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The Forum > Article Comments > Does the public care about the public interest? > Comments

Does the public care about the public interest? : Comments

By Sean Regan, published 29/6/2012

With regard to public debate, the money-grubbers still clearly have the upper hand.

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The money-grubbing Rightists that you despise so much have merely stumbled inadvertently upon an important truth: before you can redistribute wealth you have to make it. If and when the enlightened, caring Left ever masters the art of making their own wealth rather than absorbing other people's, they will be entitled to distribute it any way they want.
Posted by Jon J, Friday, 29 June 2012 7:25:52 AM
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A great article and some good questions to ponder that "we" ought to treat as much more than rhetorical. It seems hopeless that any kind of change is coming, en masse, before a fall though. Another name that should have been mentioned is Erich Fromm, who wrote a series of books like "The Art of Being (and "of Loving")", "To Have or to Be" and "The Sane Society" back in the sixties, along with Herbert Marcuse selling essentially the same message. But the New Left degenerated into psychedelia--was in fact commodified--and capitalism/consumerism has ramped up infinitely since then; by comparison the consumers of the 60's and 70's were like monks! Humans seem to have an equally infinite capacity to adapt to any dispensation, though increasingly the era of decadent capitalism is leading to mental, emotional and social dysfunction. Of course it's impossible that the capitalist programm gone mad can continue; we are rapidly reaching, have probably already exceeded, the material and economic limits of the planet.
I see no hope of averting the catastrophe we're hell bent on, and as the article suggests, the only recourse, for "sensitive dispositions", is a kind of neo-transcendentalism (which has been my doctrine for many years). The Transcendentalists of yesteryear, like the Modernists, were and are criticised by culturalists as elitist, but when one lives in an obdurate world that refuses to accommodate those who aspire to modesty and an acute mind, and foists relentlessly the same vulgar gruel that's making the world sick, then one is justified in retreating into a makeshift inner sanctum.
It seems to me that just as humanity is capable of adapting to any dispensation, were we suddenly to find ourselves in a salubrious one, there's no telling what we could achieve. Such was the belief of the Transcendentalists, and the Romantics before them, but ours is a cynical age wherein we're wretched within our affluence (and effluence).
Posted by Squeers, Friday, 29 June 2012 9:27:16 AM
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public interest would of banned the NAtional Broadcasters from their socialist agenda and stopped the gw lies produced by the IPCC being used as a bible.
Posted by runner, Friday, 29 June 2012 9:36:38 AM
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Hi Shaun,

Your quotes from so many authors may reinforce your academic credentials but do not add any extra gravitas to your assertions, unless you wish to use an appeal to authority as basis for your article.

Do you wish us to challenge/support for instance Keynes' and his teacher, Alfred Marshall or your interpretation and application of their opinions?

For instance, if the central critical case is that;

“Making money cannot be an end in itself “, wrong it is personal choice, nobody else’s business.

Unless of course you see yourself as superior, then you can justify saying “at least for anyone not suffering from acute mental disorder”. Ooops!

On and on goes the summary to which you subscribe. It is all about how some have a perspective that they see as superior, to which those who are not deemed superior should subscribe. It’s called socialization. Everything that others do must be seen through this prism.

You go on to confirm this with “The alternative is a revival of 'the old idea of economics as a moral science”. Ah! Now where have we heard this before?

In his 1959 Rede lecture, CP Snow highlighted that the Two Cultures of scientific and humanities studies were failing to communicate. In subsequent essays from 1962 onwards, various authors made it clear that this had escalated into open warfare. The two primary problems identified which are getting worse today are the “dumbing down of the educational curriculum” and the “socialization of sciences”.

It is now abundantly clear that we have a very public and open conflict between those representing scientific conclusions and the socialized perspectives held by those representing humanities. Sadly this includes you.

You further confirm my assertion with, “A similar outlook informs current misgivings about the direction taken by what are called the quality media and the problem of undue influence resulting from personal or institutional connections and ownership”.

Yep, we get your translation. You mean any media that does not conform with or challenges socialization must be subjected to a public interest test?

You blew it with the term “quality media”.
Posted by spindoc, Friday, 29 June 2012 10:41:15 AM
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Spindoc,
Snow's juxtaposition has been inverted and the liberal rationalists are the new barbarians (to borrow from Arnold), but clearly you're with the philistines : )
Posted by Squeers, Friday, 29 June 2012 11:09:24 AM
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spindoc,

