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John Quiggin 
I wondered if anyone had thoughts on the Nixon Black Saturday uproar?
Alan Kohler and Jessica Irvine and getting concerned about what will happen with the wealth if another mining boom comes along. Howard’s track record was hopeless. Does anyone think that Rudd (or anyone else for that matter) has it in him to manage it properly?
The mining boom does present problems. Another one is that, although I am guessing and haven’t based this on any analysis of data, the resources sucked into the expansion of mining are, I guess, very much the same resources that are used for construction, including house building. Assuming this correct, the supply of new housing, and other construction, will continue to be squeezed for sometime with plenty of redistribution upwards via rental increases.
You’re right on there Freelander. My mates in the construction industry (in WA) already reckon the backlogs are as bad as 2008.
@Freelander
An appalling brouhaha without, as far as I can tell, any merit at all. The woman appears to be doing a reasonable job and is guilty of no prior breach of duty. She has the support it seems of the people who need her efforts. Were she to be removed and some grandstanding politician have a scalp the public would be the loser.
The Liberals really are unspeakable.
Well Freelander, my thoughts are that the media loves trying to get a controversy going. Unless Nixon’s role involved rolling up the sleeves and hands-on work, I fail to see how her popping in and out of command central, or whatever they call it, is even a talking point. The media tried very hard to stake a claim on controversy by saying she went to the pub for a meal – while people were dying! As if she was responsible personally, as if she could have run down the hill to the nearest burning property, kicked the doors in, and rescued anybody in there. Bottom line is that she has managers to do the managing, and they have staff to do the doing, and those staff have equipment to do the doing with. I would certainly not want the head of police to also be responsible for tactical on-the-ground decisions concerning emergency response – it just isn’t their role.
There you have it.
Her first real mistake was in not saying up front that she was not personally in charge (of those police operations) and have pointed out exactly who was on that day. Presumably someone in the Victorian police was in charge of these operations on the day, and probably would have had specialist experience that would have made them better able to handle the detail of that particular operation. Being Commissioner is not about being the best at every job in the force. Delegation is a very important part of being a senior manager.
Having not established that, the next real mistake was not being upfront about the meal. She could have simply said, look I was not in charge of these operations, I had complete faith in the capacity of those I had chosen to handle things, and complete faith in their good judgement to keep me appraised in a timely manner of anything I needed to be made aware of.
When authority is delegated, especially to able senior people, their ought not to be a need for a high level of continuous monitoring even in that type of crisis situation.
Having opened the door by not being straight forward on the meal, unsurprisingly a skilful silk moved in. The media was as its usual histrionic self, as were the various self-serving commentators.
Christine Nixon is a scapegoat: they’ve been casting around for a while for one and it looks she’s the bunny, for now.
The real problem is the sort of corruption of policy formulation and implementation, an almost systemic failure that has occurred over the last generation: lest anyone misunderstand, I’d definitively reject the Miranda Devine tactic of blaming environmentalists- more to do with the myth of “efficent” allocation of resources in modern society and the results of that, that come later, “downstream”.
@paul walter
Yes. Almost all modern leadership nowadays is of the form “mistakes were made but not by me” and “mistakes were made which can only be seen in hindsight” or “in hindsight, I would have done things differently [but without the great benefit of hindsight you can’t blame me at all for what I did]” or “I am sorry you feel that I have something I should apologise for”. In a world of spin they are all too dizzy to succeed at policy formulation and implementation. After all those two things are not the core skills that got them where they are in the first place.
@Foib
Sorry Foib – if we are making money out of the mining resources recovery…and higher taxes the last place I want any politician to squirrelm it away is in any global sovereign (call it what you want) shonky fund. The Govt can repair infrastructure, invest in youth education or additional infrstructure (why the hell are 50 ships queueing in our ports?).
Forget soverign wealth funds…what a lot of garbage by writers who get a kickbacks from fund managers like MQ bank. Are we all stupid?
@Freelander
Agree with Fran. If she wasn’t a female tall poppy, I wonder whether the media reaction wouldn’t have been markedly different.
Given those who have managed to escape criticism it was all a bit rich.
The ABC has an interesting piece on it:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/04/12/2870566.htm?site=thedrum
@Foib and @Freelander,
You raise an interesting issue.
If this country does not have the housing, infrastructural and human resources to mine our resources at the break-neck rate the mining companies, mostly foreign-owned would want to, then a Government, with the public interest at heart would simply withold approvals for the new mines until such time as those resources become available.
