Winston Smith wrote, "Human wants and desires are essentially unlimited."

What an improbable claim.

Evidence?

An improbable claim?

Surely you don’t really believe this, do you?

Given that we have moved beyond living in caves, and are currently reaching for the stars, it’s the corollary which lacks evidence.

Winston,

You may be some weird creature whose wants and desires are essentially unlimited, but the rest of us aren't.

Keynes warned about people like you in his concluding words in "The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money", http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/k/keynes/john_maynard/k44g/chapter24.html

"Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back..."

You are channelling voices from more than a century ago.

Dir!! The GATS agreement has been in motion ever since the Hawke days.

Labour has ridden on the back of Medicare, only they signed the deal and the Liberal party have carried the torch and implemented it.

We can see by the Corporatising of our utiltise and our Australian Assets, the sale of Telstra is one of them, according to the GATS.

The GATS agreement that Labour initiated states that nothing will be pubic. Everything will be privatised.

So Labour have been flogging "Medicare", only to know that they will have to privatise it according to this "TREATY".

Sure, Yep, Labour always working for the people. Ugh!

Medicare was set up in February 1984 by the Labor government set up by RJ Hawke.

Its Liberal policy to sell off Telstra and utilities like trains, gas and electricity. I fail to see why utilities that the public have built and paid for are going to be run more efficiently by a myriad of American owned companies.

Take electricity for example. In western NSW the electricity provider is Countrywest and in Victoria the electricity provider is TXU, Texas Utilities. In a 3 year period Countrywest trained up 800 apprentices and TXU trained up 3 apprentices.
Who has this country's future at heart?
Who is out to maimise profit for their overseas owners?

At the moment our Pharmaceutical Benefits [Payments] System which is considered a world class example of how to provide drugs effectively and fairly is under threat from big pharma. The big pharmaceutical companies want to break the power of the Australian government to set the price, when the price of a generic drug gets to high the PBS system has ordered it from a cheaper supplier.

Why do I worry about poor people. Well if only those with health were treated then doctors wouldn't be able to prescribe the best treatment, they would only offer the cheapest treatment, so that doctors have less practice with the best treatment. In other words, the standard of all australian health care falls.

MikeM,

In public life I am often exposed to contemptuous remarks from those who see nothing wrong with the forced redistribution of wealth that must necessarily accompany socialist schemes such as Medicare. Derision and personal attack seem to be their weapons of choice, rather than reasoned argument against the points I make (for those, see my earlier posts). You seem no different.

I am well aware that one of the foundations of socialist thought is the concept you believe in - that human wants and desires are limited, or if not, one should make every effort to discipline oneself and others to achieve that state. However this does not accord with reality or freedom, and if it were true, we would not be in any position to debate such issues by means of technological advances such as those that make this forum possible. We would all still be walking everywhere, and communicating face-to-face only.

If you are interested in developing your understanding of these issues beyond the writings of Marx, Keynes, Galbraith, and Krugman, I recommend this book for an excellent and provocative insight: http://www.capitalism.net/Capitalism/CAPITALISM%20Internet.pdf