Submitted by triviafrenzy t3_10z80ds in todayilearned
This is what happens when right wing idealogy wins out. Everyone loses.
Because we have never seen economic implosions from left wing governments...
Yep no successful right wing government has ever happened..m
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Reddit moment
Please elaborate. I sincerely ask in good faith. Are you disagreeing because you're right wing or a centrist?
I don't think they are disagreeing, more pointing out how quickly some Redditors jump on the left wing right wing thing.
It's something pretty well ingrained in American culture nowadays and a lot of us around the world find it pretty disgusting and cheap to blame every problem on the opposite ideology you believe.
He’s disagreeing because it’s a ridiculous statement, lol. Nauru collapsed because it’s a small island nation whose entire economy was based on mining a limited resource which, when depleted, completely wiped out the economy. Blaming its failure to modernize on Right Wing “idealogy” (it’s spelled “ideology”) is laughable - they failed to modernize because they live on 8 square miles in the Pacific Ocean and never had a sustainable economic model to begin with, and because the bulk of those resources were absorbed by larger, more powerful nations (as has happened repeatedly for all of time).
Personally I identify as a moderate, which is why I disagree. The answer to every problem in society does not lie on one side of the political binary we’ve created. To say “this is what happens when right wing ideology wins” is such a hilariously wrong and oversimplified statement and a very stereotypically Reddit thing to say. Sometimes right wing policy works and sometimes left wing policy works, that’s government. But one side isn’t evil and society destroying and the other side isn’t sunshine and rainbows. Both have inherent flaws and strengths.
Such black and white thinking, assuming everything is a shade of gray. The “both-sides”ism is toxic and effectively advocates apathy and anarchy as reasonable solutions, which is silly, and legitimizes propaganda that sets the goalposts to where this “middle” is supposed to be.
Edit: this post just made its way to r/bestof
But the original statement was so sweeping and downright stupid that it's worth criticizing. It's like pointing out failed communist states and saying "tHiS iS wHaT hApPeNs wHeN tHeRe aRe lEfT wInG gOvErNmEnTs."
I did criticize it.
I’m sorry I don’t know if I get what you’re trying to say.
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Another way of looking at it is that they were strip mined to death by corporations based in AUS and NZ using outsourced labor, who left them in the dust once the resources were extinguished.
Doesn’t really have anything to do with right wing ideology this is just what big nations do to smaller nations on every continent every day all the time
Native right wing population said migrants stole their jobs so they kicked them out and had massive labor shortage sounds eerily similar to the bullshit being spewed by rightie tightes in America.
The island has been mined into a desert.
The economy crash had a lot more to do with the over reliance on a single export and it’s exploitation by mining companies than the anti immigration sentiment. The labor could obviously be replaced, since 90 percent of the natives are unemployed. The problem is there’s no jobs anymore. There’s nothing to extract
The author wrote it that way deliberately for American audiences.
Nauru's economy collapsed because it relied solely on mining phosphate, and then it ran out of phosphate.
The reactionary policies were a result of the economic crisis. Arguably they exacerbated it, but the author is describing events taking place in 2015 as though they caused the crisis. Phosphate mining had ceased by 2005 and Nauru has no other exports or industries and an uneducated workforce that isn't competitive internationally.
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Right wing = bad thoughts 😡🔪😈
Left wing = good thoughts ✌️🕊️🌈
Is this actually how people think?
Based on the track record, yes. Right wing mindset may make sense on paper, but it is cancerous to humanity.
Statistical, mankind and nations improve under left wing ideas with healthy touch of right wing financial conservatism
That's not true. "Statistical" (presuming you mean statistically), there is no way to prove which political wing has improved people's lives more.
The greatest leap forward (in terms of GDP, population levels, technology and life expectancy) was the industrial revolution (even Marx congratulate the bourgeoisie on their achievements that exceeded any civilization before in such a short time in the opening of the Communist Manifesto). This did come with massive exploitation and wealth inequality but in most people's opinions the good of it outweighs the bad.
Furthermore, right wing ideas have provided stability to nations for centuries (look at Burke and his ideas of slow gradual reform or Hobbes and his idea of the role of the state).
Left wing governments did guide the Western world to social democracy which has been successfull so far but seems to be slowing down.
