166 thoughts on “Weekend reflections”

  2. The idiots in charge of NSW are at it again with the electricity privatisation. The ABC news reported last night that the sale would be likely to fetch about $3bn. I don’t know where they got that number from, but I assume they didn’t just make it up randomly.

    According to Bob Walker of Sydney Uni, the NSW government receives about $2bn in dividends and tax-equivalent payments from its electricity assets every year. That’s an income stream worth at least $10bn, even with the most pessimistic discount rate assumptions. To propose giving it away for something like $3bn should be setting off alarm bells all over the place.

    There’s a couple of possibilities:

    1) They fully intend to go ahead with the sale, which amounts to a theft from taxpayers.

    2) They don’t intend to go ahead with the sale, but want to allow the advisers to continue milking fees (about $50m so far), which amounts to a theft from taxpayers.

  3. Rationalist – the Qld power station must be the first commercial coal-fired power station on the planet to use CCS. More to come I am sure.

  4. A weekend question for all the capitalists?

    What economic theory or set of modelling equations produces;

    1) increasing poverty – see: Poor Get Poorer
    2) rich getting richer – see: Rich Get Richer
    3) millions of dollars for companies – see: Subsidise Capitalism .

    It appears to me that this has nothing to do with economics but more with corrupt politics.

    Or at least this is what the evidence is showing. The amount of US political support for propping-up capitalism is correlated to the amount cash politicians receive from capitalism.

    see Cash for Influence .

    So where in economic modelling does this cash fit?

  6. Yes I suppose it is how you base your rationality.

    Those individuals who benefited from feudal exploitation or colonial slavery would also say:

    Shrug (feudalism/slavery) is working just fine for me thank you very much and I am no Whitehall dandy.

    But if you take a social view this is unacceptable because the satisfaction of some is based on the dissatisfaction of others.

    But if you are an isolate – then this may not apply.

  7. @Chris Warren
    I would say that the overwhelming majority would agree that as a general principle, the market based capitalistic liberal democratic model has yielded fantastic wealth and overall is a great system.

    The average hard working tradie enjoys to see the fruits of his efforts, as do businessmen and those in industry. The last 15 years have shown how fantastic our system truly is for all Australians, now that is a consensus!

  8. Here’s a little known fact about Abraham Lincoln, the president who has a memorial constructed in his honour:

    When General Benjamin “Beast” Butler issued an order declaring all the women of New Orleans to be prostitutes because they refused to genuflect to his occupying soldiers on the streets, Lincoln refused to rescind the order despite international pressure to do so. The order was a license to rape.

  9. Clean coal is a dirty lie. C + O2 = CO2.

    The energy required to capture and store the CO2 will equal up to 40% of the plant’s total energy production. Forty percent more coal will have to be burnt to get the same amount amount of usable energy. There is no guarantee that sequestered CO2 will stay sequestered.

    Clean coal is DELIBERATE DIRTY LIE.

  12. The supporters of “clean coal” are, as Ikonoclast claimed, liars (or perhaps idiots).

    Harry Says

    Rationalist – the Qld power station must be the first commercial coal-fired power station on the planet to use CCS. More to come I am sure.

    Wheras the linked story actually says:

    CSS and has launched a pre-feasibility study into the project.

    “Pre-feasibility” does not equal “commercial”, at least for known values of “real world”.

  13. “What economic theory or set of modelling equations produces;

    1) increasing poverty – see: Poor Get Poorer
    2) rich getting richer – see: Rich Get Richer”

    It’s called the business cycle.

    When unemployment rises, the negotiating power of the suppliers of labor decline.

    3) millions of dollars for companies – see: Subsidise Capitalism .

    Are you aware that most of the funds provided under bail-out are loans or share sales? And that the US government will probably end up making a profit out of buying assets when prices were depressed and selling them once prices recover?

    3) millions of dollars for companies – see: Subsidise Capitalism .

