Australia: a beautiful casino on the edge of Asia that is equipped with every comfort. A casino set against a vast outback background of void. It provides a daily contemplation of the abyss of uncertainty that reproduces itself as a flux; a flux between international cuisine and nanny state adventures; a flux that can only heighten the enjoyment of the subtle and minimal comforts offered.
The acceptable Aussie lifestyle is “having a fair go” in fair dinkum competition. “Fair dinkum” is a popular Australian notion and colloquialism for the unquestionable good and legit; it is a signifier that captures fair play, fair pay, common sense communality, seriousness, and the “real”. A fair dinkum lifestyle ideal is one against the perverted world of non-fair dinkum. Think the lovable Aussie “punter” (gambler, customer) which is a common term for the typical Aussie worker. The punter is a subject engaging in fair dinkum speculation.
Fair dinkum is a notion so vague that all political parties wield it for emotion appeals, constantly. Yet, it has a meaning minimized by most; it is actually an empty signifier obfuscating the Real antagonism giving form to the whole economy: class struggle. Like with all ideology it turns the unenjoyable into the enjoyable. For instance, the “game” of fair dinkum replaces class struggle, with a “fair”, “universal” and “rational”, because when the House wins inevitably – We all win.
Fair dinkum has an etymology linked back to the UK in the 1880s, a beginning followed by Australians shortly after. In the late 19th century, beyond the many convicts who were transported to Australia, many mineworkers also migrated from England; they took their working language with them. However, the common folk-etymological tale is more telling, and persists much more than this genealogical UK perspective.
The common (and more telling) notion is that the phrase derives from the expression “din gum”, an expression used by Chinese gold miners to mean “real gold”. As the early gold rush of Australia provided its birth as a military enforced casino. It began this process when it changed the convict colonies into more progressive cities with the influx of free immigrants. It blended the convicts in with these proletariat speculators. And this could be why Aussies associate fair dinkum with this fair speculation for real gold (plus fundamental speculation via land and resource grabs). Consequently, a notion of fair dinkum has manifested Australia’s shape.
The ideal's drive of fair dinkum is a universality by inversing the perverted “way of the world” to generate value (as non-fair dinkum) and to make manifest its right spirit. This fair dinkum ideal drive is the success one will gain by playing in the capitalist fair dinkum game of speculation – the one they have posited in the beginning and is only justified retroactively. Even the fate of the shrinking Australian middle-class cannot help but remind one of the old Radio Yerevan jokes: is it possible to make ends meet on salary alone? Answer: We don't know, we never tried.
Uncertainty has multiplied via the number of volatile variables in the monetary and financial structure of the international directed political economy of Australia. It has grown to resemble the emerging form of Casino Capitalism; a notion described in Susan Strange’s book (of the same name). She likened global capital to that of the operations of a global casino. A casino because all are affected by its structural boom and bust cycles, financial bubbles, and major financial crises. She argues the common argument that post-industrial economy is increasingly based on abstract finance capital whims, and thus: speculation.
For Strange, the uncertainty of global capitalism has started a vicious circle of risk-averse responses, adding further volatility, confusion, and irrationality to the variables. She argues global capitalism has become a gamble because it offers a faltering confidence in its long-term viability. This erosion of social trust has been exacerbated as increasing human resources have been diverted either to speculation, or for a self-defence against it [1].
Subsequently, she was ahead of her time as things have only accelerated since her book (with cryptocurrency only reinforcing her argument). However, her theory has been exposed as too idealistic; it misses how the “casino element” of capitalism is grounded in (only) a few concrete particulars, where “uncertainty” is cultivated and housed via monopolies. Thus, Strange misses how a few casinos ground this global casino network of capitalism in fair dinkum nation-state casinos like Australia.
Accordingly, Australia is a casino, par excellence. It completely embodies the liberal capitalism of foreign powers. This has resulted in a history of increasingly technocratic norms; the norms aim to create a calm, functional and aesthetically pleasing economic environment to beat out the competition. Thus, Australians’ economic fate has become increasingly integrated in global capitalism in its employment, use of credit, debt, investments, and pension funds. The financialisation of the Australian economy is largely the product of the deregulation of the financial and banking system and the rapid expansion of financial services (a critical economic sector).
Australia is often called a “nanny state” but this misses that these tendencies mean it is actually a casino. The nanny state country has been constructed along the wide-spread interior casino design trend of “playground design”; a notion emerging from David Kranes’ “Play grounds” [2]. The playground design (that Australia abides by) violates many of Friedman’s famous casino design principles (low ceilings, dark mazes, no clocks, and so on). It violates these principles in favour of a pleasant atmosphere to reduce stress and convey a "playground" environment; thus, an environment encouraging liberal patrons to spend more money.
Australia as a casino operates as a 24-hour exception to its communities, it operates by its own rules and temporality. Australia is alone in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) by engaging in the war of terror without a bill of rights. The adoption of Anglo-American neoliberal capitalism drives the Australian political agenda. The neoliberal casino police state is increasingly denationalised with the control of the economic control and security transferred abroad; a nation denationalised by becoming an important casino US outpost in the Asia-Pacific region.
In Australia, it's nothing serious, just go out and have some clean liberal adult fun. While it would be nice to strike it big, it's in the end just about the fun, a fun found by not going overboard with gambling away all of your money. A volatile acceleration and growth (for the benefit of financial elites) of the speculative and manipulative market operations of currency and commodity markets; credit; and sale and trade of shares; bonds; futures contracts (liquid and fictitious assets); and so on.
An unwavering U.S. stranglehold, a military platform for the US military pivot to Asia and regime change in China. Northern Australia is now hosting a growing network of intelligence and military facilities in support of military operations in the Middle East and East Asia. Thus, the demos are increasingly becoming insignificant in political outcomes. With their only power to rebel coming through voting for two parties (effectively), where both represent the ruling class of foreign capital and US geopolitical strategic interests.
