Why isn't it about the economy? Stupid!

Our only productive economy is the outrage economy.

After reading my fortieth think piece about a bill that has no chance of passing, I started questioning the point.

The point of commentary. Of politics. Of paying attention to anything other than one's own life and loved ones.

Is the purpose of our national political discourse to solve real issues or create new facile ‘problems’ and make people's lives actively worse?

If it wasn't in my financial best interest to follow these issues, I wouldn't read or consume any of this anymore.

It would be fine if it actually mattered, if it had real world consequences, but it doesn't. It's one step forward, the exact same step backwards.

Nothing gained, nothing learned. Forever.

This isn't to disparage the writers of said pieces, or even any side of the debate, it's just acknowledging what is clear to everyone other than partisans.

This is beyond tiring, it's making a Mad Max-style post-apocalypse seem preferable.

When so much time is spent on things that won't feed or house a family, it is inevitable that cynicism sinks in, but those deep in the trenches can't see the rest of us tuning out or giving up.

230 people at Winstone Pulp mill will lose their jobs next month. Businesses are closing down across the country.

We're in a recession, livelihoods are being lost, and yet a recurring sideshow has become the only show yet again.

In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death, taxes, and another public debate about Te Tiriti that goes nowhere.

From a political PR perspective, and counter to what some partisans will claim, this circus actually helps the Coalition. Yes, even National.

It is a distraction from a weak economy, crime, and a struggling health system… so many other things too.

It's a bit like a Potemkin village, an artificial construction designed to distract from the nothingness behind it.

It doesn't win National voters, but it allows them to play the middle ground while distancing themselves from the National Party of Key and English.

It also doesn't help Labour, As currently led, they are too ineffectual to do anything to profit off this.

They have tried to rely on others to fight this battle, which makes sense as they have priors in this space that make any political point scoring a double edged sword, but they haven't seen a bump in disillusioned centrist or centre-right voters because it is not clear what they would do better.

For ACT, it is a clear win whether it passes or not.

This kind of publicity is a boon for a minor party, and comes conveniently at the same time as leader David Seymour's pet project - the Ministry for Regulation - is being exposed for spending $410,000 on external consultants and is recruiting for a $168k-a-year spin doctor.

Riling up ruling caste Maori also helps ACT, but it helps those same ruling caste Maori too.

They both get attention by talking about the other and about themselves - making each other relevant without either doing anything productive for non-ruling caste Maori.

It's all fuel for the media narrative. It feeds horse race-style commentary.

Sure, there is a story here, but it's a tired and weak one.

If this was a film, being shown in theatres, we'd be in hour seven of a film everyone knows the end of and people would be walking out. En masse. While questioning whether they would ever go back.

These scenes would hurt the movie-going industry itself, one already decimated by streaming and people staying at home, because it would make clear that the filmmakers are making these movies solely for themselves and their own agenda.

It speaks to a dying and entirely incurious media industry, one that has nothing new to say and is easily led by anyone in any form of power. Anyone except their actual audience.

This is why media trust and reader/viewership continues to drop - not due to corruption or an agenda, but due to having no ambition or discernment, and due to being easily led by the agenda of others.

This is also why our media industry is desperate for taxpayer bailouts. They can't sell their valueless product to customers who resent them, so they have a new customer - politicians.

The stories being peddled don't relate to the average viewer, to us commoners who care about people and not these irrelevant story lines, but elected politicians need the media to raise their profile and parrot their views.

Its leeches, living off even bigger leeches, living off our attention - unwillingly draining us dry.

No nurse has fled to Australia because of Te Tiriti.

No one is sleeping in their car because we as a nation haven't talked enough about who did or didn't cede sovereignty.

None of this will feed a child or create a job.

We need solutions, and accountability, but instead we're getting the same debates and the same failed ideas (welcome back, Capital Gains Tax chat, you really weren't missed).

If I'm starting to sound like Howard Beale, the protagonist of the prophetic film Network, that is because the situation we find ourselves in as a nation and as media consumers is just as dire. Maybe even more dire.

When he said "We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller," he could easily have been talking about New Zealand right now.

The end of that monologue, Howard's solution to the bleak world he found himself in, was to “go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - ‘I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!’”

This is a cute idea, and the film shows its strengths and weaknesses brilliantly, but we're already in a nation where people are mad as hell.

Our greatest failure as a country is the opposite of not being mad enough.

We are a nation where the outrage economy far surpasses the actual economy. Where everyone is being constantly fed more things to be mad about than they can stomach.

The attention of our politicians (all of them) and our media (all of those in editorial positions) are spread so thin they no longer seem capable of discerning what is and isn't an issue for voters.

I haven't heard a solution in over a decade. No change of politicians or broadcasters will save us.

You can go yell out your window, it will be cathartic, but other than freaking out your neighbours it won't solve anything.

The story of the average New Zealander contains no deus ex machina.

We're on our own. Our institutions have failed us. They will continue to do so.

They will see your righteous outrage at our sinking economy and raise you with a historical and rhetorical outrage that fills time.

We're stuck in a destructive spiral of re-litigating our past and destroying our future.

To quote Genesis (the band, not the book of):

“Always the same, it's just a shame, and that's all.”

Welcome to New Zealand in 2024: It's both always the same and only getting worse.