It is unfair to compare today's parenting with previous generations. The environment is very different. I would dearly love for my children to be able to walk to school or wander off unsupervised and play in the streets and parks as I did as a child. However I do not remember parked cars along every residential street and idiots speeding along them. One thing I believe has always been true is that parents do what they think is best for their children and we should respect that.

I do think that here is a tendency to carry on treating them as children once they are full grown however. I am amazed at the number of 'children' who still live at home once they are at Uni or working. I am even more amazed at the number of parents that allow it to happen. Surely their independence is more important than their own car or mobile phone and other luxuries. Having to fend for themselves on a tight budget and learn what really is important in life is probably the best thing a parent can teach their children.

There's a lot been written by economists about positional goods: those that conspicuously show that you are better than everyone else.

(Peacocks use tail feathers. Humans have more sophisticated ways.)

What's better than an expensive private school? Drop the kids off and pick them up with the world's fastest production 4WD.

The Sydney Morning Herald recently ran a quarter-page ad for Porsche Cayenne Turbos with tag-line, "If you can't work out why you need 450 hp to pick up the kids from school, you're not giving the problem your full attention - Cayenne Turbo, the five-seater Porsche".

Starting at $A208,000 plus on-road costs, you can trump other Cayenne owners with the twin-turbo S model - 521 hp (383 Kw) - at $A241,000 apiece.

This all-wheel-drive 2.3 tonne monster accelerates from 0 to 100 km/h in just over 5 seconds; 270km/h top speed. (Top speed limit in most of Australia is 110km/h.)

Yes. If I was splitting up with my wife, suicidally inclined, wanted to take the kids out with me and leave no residual funds in the estate, I would exactly choose such a machine to pick up my kids from school.

Wouldn't I? Or did Porsche have something else in mind?

What does this say about an increasingly sick society? Our kids are not just excuses for belongings that show how smart we are.

They are supposed to grow up as independent, flourishing human beings, each with his or her own strengths and weaknesses... half below average and half above in every measure ever devised.

After all, that is what average is.

Disclosure: my wife and I drive a 2nd hand 120hp (93kw) Toyota Corolla, weighing just over one tonne. It cost $17,000. Like a Cayenne it can achieve maximum legal speeds on NSW roads. Like a Cayenne, it also seats five.

The only time I will envy a Cayenne owner is when she turns her back on the road to wipe her kid's snotty face, and hits me with 2.3 tonnes front diagonal right at 270km/h.

I don’t know why people seem to get obsessed about somebody else being better than them or them appearing better - or worse for that matter!

Why do people often confuse 'different' with 'better'. Could it be an inferiority complex?

We are all the same in one respect, we all want to find a loving partner and make babies or otherwise and live a safe, healthy and happy life amongst family and friends.

It really doesn't matter what car your drive or what you have or, for that matter, even if you are smarter, thats not being better, it’s just being different!

We need to learn to respect this type of difference and treat each other with respect as everybody has alot to learn from each other.

I know that, when I was at school and was put in extension classes, I struggled with the thought that, compared with my peers, I was now 'ordinary'.

It just made me work harder so that I could be the best in that class, too.

I think on OLO, 'redneck' is also 'common sense'.

When you consider learning and sociological control are in the hands of those whose only experience of life is in a school room, is it any wonder education, social behaviour and understanding are collapsing.

Teachers go to school, then to college, then teach. No experience or understanding of life, just programmed indoctrination. Bureaucrats are virtually the same. They go to school, go to uni, get a meaningless degree in some illusion and then are given the task of overseeing society with no experience or understanding of life.

The result of that approach, has lead us to the situation we have. Jane, is only expressing her own upbringing, semantically knowledgeable, yet lacking true life experience. No wonder people can't understand whats happening, nor do anything about it. They can't because they are a part of the problem. Education in this day and age, is orientated to the self, me and me alone. With the emphasis on cloning more and more programmed slaves for the system. Todays education is designed for a head trip, not towards a life experience.

Looks like this society has reached its zenith and is now just unravelling from within the education, bureaucratic system, social obligations, responsiblitities and family structure.