But left wing governments have also been responsible for Maoism, Stalinism, The Red Terror, etc. Whereas right wing governments have been responsible for Fascism, Pinochet, Nazism etc.
There is no clear winner between the two political wings. It's almost like you should look at each policy independent of origin and debate it on its merits (regardless of its left wing or right wing) rather than viewing everything through partisan lenses.
Yeh i can believe that is statistically true, but personally I think moderate right-center parties are almost equally good as most Centre-left parties, but I also believe that far-left governments are usually better than far radical-right parties are a lot worse. These are just my personal opinions though.
Based on the track record, yes. Right wing mindset may make sense on paper, but it is cancerous to humanity.
Statistical, mankind and nations improve under left wing ideas with healthy touch of right wing financial conservatism
Idealogy drives policy. Anti immigration policy is right wing stupidity and kills economies.
The comment at the top of the thread, and yours, make it appear that the anti-immigration policy single handedly tanked the economy. While it didn’t help, in actuality it’s only one of like 100 reasons why Nauru is in bad shape.
There was no foresight or even the slightest consideration of long-term effects when the mining companies decided to strip the island barren. They knew that it would render the island uninhabitable once there were no phosphates left. This is why a relocation was proposed.
Also worth noting: the government of Nauru placed the money that it earned through mining in a trust to support the citizens once this inevitably happened. Due to mismanagement and a series of bad investments in real estate and Musical theatre, the assets in the trust were wiped out and basically bankrupted the government and its national bank ceased to exist.
So yeah anti immigration policy. Among many many other failures.
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If by "left wing" you mean corporate left, eager to depress wages with a large mostly uneducated workforce, then yes, we can both agree that the right wing method is better. Globalist scum
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That’s what the Nazis said, and they claimed Socialism in their party’s name, but we don’t call them leftist do we.
Thanks for the fantasy speculation.
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Might want to join reality at some point.
Isn't a common feature of right-wing economics to support a country opening it's resource extraction industries to foreign investment, under the theory that doing so will raise the living standards of its people who wouldnt otherwise be able to profit from their own resources due to lacking the wealth needed to do it themselves?
I'm not blaming the "right wing" for this by the way: back in 1967 I'm sure only a few losers who were jealous of others' wealth were suggesting that too much mining, too fast, could permanently damage the island's economy. We know better now.
And it has the highest rate of diabetes in the world.
Yeah. They ran out of what made them rich. Like Venezuela.
And then they spent most of their nation’s wealth on a West End musical about Leonardo Da Vinci falling in love with the Mona Lisa, but he’s actually gay and it is one of the biggest bombs in theater history.
For those who learned something else today
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_the_Musical:_A_Portrait_of_Love
While the rest is true, "most of the nations wealth" is an insane exaggeration, 2 million quid doesn't even come close to the wealth generated by the mining boom. During which Naru as one of the wealthiest nations on earth. Source
I'm having trouble finding a place on that page where it says Nauru was one of the wealthiest nations on earth, do you have a quote?
Sure! The first line in the "economic performance" section states:
"In the years after independence in 1968, Nauru possessed the highest GDP per capita in the world due to its rich phosphate deposits."
That says GDP per capita, right? That's insanely different from being one of the wealthiest nations if your population is pretty low.
As a hypothetical with made up numbers, if your GDP is only ten million dollars, you'd be one of the poorest nations in the world, but if you've also only got ten people, then your GDP per capita would actually be the highest.
Good bot
Nauru became self-governing in January 1966, and following a two-year constitutional convention, it became independent on 31 January 1968 under founding president Hammer DeRoburt.[64] In 1967, the people of Nauru purchased the assets of the British Phosphate Commissioners, and in June 1970 control passed to the locally-owned Nauru Phosphate Corporation (NPC).[37] Income from the mines made Nauruans among the richest people in the world.[65][66] In 1989, Nauru took legal action against Australia in the International Court of Justice over Australia's administration of the island, in particular, Australia's failure to remedy the environmental damage caused by phosphate mining. Certain Phosphate Lands: Nauru v. Australia led to an out-of-court settlement to rehabilitate the mined-out areas of Nauru.[53][67]
Citizens being among the richest in the world does not make a country "One of the wealthiest in the world" when their population is incredibly small.
