If only we had Betsy to make everyone else's decisions for them, then what a paradise we would have.

Any worker, any person who has to face the problems of the day after day surviving within the limitations of a meager wage, who tries to ‘enter’ the grounds of academic thought, is bound to experience a sense of alienation, of not being.

The ground, firm and factual outside, becomes muddy, swampy and perilous at meeting the ones who live in citadels called Universities, people free from the task of providing for themselves and their families the everyday necessities for survival.

The concerns of these insiders are mysterious, their language full of allusions to shared pre-notions and incomprehensible to the un-initiated

Put simply Sceptic, the holier than thou arrogance covering a fear of the world unknown, churned out as University graduates.

Unfortunately though this group now encompasses Police graduates, nursing graduates among the other hosts of the over-educated.

Once was a time when most kids completed school by the age of fifteen and continued their education in the workplace among normally adjusted members of a society they were being groomed to productively join: Now a way of "traditional" life dead and gone.

Skeptik/Diver Dan,

Anti-education now are we? Move to North Korea and see how it suits you then... This is Australia, though. We are proud of the endeavours made by our academics, the medical breakthroughs that come out of this country are amazing considering our population size. Love it or leave.

Let's not go overboard on this.

These people are kind, well-meaning and concerned citizens. It is not their fault that they see the country through the lens of "if only...", rather than with the benefit of practical, useful experience.

Unfortunately though, the result is that the perceived ailments are reduced to string of generalizations...

"One of the main problems with free market economics is that instead of an economic system it became a full-blown ideology, with all the false promises of utopia..."

Catchy. But essentially useless as a problem definition.

In whose view is it a "full-blown ideology? And where are the "promises of utopia", that the author has determined are false? Sounds very straw-mannish to me.

"If conditions for trade don't suit [international corporations] in one country, they can simply move some or all of their operations offshore. This causes job losses"

Well, errr, yes. If Country A is uncompetitive in a particular marketplace, production in that country will cease, and reappear in a country that is competitive. The solution, I would have thought, would be to determine what needs to change in Country A, rather than pour in (taxpayers) money to ensure that the industry in question remains uncompetitive. Creating a localized cargo-cult is not going to do anything except exacerbate the situation, and ensure a lifelong dependence on handouts.

"Again, one can only wonder what might have been the case if, for instance, a creative solution had been tried where family farms were assisted by favourable interest rates to buy their next door neighbours out."

One can indeed "wonder". At whose expense would these "favourable interest rates" be offered, one wonders. Commercially, it would necessarily be the non-farm cohort of borrowers, subsidising the farmers. Or does the author believe it is the government's business to "pick winners"...?

"Governments fear being seen as "too prescriptive" or "trying to pick winners"..."

Hang on a minute. In the view of the vast majority of Australian companies, the government is already far too prescriptive, and dangerously over-inclined to pick winners. Heaven help Australian industry if they become even more so.

I would really like to see a Government who is capable of really governing, it is too easy for people to get a degree in politics and think that they will make good politicians. Consistent brawling and carping in the house achieves nothing whatsoever, point scoring is not leading or governing, too much energy and time is wasted in hurling insults at each other, and too much firing from the hip to please others. Rather than tell those who discovered the dreadful treatment of the live cattle recently, that they would close it down, without for once thinking of the consequences, ergo the trucking, shipping and meat growers industry. If the incumbent government had given pause to think through the consequences of banning live cattle export, then a better solution could have been sought. A good PM would have investigated these claims before bowing to the Animal Rights Association, (which I do support) activists, instead of costing the taxpayers millions of dollars of income support for those afflicted. Used to be that Prime Ministers took a tougher stance rather than firing from the hip.
NSB

Are you lot all mad? I most definitely don't want anyone to govern my life.

Even more so, I don't need or want any leader.

Just think of a few of them, Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler, Churchill, The more you name the more dead people you can find. Leaders, you can keep them.

Then lets try governments. Every time there is something to do, they stuff it up. Could anyone other than governments have given us our fool railway gauges?

Water grid, & desalination plants anyone?

How about bush fire control & planning?

Our health care system?

Iraq, or Afghanistan?

Do I need to go further?

Betsy, do these type of articles really get you a masters? It does require some substantiating evidence to support your theme. See above.

What we need is protection from leaders. A simple manager would perhaps be able to get transport, health & education working a little better, But no leadership, or governing thanks.