Small is Beautiful.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_is_Beautiful
Posted by Poirot, Friday, 29 June 2012 11:11:42 AM
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Of course the public interest is served, by setting in train policy paradigms that seek to end poverty in all its forms and guises, wherever and wherever we find it. It is also served when we treat all others as we would be treated, were we in their shoes, and some day, we could be? We have many more riches to rags stories, than rags to riches examples!
So there is an inherent self service element in developing that inculcated social mindset.
Moreover, when those on the lower socio-economic rungs are assisted to climb a few rungs higher up, those immediately higher up are all but forced by up-welling pressure to also take a few steps further up. The public therefore ought to take a keen interest in the public interest, given, at some point in the public interest dichotomy or diabolic juxtaposition, [dammed if you do dammed if you don't?] It is not possible to please everyone?
Look, some people can never ever get enough money or power.
When we improve the prospects and the spending power of the least amongst us, we achieve a number of things, including finally meeting unmet need, and more importantly, introducing an economic growth paradigm no longer or ever dependant on unsustainable population growth.
No man is an Island, nor is personal wealth, however large, ever the creation of any single individual, but rather, the end product of very many minds, hands and other peoples' blood, sweat and tears!
Who ultimately create all so-called wealth!
e.g., a steel merchant needs iron ore and coal miners, steel mills/workers, shipping, road, rail and transport operators, port operators/wharfies etc.
Those who like billionaire merchant bankers, pluck their money from thin air, via derivatives, short selling, or debt based speculation, are in reality, I believe, plundering the real enterprise, effort and enterprise of others? And indeed, the real reason we have poverty here or an ever widening gap between the haves or have-nots?
We could do a lot worse than return to Keynesian economic principles, or the post war period of unprecedented prosperity it created. Rhrosty.
Posted by Rhrosty, Friday, 29 June 2012 12:26:55 PM
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Rhrosty,
What if the "Poor" can't or won't change and throw your charity back in your face?
The idea of unlimited human potential is, again, simply dogma, it's based on a set of beliefs and not in fact.
There are myriad factors "holding people back", heredity and race play a part, congenital disorders, diet, intelligence and so on.
With money all that can be achieved is to tinker at the edges, you can extract some people from "poverty" and through subjecting them to intensive management you may improve their lives but how do a few million well meaning Europeans manage several billions of feckless, low IQ Third Worlders?
Posted by Jay Of Melbourne, Saturday, 30 June 2012 8:21:26 AM
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JOM: Not talking about charity per se. But rather, a hand up rather than a hand out.
Warren Buffet was right!
We create post code poverty traps by treating those who were born and raised in them, quite differently!
No one that you could point to JOM, chooses to be born into poverty and or depressed circumstances. You stand corrected.
Its like a race, where some are forced to run carrying an iron ball and chain, [the circumstances of birth,] whilst others are given a tow and a tail wind, or the benefits of being born wealthy, or having dedicated parents willing to sacrifice, in order that their kids have a better start than they did.
Yes, it is sadly true that some piss their prospects away against some wall somewhere, but that applies to all socio-economic circumstances.
Usually, inherited wealth doesn't travel beyond the forth generation!
My recipe would include quite massive tax reform and vast simplification.
To in the first instance, remove the cost of compliance, which sees as much as 7%, ripped from the bottom line.
A very big part of the paradigm, is enhanced self help opportunity.
Besides, we need something other than entirely unsustainable population growth, to grow the economy!
With around 7% added to the bottom line, via long overdue real tax reform, we could and should progressively increase the minim wage.
A very simple stand alone expenditure tax, set at a patently painless 5%, would raise more revenue than the current complexity, around 100 billion more, PA.
Half of these new surpluses could be invested in an income earning sovereign fund, the other half could be used to improve the eduction prospects of the worse off. All in the public interest!
And we could trade away unfair dismissals, in return for seriously improved welfare/work start benefits, which would conclude for the able bodied, in around 12-18 months, and then be replaced by compulsory military service.
Which could include trade and profession training!
To do what we have always done and expect different outcomes, is madness.
Rhrosty.
Posted by Rhrosty, Sunday, 1 July 2012 10:53:39 AM
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Footnote; low IQ in third world countries is usually a product of enduring poor nutrition, not dark skin genetics! Again you stand corrected JOM. Don't look now, but your bigotry is showing?
Helping those poor bastards rise above the circumstances of their birth is as simple as collecting a tiny Tobin tax and distributing some of it as micro-loans, that help self help, village or local economy progressing cottage industries.
Think global but act locally!
Usually every community has some saleable hand craft/cottage industry skills and or surplus produce, and only need some professional guidance, to get that to market, and at a time, which improves the margins and or bottom line.
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him and his family for life.
Where it is possible, the addition of power and clean water does wonders, as does supplanting hand held implements, with a milk producing buffalo or two, which can also pull a plough.
It can be very surprising how so much difference can be made, with so little assistance.
Rhrosty.
Posted by Rhrosty, Sunday, 1 July 2012 11:21:58 AM
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Oh my god! Verbosity reigns supreme.

This one must take the prize for bull sh1t dressed up as cream, & the fellow travelers among the posters, are almost as bad. Some people should never be allowed even the merest glimpse of their navel, let alone be allowed to meditate on the thing. That goes double for those who have read too many lefty ideas, but have no thinking capacity of their own.

Yes I actually struggled through the whole thing, & apart from being horrified that such fools are all too often paid by the public purse, I did get the point.

To paraphrase, "I want to be editor of The AGE, & I don't want Gina, or anyone else who has worked hard enough to buy the thing, telling me what to do, when I am".

Thank god for the AGE readers, & share holders, such a happening is about as likely as me bothering to read another article by this bloke.
Posted by Hasbeen, Sunday, 1 July 2012 12:23:15 PM
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