The cost the rest of the community pays to allow these companies to extract our non-renewable mineral resources must be enormous: hyper-inflated housing costs, skilled labour drained from the rest of the economy, the enormous costs we pay for immigration and population growth (to the extent it is truly necessary to supply the labour necessary for mining), etc..
Given all this and given that much of the high wages are earned by imported workers, that most of the profits are repatriated overseas, it is questionable whether the Australian communty as a whole come out ahead from the mining boom.
And this is disregarding the fact that we are extracting non-renewable resources that will mostly be gone in decades and unavailable to future generations and the horrific planetary and local environmental costs of mining.
More corrupt capitalists. This time Goldman Sachs.
See | GFC Diagnoses |
@Chris Warren
What is at least positive is that a regulator is actually going after them. In the past, the norm was simply to ignore such obvious fraud. Hopefully this is a sign of things to come. There was an awful lot of fraud in the whole subprime-CDO-CDS fiasco. If all the fraud were properly pursued. the US might have another felon incarceration led recovery. Some of the current unemployed could be soaked up in the demand for prison guards.
@daggett
Daggett – disturbing news coming from south of Gunnedah about mining leases granted to a chinese company which is now busy buying out farmers at windfall prices and the potential for damage to aquifiers from mining – all on food producing land. Nice and stupid isnt it?.
@Chris Warren
Chris…as Goldman started so they continued…unchecked.
Quote
“Senator Couzens (a liberal Michigan Republican): Did Goldman, Sachs and Company organise the Goldman Sachs Trading Corporation?
Mr Sachs: Yes, sir.
Senator Couzens: And it sold its stock to the public?
Mr Sachs: A portion of it. The firm invested originally in 10% of the entire issue for the sum of $10,000,000.
Senator Couzens: And the other 90% was sold to the public?
Mr Sachs: Yes, sir.
Senator Couzens: At what price?
Mr Sachs: At 104. That is the old stock…..the stock was slit two for one.
Senator Couzens: And what is the price of the stock now?
Mr Sachs: Aprroximately 1 and 3/4.
Source: Stock Exchange Practices, Hearings, April-June 1932, pp566-67
@Freelander
yes it is positive that the regulator has the resources and intention to act.
But I can’t help thinking that it would be more efficient for the regulation to precede the corruption (and therefore prevent it in the first place).
@Alice,
I found this story in the Sydney Morning Herald of 17 April:
At the end it is said that the Shenhua mining company has conducted negotiations with the farmers fairly:
Nevertheless, it’s colonisation and the principle is not fundmentally different to what is going on Madang in New Guinea, where a China Metallurgical Construction has been despoliating the local environment and trampling on the rights of local landowners with the collusion of the Government of Papua New Guinea.
“Nevertheless, it’s colonisation and the principle is not fundmentally different to what is going on Madang in New Guinea”
It is fundamentally different. Australia is a rich democratic country with a decent legal system and reasonable procedures to deal with conflicts of interest. If mining goes on there, then presumably that’s because there is a good trade-off, and not because Shenhua mining is exploiting anybody. It’s good business. Some farmers get rich to stop farming (it’s not like they are obliged to sell, and it’s not like they are selling the land cheaply), and another business that earns even more money replaces them.
@conrad
Nonsense. Although your point about legal system is correct, the relevant law only takes into account the interests of the buyer and seller, but when China buys up big there are many more interests involved. It is colonisation of Australian resources and sovereignty, and gives China a lever if ever the government wishes to make law changes that they believe are against the interests of their holdings in Australia. China or any foreign country buying up big, especially a large and powerful country, can rapidly become an undesirable foot in the door. Further down the track, despite our democracy, substantial Chinese holdings in Australia can provide the opportunity for significant pressure and control, and too vigorous exercise of our democratic rights against their perceived interests could end up with us subjected to ‘gun-ship diplomacy’. China has already demonstrated a willingness to play ‘hard ball’, in a very ruthless capitalist manner.
If you want an example of a country whose citizens that had substantial, quazi-criminal, holdings in another country, that suffered changes detrimental to those holdings, and the consequent retaliation, here is a great example – USA and its victim Cuba.
The sanctions against Cuba are mainly a consequence of the confiscation of the quazi-criminal holdings of US citizen’s in Cuba. I say, quazi-criminal holdings because the Cuban economy was a brown paper bag economy from top to bottom, but more so toward the top, and US property holdings were obtained through graft and corruption.
