I’m a lefty. That doesn’t mean I live out in a yurt, cuddled up with a copy of The Communist Manifesto, surviving only on the cold beetroot I grow in my own bleak, gravel garden. It just means I’m a person on the left of whatever this weird political spectrum we’ve made up is. I’m the kind of lefty who wants public services, universal healthcare and billionaires to be a historical footnote filed under, “Well that got out of hand”. I believe people deserve food, water, shelter, education and warmth simply for existing. Existing shouldn’t be a bloody privilege.
But, I also think a lot of people are fucking idiots.
And that’s the spicy conflict under the hummus of my polite leftist ideals: how do I square wanting a compassionate society with the fact that Darren over there just flung his greasy bag of McDonalds leftovers from the window of his moving van, straight into a random bush because he knows there are no consequences and has zero fucks to give about crap like the environment or other people?
I want socialism, but with high-powered tasers.
At my core, I believe in equity. Not just equality – equity. I want to live in a society that gives people what they actually need to live rather than allowing – even encouraging – a select few to monopolise and profiteer while they shout “Good luck out there, peasants!” to the rest of us plebs. I want people to be warm, housed, healthy and able to live their lives without the soul-crushing fear that one bad month sends them into a spiral of payday loans and desperation.
But I also want mandatory education for people who think climate change is a hoax because it snowed once in 2007. I want extreme punishments for littering. Literal court appearances for anyone caught throwing rubbish on the floor like it’s normal fucking thing to do. Fines. Public shaming. Perhaps a modest electrocution from time to time.
Because the reality is – and I know this is blasphemy in certain lefty circles – people don’t always make good choices. Actually, they often make incandescently terrible ones. And not because they’re evil. They’re just morons. Or misinformed. Distracted. Or too emotionally knackered from life to think anything through beyond, “I’ll just do this and hope whatever comes next is someone else’s problem.”
And yeah, the system absolutely makes some people like this. And yeah, that’s totally their choice to make terrible decisions, like letting their toddler swap out the dummy for a watermelon vape. But the problem is, we still have to live with the cockwombles and their shitty decisions impact others.
Soft and furious
I want free public transport. But I also want CCTV on every bus so we can fine people who put their feet on the seats or play music out loud from the phones like they’re hosting a public seminar on being a twat.
I want housing for all. But also, I want landlords who do this thing where they cease to be. Just... don’t exist. Go find another career. Or a sinkhole.
I want food security. But also, I think if you willingly share diet misinformation or "alkaline water detox" bollocks on Facebook, you should have to do a week in chained to stocks in the town square, loudly reading the studies that contradict your horsehsit and then be made to sit a GCSE in basic human biology before being allowed back online.
I am both soft and furious.
Leftism doesn’t mean “Let people do whatever they want with no consequences”. It means “Let’s build a society where people contribute and are safe and supported”. And part of being safe and supported is not having to live next to someone who thinks it's fine to burn tyres in their garden because they saw a video titled, “Tyre Smoke Kills COVID.”
And this is where some leftist rhetoric breaks down. We talk a lot about freedom, but not enough about competence. Not enough about the fact that freedom to many people translates to “I’ll do what I want, shove your consequences up your arse, and if you challenge me you’re oppressing my right to be a turbo cunt.”
You can be left-wing and still want rules. Just not the kind of rules written by privately educated reptiles with PPE contracts. I want rules that make society more than bearable – actually, let’s make it brilliant (or at even just “Yeah, okay, that’ll do” instead of this clusterfuck we’re entrenched in). I’d like rules that force you to at least give a whisper of a shit about other humans. Like, “Don’t scam old people via email or we’ll find the office you’re doing it from and burn it down.” Or “Don’t record your 8-year-old doing pranks for content.” Or “No, you can’t keep a ferret in your handbag on a Ryanair flight.”
So yeah. I want Universal Basic Income. I want free healthcare. I want to pay taxes that help build society. I want us all to have to do time in governing society. I want people to be rewarded fairly for the work they do and have a say in how shit’s run. I want an end to generational poverty and the eradication of inherited wealth. But I also want you to be violently frogmarched and tased if you dump a mattress next to a primary school and pretend it’s someone else’s problem.
