CountryGal, your husband might well be on the right track, for you
have seen on here what happens when you work hard and try hard. Those
who know how to work the system to their advantage, will accuse
you of being a sucker!

At one stage I pioneeered a business, which created millions of
$ of new exports for Australia. We'd have around 30 people on
the books each year. Many wanted to work parttime to fit in with
their family commitments, that was fine by me.

In the end, some nazi like tactics by various state and federal
bureaucrats drove me to the point where I sold the lot, the moment
I had saved a few pennies. Now I do what I enjoy, if it pays so
much the better, but let others have some stress for a change.

You are right, I doubt if any of these people have ever been self
employed, they simply don't understand what is imvolved.

So time for you and hubby to enjoy life, perhaps he can work for
one of those large, worker owned companies, and demand his rights
as they do. Life is about enjoying the journey, not arriving at
the destination

I am not anti business but if a person goes into buisness it is there choice to do so and should not complain how hard it is. Their business is nobody elses responsibility but it going by the whinging and whining and moaning of many business people they seem to have a welfare mentality where they think everybody else including the state and workers should be responsible for them. A classic is a farmer here that complains his farm has been in his family for generation but he cant get anybody to work for him as they selfishly wont accept the wages and conditions he offers. He cannot understand that to keep the farm in his family is only his problem and nobody elses.

Country Gal obviously your family values money as the highest importance in life and to die rich you must devote your life to work. Good for you but you mu8st understand that you only impress yourself others put their families or their relationships as primary values. Others wish to enjoy life and so seeing appreciating life as more important than chasing the dollar. Others simply have other interests. Most importantly most have lost control of their lives as Howard has handed the contol of Australian lives to the raw virulent greedy who care nothing for Australians or the nation.

Yvonne,

Good to see you’re reading Marx and Engels! A lot of what they wrote is hard going to start with, but there are occasionally the most apt little pearls of insight. I found Engels is quite a bit more accessible than Marx – he was a bit the populariser i.e. putting things in simple terms.

Have you checked out the Marxists Internet Archive? The address to the Australian mirror site is http://marxists.anu.edu.au/. To start with stick with Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky – on the site their pictures lead to their archives.

If you want to read Marxist analysis on current events try this one: http://www.wsws.org They have an international party with a section in Australia. They are “Trotskyists”. Trotsky fought against Stalin in the Soviet Union, and was eventually killed by Stalinist assassins.

Country Gal,

Can you substantiate your assertions please?

“But-the-human-condition-requires-that-we-do-a-certain-amount-of-work,-if-for-no-other-reason,-than-to-keep-us-out-of-mischief.-We-are-a-race-that-is-ultimately-destructive-with-too-much-time-on-our-hands.-Keep-a-bunch-of-people-busy-just-trying-to-survive,-and-they-wont-have-the-time-nor-energy-for-fighting.”

Do you do work just to keep out of mischief? I don’t.

If you have time or energy on your hands do you spend it fighting? I don’t.

Are you destructive with too much time on your hands? I’m not.

Where do you get these ideas? On what objective basis do you make such judgements and generalisations about the whole of humanity and human nature?

Perhaps if the majority of wealth in the world wasn’t in the hands of the few, who use it to build bombs and drop them on people, humanity would be a whole lot less destructive.

I’d also suggest that if people didn’t have to scrounge and fight each other in order to get enough to survive humanity would be a lot less destructive. In fact, “a bunch of people” with a full belly and time on their hands, and no-one subjecting them to exploitation, could be a whole lot more creative and constructive.

"Perhaps if the majority of wealth in the world wasn’t in the hands of the few, who use it to build bombs and drop them on people, humanity would be a whole lot less destructive.

I’d also suggest that if people didn’t have to scrounge and fight each other in order to get enough to survive humanity would be a lot less destructive."

Tao, the above two comments show the contradiction of your argument.
Clearly those with power, want even more!

You are trying to see the world through your eyes, forgetting the
behaviour of others and how they think. Thats why Marx and Engels
won't work. Thats why chief honcho workers (CEOs etc) screw other
workers. Its not the shareholders, as I have shown, the majority
of them are workers too!

CountryGal, your philosophical ponderings have merit. Its just that
human behaviour is more complex, then Tao seems to think. Her limited
world view is not the only way that others see the world. She still
doesen't get it that lots of people act out of pure self interest and
many of them are in fact workers.

So Yabby what you are saying is that a nation should be indentured to the benifit of an extremely tiny minority because workers also have self interests and thus be punished for that and those who are greedy and corrupt should be rewarded. Please elaborate as to the reason why you think Australians should be punished by AWA's because they have self interests? Why do the self interests of the corrupt and greedy have precedence over the self interests of Australians?

West, IMHO the whole industrial relations system in Aus is pretty
backward, as its based on the old British system, of everbody trying
to screw everybody else, bugger the rest.

So greedy managers, union thuggery etc, will mean a loss all round,
especially to Australia as a whole. At the end of the day, companies
and workers need each other, best they all try to cooperate to achieve
mutually beneficial outcomes. A really smart employer realises that
good staff are his biggest asset. Now that workers own most of the
big companies through their super funds, they have the most to lose
if things go wrong. The really rich of this world, and there are not
many of them, will simply take their megadollars and go elsewhere,
they don't need Australia.

If we look at some comapanies around the world who have done really
well, they have achieved that without megasalaries for management and
without workers being screwed either. Everyone benefits, if they
realise what working together can achieve, not as we do in Aus,
eveyone trying to con the other guys.

Look at some of the Japanese and Korean companies etc, in industries
like cars, shipbuilding. They have come from nowhere and are thriving
globally. Everyone benefits.

I don't see the world as black and white, like you do. I see the shades of grey,
every situation is different. I think that some
AWAs are both good for management and workers. Some are clearly
rorts to cut costs. What I really think is needed is Australia is
a change of mindset, away from everyone trying to screw everyone
else based on muscle power and short term self interest, to a
system where everyone benefits by a bit of cooperation. There is
enough for all, to go around, if we use half a brain