE

    Reply
  5. Stephen D 5
    22 December 2025 at 8:39 pm

    Not often, if ever, I’ve agreed with Winnie.

    Luxon has rolled over again like he did with coalition negotiations.

    https://www.nzfirst.nz/india_fta_a_bad_deal_for_new_zealand?

    Reply

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