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That says richest people, but that doesn't say the country as the whole was one of the wealthiest - and given everything I've been reading about their low population I have a hard time imagining the nation itself had a comparable economy to major nations in the late 1960s.
There should make that one of the great works of art in CIV 6
Well, what could you expect with Bea Arthur and Jack Klugman headlining. They say their premier performances killed. Yes they did, they murdered legitimate theatre that night!
The Wikipedia article says "The cast included Paul Collis, Jane Arden, James Barron, Hal Fowler and Rebecca Pearce." I'm a little curious about where you got the idea Bea Arthur and Jack Klugman were in it?
They’re my go to performers for way off off broadway
5,570 kms away is certainly "off off Broadway"
You haven’t seen the production. It was just off off off.
Zing I gots a million of them!
Better in Broadway than Sandford, Gloucester. Theyll take your head off for crappy theater performances!
That’s probably why Sweeny Todd with Ruth Buzzy and Brian Dennehy opened and closed the same night. Heads rolled that night.
Cool fact is the islands have so much phosphate as it has been a breeding ground for sea birds over millions of years who shit all over it.
Nauru is a raised coral atoll, which is where much of its phosphate comes from. Though bird crap had its contribution as well.
Yeah the rich phosphate guano has been mainly mined off the island now, the guano has a much higher density of phosphate than coral naturally. Wouldn't be worth mining coral for phosphate if it didn't have the amount of guano Nauru had. Coral itself has barely any phosphate compared to guano
Just by reading the article it sounds like this:
The UK, Australia, and New Zealand had joint control over Nauru. They mined the fuck out of it using chinese labor. In 1964, Australia felt guilty and said we'll move all you guys to another island. Nauru said screw that noise and became independent in 1968.
Also Nauruans became rich as fuck during the mining boom, lived way beyond their expenses, had so much money they blew it on completely insane investments like financing crap musicals and a government palace for a population smaller than the average village, have now the highest diabetes rate in the world
Someone watched the Half As Interesting vid on Nauru's financial troubles.
Nope. I got this from a documentary they showed on german television a couple years ago
Should have taken that other island
They didn't spend all their mining windfalls on terrible musicals. They also invested in real estate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nauru_House.
It was the tallest building in Melbourne for a year. Looks like they sold it for $140 million in 2004.
Nauru has a few things about it that are utterly fascinating. The this American life episode about it is a gem
I was going to link this if I didnt already see it. Worth a listen for sure.
Jack Hitt is a treasure.
Australia wouldn't make that offer now. We imprison refugees there.
Yes. I was hoping someone would mention that horrible fact.
I wouldn't say I'm surprised, but I am disappointed in Albo's decision to keep it open.
> We imprison refugees there.
You mean the ones that dont come via international recognised channels, the ones that pay thousands to people smugglers?
> You mean the ones that dont come via international recognised channels, the ones that pay thousands to people
A refugee is someone who is fleeing. There's no requirement to follow "recognized channels." If things go to shit in your country they're not expecting you to go to the border guards with your immigration papers. That's not how refugee works.
And even if it was, that doesn't really excuse detaining someone in a random pacific island.
You go to the first safe country. You don't welfare shop by skipping thru safe countries that don't give you a large enough handout. Most refugees are in fact not refuges, merely migrants attempting to game the system
> You go to the first safe country
Doesn't always work. Isn't always safe. If you want an example the refugee camps in Turkey are infamous for the lack of funding and terrible conditions. You wouldn't want to stay there for any long period of time. You're a human being and actually want a life that's more than waiting for help while living in squalor. For many families the solution was to have the adult men go for work where it's available so the family could have a better life.
> Most refugees are in fact not refuges
Utterly untrue. I think your views have been seriously warped if you believe this. There are 89.3 million refugees globally. Of which 72% are hosted in neighbouring countries. Only 17% of refugees are hosted in high income countries. Far from your narrative of "window shopping."
It's also insane to think that detaining them in a distant pacific island is fine even if your warped vision was true. If someone breaks a law just deport them why are you putting them on a prison island? It's psychotic.
It's not only the few refugees that meet that criteria that are imprisoned there.
You do realise that the vast majority of refugees are not what bigots, LNP politicians, and our right-wing media's propaganda portrays them to be, right?