Freelander, Cuba is not a rich democratic country. I also think you’re suffering China paranoia. I remember similar arguments about Japan in the 80s (although strangely not arguments about our biggest foreign investor, the USA, who has got us into far more trouble than everyone else combined, and still does looking at Afghanistan). I also think that China having to deal with Australia (and other countries) is good and not bad, since the influence works both ways. In addition, given that Australia has some fairly unique resources, and given that the main rather obvious aim of the Chinese government is to make sure they have a stable supply of these, it’s rather hard to imagine that they could do anything to create the type of influence as your example — if they sanctioned Australia (which of course they wouldn’t, and indeed couldn’t), it would screw up their own supply of minerals, the consequences of which would be far worse than Australia losing a bit of money by not selling to them.
A country whose political leaders systematically impose “elite as opposed to popular views”, as Bob Hawke put it in 1993, on virtually every major question of public policy is not a democracy in my opinion.
Obviously a facade of democracy exists, but behind that facade almost every important decision is arrived at in meetings held behind closed doors by representatives of this country’s oligarchy and conveyed to our country’s political rulers to be announced as Government policy. How else can anyone explain how all the decisions reached, that have been so harmful to our best interests, in the last three decades have been arrived at? These include (from my above-cited article “Why Queenslanders must demand new and fair state elections” of 12 Jan 2010):
Of course, the most blatant example of how ‘democracy’ has been rigged to ensure that “elite as opposed to popular views” prevail is the way that the Queensland public were cheated out of having any say over the $15 billion fire sale at the last Queensland state election, because the newsmedia, in particular, Madonna King of Brisbane’s local ABC radio station refused to properly question Andrew Fraser and Anna Bligh over whether or not they intended to flog off more public assets during the election campaign, in spite of my having provided abundant evidence to her that this was likely to happen. See my article “Brisbane ABC suppresses alternative candidates in state elections despite listener dismay with major parties” of 30 April 2009.
It is not. It has obviously been rigged to ensure that interests of the wealthy almost always prevail over the public interest and the interests of ordinary citizens.
How else can we explain the outrageous and astronomical $250,000 costs awarded against Senator Bob Brown last year by a Tasmanian court, or $30,000 awarded against Greens Tweed Shire Councillor Katie Milne for contesting the environmentally reckless decision by the NSW Government to impose the World Rally car races on Tweed and Kyogle shires?
As the above cited article makes clear, the farmers overwhelmingly don’t want to sell, but have been placed in a situation by the NSW Government where they have to.
As @Freelander argued, even if they wanted to bought off, which they don’t, should it be their choice alone, and not the rest of NSW, not to mention future generations, to allow the mineral wealth to be plundered, to allow rich fertile farm land to be destroyed, to allow the possible poisoning of water aquifers extending well outside their own region and to allow yet more climate changing carbon dioxide to be poured into the world’s atmosphere by Chinese industry?
“Cuba is not a rich democratic country”… Not relevant. Neither is China. Japan didn’t and doesn’t have a large army, navy or air-force, or nuclear weapons or intercontinental ballistic missiles. Japan also has a legacy from WWII and was very much under the US thumb in that period. More recently Japan has been pretty stroppy. Their activities in relation to whaling being one example. The US does use its economic ‘weight’ and military hegemony to exploit other countries including Australia. Afghanistan and Iraq just two of many examples, and both of these have cost us significantly. The only reason we haven’t gotten the raw deal the US has dished out to others is our membership of various networks, that we don’t have the things that the US is most interested in, and, hence, they have larger fish to fry.
“the influence works both ways”… Maybe, I guess that an ant may influence an elephant which in squishing the ant, slips on its juices and does itself an injury. Though an unlikely and expensive route to influence.
We do have stuff that China wants resources of all kinds, not just minerals but agricultural land and so on. China can acquire strategic stocks of various resources, just as the US has. It can then turn on the screws and can also us any exercise of our democratic rights that cuts across their perceived ‘property rights’ to intervene.
Our defense forces would last about 8 minutes with Chinese human and military resource casualties zero.
I am not paranoid about China just a realist.
Things don’t have to get to an intervention situation for us to worry about China’s potential for economic (and military) hegemony. We already have the US experience, and the Chinese play a more serious form of capitalism unfettered by some of the ideology that at least some in the US pay lip service to.
