Chris,
there's no doubting your humanitarian ideals.

I've just been listening to Andrew Parkinson's inspirational address and at the end he speculated on what a great country Australia might become once it decided what it ought to do. For my money, it ought to decide what it believes in and then stand by those principles doggedly.
Instead, Australia is a national lap-dog to once-great nations and the anonymous face of globalism.

If you want to see how poorly workers can be treated and exploited in Australia see what happened in Adelaide recently. You wouldn't believe it possible:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKp7Y316fyQ&feature=player_embedded#!

The title of your preceding post: “Can western nations remain affluent?” prompts the basic question: Can one on this planet be affluent without another being effluent?

How can economists and people equally unproductive survive without being supplied with goods and services by another group?

Certainly no economist that I know has so far dared to assess the ratio of people that actually produce the goods and perform the tasks necessary for the survival of us all against the total number of people who benefit from what wealth they procure.

I dare say that those of us who have the task of producing or servicing, day in day out, hardly have the time or the opportunity to read articles like yours on OLO, let alone write articles for any publications. They are the Silence of the Nation.

And their job gets harder and less rewarding with the numbers of non productive graduates’ that hits the street at the end of every academic year.

skeptic

I am not sure what you are on about.

Please explain. Are you suggesting I return to factory work and labouring to be productive. No thanks, academia is a bit easier.

Yes, Micheal in Adelaide, an absolute disgrace. That is my fear, that democracies are turning in on themselves with govts turning a blind eye to such issues.

Dear Chris.....

you said in your piece:

//Austrian School economists generally hold that the complexity of human behavior makes mathematical modeling of an evolving market extremely difficult//

You might be very interested in this information.

"Century of the self" in a number of parts. It connects the impact of Freud, Bernays,(Father of public relations) and some important movements which reshaped the American 'consumer' psyche, and in turn, caused capitalist interests to look to the information processing capability of the Star Wars resources to predict that very thing which eluded the Austrian school adherents.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpLCjgWYsrY&feature=related

No Australian should be unaware of the information in all 6 parts.

ANYthing on this is valuable.
These doco's cover so much ground, at such a depth that you simply cannot absorb it in one go...nor can one understand 'today' compared to the 50s.. without it.

The scariest part is the work of the ESALEN INSTITUTE. (see wiki)and where it led.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2OwUcmXj4M&playnext=1&list=PLFCC677C23D37B6D0&index=24 "policeman inside you" part 1 of 6

All of this has direct bearing on economic questions.. so it's not off topic if you please. In fact..I'd go so far as to say that without covering this information.. one CANNOT understand the bigger economic questions.

Al Gore is Rich,

Yes, I have seen that second documentary before. Quite interesting.