  14. “Shrug (feudalism/slavery) is working just fine for me thank you very much and I am no Whitehall dandy.

    But if you take a social view this is unacceptable because the satisfaction of some is based on the dissatisfaction of others.

    But if you are an isolate – then this may not apply.”

    Well obviously anyone who disagrees with you must be a monster who hates the poor.

    I grew up in extreme poverty. I currently own a multi-million dollar business where I pay myself the exact same hourly wage as every other employee. I live in a housing co-operative or peopel on low incomes (which run as an un[paid volunteer).

    I happen to believe that a suitably regulated capitalist system, over the long term, has the greatest likelihood of improving the living standards of the poor.

    But, as I said, I disagree with you so obviously I’m the moral equivalent of a slave owner,

  16. The neo-confederate racist propaganda with Sukrit is promoting and which Alice so happily falls for is based on this article:

    “During the Civil War many southern women feared sexual assault, and hundreds, perhaps thousands of women suffered rape. Even though the federal mUitary defined rape as a crime punishable by court-martial, even execution, some Union soldiers were not deterred: at least 250 were court-martialed for the crime of rape.”

    http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3671/is_200904/ai_n31964235/?tag=content;col1

    Got that? “hundreds POSSIBLY thousands” of women were rasped in the course of the the entire war.

    I am not trivialising any instance of rape but this is not an exceptional figure by the abysmal low standards of military history.

    From the article:

    Storekeepers and businessmen, out of financial necessity, had little choice but to yield to Butler’s orders ; their wives and daughters were under no such compulsion. In fact, southern white women remained openly resistant to Union occupation, seeking not only to provoke Union troops, but also to compel Confederate men to action. If a New Orleans belle met a Union officer or soldier on the sidewalk, she contemptuously gathered up her skirts and walked to the other side of the street. When federal soldiers boarded streetcars or entered churches, southern women got up and left with a great to-do. They wore Confederate flags in their hats and dresses and hummed southern patriotic songs within earshot of northern troops. One woman, draped in a Confederate flag, walked up to a soldier standing guard, stared at him, and spat in the gutter before walking away in disgust ; others spat directly in the faces of federal soldiers.13 In fact, some went so far as to dump their chamber pots onto passing Union soldiers. Of displays like these, one general noted, “Such venom one must see to believe. Such unsexing was hardly ever before in any cause or country so marked and so universal. I look at them and think of fallen angels.”14

    …

    When one of Butler’s officers expressed concern that “troops may misunderstand the order,” Butler defended:

    Let us, then have one case of aggression on our side. I shall know how to deal with that case, so that it will never be repeated. So far, all the aggression has been against us. Here we are, conquerors in a conquered city; we have respected every right . . . and yet we cannot walk the streets without being outraged and spit upon by green girls. I do not fear the troops ; but if aggression must be, let it not be all against us.16″

    So there’s no actual evidence of the orgy of rape that the people Sukrit sedulously cites claim happened but hey it’s what can only be expected of those who wish to set aside the divinely-ordered separation of the races and the subjugation of the accursed children of Ham.

    Or in Alice’s case, it accords with the sexist, racist phallocratic behaviour of the US so even if it’s true in FACT it’s true in ESSENCE.

    After all how dare the Union troops be mean to the delicate southern belles when all they were doing was defending their husband and masters’ right to enslave other humans.
    …

  18. @Ian Gould
    “I happen to believe that a suitably regulated capitalist system, over the long term, has the greatest likelihood of improving the living standards of the poor”

    Yeah well that’s your capitalist system, not the one we’ve got, the one Chris Warren is talking about. I think he has a good reason for being down on the reality one.

  19. Thanks for doing garbage pickup on that one, IG. Sukrit, you need to be careful not to believe what you read from Lew Rockwell and similar. I know your economic views are similar, but I don’t think you are a loon. They are certifiably loony.