We can’t look to the US to help us. Its a dwindling power and effectively lacks a real government. Not to blame Obama , but with their type of government where parties are only loose coalitions, and the administration effectively has no control over congress, quick coordinated non-military and well thought out action in response to any Chinese machinations should not be relied on.
In looking to curb China, Australia should be developing strong relations with the EU (and anyone else) before real threats eventuate. Australia should also make sure that China doesn’t get to much of a foothold which could provide cover as justification for any undesirable actions.
Freelander & Daggett, you really are paranoid and have an extremely weird view of history. Free trade with countries like China has done wonders for Australia over the last few decades (and China for that matter), and helps pay for all of those government services and subsidies that you think are necessary. We’re miles richer than we were 30 years ago by any measure, and if it hadn’t been for Hawke and Keating, we’d be broke now. In addition, if China wanted to play nasty-guy with people, it would already have done so to Taiwan, Japan, all of the other countries that think they own the Spratley’s etc., but in the end, having a good relationship with Australia is good for them and good for us. Alternatively, knocking Japan off the map would please a fair chunk of the population, get rid of a competitor, and be fairly simple for them to do, but they haven’t done that.
As for the rant about privatization etc. — it’s really been quite a success for some of the companies you mention, like Telstra (which actually has to give you good cheap service now), Qantas (which would probably be broke now like most government airlines otherwise), CSL (which became one of the best companies in the world), the Commonwealth Bank (where you can get a loan without grovelling to the bank manager), etc. . If I compare that to Australia post, for example, which doesn’t open on the weekend (obviously we can send our wives to pick up parcels on weekdays), the difference is stunning.
Conrad – there is a huge difference between yourself and the Chinese. They are long term thinkers and you are short term. As a Telstra shareholder I find your definition of success misguided at best. The decision to leave everything to the market is short sighted because you can be quite sure that the Chinese would never be so stupid. They remember the gun boat diplomacy that they have had to contend with in the past and will make sure that they have the whip hand. Inadequate protections of the people and blind optimism are sure ways to leave the country vulnerable. The cyber attacks experienced in the last week are signs that market only responses to other nations are less than adequate.
Here’s some fun:
The Roots of Stalin in the Tea Party Movement
Fascinating piece covering the origins of the anti-communist, pro-libertarian, climate change denying, tea-party funding astroturfing Koch Industries in — the old USSR.
Gotta love the irony, including how they got driven to deal with Stalin after being screwed by US big business using patent law.
Love this bit:
Irony …
@conrad
Unfortunately Conrad, once you deduct the increase in debt, Australia is not richer than it was 30 years ago.
If Whitlam, Fraser, Hawke, Keating, had left the economy alone, we would have a lot more manufacturing, and less debt in Australia.
You consistently misrepresent matters – no-one “grovelled” to a bank manager to get loans. But now many fear being foreclosed and this will increase as interest rates climb.
If you want to take this issue seriously spend some time looking at bankruptcy trends, debt trends, and Andrew leigh’s latest work in increasing gap between rich and poor.
Once you look at their debt levels – most capitalist economies are now broke – and the same causal tendencies are still mounting.
You are being disingenuous, Conrad.
Freelander and Daggett know that the even playing field nonsense is just that- the last generation has seen the misappropriation; the “privatisation” of government to big capital at the expense of communities “designed” out of the loop.
Manufactured consent sees humanitarian and sustainability issues on the back burner, to slash, burn and run exploitation with communities left to cleanup after they’ve had their resources expropriated.
Democracies are corpses fed off by corporatist grubs, and the law does indeed function”to protect the guilty”.
the system is centred around the mass production of junk and the nexus with consumer commodification- this is surely not much of a culmination to evolution, but its negation.
@Fran Barlow
Of course, a lot of Libertarians, including the Lew Rockwell lot, have a low view of the Kochs for that sort of reason and think they are trying to infiltrate and take over things that really started up from grass roots.
I tend to agree that the whole brouhaha about Christine Nixon seems overdone. I don’t think it really matters a great deal if she did go out for dinner. She no doubt would have been instantly contactable if needed. Not all public officials can be at the coalface around the clock.
I suspect there is a certain amount of pandering to the politics of envy in all this. The subtext: look at this fat cat dining out at expensive restaurants. I bet you can’t afford to do that, you poor battler. Yah boo hiss!
“If Whitlam, Fraser, Hawke, Keating, had left the economy alone, we would have a lot more manufacturing, and less debt in Australia.”
