Abundance

 

Many years ago when Bob Jones's semi-libertarian New Zealand Party stood for election — the first party I deemed worthy of having my vote — he ran on the slogan "Freedom and Prosperity."

He later quipped, "It was easy getting folk excited about prosperity. But bloody difficult getting anyone interested in freedom."

Little has changed. 

So it was with that in mind I read Mike Grimshaw's call for An Abundance Agenda manifesto for Aotearoa. Nothing about freedom. Or liberty. Just about "abundance." As if you can have one without the other.

The U.S. manifesto on which bases his own piece says: 

The abundance agenda aims for growth, not because growth is an end but because it is the best means to achieve the ends that we care about: more comfortable lives, with more power to do what we want, with more time devoted to what we love.

Who could disagree, however misguided the notion one could find a common political cause for such an agenda with activists mired more in identity politics, enthno-nationalism and anti-colonialism than any devotion to genuine human progress, or any clue how it might be progressed.

Nonetheless, among the grab bag of bromides and buzzwords Mr Grimshaw brings to his manifesto are these few morsels of mixed but genuine hope:

An abundance agenda: understands that pessimism is the enemy of abundance.

An abundance agenda: argues that pessimism is not so much due to scarcity but rather due to policy choices made by local and central government; but also due to pessimistic decisions made business, by institutions and by citizens. ... 

An abundance agenda: argues for innovation and a rekindling of imagination

An abundance agenda: is based in intellectual curiosity, business dynamism, societal and economic growth – and the end of status quo thinking and action...

An abundance agenda: seeks to grow and expand the resource of capable, innovative minds present in Aotearoa. ...

An abundance agenda: recognises that social and economic wealth does not arise from resources, but from what is done to and with them, and this is due to human ingenuity.

An abundance agenda: seeks to make our cities and regions centres for human, social, cultural, economic, intellectual and technological ingenuity for Aotearoa. It recognises that brains are the ultimate resource and that the ultimate source of wealth is the mind.

An abundance agenda: puts access to quality state education front and centre and asks challenging questions and offers options where this is not delivered. It does this because abundance is based in the flourishing of human capital and potential. ...

An abundance agenda: recognises the fundamental importance of access to reliable and affordable energy, asking what steps can local government and businesses take to ensure energy abundance and the productive use of energy. ...

An abundance agenda: seeks local housing affordability that facilitates daily lives of balance and flexibility. ...

An abundance agenda: integrates and facilitates social and economic entrepreneurship in an environment of enabling dynamic possibilities. 

Despite the mixed premises and many platitudes therein, there are many worse things to promote than abundance.