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The Forum > Article Comments > False Labor > Comments

False Labor : Comments

By Geoff Davies, published 12/5/2010

Isn’t it time we declared the Labor Party officially dead? The party lost its vision long ago.

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Yes, the original vision of Labor is dead. But it’s not dead because its politicians ever stopped believing that government interventions can re-shape society at will. We have only to look at Rudd’s wake to see that that belief is alive and well. The reason Labor has had to abandon these pretensions is because reality keeps on checking what socialist politicians are trying to do. Socialism doesn’t work, and it doesn’t work for reasons that were pin-pointed by Ludwig von Mises in his 1924 work “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth”. No socialist has ever been able to refute this. Ignore it at the cost of millions of lives, yes. Refute it, no.

Take the NSW Labor party. They didn’t privatise the NSW electricity industry because they believe in privatisation. If they did, they wouldn’t have done the Claytons privatisation that they did. The reason governments try to divest themselves of these so-called public assets is because, absent the discipline of profit and loss, they are incapable of knowing the more economical way of doing things.

On the other hand, if its any consolation, the original vision of the Liberals is just as dead. They have lost the very idea of liberty, and have become a party of thorough-going interventionists. We have only to look at Turnbull enthusiastically dictating what light-globes people can have in their own homes to see that they have been completely captured by the interventionists’ superstition.

While the population are distracted by the false dichotomy of ‘left’ and ‘right’, the political parties morph into two wings of essentially one political belief system. They would like governmental control of anything and everything to work, and they keep trying it. But since these interventions just keep on failing, they are thrown back on to the system of private property that they despise and attack. The end result is neither liberty nor socialism, but an ugly nationalist socialist amalgam and symbiosis of big government, big business, and big unions. The political class have far more in common with each other than any of them have with the ruled.
Posted by Peter Hume, Wednesday, 12 May 2010 10:08:03 AM
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Come on Geoff,

Reminiscing about Whitlam or former Labor ideals is a bit unrealisitc. The world you were hoping for was a brief illusion as the need to compete in a world of freer trade, which means all nations have a right to benefit from trade, caught up with us.

You may be sad now, but I suspect things a going to get a lot worse as we struggle for the right policy mix to balance competiveness and compassion.

Count your lukcy stars Geoff. We have stuff in the ground; other Western naitons have no such luxury.
Posted by Chris Lewis, Wednesday, 12 May 2010 10:15:27 AM
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Peter and Chris -

Let me be very clear, I do not propose a return to socialism. What I lament is the loss of a party that cared for ordinary people, rather than sucking up to the money power.

The right-left dichotomy is false and we need to move beyond it. We can have a market economy in which the incentives driving markets are managed so they support the kind of society we choose to live in. Unfettered markets do not do that - it is clear in practice and there never was a theoretical justification for this quaint belief. See
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=8644
http://betternature.wordpress.com/2009/03/02/neoliberalism-was-always-rubbish/

Unfettered markets are just economic anarchy, and warlords take over during anarchy, as we have been experiencing. Warlords don't give a damn about ordinary people, only their own power. Labor has yet to figure this out.

Not that we really have unfettered markets of course. In reality most of the incentives are stacked, and they're stacked to favour the already-wealthy. If we just levelled the playing field we'd already do a lot better.
Posted by Geoff Davies, Wednesday, 12 May 2010 10:50:11 AM
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Goeff,

I don't see politics as you do. I do believe that we live in a country where its leaders on both sides of politics (and minor parties) are generally committed people trying to balance compassion and competiveness, although we all are aligned to particular levels of government intervention on a variety of issues.

I am not saying that their quality or decisons cannot be improved. Rather, I am saying that the problems are getting out of hand with few real solutions given present trends, such as out greater reliance upon debt and now the economic fortunes of developing nations.

We will need key reforms, but how we do them effectively will test our sophistication as a nation and as part of humanity. I think about such issues constantly, but I am struggling for the answers.
Posted by Chris Lewis, Wednesday, 12 May 2010 11:07:46 AM
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So what sort of comments are needed?

Talking about false polital situations, what more politically false could be very Conservative John Howard backing British Labor man Tony Blair to back right-wing US George W Bush to illegally attack Iraq?

Or aren't foreign political situations included?
Posted by bushbred, Wednesday, 12 May 2010 12:35:46 PM
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Spot on, Geoff. The rot in Labor's asylum seeker policy started in 1989, when the Hawke government introduced mandatory detention. Refugees inconveniently streaming out of Cambodia were getting in the way of Gareth Evans's Grand Peace Plan To Solve Absolutely Everything In The Universe And In Doing So Attain Global Hero Status, so they simply locked them up.

3 years later under Keating they discovered mandatory detention was illegal, so instead of doing the moral thing and setting them free, they hastily legislated to MAKE it legal. And so it has been ever since. After more than 20 years, this utterly needless practice has become so entrenchedly bipartisan, so fundamentally part of What Australia Does, that I despair of ever seeing it repealed.

When the only steadfast parliamentary voice of dissent against the Pacific Solution in 2001 had to come from the late Peter Andren (Independent, Calare), and Labor hacks went diving under their desks to avoid confronting their moral responsibilities, I figured then that the backbone had entirely disappeared.

Rudd's recent spinelessness on Sri Lankan and Afghani refugees is simply a latter-day confirmation of this 9-year-old conclusion. Gutless, compassless, they waft in the political breeze, drifting rudderlessly from pragmatic backdown to opportunistic backflip.

A plague on them. Bring back Howard. At least, with the Man of Steel, we knew we were dealing with a hard opponent, who would front up and fight, so we could devise our counter strategies accordingly. Fighting the wishy-washy flip-floppers of the ALP is like trying to take a firm grip on tofu.
Posted by Slobodon Meshirtfront, Wednesday, 12 May 2010 1:45:43 PM
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