  21. @Ian Gould
    Except Ian – you then go to say “Or in Alice’s case, it accords with the sexist, racist phallocratic behaviour of the US so even if it’s true in FACT it’s true in ESSENCE.”

    Really? As much of an urban myth… as Sukrits first post and unlike JQ I wasnt quick enough to detect it as a loonie link (no shame there – I didnt read it all), but lets not deny originally and predominantly white societies (like the US and Australia and elsewhere) have actually been both sexist and racist in history Ian and still are. Or is that one on your denial list IG?

  23. John, harvesting methane gas and from biosolids and converting it into clean energy fuel is not new, but today it has been reported that Australia’s abundant methane gas reserves found in coal seams could help power the world.

  24. Rationalist will find that “fantastic” wealth built by “market based capitalistic liberal democratic model” was in fact built by regulated markets and enterprises that have little to do with capitalism. Capitalists then come along and demand that governments hand over the wealth that has been created outside capitalism. This process is called privatisation.

    Australian wealth was built on farmers (not capitalists) who sent wool and wheat on railways (not created by capitalists) to ports (not created by capitalists) to a external market (not created by our capitalists).

    After recovering from the destruction of 2 world wars (caused by internationial capitalist rivalry) and a depression (caused by capitalism) our productivity increased as Australia developed its schools, technical colleges, and universities (not by capitalism), by developing the Snowy Mountains Scheme and Murrumbidgee and Murry irrigation areas (not by capitalism). This growth was assisted by developing a national system of highways (not by capitalism) for produce and materials. It was also assisted by developing postal, telegraph, and phone systems.

    Australians also benefited from having decent police, health, and emergency services, which developed in the 20th century – but not by capitalism.

    So our food, transport, infrastructure, services, education and energy, etc all created without this so-called capitalism.

    The capitalism comes along and, as Henry Lawson says, “comes to take it from us” and from that point on, unemployment, and current account deficits have ratchetted up, and more importantly – per capita debt has increased.

    But not only this – the electronic gizmos you are probably mistaking for “wealth supposedly created by capitalism” – are imported from third world countries and manufactured by oppressed workers.

    Capitalism only gets into the economy, if it uses politics to insert its self parasitically, into an otherwise normal market liberal democracy. It then hides behind the market and democracy, destroying both in the process.

    And then when someone asks, “how is the reality of capitalism reflected in its economic theory or equations” our capitalists get terribly upset and try to answer every other question, except the one that was asked.

    Really – should we put up with such irrationality?

  25. Poor old Ian Gould;

    Typically answering his own questions – not the one that was asked.

    Anyway it is not realistic to pretend that Australian capitalists may themselves the same hourly wage as their workers and live in cooperative housing.

    This is irrelevent, useless, and time wasting. If you tried to pass a law so that all capitalists only received the same income as their workers – this would abolish capitalism.

    Capitalism, by definition, is not based on capitalists getting the same as their workers.

    It is the opposite.

  26. @Rationalist
    The ZeroGen plant was on Four Corners. If I recall they said they needed both a carbon price and some capital assistance from the large clean coal fund. I’m disturbed by Anna Bligh’s assertion that new coal plants will be approved if they are ‘capture ready’. Let’s release repeat offender crims if they are ‘law abiding ready’. My take on this is that politicians are in cahoots with the big emitters and are thereby in opposition to the conservation movement.

    A lot of the Chinese commodity demand could be stockpiling at low prices and for when their stimulus runs out. I know someone who lost his job in an ore mine and was re-hired when the Chinese took it over. If predictions of a Chinese coal shortage in five years are true it could be interesting. Australia supplies both the ores and the energy. Aussies occupy the non-executive jobs (eg bulldozer driver) but value adding and profits go to China. There’s a cloud in every silver lining.

  27. @Chris Warren
    That is ok, you are a bit of a Trot… I will still be your friend if you want.

