Robodebt: Morton, Milgram And Morrison
In case you haven’t guessed, I read a lot…
Of course, this probably disqualifies me from holding a cabinet post in the United States and various people will attack me as being one of those out of touch academics who has no experience in the real world… which would be fine if only I’d been more successful at school and didn’t waste so much time doing things in the real world in my final year of schooling… or when I did tertiary studies, come to think of it.
In fact, when I moved from secondary to tertiary studies, I couldn’t work out how I didn’t score as well as those “mature age” students who were seven or eight years older than me… It was in my final year that I realised it was partially because they went and did the recommended reading and didn’t try to whip something up based on a lecture and a couple of tutorials…
Anyway, one of the books I’ve started reading lately is Rick Morton’s “Mean Streak”, and I’d strongly advise you all to go out and buy a copy, even if you’re not a reader. I mean, Christmas is approaching and you could give it to that relative who spoils Christmas by telling everyone how Labor is ruining the country by spending billions on renewables but won’t accept that Peter Dutton should reveal the cost of nuclear and the whole argument gets sidetracked just as you were about to say something about the problem with the duopoly of Australian politics because pudding is served and Auntie Flo asks everyone not to spoil her last Christmas…
While I haven’t finished the book yet, it’s the sort of book that shouldn’t need to have been written. I mean that in the same way that we shouldn’t have books written on the rise of Hitler, Trump’s victory and any biography about Kim Kardashian and her importance. Basically, the fact that these and Robodebt were even a thing is part of the whole failure of the system…
As to whether it’s the Westminster System, the capitalist system, the public service or the whole idea of Karma, I’m not sure. However, one thing is certain, when you give some people a job to do, robodebt demonstrates that some people do the task at hand without looking at the bigger picture. And, by bigger picture I mean such things as ethics, morality and legality.
It’s a bit like the Reserve Bank at the moment where the subtext is: We can’t lower interest rates because not enough people have lost their houses and/or their jobs because if do and inflation goes up, we’ll have made a mistake and we’ll look sillier than our predictions about interest rates not going up until 2024 or the one where we said that inflation wouldn’t fall below 3% for a long time and Treasury’s Budget assumption is wrong...
At one point, Rick Morton compares the whole thing to the Milgram experiment. This is the famous experiment where subjects were instructed to give another person electric shocks by an authority figure and a surprisingly high number (a majority) were prepared to keep going even though it was supposed to cause the death of the person being shocked. Of course, in the Milgram experiment, the person being shocked was a confederate who was only pretending to be in pain. While the Milgram experiment is widely regarded as being unethical, robodebt hasn’t caused as much controversy because the people being shocked were actually given real pain by people who were more concerned with their own advancement than…
I should pause and consider something I read from “Humankind: A Hopeful History” by Rutger Bregman. At one point he pointed out that the problem with looking at Nazi Germany through contemporary eyes is that we overlook the fact that the people doing horrible things all believed that they were doing the right thing, the moral thing, so it’s not completely fair to judge them because if they did anything but what everyone around them thought was right then…
Mm, I may be sounding unfair to Rutger Brennan, because he actually raised some good points. It’s just that when I summarise them they sound like the sort of justification that went so badly at the Nuremberg trials… although it seems to have gone over a treat at the Royal Commission… Oh wait, no it didn’t. Apparently, there was a whole sealed section that was larger than the ones in Cleo which were all about effectively fucking people. While the whole robodebt fiasco was all about that very thing, the point of their sealed section – as I understand it – was to ensure that criminal prosecutions could take place and not to allow the NACC to ask certain people if they felt that S & M would be too painful for people who’d indulged in SM activities…
All of which brings me to Scott Morrison and his role…
From what I remember at the Royal Commission, Scotty was badly let down by his department and he threw them all under the bus… which is ironic because – as the man who didn’t hold a hose – that’s the most manual labour he’s done!
