As still full of old Pap with the philosophy of Western history, still get very frustrated these days when the word liberal is used much more to praise the thievery and the racketry of the free-market than it does to praise fair play.

As Adam Smith warned when he brought in the concept of Laissez-faire. Remember this only means the freedom for the greed so necessary for marketing competition - not the betterment of the worker nor the freedom for the slave.

Thus though governments need shut their minds to the necessary greed of competition, they much more need to free their minds how to have the lower classes better provided by means of the profit that the liberalism of the market sustains.

The freedom of the market place has resulted in the greedy marketeers failing to train skilled workers and tradespeople in this country.

Once it was government policy that for every five workers one tradesman had to be trained.

When something affects the country's future as drastically as suddenly having no skilled workers then the government must exert some control in the marketplace.

Freedom of the marketplace is a beneficial thing as long as you have a government willing to step in with safeguards where appropriate to protect the community from excessive profiteering on basic food needs etc and to make sure that profiteering doesnt come before the needs of the long term future of the country.

Well,
I tend to think that Fukuyama's guess is still where the smart money is. We seem stuck with Howardism.
The globalisation and ideological neo liberalism of the times, with misanthropic Thatcherist "trickle down" in the interests of floating, often- offshore big money, means that ordinary Australians haven't even begun to feel the bite of real Howardism yet.
Howard has quietly said, urged on by rats like Hendy, that he wants more so-called "reform" and is playing 'softly, softly' until after the next election. And no sign that any opposition politician is prepared to substantially challenge the rat race paradigms in place. Rather we get things like Mulrunji, bodgy PP's and Tasmanian Woodchipping.
Yet the best of the opposition would be capable of challenging attitudes if only they could survive neo-liberal pressure and the purge of the ALP by its illiterate Right.
Rudd is in that category but he's still making up his mind as to whether its all too hard or not, and the same aplies to other brighter types at state and federal level. Deeper thinkers in the ALP, Democrats and Greens are faced with the attitude and conduct of business by the new moronocracy of opportunists and careerists that constitutes new labor state governments and ALP party structures, in a climate that encourages opportunism and despises thinking to a purpose. Like Howardism it is mildly reactionary and unconscious.
Meanwhile, the ten years of Howard, like the six of Bush, could not have come at a worse time. So much has been lost, as to education, skills and the media. Laws and freedoms have been eroded and little stands in the way of a complete rout of working class Australia, should a serious recession come.
Australians in are a state of deep sleep. I maintain that there exists a "dreamtime" state paralleling that of the nation's indigenes two centuries ago.
Will give way now to wiser souls.
but I hope Mark himself explicates further, instead of just abandoning the thread to "wander", as so many others with this outfit seem to do.