Squeers, I have heard no mention that Tony is involved with the Aust Poectionist Party. (You're not are you Tony?) You've got to be careful not to make wild claims as well.

Ah, you are naive GH.
BTW, with this comment, above: <And to think, that's where a large chunk of the Australian Labor Party has ended up>

I meant that that was where a large chunk of the Labor Party "vote" ends up, with neo-conservative parties like this one. That's why Labor has to play the bullsh!t boarder protection card, otherwise half its constituency would go hard Right

Of course I don't know Tony Ryan, and it could be that he and the hierarchy have a respectable agenda (I doubt it) and are just utilising the ignorant paranoia and selfishness that is undoubtedly well represented among the working class. That's what all parties do after all. That's why none of them stand for anything any more, they all just court the popular vote, the puerile do-nothing centre. Democracy is the tyranny of manipulation and ignorance. Soulless populism.
It's curious (and disturbing) how left and right are capable of such blithe ideological reversal..
Though I'm a pacifist, you can't get much further left than me, and yet during my blue-collar days I was always extremely dubious about manic unionism, that is its introverted agenda, indifference to violence and want of philosophy.

Dear Yabby,
these "fringe dwellers" have a big following and are influential.

Yabby

I guess you're right. I wonder who is persuaded by this approach? Tony himself, perhaps.

Some of you might like to check out this article that was published on OLO on Wednesday.

Might help you sort out a few issues especially Squeers.

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=11238

Dear GH,

While I don't pretend to comprehensive formulations of, or solutions to, the world's economic ills, I have an infinitely more sophisticated understanding of the concomitant social crises than you do with your inane prescriptions. So please, rather than patronising me, I suggest that "you" should "sort out a few issues", by reading a lot further afield than OLO and new age manuals. Indeed, you'd better start at the beginning!
I do not and have not defended free trade per se, but have been critical in this thread of economic naivety and nationalism, which are untenable and unconscionable respectively.
For me, capitalism is an abomination that no economic tinkering can redeem. I base this conviction on a broad and complex understanding of political/philosophical/psychological and economical arguments, as well as patent ecological, ethical and economic realities. But all these are as nothing against prejudice. I could spend a great deal of time laying out my arguments, well supported, as I say, by primary and secondary evidence/authority, but time is a luxury I don't have, and in any case my arguments would be consummately despatched in one or two lines of blind indignity by the benighted ideological slaves to the system OLO has in her stables and Australia en masse in spades.
So I advise you to interrogate your well-intentioned ideas further, to see if they are sustainable and equitable for "all" humanity. Tony Ryan, like all union bosses, only concerned with getting the best deal he can for his closed shop, regardless of its being viable or ethical in the broader context.

Squeers, Sorry about my previous comment about sorting out issues. That wasn't appropriate.

You wrote,

"Short of dismantling global capitalism, it seems to me the least conscionable thing we can do is stoop to protectionism again"

"dire impact of tariffs on poor countries"

"Free trade is probably largely responsible for comparative world peace of recent decades"

"In practice, protectionism is a form of insular nationalism"

And there was that ridiculous link that you provided.

and then you write,

"I do not and have not defended free trade"

So I'm not quite sure where you're at. Is the free-trade/protectionism discussion best understood in terms of there being limits to growth maybe? Or is it all just irrelevant, capitalist, bourgeois, rearranging-deckchairs-on-the-Titanic rubbish?