Do you mean like East Germany before the wall fell?
“Unfortunately Conrad, once you deduct the increase in debt, Australia is not richer than it was 30 years ago.”
Chris, can you tell me one way the average person isn’t better off these days? We have better health, education, and living standards. What more do you want?
“Andrew leigh’s latest work in increasing gap between rich and poor.”
As pointed out (obviously you don’t believe it since you think we arn’t richer — but even the hard left guys over at LP are willing to admit it, so you may as well assume you’re wrong), we’re all better off. The fact that some rich guys have become even richer is neither here not there to me.
“Conrad – there is a huge difference between yourself and the Chinese. They are long term thinkers and you are short term. As a Telstra shareholder I find your definition of success misguided at best. The decision to leave everything to the market is short sighted because you can be quite sure that the Chinese would never be so stupid”
I don’t believe everything should be left to the market. There are monopolies I think need to be regulated. Also, I’m not a short term thinker. Quite the opposite. I think that the best way for some things to prosper is for the government not to run them — Just like CSL — it went from something rather tiny to the success it is now.
How was Australian manufacturing, ever like East Germany?
What is the relevance of living standards, if per capita debt is rising continuously. Criminals can have huge living standards with bragging rights – until the logic of their situation catches up with them. Anyone can buy a higher living standard if they get more debt.
We all want higher living standards, but not at the cost of unsustainable, increased debt (which propagandists ignore). If you ignore the debt then you can say “what else do you want”. But this is like living in a fools paradise.
It would be far more sustainable, and ethical, for Australia to be better off with a living standard comprised of commodities manufactured by labour remunerated at the same level as, and with similar conditions, as Australian workers.
The living standard that is dazzling you, was imported from the Third World which is based on relatively low paid, oppressed labour. If workers making computers received the same share of their productivity as in Australia – Australians would not be able to afford computers.
You are not thinking logically. You are also misrepresenting what I said.
As I said – if you deduct the debt – Australia is not better off than 30 years ago – 1980.
I note that you don’t care whether the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.
The illusion of “balance” in the media concerning Climate Science is torn to shreds in this interview on the ABC Science Show. Ironic, really, given the delusiorati airing their anti-science BS on the ABC Drum recently.
I recommend having a good read of the interview transcript or a listen to it.
Re: Christine Nixon – no doubt she assessed that her presence wasn’t needed when she went to dinner. What happened was truly awful but there were many people at fault that day – I am not sure why the press seems to have decided that she is the Fall Guy.
@conrad
I have no great problem with Australia selling resources we extract, food we produce and so on to China, and some of us are indeed doing well from the incredibly cheap goods we are getting from China in return. While the good times in relation to selling resources we extract, food we produce and so on, is likely to continue as long as we (or others without a ruthless capitalist agenda) own the mines, the farms and so on, the cheap goods we get in return will not. As China pulls along side the rest of the world in terms of GDP per capita, a big transition will occur. The ‘west’ will have to re-industrialise because we will no longer get cheap goods based on the low rates of pay (unless we discover some other useful billion or so unemployed who get on the development path), we will have to pay first the longer run equilibrium price and then a premium while we re-industrialise.
At least Australia, will still have resources and agriculture unless we sell it all to China. That will soften the transition. As for much of the rest of the west, the transition will be painful.
As for “Telstra (which actually has to give you good cheap service now), Qantas (which would probably be broke now like most government airlines otherwise), CSL (which became one of the best companies in the world), the Commonwealth Bank (where you can get a loan without grovelling to the bank manager), etc.”, there is no evidence (except for some self serving wishful thinking masquerading as research) that their performance has been any better than it would have been without privatisation.
In the case of Telstra the performance and productivity has been quite appalling. Prices have fallen but so what. That is simply the result of massive technical advantages in the electronics and communications industries, nothing whatsoever to do with Telstra’s privatised management whose performance both from a technical and in terms of competitive and efficient outcome has been quite appalling. As for Qantas, again there has been ongoing technical advances in that industry too. Qantas management has been relatively good both before and after privatisation. Nevertheless, after privatisation the concentration on cost cutting seems to be heading towards the situation that some are beginning to wonder if maintenance is going from ‘just in time’ to ‘almost in time’ and I am beginning to wonder whether, as a consequence, we might begin to see planes falling out of the sky. Likewise, the Commonwealth Bank was well managed before privatisation and has been well managed since, and this is another industry that has benefit massively from cost reduction due to improvements in electronics and communications, but again, in the privatised form the Commonwealth bank, like banks generally, is clawing to much in margins, is paying its senior staff too much, and hence is allocatively inefficient. You are attributing the consequences of many regulatory reforms, some of which were good, to the privatised management. You had to grovel to a bank manager regardless of ownership before the reforms. Likewise, changes to pricing and competition occurred in the airline industry, as well as excess capacity. And Telstra’s telecommunications prices and access to its infrastructure are subject to substantial regulation.
