in a spirit of brotherhood, in quest of Eden.
Saltpetre,
Yeah, but how can we get rid of the hangers-on ?

*And btw Yabby, imo the vast majority of today's youth are as fine, in potentia, as they ever were; it's the system that ruins them) and get angry*

Squeers, our society is probably more diversified then it's ever been,
with young people having more choices then they ever had. When I
was in my 20s, just borrowing money to start your own business was
a huge drama, not anymore. Sourcing information was a huge problem,
not anymore.

We have youth of all types. Some thrive and grab the many opportunities
around them. Others just blame it on the system, when
their unrealistic expectations are not met.

My point is, forget blaming the system, start to blame the parents.
As we can see, within the same system we have a huge variation of
results. Trace that back and it comes down to the variation in
genetics and the variation in environment, ie how the parents raised
their kids.

There is more to raising kids then just popping them out and then
blaming the system, if they didn't turn out as parents expected.
But of course its easy to just rationalise away parents own failings
at the job that they have done and blame everyone else.

Its a human foible, I know.

Hi Squeers,

"We engineered and continue to drive a human plague."

We designed it in and we can design it out by balanced migration ( 70,000 out, 70,000 in ) and get rid of the baby bonus (ABS: our birthrate is double our deathrate ).
That is a saving of 1.2 million people every 3-4 years and a saving of our best farmland , bushland (read unappreciated ancient forest) and billions of dollars that would have been spent on, polluting growth infrastructure.

"There would be no capital without population/material expansion somewhere? Education etc, is a prospective investment (as Poirot illustrates above) and entrepreneurial, not philanthropic."

Capital can be recycled between institutions and individuals, in a population stable Australia. The design of modified capitalism is always changing and the prospective investment can be funded from "me" not spending my existing capital on say providing more housing stock and instead investing that capital in prospective investment in education, health and emerging technologies.

"I've no wish to give offence but this is magic pudding talk."

Yep.....point taken. Wishfull thinking and reality checks ! The Magic Pudding of endless growth at the expense of reality checking that peak oil is yet to wreak havoc on the planet by making food so expensive that maybe a quarter of the worlds population may starve to death. There is no substitute for cheap oil which has allowed us to breed-up because of cheap food and medicine.

Better to stabilise now , while there is something left to save and use all our foreign aid to do the same for other countries.

I appreciate the testing.

Cheers,

Ralph

Posted by Squeers, Saturday, 25 February 2012 6:59:04 AM

Saltpetre,
I despair. Just when I think I've imparted a water-tight argument, easy to follow and hard to refute, as economically and unequivocally as may be, given the constraints, you throw salad in my face and it's clear you haven't understood my argument or your criticism of it. But I have a deadline and if I’m to rephrase again, it’ll have to wait a few days.
One of the things I've noticed on OLO is that most of both the reformist and conservative argument is divorced from reality; that is idealistic rather than pragmatic--Ralph Bennett you’re case in point, dreaming up fanciful ideas that not only don’t bear scrutiny, but have no hope of being attempted in a world addicted to economic growth.
Lesson number one is idealism is worse than useless in that it creates the illusion, a comforting diversion, the phantasm of something real at play in the world. Hope. Whereas idealism remote from action is nothing but the denial of reality and so much temporising--ask Hamlet.
Philip Adams is fond of saying “the situation is hopeless. Let’s take the next step”, as if it was an aphorism or hope was a virtue. As if positive steps were being taken to confront or mitigate the hopeless situation! As if endless “compliant agonising” had leverage in the real world. One should stop at sober criticism, facing reality, and not take refuge in flights of fancy that have no substance--no hope of being enacted--and amount to a denial of reality, a cosy retreat rather than resistance.
By “magic pudding talk” I wasn’t referring to peak oil, but pie in the sky:
<A vibrant, research and development orientated society is designed in by the mechanism, of diverting forgone growth infrastructure expenditure and taking this money for R & D. New products, from this R & D investment and capitalism will drive change and vibrancy. The ultimate restraint of the environment is also addressed by population stabilisation>
Growth infrastructure and capital are not independent, but proceed from each other.
I’m not testing your position, I’m popping your balloon!

Squeers,

Go figure? You put forward cogent argument that the status quo is all that is possible - though you wish it were not so, and suggest a paradigm shift is needed - despite also recognising the unsustainability of exponential growth within the constraints of finite resources and finite space. You say we olds should all top ourselves or otherwise make way for the young (and argue that they are as good as ever, though angry, disillusioned and brought up with unreaslistic expectations by doting parents and a mechanistic education system) - but it is arguably the young, led by unscrupulous bankers who have been enthusiastic co-conspirators and engineers of the GFC. The young are indeed maleable. So we have the usual dichotomy - the enthusiastic chasers of instant gratification, against the Occupy Movement protesting for economic responsibility; the tree-huggers vs the rapers and pillagers; the 'idealists' vs the 'opportunists' (or those who have simply given up trying or caring).

You criticise idealism as fantastic, yet the current capitalist expansionary profit-driven grow-or-die system is the real idealism, the 'ideal illusion'.

Mankind is complex, malleable, and prone to accept direction - for good, or for ill - so where are the sages, those whose wisdom and judgement may sway mankind towards a better and sustainable future? In White House or Kremlin or China? Who is going to talk sanity to the Taliban? Is our only future to be in keeping the Third World depressed and repressed and exploited to keep the First World in clover - or is a war to end all wars just over the horizon?

The world is a mess, and I don't have an answer. Do you?

Hi Squeers,
You wrote:

"idealism remote from action is nothing but the denial of reality and so much temporising--ask Hamlet."

The action is you can join the federally listed for the next Senate Election ; STABLE POPULATION PARTY AND THE NON-POLITICAL "SUSTAINABLE POPULATION AUSTRALIA (google both).

You will feel much better because not only will you be putting in place sustainable economic, social and environmental design, but it gives you a positive platform to exlain how change will deliver the outcomes society craves.

We all agree that business as usual is not smart.

All the best,

Ralph