Cameron Murray - Game of Mates

GAME OF MATES

HOW FAVOURS BLEED THE NATION

CAMERON MURRAY and PAUL FRIJTERS

First published in 2017

By Cameron Murray and Paul Frijters

Copyright Cameron Murray and Paul Frijters

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Cameron Murray and Paul Frijters.

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry.

Author: Cameron Murray and Paul Frijters.

Title: GAME OF MATES, HOW FAVOURS BLEED THE NATION

ISBN: 978-0-6480611-1-3 (ebook)

ISBN: 978-0-6480611-0-6 (paperback)

Subjects: POLITICAL SCIENCE / Political Economy

POLITICAL SCIENCE / Political Process / General

POLITICAL SCIENCE / Public Policy / Social Policy

Whilst every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the information contained in this publication, no guarantee can be given that all errors and omissions have been excluded. No responsibility for loss occasioned to any person acting or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Cameron Murray and Paul Frijters.

It is the story of how groups of Mates have come to dominate our corporate and political sectors, and managed to rob us, the Australian majority, of over half our wealth.

To understand how the Game of Mates is played and to disrupt it, we must see Australia through the eyes of our villain, who we call James. In reality the Game of Mates is played by well-connected individuals called Clive, Julia, Malcolm, Bronwyn, Tony, Peter and so forth. Only rarely are they truly named James, and we of course do not want to offend any James out there who is not a villain!

This book is about how the Jameses of this country play their Game of Mates. It is about how much their Game costs you. And it is about what we can do to stop them!

Opposing our villain is our champion Aussie, who we call Bruce. In each chapter, we show how much James Game ends up costing Bruce, bleeding him and his family not only of their current wealth, but tying them to future obligations to pay James for the privilege of taking part in society.

Our characters help to tell a story that is difficult to see from the perspective of any individual. The reality of the Game of Mates in practice is far less tantalising than the fantasy worlds of political intrigue we see on screen. Brilliant as these stories are, the reality of Australias insidious political games is far more ordinary; Bruce bleeds economically, rather than from the neck! Our villain James swings no sword. He does not ambush Bruce in physical attacks. He instead swings his power in the halls of parliament, in the media, and in the complex bureaucracies of government and large corporate enterprises. His ambush is a raid on Bruces wealth that happens on the sly in mundane offices across our cities, but that nevertheless take a cut of the countrys economic wealth to which he was never entitled. Instead of victory parades, he hosts industry awards nights to glowing media coverage!

The not-so-bloody reality is that James has been in the ascendancy in Australia for at least the last twenty years. He now robs you of a hefty part of your superannuation. He dodges taxes so you pay more. You pay higher interest rates on your mortgage, higher transport costs and higher medical costs, because James and his Mates take a cut.

Our research leads us to believe that James is stealing roughly half of the real wealth of Bruce, our champion Australian. Every hour you work, there are thirty minutes of it working to line James pockets rather than your own. In a world without James and his Mates you could retire fifteen years earlier, enjoying the fruits of your labour, rather than watching James enjoy them.

While we focus on James recent rise in Australia, his Game is eternal. We can never wash ourselves of him completely, for after each wave of purging, he rises again. For you see, there are countless wannabe Jameses. His position is admired. Many of us send our children to the right schools in the hope of befriending James, marrying James, or becoming another James. This admiration is misplaced. He is robbing us while pretending that he deserves his spoils, which is despicable, no matter how smartly he plays it.

James is running amok with his Game now in Australia. But Western countries have historically gone through many waves of cleansing themselves of their own Jameses. James Game was up in Britain in the Glorious Cromwellian revolution of the seventeenth century that abolished many of the privileges the Jameses of the preceding era had assembled. And again, his Game was up in Britain in the early nineteenth century when the wheat barons, who had increased the prices of wheat in the United Kingdom by blocking imports, were dethroned. Many Jameses lost out in the Thatcher era of the 1980s in the United Kingdom, or the Bob Hawke years in Australia, as political reforms took away past privileges.

It has been over twenty years since the last purges in Australia. James has taken full advantage of the fact that our attention was on other things; family, work, sports, celebrity and the general business of getting on with life.

The reason we must repeat history again now is that our societies dont notice James at first, for that is his skill. While the rest of us are productive, James and his Mates are organising our poverty by taking advantage of the opportunities we inadvertently leave them. We only become aware of his Game after decades; when his Game becomes so flagrant, entrenched and costly it can no longer be ignored.

Economist and social scientist Mancur Olson described the process of social decay resulting from what we call the Game of Mates as institutional sclerosis. He observed that over time all institutions succumb to the power of special interest groups, that incur great economic cost on the community as they reallocate wealth towards themselves. So grossly inefficient is this process that these special interests will impose costs on others that exceed the amount redistributed by a huge multiple (Olson, 1965; Olson, 1982). This means that the scale of the economic loss is staggering because not only does James steal from the economic pie, he spills more crumbs on the floor than he gets himself!

Or put another way, it is like James stealing a television from Bruces house, then burning down the house as well!

The late stages of such declines have been called elite overproduction by the historian Peter Turchin (2007). Groups of Jameses begin to steal so much of the wealth for themselves it brings on competition from other groups of potential Jameses, sapping even more resources from the economy. In these periods, societies either socially break-down, if Bruce chooses to ignore the Game (or play it himself), or they purge themselves of James Game, if Bruce revolts against it.

It is time once again to look up, take stock of how much the latest generation of Jameses have cost us, spoil their Game, and get on with life. Though we will never rid ourselves of those trying to use politics and bureaucracy for private gain, for we all succumb to the temptation, Western countries like ours are far better off now than 100 years ago. And far better off than 200 years ago. In the long-run we are winning. And Australia has an advantage in these periodic battles against James, for it is an extremely wealthy, well-educated, and cooperative society. If any country can rise up and fight their Jameses it is us. We hope this book can help in this fight by providing the tools to see James Game, and showing how much it costs Bruce, the typical Aussie.