If you simply ignore the facts then who could say that you are wrong?
@conrad
Conrad says “obviously you don’t believe it since you think we arn’t richer”
There is one big fat huge elephant in the room when you make this statement Conrad. It takes two incomes to buy a house. It didnt forty years ago.
Plus lots of young people cant buy a house until they are in their thirties instead of their early twenties when they used to set up house and family.
No the average person and the average family is not richer. They are poorer by half.
The elephant Conrad – you totally ignored it. Where people’s income is going. To the mortgage, to the banks.
But yes, the banks are much richer.
I also wish Conrad would spell “aren’t” properly. You are at uni Conrad (and I know Im a sloppy speller but thats typing speed with two fingers but I dont make the same spelling mistake twice for that reason).
I am so glad Goldman is being charged with Fraud. Bring it on and more of it (such charges) so decent people can get back to decent business with some confidence.
Residents stand up to dictatorial imposition of high rise monstrosity on Milton
In response to the overwhelming rejection by residents of plans to erect a massive 31 story residential and commercial tower atop the Milton Railway Station, Minister for Infrastructure and Planning Stirling Hinchliffe has declared the project to be of state interest and “called-in” the development approval proces so that the normal legal avenues can be bypassed. However, Concerned Residents Against Milton’s Excessive Development are determined to stand up to Hinchliffe and have called a public meeting to protest his decision.
What you can do: Please show your support for the embattled residents of Milton by attending the meeting at 6.30PM, next Thursday at the Milton State School. More information: Ph 0404 833057, 0408 101117, enquiries[AT]cramed.org.
The one company mentioned by Conrad and Freelander I can comment on is CSL. I had a tour and briefing on them. Their huge cost and efficiency advantages over their competitors in serum extraction lie in their investment in a radically new process and a full state-of-the-art facility designed to operate it properly. The process was developed, and the facility built, in the several years before privatisation, when they were run by stodgy bureaucrats and lacklustre government scientists.
@Peter T
You couldnt possibly be saying Peter ..that public investment actually pays dividends could you? You could be locked up as a free market heretic for saying something like that LOL!
@conrad
I am not particularly interested in arguing yet again over privatisation here.
That argument has been won over and over again. Even in the face of media’s predominant pro-privatisation propaganda an overwhelming majority has remained consistently and steadfastly opposed to privatisation in recent years.
My essential point that you have not attempted to answer is that in our supposed ‘democracy’ the will of the majority is almost invariably ignored.
Even if public ownership is inefficient as the neo-liberal ideoogues insist it is, it is surely still the right of the owners to retain ownership of those assets and to operate them in that way if they so choose.
Yet our supposedly democratic governments have repeatedly ignored those wishes in previous decades.
@Peter T
Thanks. Very informative. CSL is one that I really knew nothing about. Unlike some who post here, I wasn’t inclined to ‘just make it all up’.
Typical. Sounds like the solid work and accomplishments of old fashioned stodgy bureaucrats who actually cared and tried to do a good job for Australia has been donated, at a bargain basement price, to the big end of town. I wonder what the ongoing cost is for all the services the Commonwealth and States now have to pay a premium for, to CSL, those services that they previously got at cost.
Typical and very clever privatisation.
Daggett’s point that the will of the majority has almost invariably been ignored is valid. The neo-liberal ideologues pursued a policy of infiltrating both sides of politics, academia and the bureaucracy with the long term objective that their ideas would be carried out regardless of who the public voted for. And they succeeded with this surreptitious approach.
They have always had an elitist contempt for democracy, as they only believe in rights, and the only real rights they believe in are property rights. If they had their way their ideas would be written into law and the only way any of those laws could be overturned is by a unanimous vote. Some might think I have just made this up, but they would be wrong. These are the ideas of the neo-liberal ‘theorists’ and ‘philosophers’.