Call it compassionate authoritarianism if you must. I just call it basic fucking standards. Because I genuinely believe people deserve better. And I also believe some of these idiots need protecting from themselves. So while I want to rest comfortably in the knowledge that people are warm and housed and fed, I really don’t want to have to actually interact with anyone. I’ll be your compassionate supporter for way the fuck over there.
Who decides what counts as idiocy?
Punishment sounds fun, until you realise someone’s picking the targets.
If I get to write the rulebook, then sure, public shaming for minor-vandalim, license applications for podcasting equipment and mandatory “Being a fucking adult” classes for anyone who believes in healing crystals are on the card. But what if you get to write the rules and decide I can’t swear out loud, drink wine during the week or eat an entire tub of hummus as a meal?
Exactly. That’s the danger. If we say “People aren’t allowed to…” we’re leaving the problem of bias in the person/people deciding the rules. Whether that’s Supreme Chancellor Keir or the Splendid Humans Collective, it’s a difficult balancing act.
That line between standards and control is blurry. When we try to stop people from being idiots, we run the risk of giving power to people who are… well, different idiots. Just the better-dressed kind with business cards and genocidal tendencies.
Look, I love a good lefty fantasy about “benevolent technocracy” or “data-driven utopia” run by experts, but these are just that – fantasy. History’s not on our side here since it’s absolutely littered with experts doing a dogshit job and acting like they’re doing you a favour while they do it. Let’s not forget the NHS once recommended smoking during pregnancy and the CIA put LSD in people’s tea just to see what would happen.
I don’t know how we decide to fix this shit, but come one, we gotta do something at this point.
A brave new world
So no, I don’t want a Ministry of Common Sense. Or a Central Idiot Control Unit. I’m not trying to resurrect the Thought Police. And yes, a lot of the stuff here is hyperbolic. But I just want to live in a society where people have rights and responsibilities – where doing objectively shitty things (like phishing pensioners for their life savings) actually leads to tangible consequences.
We don’t need to micromanage everyone. But total freedom always fucks someone over. We can hold both truths: that people deserve care, and some of them definitely shouldn’t be in charge of anything sharp.
Can we do any of this? Nah. Would it require an evolutionary-level rethink of how society works? Obviously. Will it ever happen? Not a chance. Will I still be soft and furious? You’re damn right I will.
I love your writing bill. Its a breath of fresh air in amongst the AI and Americanisms. I hope one day I can turn out something nearly as good!
You posted this on the same day I posted up my incredibly boring but frequently-needed "Requirements for egg supply in Australia" document. I use Substack to store information that I then provide to very specialised interest groups back on facebook, because FB consistently makes it impossible to re-use information. I've had it in a PDF for a couple of years and decided Today Was The Day to Substack it.
So the core tenet of egg supply in Australia is "supply clean, uncracked eggs that have a supplier identifier on them, in case of a salmonella outbreak". Fairly straightforward stuff, you'd think, right?
Except that the head wonks devolved implementation of the regulations down to the individual Australian states, which promptly led to a pile-on of extra rules ranging from 'deliberately designed to keep small suppliers out of the market entirely, thereby ensuring a shadow market of people who don't even bother with that bare minimum because they feel the rules don't apply to them at all" (Queensland, in case you were wondering) through to "ridiculously easy and sensible compliance requirements, including handing out free egg stamps, so egg supply is safe and clean" (NSW, SA, ACT).
So every time I post this information, someone has to come along and start screaming about nanny states and how they won't comply because gummint overreach something something surveillance state something something common sense.
This did, indeed, promptly occur when I popped up a thread with the new link.
So reading your post got me right in the "ow YES" feels, because today i just wanted to knock heads together. I want "I'm all right jack bugger the rest of yer" ableism to be seen as heinous as "I'll run 300 chooks in a 10m x 10m backyard and sell grotty eggs because $$" greed. People need to be protected and to be safe; protections need to be -just- right without excessive overreach, but they can't be too vague because people, in the end, are people; and people tend to always want more.
It would be a lovely world if it weren't for the idiots in it. Which is everyone except you and me and the people i like and frankly, I'm not entirely sure about half of them.