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10 comments
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uncletimrob -
Bert -
Maggie McCann -
Arnd -
Harry Lime -
Sad but true -
paul walter -
Clakka -
Rossleigh -
Arnd
Return to home page“In case you haven’t guessed, I read a lot…
Of course, this probably disqualifies me from holding a cabinet post in the United States”
Nah mate, what would hold you back is that you’re an intelligent, articulate thinker….
Love your work btw.
Looking at Nazi Germany through contemporary eyes…. a bit like gazing at Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon….. destruction by people believing they are doing the right thing…..
Briiliantly spot on young Rossleigh. The truth is so obvious but in a world of sadistic pathological, slimy liars like Scotty and Donny, who seem to squirm out of every cesspool they create, will we ever, please, please, be able to put them in the stocks and pelt them with excrement?
I haven’t read Rutger Bregman … – but he seems to make (or “reiterate”, considering that other thinkers have arrived at that outlook before him) what I have come to consider a supremely important point about the feebleness and unreliability of ethical reasoning.
A supremely important point, but, alas, also a deeply disturbing one. Mostly, people resent being alerted to it. Socrates, in an impeccable display of dialectic reasoning, arrived at the conclusion that “No man wills what is evil!” And those wielding temporal power in ancient Athens promptly made him excuse himself from any further philosophical discourse. Permanently!
Even more famously, one J. of Nazareth insisted that only those without fault should throw stones. His subsequent fate has become the stuff of enduring legend.
In that sense, I feel like asking Maggie McCann whether she is truly convinced that pelting Scotty From Marketing with excrement really is the most promising way forward.
‘Sapiens’, a book by noted Israeli historian(and activist), Yuval Noah Harari, paints a pretty bleak picture of humanity and how we got here.
Pelting the Liar Morrison with shit mightn’t be the best way forward,but the satisfaction,although temporary, would be cathartic.
Another great dip into the philosophy of human endeavour.
I remember having a philosophical discussion with a work colleague many years ago about morality and morals and he made the observation that everyone thinks that they are moral and that their actions are morally acceptable.
And I have to agree with him.
We all have a position which we take up and defend.
Several years ago I met up with a long time lover whom I had not seen for a number of years and while having lunch we discussed the world and politics, subjects that we had discussed many times during our relationship in years passed, I was somewhat dismayed and saddened to find that over the intervening years he had lurched far to the right and I had continued my journey to the left. I discovered after a couple more meetings that a man I had loved for many years and still did, I no longer liked. Not only did I not like his political and social views, but, as much as I wanted to and as much as I tried, I did not like the person that those views had made. He was absolutely convinced that his position was moral and just, just as I was absolutely convinced that my position was moral and just. My work colleague was spot on. We all think that what we believe is moral, no matter what anyone else believes.
Fair set of comments.
The people who designed and implemented Robo debt in fact knew DAMNED WELL what they were doing.
They also know full well the truth behind the Gaza massacre, but studiously look in the opposite direction.
For those vested in a clear-eyed view, nothing to see here! At least, in the blink of an eye whilst we finish obliterating it, there will be nothing but arguable figments of the many and various imaginations, and room for endless blind faith and its conquests.
Better than nursing bloodshot eyes!
The difficulty for anyone in a corrupt regime is to decide whether to call it out and risk losing all power or to work on the theory that, by complying, they can make a small difference to those being harmed… It may seem like the big powerful gesture is the thing to do, but some actually help those who are being executed by giving them a more humane death, while those with the grand gesture only end up being thankful for those giving them the more humane death…
Of course, both have their good points and their bad points, but the simple truth is that the machine is always brought down by those in a position to loosen the screws and this isn’t always the government of the day but it’s never the political opposition!
Rossleigh, I don’t think this is a hard either/or. There must be those who identify and call out corruption from the outside, and thereby inform and encourage those who keep working quietly on the inside.
Robert Greenstein worked tirelessly on the inside for four decades, and, apparently, without any intentions to blow up the corrupt system.
I don’t blame him.
At the same time, I know that I could never emulate him, either. He did his thing, and I am trying to do mine.