    Our system of capitalism (which is regulated, prudentially (thanks to the Howard Government reforms) will make anyone who has skills or is willing to put the time and effort into something well off.

    This is fantastic, Rudd would agree with me.

  28. Crikey John, I didn’t know Norway’s city buses was run on biomethane a by-product of treated sewage which emits 78 percent less nitrogen oxide and 98 percent fewer fine particles two causes of respiratory illnesses and is 92 percent less noisy. Furthermore, the cost of producing biofuel the equivalent to one litre of diesel is about 0.72 euros compared to the price of diesel at the pump of 1.0 euro. Sounds very promising.

  30. OK

    Tactic 1 – smoke and mirrors did not work, so Rationalist tries tactic number 2, “ad hominem” attacks viz: “… you are a bit of a Trot”

    Unfortunately I am not, and have never been, a Trot. This debased logic should not be the refuge of last resort of irrationality.

    One day, some day, Rationalist may say something rational about the question asked.

    So we wait, and wait, and wait …….

  31. Rationalist, Oslo City Council began investigating alternatives to fossil fuel-powered public transport and decided on biomethane. Previously at one of the sewage plants in the city half of the gas was flared off emitting 17,00 tonnes of CO2. From September 2009, this gas will be trapped and converted into biomethane to run 200 of the city’s public buses.

  32. Rationalist, I forgot to mention think of the Libertarian poo being put to some good use of powering public transport.

  33. @Rationalist
    I read the article in question. Now I am a little surprised that there were so few Liberal supporters at the Western Sydney campus, given that is where the Liberal member Jackie Kelly was based AFAIK. Still, a check of the campuses such as Sydney University, might reveal a larger Liberal club support base elsewhere.

    As for the abuse, it isn’t nice but then among the most senior Liberal members of parliament in the land we have Abbott and his potty mouth about Gillard’s “s**t-eating grin”, and we have (two books’ worth at least) of Iron Bar Tukey’s quotes, Joyce’s approprium and Heffernan’s comments on the “barren” Gillard. For whatever reason, political players and abuse reflect the broader population from which they are drawn. I’ve picked Liberal pollies as examples because the article in question was banging on about how some hard-left try-hardly was so abusive, as if it were limited only to those who think they are leftwing.

    As far as I can remember from Uni it had the full spectrum of political clubs (best avoided), as well as some very interesting (ahem) horticultural clubs, as well as arts, crafts, chocolate appreciation, sports, mountaineering, faculty, and astronomy clubs, and of course the “Society for Creative Anachronism”. Where would we be without those guys and gals?

    University was a time for meeting people with a diversity of lifestyles from Nimbin to nimby, and for seeing that perhaps there are some good – if misguided – people whose only fault was a politic different from one’s own.

  34. @Chris Warren
    Says
    “Rationalist will find that “fantastic” wealth built by “market based capitalistic liberal democratic model” was in fact built by regulated markets and enterprises that have little to do with capitalism. Capitalists then come along and demand that governments hand over the wealth that has been created outside capitalism. This process is called privatisation.”

    When great wealth generated by a democratic system passes to private ownership it may often then become rule by oligarchy, no longer a democracy – how did the Medici Family become so wealthy and powerful?….they were bankers of course (what else?). They took control of Florence after a mediaeval democratic government collapsed.

    That should be a lesson to governments who want to privatise all and de-regulate all …and you could question why but often its because there is something short term in it for the govt officials/politicians or their party and families eg the Obeids of the world….the race to privatise Russian public assets was a race to the bottom beset by corruption but once governments start going down this path of privatisation of even base level social infrastructure services (under whatever spurious “policy” guise) they have already effectively lost control and probably are getting pecuniary benefits somewhere along the line for it.