Australia is an Anglo settler-colonial playground society that has regionally dominated while also being utterly dependent on foreign powers; the result has been that Australia remains as the casino playground of foreign powers and their capital, ultimately. The fate of the environment is even thrown into this collective gamble. See the gamble on fossil fuels and Petro-dollar thriving even against Climate Change. Freedom is the freedom of capital to leave the hands of punters to the house of foreign powers.
The casino is upgraded wherever it is profitable; for instance, foreign investors are given virtually free reign over property (a major source of economic growth). Anglo-American corporations mostly (despite the Xenophobia exhibited recently) play the major role in surplus extraction. A game that favours the Anglo-American abstraction of wealth from the continent and rent dividends on intellectual property, services, and investments. A military speculation complex founded in free trade agreements, an entrenched account deficit, and a favouring of services over a manufacturing capacity; with employment favouring principles of efficiency over social justice via neoliberal capitalism.
An economy with a strong, and increasing foundation in precarious and temporary residents, and an army of international students; basically, anyone who has enough money to come speculate in a precarious arrangement. A fair dinkum reality for the many temporary residents who endlessly hustle in precarious work, in a gamble that they can enter the permanent commons. Australia is a casino where one looks to bet in the dark.
The fact is that crisis and irrationality is fair dinkum baked into the neoliberal capitalist system, and it leaves the majority with “hope” or “faith” that things will shake out for them. The prices move in response to the balance of opinion, and its algorithms that are directed at the future movement of prices. A speculative economy is based on the speculative markets as the dominant mode of production and distribution that is enforced by a mercenary military industrial complex.
Even the conformist Erik Paul argues (University of Sydney, Peace and Conflict Studies) in his Australia Us Empire, that Australia’s Partnership in the US imperial project is a major danger to Australian democracy and security [3]. Since Australia fought alongside the US in every major war since the end of World War II, with an explicit pivot to the US over the UK after WII (Allies since WW1 leaves this at 100 years of Mateship). This leaves Australia in between China and the USA/UK tug of war.
Moreover, interconnectivity post 9/11 has only intensified the alliance; an alliance leading to Australia’s bulging military budget supporting US wars has made Australia complicit in war crimes (illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq) has made it a nuclear target in the event of a war with China (or Russia). The military alliance that has kept the Casino safe for decades has put it at risk. Or has it?
This increasingly heightened contradiction keeps Australia as a location of increasing speculation in its rocky relationship with China. A gamble by the elites between US/UK and Chinese capital. China persists as Australia’s most important economic trading partner. While the US and UK are the most important political partners. As with all casinos, Australia’s future will increase the volatility and risks of its community members at the expense of the stability of the stakeholders of the casino.
This casino arrangement makes Australia increasingly vulnerable to world economic disorder concerns, such as: the chronic instability of the world’s financial system, environment, and the ever-increasing disparity and inequality in the social distribution of risk and of opportunities for gain.
Australia’s military industrial complex increasingly enforces the immersion into free rhythms of labour and play into the measured beat of work; both must become equally productive. Increasingly, knowledge construction is a work in opposition to recreational actions, as all is subsumed by the market and its attached military industrial complex - a military speculation complex.
The military speculation complex of Australia is the increasing militarisation of society by a neoconservative two centrist party regime that (re)produces via persistent enemies (victims) and antagonisms (inequality). A casino that requires (like with all casinos) it requires an authoritarian all-pervasive surveillance state with private security to maintain stability. Australia’s “war on terror” has helped shape the country into a speculation stronghold via a powerful police state increasingly shielded by secrecy and legislation to neutralise dissent via increasing and accelerating censorship and the deprivation of civil and human rights.
A “representative” democracy fostering economic and political inequality via growing shortcomings in public services, transport, and health. The demos is guided almost exclusively to a form of speculative capitalism by the media monopoly of the Murdoch Press. They push the agenda that Australia is a flat self-contained system where contradictions can be overcome through hard fair dinkum work and obedience. A self-contained system threatened externally from inside and outside by terrorists, irrationality, criminality, relativity, and so on.
Despite the settler colonialism and White Australia policy (and so on), the Australian subject position (driven by the Murdoch Press) sees itself counter-intuitively as one of universality. An Aussie discourse of universality gains its power in attacking the excess that gives form to the whole (refugees, indigenous, and so on). The excess undermines the casino’s universality integrity for the punter and is seen as a threat to the totality.
The military speculation complex via its universality has obliterated both the spatially located templexity (time master position) relative to boundaries between different copies of territorial delineation; and, the legal dividers delineating the properties. A creation of a casino ecosystem that is always open to the probability of volatile swings despite the rationality of one’s choice; an ecosystem that faces contingent random swings as externalities of the fair dinkum speculative capital volatility.
In the casino there is a formal equality for all speculators; the economic relations which directly determine the changing in form are mediated via exchange between man and its outside nature; an exchange where the distinction progressively disappears. Man becomes, in the true sense, a speculator drive as persistent being. Where the marketplace becomes the reality (as structuring symbolic) for man.
So place your bets. And what will the result be? Will it mean that those who have guessed correctly love Australia? Well - that is precisely the meaning of what Australian political economy has enunciated in its history - to know what your partner will do is fair dinkum not a proof of love.
Notes
1. Strange S. Casino Capitalism. Second Edition. Manchester: Manchester University Press; 1997. 101 p.
2. Kranes D. Play grounds. J Gambling Stud. 1995; 11: 91–102 p. DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02283207
3. Paul E. Australia in the US Empire: A Study in Political Realism. Sydney: Palgrave Macmillan; 2018. 208 p.