Adian makes rational common sense, makes an effort to seem reasonable!

The highly FLAWED ideological imperative and carved in concrete conformation bias is alive and well in most other posts?

Dial it in, hit repeat and sit back and watch as the world, our economy, and anything else worth keeping, goes to hell in a hand-basket! To a virtual man they seem to think, in order for the "PRIVILEGED" class to be better off, the mugs, rubes, cannon fodder and grunts need to be worse off?

When nothing could be further from the truth. And nowhere better demonstrated than in rural Australia and small recession proof, co-op supported, country towns, prior to the Coalition's destructive dismantle!

With drought reducing production and harvest outcomes, resulting in overstocked sale yards, fire-sale stock prices, workers with reduced incomes, that then, if enduring. results in empty shops and business premises, with the obligatory for sale or rent signs in vacant windows!

Then as it always has, the drought breaks, the pastures recover as do stock prices and production and harvest outcomes/workers incomes!

Then the businesses reopen, sometimes with cashed up new chums, who often take time to blend in and accept the fact that rural Australia in particular, succeeds, when it cooperates!

Unlike the (the ethnic in the woodpile) Collins street farmers and other (dog eat dog) fat-cats, whose eyes are like a till when the dollar sign is rung! Cer-chung, cer-ching!

[Want to see what they look like? Go to a bank auction that's selling up a generational foreclosed farm and look for the portliest, brow mopping examples?]

Who invariably, adopt profit first and foremost practices, designed to kill/severely wound social cohesion and the unique cooperation paradigm; that makes living in rural village Australia, fair dinkum democracy in action and Australian to the very core!

Take a drive and visit Maleny in the sunshine coast's hinterland and take a butchers, to see what "democracy" looks like!

"THINK"!

It's those who work and produce who create all our wealth, not the (tax avoiding?) anti democratic parasites, who LEAN all over them!
Alan B.

Aidan, the fact that he copied those lines from someone else simply proves he has none of his own, & has to borrow others work.

That he borrows from two fairly prominent people, both lefties only proves how bereft of real thought he is. Simply a "B" grade follower, with doubtful ability to even understand what he is following.

It is definitely communism by the side door, by one or many without the guts to try to do anything by the front door. Conniving slime.

This one little statement, "the promotion of collective interests over private ones" just about sums this garbage up. The man obviously still believes in communism.

No, he just knows that this stuff is simply Agenda 21 being rolled out.

Hasbeen, do you seriously believe that? Or are you just trolling?

Anyone who's been to uni would ridicule the notion that referring to the work of others proves a lack of original ideas.

Tell me: do you think Sweden is communist?
If so, what exactly do you think is inherently bad about communism?
And if not, why do you think this guy's a communist when most of what he's advocating has already been tried there?

Other posters have poured sufficient scorn on this article. I would point out that the writer assumes that a thriving economy is mutually exclusive with a society that concerns itself with social justice.. well no, social justice requires money. Support for the aged and handicapped requires money. A thriving economy generates that money. One reason for the Brexit result and Trump victory was stagnating economies. A lot of American voters have not gained an after-inflation increase in wages for years. No wonder they are angry.

The author's solution to these problems would be to throw out the old system and replace it with something Marxist where everyone, including the old and handicapped, are poor together. So the Berlin wall never fell, right?

curmudgeonathome,

" I would point out that the writer assumes that a thriving economy is mutually exclusive with a society that concerns itself with social justice."
What did the writer say that led you to that conclusion?

ISTM he wa making the opposite claim: he regards social justice as "a catalyst" for a thriving economy, and is worried about the economic effects (as well as the social effects) of our neglecting it.

Of course social justice requires money. But we have money. Australia is a rich country!

"The author's solution to these problems would be to throw out the old system and replace it with something Marxist where everyone, including the old and handicapped, are poor together."
And the basis for that claim is..?
(I'm guessing it's Hasbeen's comment, since there's nothing in that article itself to give that impression. The author is calling for reform not replacement, and for increasing prosperity not destroying it).

It's not surprising the SMH rejected that article as it was IMO badly written, with little supporting evidence, and different issues conflated. But most of the criticism on this site either ignores what he wrote completely, instead substituting what they assume his views to be, or views it through a dogmatic ideological prism, not even bothering to properly consider his ideas before dismissing them.