    Then we end up with the wealth built by a democratic capitalist system mostly conferred to and becoming concentrated in a close few extremely wealthy families (financial CEOs these days?) and at its ultimate hereditary rule….. the Tommy Soehartos owning swathes of a country’s industry ?..We end up with no say in our rulership at all for the ordinary person and degraded public services (sound familiar at NSW state govt level?).
    I am for democratic capitalism, not oligarchic hereditary power plays under the false premise of pseudo competition.

  35. A more question more fundamental than whether or not capitalism best serves the interests of all members of society is whether or not what is said to be ‘capitalism’ should trump democracy.

    In the last three and a half decades of the neo-liberal ‘free market’ counter-revolution which began with the coup in Chile of 11 September 2001 1973, 36 years ago from yesterday (or still today in that hemisphere) governments have over-ruled popular will, whether through outright repression or through abuses of democratic processes as in the example of the 2009 Queensland asset fire sale in order to impose ‘free market’ prescriptions.

    Much of this has been chronicled in Naomi Klein’s towering “The Shock Doctrine” of which I have written of here (Why has has WordPress discarded all the internal anchors in URL’s, Professor Quiggin?).

    The neo-liberal cothinkers of many who contribute to these pages have been shown in Klein’s book to be willing collaborators with mass-murdering dicators. Her thesis has never been rebutted.

    To this day Klein’s thesis has not been rebutted anywhere by the neo-liberal ideologues “The Shock Doctrine” attacks.

    Of course, the neo-liberal counter-revolution was given a boost by the September 11 false flag terrorist attack of which yesterday (still today in that part of the world) was the eighth anniversary, on the 28th anniversary of the Chilean coup.

    In “The Shock Doctrine” Klein has shown how September 11 was exploited by Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rice, Bush et al to impose their sociopathic neo-liberal economic agenda on the US and the rest of the world.

  37. Alice

    There ain’t no such thing as democratic capitalism. Once a capitalist economy becomes truly democratic ALL monopoly power is abolished or controlled.

    Under such conditions, all economic theory suggests that economic profits are competed away. This marks the end of capitalism.

    Concepts like ‘democratic capitalism’ are nice sounding but are not properly developed concepts.

    Capitalism opposes democracy in the interests of capitalists.

  38. A much easier goal to achieve — serving the “vast majority” rather than all members of society — isn’t it Rationalist (@ #36)?

    So, if a good many are impoverished as is happening to renters right now, then that’s OK as long as neo-liberal economists can produce figures that ‘prove’ that the ‘vast majority’ are better off?

    Many qualified experienced professional has described their circumstances as ‘slavery’ as they are forced to hand over an ever escalating proportion of their income to landlords in order to have what in any civilised society should be considered a basic right for everybody — secure shelter.

    “Slavery” is a term I read in a letter to the Courier Mail written by a professional last year and it is how an experienced qualified professional who lives in my street, who once owned his two homes, together with an ex-partner, has repeatedly described his circumstances.

    The situation of many low-skilled and unskilled workers in this country must be truly appalling.

    When I stood as an independent candidate against the current Queensland Minister for Privatisation at the state elections in March, I met two women, who only months before were strangers, who were sharing the same bed within a room in a boarding house, so extortionate are rents in Brisbane these days. Both had secretarial qualifications but were at that point unemployed.

    I actually raised this in my speech on the “Meet the candidates” night. Andrew Fraser showed no interest whatosever in their plight in his speech or in any subsequent discussion.

    Later on he discussed anecdotally stories of people seeking to buy houses in the area. He told of how they would specifically seek houses on certain sides of inter-school boundaries to ensure that their children attended a particularly desirable primary school within the Mount Coot-tha electorate. How Andrew Fraser expected professionals forced to rent, let alone low-paid workers, to be able to relate to this anecdote was completely beyond me.

    Clearly for our political rulers, as well as apologists for economic ‘neo-liberalism’, the concerns of such people are completely off their radar.

    In any case, the statistical basis of neo-liberal claims that it has improved our prosperity, particularly Gross Domestic Product (even on a per capita base) have been long known to have been capable of presenting real and massive declines in prosperity as increases in living standards.

