mxx1's avatar

The Blumenstein Effect

Named after the first victim that I noticed with it, this syndrome has the effect of creating pointless radicals out of seemingly rational bureaucrats.

Has that got your attention? Good.

In the past, my hypothesis had been that, although completely self-serving, bureaucrats are quite rational because they need to be so as to act effectively in their own self interests. Cunning rats, essentially.

However this paradigm appears broken and many of them have gone Trumpian. A typical symptom I’m seeing is over-the-top public barracking for one political party over another, often in circumstance where it’s very difficult to see an upside of any sort in this behaviour.

This despite the fact that the two major political parties are virtually identical, and differ only in the substance of their lies. Also despite the fact that the gubment has virtually no control over the macro issues that feed the rage, e.g interest rates, the economy, the middle east, US politics, etc.

On LinkedIn, the associated shark jumping has been the subject of continued inflation, driven I believe by the endorphin hit of a post that attracts more than your average attention.

An example from this morning;

“It is well known that big business and Australian investors went overseas when Albanese Labor got in as investors have always done under Labor Governments. Now they actually publish the fact, that the Albanese communists have taxes so high the average bear is broke, now they are going to tax retirees superannuation, has there ever been a government in modern WORLD history that has stooped this low just to push their communist agenda. I wish someone would tell them we are a democratic country.”

So I did some digging. The only changes to the tax system instigated by this govt haven’t been implemented yet but the upshot is that people with taxable incomes of less than about $146,486, or nearly 90 per cent of all taxpayers, will get either the same or a larger tax cut than expected (as per the last government) under the new plan. Whereas the 10 per cent with higher incomes will get smaller tax cuts than originally expected, but still a cut.

Also, after 2025, superannuation balances above $3m will be taxed at a rate of 30%, up from the current rate of 15%. But that’ll never happen because either the senate will block it, or the coalition will get in at the next election, or Labor will drop that policy ahead of the next election due to the Skynews effect.

So my response to that crazy LinkedIn post is that the person who wrote that post is a complete and utter fuckwit, and although I’ve done useful business with them in the past, I’m now going to ghost them.

My apologies for the plural third person pronouns there. It’s the fault of the English language.

Back to the Blumenstein Effect. I believe the cunning rats are slowly going mad as their world abandons rational thinking. Once they get to a certain threshold of craziness, they simply crack and decide to throw themselves on the most lucrative looking raft that happens to float by.

It looks as though what was known traditionally as the right hand side of politics have noticed this and they’ve launched a bucketload of rafts on LinkedIn.

Not so crazy.