Spot on, daggett, regarding ownership. Incidentally, what is the neo-liberal concept of ‘efficiency’?
@Ernestine Gross
Simple in two parts. First, what ever the ‘market’ outcome is. Second, they don’t really care about efficiency to quote Milton Friedman. He said in one interview, where he uncharacteristically told the truth in public, that he believed that the unfettered market was the most efficient means of production and allocation, but that he really didn’t care whether it was or it wasn’t, because the unfettered market was the only fair way to do things and any of its outcomes were therefore fair and that is all that mattered in his conception of what the best society was and the best of possible worlds.
Really, libertarians like Friedman engaged in bait and switch. Their own justification for the policies they have promoted is based on philosophical ideas of what is fair and just, which are based on fair process without any regard for outcome, or even the fairness of the initial distribution. But to the broad public to sell the ideas they rarely argue that. Instead, they make claims about efficiency, making the cake bigger, a rising sea lifting all boats and so on. Because these arguments are not really the reasons for their support of these policies, simply means to an adoption end, they don’t really care whether they are true or not. What they care about is whether they manage to get decision makers to do what they want.
It is simply part of the very undemocratic and elitist streak that runs though libertarianism. They certainly mustn’t believe the ‘unexamined life is not worth living’ because one thing they strenuously avoid is the examined life when it comes to their core ideas and beliefs. Not unlike all great religions.
@Freelander
In short, are you telling me the term ‘efficiency’ is empty in neo-liberalism?
Some of them know neoclassical economics. Many don’t really. But the theorists who do, don’t really care whether outcomes are efficient or not. Neo-liberalism is not about efficiency at all. It is a philosophy of process justice. Agents own property rights, ‘willingly’ enter into contracts, as long as everything happens according to what they consider ought to be the law, fine – everything is fair and just because the process was fair and just. Of course the practical analysis of real world issues quickly breaks down into sophistry.
Take for example if you suggested that Aborigines were dispossessed of property in the past and that their ancestors should be compensated. The type of response you are likely to get from a typical (educated) libertarian is that all rather hard to prove and demonstrate who should do the compensating; the people who did the dispossessing are long dead; and anyway, to do that sort of thing would be too much of a disruption to the current system of property rights, and would ‘introduce unnecessary and undesirable uncertainty about ownership’. Hence, best to just forget about it. However, say it was an individual, not Aboriginal but of European descent, long dead, who had some property taken, then the analysis would be somewhat different. The story then would be to not allow that claim to be pursued by their ancestor would ‘introduce unnecessary and undesirable uncertainty about ownership’ in the current system of property rights. This would be a wrong that very much has to be put right for fairness and justice to prevail.
If you have been around them or worked with them, they are very much like bible quoting bible bashers who find support in the bible for whatever they want. Similarly, a skilled and self-deluded libertarian (redundant to say self-deluded) will find support in their philosophy for whatever fits in with their petty prejudices. There is only the semblance of intellectual rigor.
All very interesting but they can become so mechanical as they absorb the doctrine, that the worn phrases and regurgitated polemics can become rather tiresome. They do tend to take themselves very seriously and frequently have extraordinarily overblown opinions of themselves. They are typically not into real empirical research, except for those who torture data until it confesses what they believed all along. They are typically not into real model building either instead they prefer to replace the absence of solid analytics with considerable polemics and rhetorical flourish.
Just as it must be fascinating to study exactly what makes the average religious nutter tick, so it would be fascinating to study the predilections that make people susceptible to libertarianism and the inner workings of the libertarian mind. As with any highly intelligent nutter, the sophistry generated by the highly intelligient libertarian, and their rationalisions can be quite complex and are, themselves interesting. Take for example that libertarian nutter Alan Greenspan. He is a follower, and was a close friend of Ayn Rand, a very bizzare woman and a very bizzare form of libertarianism. When things blew up he even resorted to some Randian babble in his explanation of his ‘mistake’.
One interesting thing about nutters… The lone nutter will frequently get themselves, straightjacketed and locked up (or at least they used to before the policy decision to let them live ‘free range’ was made). When groups of nutters share their delusion it is frequently called a religion and they get tax concessions, or they form think tanks and undertake ‘research’ and also get tax concessions. There is always safety in numbers. And throughout history, societies of nutters have done well for themselves by being devote members of some system of delusion, and by using their network to exact tribute on the undeluded.
That said, these groups of organised nutters represent a significant dead weight on the rest of society.