    How else is it possible for proganda mouthpieces such as the Australian to make claims of rising living standards in its editorial celbrating the suposed economic achievements of the Howard Government, when it is now necessary for at least two incomes to pay the cost of a mortage these days instead of only one as was the case little more than a generation ago.

    As has been repeatedly shown by myself and others on this forum economic neo-liberal ‘theory’ is a fraudulent sham devised only to conceal the theft of wealth from the many by a few rather than to help us understand how or economy really works.

  39. Rationalist

    I assume when you say vast majority – you mean vast majority in some economies?

    But this just means you have not digested the reality of social and economic decay now being reported from America.

    In the Third World many economies have been traumatised by capitalism and IMF interference as well as bloody massacres by capitalists against those who do not agree (Chile, Argentina, Indonesia, Vietnam etc etc).

    So how do you arrive at the “vast majority”? Does this include all the dead people killed by capitalism?

  40. @daggett

    Brisbane and SEQ has infrastructure issues due to massive population growth, part of a boom which has been going on for decades. Slavery? Hahaha.

    @Chris Warren

    Only people in Australia. I am not a citizen of any other country, hence it is the choice of their respective citizens on how they run their affairs. America isn’t in economic or social decay, it is simply going through a painful recession, it went through a bad one in the early 80s and early 90s as well (including all of the S&L debacle). However once out of recession America and indeed much of the western world has undergone a fantastic level of wealth creation, growth (population and economic) and growing standards of living.

  41. I’ve been following the US health-care “debate”, thanking God every waking moment that I’m not an American.

    http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2009/09/10/listening_to_a_liar_part_ii?page=full&comments=true

    There are no free lunches. I moved to the USA from Canada 15 years ago. I lived in Canada, I know how much, even poor people pay for free medical care. I was making $20,000 a year and I paid $1500.00 in taxes. This was to pay for all the goodies the government was giving to us free!!! Now think about the size of the USA compared to Canada – 30,000,000 in Canada is 300,000,000 in the USA. $1500.00 in taxes is $15,000 in USA. The question is not should we do this, but can we afford this? This may sound harsh, but it is even more harsh to bankrupt a nation just to feel good about yourself. And by the way, one of the reasons that Canadians have a hard time finding a doctor is because doctors come to the USA in order to make a living, but I guess that will stop when the USA turns into Canada.

    A remarkably intelligent comment, by the standards of the American Right.

  42. Just a health warning: clicking on the link above may cause serious nausea

    (e.g. ads for “Conservative T-shirts” that read “I’d Rather be Waterboarding”… WTF!!!!!???>)

  43. Alice, of course sexism and racism have been part of the history of the US and Australia and continue to be part of those societies today.

    The problem arises when you try to explain all social phenomena by reference to those factors alone.

    You end up like Sukrit blindly accepting neo-confederate propaganda about fake Union atrocities. (There were real Union atrocities of course – and they were eclipsed by the atrocities committed by the South before during and after the war.)

    Or you end up like poor Michael. Poverty and social inequality are real phenomena. I doubt Michael’s had much experience with them up close but he’s READ all about the min the SMH and there was a WHOLE HOUR on Compass about social justice …

    Michael takes those phenomena and uses them to justify a mentally stultifying Marxist ideology that means he can’t even allow himself to graps the connection between rising unemployment and rising poverty.

    I post on political forums very infrequently these days, largely because I got tired of futile posturing in the place of real discussion and real debate. But back when I did post regularly I was varioously called a Fascist, a racist, a capitalist stooge, a promoter and defender of pedophilia (hey Jack), a Communist, a socialist, a purveyor of political correctness and so on.

    Now it’s fairly obvious that all those contradictory accusations can’t simultaneously be true.

    What I am – and this is what angers ideologues of all stripes, is an empiricist and a pragmatist.

