Jardine - stay with me - you have come a long way
Based on government stats year ending 2011
Australia's employed numbers are 11.5 million and .7 million unemployed and I would conservatively estimate a similar amount who because of government or circumstance have got themselves unto disability pensions or just given up trying to get a job.

Thus a total available workforce of let's say 13 million of our population of 22 million, or in percentage terms 56%
Now the figures provided by the ABS are % based on 11. 5million figure - so adjustments need to made.

15%idle
20% agriculture, forestry, fishing, manufacturing, mining and construction
11%utilities, transport warehousing wholesale, technical support
2% media entertainment, telco
5%hospitality tourism
5% health excluding social welfare
5% retail -reduced from 10%
10%finance, rent and professional services
20% government admin, policing, defence, social, arts, etc
7%education
Please note I have halved the retail figure and added the 5% reduction to the idle as the retail sector is so casualised, full of part timers and the official figures have them employed even if they only work an hour a week.

Now is my 20% of productive and 80% unproductive so outrageous? Our industry is effectively 20% the services to enable that industry 11%. But even with in these figures it does not take into account how much government red tape and regulation encumberes our core industry and core services. At any rate what we have is less then 4 million who provide every product and core service for 22 million.

Given these facts, the libertarian, Austrian or even classical and Keynesian argumentation misses the point. We need a whole new paradigm. And when your ready we can discuss the whole crazy debt system - by then you should be at least semi conscious.

What specifically are you proposing?

You still haven't established that your theory satisfies the minimal threshold criteria to qualify as logical thought, let alone justifying a presumption that you are qualified to re-design the whole world.

Notice how you keep trying to slime out of my questions? Do you think we can't see what you're doing?

Let's be honest. Absent your evasiveness, and the false pretence of economic knowledge in your statistical gizzard-lore, an intellectually honest dialogue would look like this:

I: How do you distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate governmental activity?

You: I don't. just yarble off whatever self-contradictory slogan comes to mind at any given point in time.

I: How do you distinguish between the market price, and the fair price, in any given case?

You: I don't, because I can't, and I've never actually turned my mind to that question ever in my life before, even though I see, now you've pointed it out, that the baseless assumption that I can underlies all my economic theory, or rather twaddle.

I. You haven't read any Austrian school theory have you?
You: No. Garbled third hand accounts from critics not interested in accuracy, yes.

I: Where do you think the government gets the money from, to pay for handouts to industries?
You: The taxpayers.

Okay, come on. What new paradigm and what action are you specifically proposing in relation to government protection of industry?

Well dearest Jardine,
A fair price for any product or service is established through the free negotiation between buyers and sellers. Individual decisions made by the members of an economy based on their goals and objectives. I think that may even pass muster with Mises.

Governments extract taxes from the wealth created by the economy via a tacit agreement of providing certain essential services, law and order, ladidah.

The money itself is largely created thru the extension of debt by banks to us and our government. The interest charged by these banks is an irresolvable inflationary burden rendering the entire system fundamentally flawed. - but its the best system we can think of.

Whilst the capacity of a country, its resources, its human capital is always present and available an economy will go thru all sorts of uncontrollable gyrations, booms and busts. the system has a mind and logic of its own and cannot be directed by governments , companies or any group of individuals - it is mysterious beast.

It is a 19th century system, or perhaps even older from mercantile times. One can accept its historical merit and necessity, but one must be entranced to fail to see that it is antiquated.

Consider the tax system, the electronic age enables us to tax ourselves instantly at point of transaction without the tedium of forms. The time, effort and intelligence consumed by business owners, workers, accountants, lawyers trying to find some loop hole, some deduction, some complex structure to minimise a tax - in what reality does this not condemn us all to imbecility?

Time does not permit for me to elucidate the endless stupidity entrenched in what is our economy but suffice to say, the above example is not the worst of it. This country because of its abundant natural wealth has been protected from the worst of the global financial crisis which still besets all of Europe and America. The economic rationalism which has now been the prescription for 30 years has failed miserably - everywhere

Honey
Notice how you didn't say what new paradigm or specific action you propose?

Notice how your definition of a fair price contradicts your views on oligoplies, cartels and "distortions"?

Notice how in criticising economic rationalism you did not distinguish the problems caused by government, which are common ground, from the problems caused otherwise?

Notice how, when your criticism of the Austrian school is challenged, you say a whole lot of stuff that agrees with them, and then can't justify any of what doesn't?

"The interest charged by these banks is an irresolvable inflationary burden rendering the entire system fundamentally flawed. - but its the best system we can think of."

Speak for yourself. Who's "we"? It's no wonder you can't think of anything better, if all you can do is recycle third-hand garbled neo-classical theory.

Let's cut to the chase. Are you in favour of government handouts to failing businesses or not?

Jardine
The better question is how you can continue to ask the same questions about the role of government when industry itself makes up no more that 20% of the entire workforce?

So in regards to the real economy, I think the Austrians have it. But when the real economy is a fraction, whether it is 20-30 or even 40 % of the whole economy then what? Exactly which part of the excess do we commence to address. The automotive industry has the unique distinction of actually producing something.

What do government departments produce? What do accountants, banks produce? What do council officers, financial planners, lawyers produce? See, I am all in favour of efficiencies, all in favour of removing theft. But lets get real, I would rather a country of subsidised engineers, than of subsidised bankers, accountants, advisers, insurance salesman, health safety experts, auditors....I would like to see more small businesses, more farmers, more manufacturers, more retailers but instead we see rapacious consolidation and more consultants to obscure and justify the illegality.

Economic rationalists have had control for 30 years and all they have done is bring the world to the brink of disaster. The Austrian / libertarian alternative currently promising salvation is essentially the same crap with only more obsession and some strand obsessed with a return to the gold standard. You know yourself the Austrians have nothing to say about restraining oligopolies. There is no consensus at all about size, the role or scope of government, other than it is bad.

So in other words you have no specific proposal, and no new paradigm, but just an open-ended cry for the teat, for no particular reason, and an allegation about oligopolies that contradicts your own theory?

Notice how you have not defined economic rationalism in any way to distinguish problems caused by government, and not distonguished problems caused by government in your critique of it?

What we've just established is that what your spouting is simply irrational. It's a belief in getting soemthing for nothing by destroying capital. This can only work on the predatory or parasitic principle. It does not and cannot work by creating net benefits for society, and the fact you think it can, doesn't mean everything's just "ideology". It just means you're wrong, which is established by your self-contradictions and logical fallacies.

Even if your idea about 20 percent of the workforce being "real" was true, it still wouldn't justify taxing them to pay other people to dig holes and fill them in again, would it?