Yes "Trashcanman":

Anti-homosexual
Anti-immigration
Anti-Education
Anti-Asian
Anti-progress
Anti-Julia Gillard
Anti-Tony Abbott
Anti-Coles and Woolworths
Anti-Anti gun laws
Anti-Anti dog laws
And that is just a few "pet" (so to speak) hates.

This article lost me after the first few paragraphs. The premise of Australia being a free market system is so patently false that I didn't waste my time with the rest of it. We are so regulated that complexity has become the issue, no one understand the vast behemoth the foul hand of Government has stirred from their cauldron.

As to a free market utopia being promised, it's simply put forward as a better solution then others. Truly Governing ? is not being paternalistic.

Diverdan; it is not the ‘holier than thou’. It is the perception of acquired privilege, that assumption that a learning institution can exempt one from working for repaying the services exacted from people relegated to menial tasks.

I will stand corrected if anyone can name one rubbish collector that has the hobby of studying, say, History of philosophy. In truth I met a man engaged in Mycology working as a rail guard, but that was nearly seventy years ago when I arrived to this country, and, working at CSL as bottle washer, I marveled at the down to hearth attitude of scientists ‘with calluses on their hands’. I vividly remember the stature of the director of that place, a Dr. Percival Beazley, who eventually was sacked for torpedoing the ‘Queeny’ Mr. R G Menzies’ plans to sell those Labs to British interests.

TrashcanMan, yesterday I saw an acquaintance that had been to visit his place of birth. He told me: “if anyone wants to know how well off we are, should visit the Balkans.

We are rich, judging by the wealth we fling into bins, when we don't strew it on trains and parks, wealth that soon will regret having wasted.

In the last three weeks I have been visiting a not-well-man at the Royal Melbourne hospital where I could not help noting that the greatest part of the caring staff were from pacific and African countries.

Great people that our Government would so much wish they drowned before reaching the shore of this ‘our’ country.

Again, I would stand corrected if one could show me one Australian-born graduate in any subject other than medical, making his/her crust in menial or para-skilled hospital work

p s

Dr. Beazley left this, his country, that he had served as soldier in WW2 and as a scientist after that war, virtually exiled by a run of the mill politician.

He died in the land of his old friend, the renowned Dr. Jonas Falk, father of the Poliomyelitis vaccine.

Sceptic:

...You talk of a lost world from the past the moment you mention "Bob Menzies". "Pig-Iron" Bob, as was his nick-name at the time; branded for selling pig iron to the Japanese prior to the WW2 conflict, which assisted greatly the Japanese war effort against the west. How dislocated was he?

...Well things haven't changed a great deal Sceptic. Still the same dislocation displayed under a new political guise of the moment. A dislocated rule pushing the rights of poofters as more important than the right of the aged in our community to affordable heating in winter, for example, by increasing power prices by 60% in eighteen months before introducing a carbon tax to hammer home the reality of status.

...There are too many signs of evidence of the dislocated rule of the overeducated, those born to rule, and the impact this is having on the normal folk of our society.

Diver dan,

The government would save millions if they processed refugees arriving by boat on-shore. That money could then be redirected to supporting older Australians in need.

But they can't because they need to appease uneducated buffoons in the electorate who think these refugees are somehow going to destroy our economy or bomb us or something. (despite history proving the opposite)

The biggest problem is that governments ignore advice of the highly educated in lieu of appeasing the Murdoch press reading masses.

Skeptic, I totally agree with your sentiment. My apologies for misinterpreting your original post. I think it's a tad unfair to say that academics are immune from the worries of providing for their families though!

...Well "trashcanman"; This country has a history which apparently you wish to expunge. The pity is, after spending such an effort to eradicate Chinese immigrants, we stopped. This country was great and respectful in the days of immigration from white Europeans.The pity is that stopped.

...The final pity is now, true Australians are silenced by laws restricting free speech and as a consequence, free thinking, to the point any view contrary to sucking up to any immigrant arriving from anywhere by any means now constitutes a crime, it would seem.

...I would consider your attitude to be the real "Buffoonery". Which leads on to a pointed remark by "Sceptic" who asks, where is the evidence on the floor, of graduate Australians from Australian Universities...Simple I would think, gone missing to greener fields in Europe, along with their credentials: Along also with the manufacturing jobs traditionally available to the uneducated and semi-skilled that have moved to China, while our uneducated work for the dole in lieu-of meaningful employment.