    I don’t have a grand overarching ideology which I keep seeking to impose on reality. (This is where I differ from poor Michael, for example, who probably lies awake at night wondering why the proletarians so stubbornly refuse to rise up and overthrow the capitalist exploiters. Then to we have Sukrit, who starts from quite rational concerns abotu big government and intrusions on civil liberties and ends up spreading racist propaganda about that blood-stained tyrant Lincoln.)

    I look at all the data, check sources and make tentative conclusions based on the available data which I revise if new data arises.

    Others might want to try it, if only for the sake of novelty

  44. (Firstly my apologies for having misspelt ‘propaganda’ as ‘proganda’ above.)

    Irrationalist wrote (@ # 36)

    “Brisbane and SEQ has infrastructure issues due to massive population growth, part of a boom which has been going on for decades.”

    Precisely.

    And why did convicted criminal Nutall, and his associates Peter Beattie and Anna Bligh not bother to inform Queenslanders that privatisation as well as congestion, rocketing rates, electricity charges, water charges, council rates, longer hospital waiting lists, threatened exinction of the koala, lungifish, the Mary River Turtle, the Mary River Cod, the Great Barred Frog, etc, not to mention rocketing housing costs, would be part of the price they would have to pay for the population growth that they deliberately encouraged?

    This demonstrates conclusively, as I have pointed out elsewhere, the Federal and State Governments’ pursuit of population is a Ponzi sheme, and one of the stupidist conceivable Ponzi schemes, at that.

    All of us must necessarily become poorer on average, even before we consider the diseconomies of scale caused by population growth and the loss of what economies of scale that govenment intervention in the economy would have allowed — all to allow a small minority of land speculators, property developers financiers and related vested interests to profit at everyone else’s expense.

    Rationalist wrote:

    “Slavery? Hahaha.”

    As I have shown, that term is not used just by myself.

    However whatever term we use to describe the circumstances of renters, the fact remains that in the last few decades, the living standards of a substantial proportion of people in our midst has declined massively, in stark contrast to the promises that neo-liberal ideologues made when they foisted their aganda on this country starting from the 1970’s.

    And the fact remains that the measures that economic (ir)rationalist economists used to claim that the prosperity of the rest of us have increased are completely wrong, and you have not even attempted to challenge that point.

    Your indifference to the plight of renters is as instructive as is Andrew Fraser’s.

  45. @Chris Warren
    Good point Chris…particularly about those countries thrown into a state of disarray by IMF intervention wkith its blanket precription to privatise any vestige of a public sector (lunatics)

  47. @SJ
    said “The idiots in charge of NSW are at it again with the electricity privatisation.”

    You know its really a shame we cant take a massive class action against the NSW State Government or can we….by the time the bastards have finished there will be no state assets, a fattened state Labor party and a few rich bs.

    It is theft from taxpayers…any lawyers want to take them on? That would be nice, really.

    The lotteries brought in 50 mill a year -sale price 100mill – tell me where you buy a business like that that pays for itself in two years and here they are again with a so called lefty in charge (yeah right – Neither Rees or his mate Robertson can be trusted not the rip the taxpayers off. Robertson already sold out his union mates with the sale of Currwaong…what would we expect of him?).

    Now this electricity with an income stream of 10 bn and they they want to sell it for 3 bill.

    You tell me who is making money out of this?? It sure as hell stinks and its not the taxpayers making any money.

    Its just a free for all of corrupt dealings. These people in State Labor are just trash.

  48. OK Rationalist

    If you want to focus on Australia, then for a period, a Western capitalism can reach a high standard of living under capitalism, provided:

    1) it can sell products outside the economy
    2) it can give workers consumer items imported from oppressed workers outside the economy
    3) per capita debt increases.

    So if you can accept these three principles then you may be living in the best of all possible worlds.

    But smarter people can look beyond this.

Leave a comment