spindoc-
I specifically disavowed socialism early in this thread, so your bashing socialism is irrelevant to me (though your tone suggests the typical and equally narrow bias of the libertarian/anarchist right).

Your other comments support my case. Without its own vision, Labor is prey to fringe groups and special interests.

Chris-
Regarding the what the Greens might do in government, if we all believe nothing will ever change (in politics), we'll be right.

Geoff
You talk as if balancing the budget were some kind of unworthy consideration.

However if the budget for a particular service is not to be balanced, that is the same thing as to say it is to run at a loss.

This loss must be paid for one way or another. It can either be paid for voluntarily, or involuntarily. The reason a service runs at a loss, is because the consumers are not willing to pay voluntarily for the amount of the loss, otherwise they’d just pay for it and there would be no problem.

The reason people look to the government to pay for particular services to run at a loss, is because government can get others to pay for it involuntarily.

All socialism and all interventionism consist of various attempts to have services paid for involuntarily, otherwise there would be no reason for government to run them.

Economically, communism, socialism and interventionism are all the same thing. They are attempts to replace production based on voluntary exchange and private property, with production based on governmental ownership or control of some kind.

But the interventionists have learnt not to claim for government the ability to direct the usage of all the means of production, because everyone now knows that total government control of the means of production results in social collapse. (Russia was only saved from collapsing much earlier by its selective abandonment of its own collectivist principles, such as by allowing private landholding, buying food from the west, relying on price catalogues for central planning etc.)

This means that the difference between full communism or socialism on the one hand, and a mixed or interventionist economy on the other, has nothing to do with the governmental part. Government remains completely, 100% incapable of economic calculation, except in reliance on the productive private sector.

The greens are merely a throwback to the reds, who have already proved the anti-social error of dreaming of something for nothing, and believing that public ownership and political expedience are any better for the environment, than they are for human beings.

Geoff,
In a society such as Australia I would have thought that over the years, 100+ Labor would have formed a natural majority say 60-30 with 10% non committed or fringe dwellers. this time never really existed, or if it did only for a very short period. But the norm seems more like 40-40 with 20% on the fringe. instead of forming this natural majority and thus having others chase them, Labor does all the chasing. Where did things go wrong for them! What's your view on this?

Peter Hume, all 3 of your comments were very insightful, but can i offer you another view of the left, right out dichotomy?

Ever since 1945 historians from both sides of politics have been lying, spinning, propagandising about the true nature of Fascism.

IT ALWAYS WAS, OF THE FAR LEFT.

Adolf Hitler himself was from a socialist workers party originally, which he later merged with a nationalist party to become the national socialist party.

Look in the "cold grey light of dawn" at the nature of the fascist regimes, they are almost identical to China today, a one party system that allowed, encouraged private enterprises to work, so long as they were in government.

The Communist regimes are also totalitarian, as is monarchy, they all, communist, fascist, socialist, monarchy, Stalin, Hitler, Kim Jong Ill, Franco, Cesar, Castro, rely on absolute central authority, belong on the far left.

The far, right is not fascism, but Anarchy, no rule of law.

The liberal, labour, national & red/green parties are all centre left or "Fabian Socialist" in nature.

The Centre right is, "small government" or, "Limited Constitutional Democracy" like the Americans started out with, in their original constitution.

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/archivos_pdf/nonedarecallit_conspiracy.pdf

This book explains it very well, being written by a couple of originally, left wing hippies, one of them even being Jewish, who later worked out, they had been duped. This sight will allow you to download a PDF copy of it, free & only 93 pages of easy reading.

http://onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=10383

This contribution of mine on the "gender wars" may also interest you. None of the loony, lefties or Fe"Man"Nazis has been able to come up with an answer yet. The gender wars was another "divide & conquer" routine of theirs after all.

Geoff, nairbe, Paul
What do you say is the *economic* difference between the governmental control of production that you acknowledge is non-viable under full socialism, and the governmental control of production that you assert is preferable in a mixed economy?

How and why does partial government control avoid the problems of economic calculation that inhere in full public ownership?

Formersnag
It is true that ‘Nazi’ is short for ‘national socialist’.

When the idea of replacing private property with central planning keeps on not working, socialists deal with this disproof, not by re-thinking their claims, but by keeping on changing the name!: from communism to socialism, from socialism to democratic socialism, from democratic socialism to social democracy, from social democracy to the third way, and so on.

But the program is always the same: forcibly override voluntary decision-making and substitute political decision-making. They keep on dreaming, including in this thread, that by *hope*, or by *belief*, or *commitment*, or *ideals*, they can make socialism "new".

The 1930s was the high tide of socialist popularity, and the intellectual roots of fascism are indeed historically in socialism. The Russian model was ‘international socialism’, the German version was ‘national socialism’, that is all. Both had in common an attempt to replace capitalism with a better, fairer system based on central planning – exactly like the “centre-left” (far left) and Greens today.

Take away their assumption that violence is the proper basis of social co-operation, and their fake moral superiority derived from looking down on everyone else’s choices, and their entire belief system vanishes.

What *don’t* the Greens think government should control?

Like religious folk, socialists and greens don’t seem to recognize the concept of rational disproof. Once Mises had shown that economic calculation was impossible under socialism, that should logically have been the end of the belief system. But they persist in dreaming of a better world through public ownership of forced confiscations, forcibly overriding everyone who disagrees with them, changing the name for their creed, and pretending the rational disproof of their belief system doesn’t exist.

Peter Hume
I didn't notice that i made any references to socialism or government control over production, though that happens now under the headings of things like "capacity constraints" and "skills shortage" all usually developed by government over time due to policy in areas like infrastructure and education.
The point i was eluding to is that the prevailing attitude of the general population is one of self and greed without consequence. It is not for the government to control this mood but rather this mood that drives the government. The only exception to this is when a great leader emerges and can inspire a new mood in the society rather than play on the existing one.
Your play on the repeated failures of socialism is correct but goes both ways, many civilizations have burned out under the wait of their own self indulgence.
So do we really need multi national banks dealing in risky sub-prime mortgages and unstable futures markets so we can all have a lotto win in retirement or are there other values besides money that make up our communities? Would a stable market with slower but more steady returns really make any difference to our Quality of life or would the lower levels of expectation see it improve?