Our offshore detention policies are literally unlawful and "cruel, inhuman or degrading" according to the International Criminal Court.
"Boat people" are dramatically outnumbered by people who fly in legally, but never leave, but they're also far more likely to not be white. Guess which group Border Force cares about and which group are virtually never even looked for let alone imprisoned or deported?
>You do realise that the vast majority of refugees
Maybe a 1/4 of the worlds population could pass the refugee test. If numbers of refugees had stayed low then they would have been let in.
Problem was that the refugee industry industrialised shipping refugees to Australia, there was vast profits to be made. Back in 2007 there was 25 boat refugees, this jumped to 4940 in 2010 and just two more years to 25173.
It was more than doubling each year. At what point does a country say enough is enough?
Year Boat Refugees
2007–08 25
2010–11 4940
2011–12 7983
2012–13 25 173
At what point does a country say enough is enough? When it serves our politicians' agenda.
When neither politicians nor the media refer to or care about one form of illegal immigration, but claim to care greatly about another, the numbers clearly aren't the problem.
>At what point does a country say enough is enough? When it serves our politicians' agenda.
The open border fans like you never provide a number of how many refugees should australia take in a year. 100k, 200k, million?
Nice job skipping my main point. Illegal immigrants should be treated identically, no matter their race, country of origin, or wealth. They aren't. Certainly not since Howard figured out how to use them to prompt racist Aussies to keep electing him.
I'm not an open border fan. I'm a fan of Australia not being an international embarrassment due to our mistreatment of refugees. I'm a fan of adhering to the conditions of international agreements that we sign. I'm a fan of basic decency towards people.
We literally put children in prison because their parents tried to move them to a country that might provide them a better life. That is unjust and inhumane.
Didn't realize that Asians and lebanese where 1. White and 2. Coming in on boats. Thanks for clearing that up, bigot
You've either seriously misunderstood me or replied to the wrong person's comment.
There's a whole bunch of derelict buildings strewn across the Pacific owned by the Nauru government. They were rich in the 70s and built hotels for themselves just to get away for the weekend. Now most of them are rotting hulks filled with Chinese immigrant squatters.
They missed a golden opportunity because they wanted to make a name for themselves.
The mining industry brought the island so much wealth that they could set up a national stipend which would make every citizen set for life for a century but instead they pissed it away on real estate projects.
I always thought "repopulate" was about focused procreation to rebuild population.
Repatriate? Relocate?
Agrees. Relocate is a better word
My selective dyslexia read, “Photoshop mining,” and I was bewildered for a moment.
That's just basically an NFT right
I’m going to go with “yes”, but a positive “yes”, not a “I don’t know what any of that means” yes.
That was a deep dive on that page. They even had a 10 year civil war during the 1880s
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Nauru is genuinely one of the most interesting countries in the world. Not much left of it now, but their connection to Australia and low population makes it home to quite a few world records (not all of them for the best). Such a fascinating country!
That's wild, I can see Curtis Island from my kitchen window. In 1964 they'd all be working on the construction for the world's largest alumina refinery
I also would sink under the waves rather than become part of Australia
Hattix t1_j835cmf wrote
The phosphate mining peaked in the 1980s, the nation was rich enough from the proceeds of phosphate exports that there were no personal taxes, and still there are none. The people blamed migrants for their problems and forced the government to deport them, which it did. The migrants, seeing no reason to stay and every reason to leave, including a hostile native populace, often left of their own accord. The warnings of labour shortages went unheeded. One right-wing publication proudly proclaimed that "It just means there are lots of jobs for our people". This then caused an economic crash, as the jobs which migrant labour was doing, weren't done. There was a population crash. The last holdouts, migrants from Tuvalu and Kiribati, numbered 1,500 and left in 2006.
Today, Nauru's ecology is decimated, most native seabirds are extinct, the forest they lived in all cleared. 90% of the population is unemployed, and of the 10% which are employed, 95% of them are employed by the government. Private enterprise doesn't really exist. Most of Nauru's income comes from international deals, such as hosting one of Australia's refugee prison camps. The government lacks the income to be able to carry out its functions, its national bank is insolvent and it is reliant wholly on handouts from the United Nations and Australia.