Dear Author Bashir,
Your lines - "The Scandinavian countries have for many years practiced a blend of popular socialism and capitalism and as a result they have attained educational excellence, economic prosperity and guaranteed government healthcare for every citizen." - were ever an ideal and are, the core, the core of your reasoning.

I am old enough to remember when some Australians once believed we could achieve that here.

Unfortunately that cannot be for the simple reason that Aussies just have far too short an attention span. They turned their back to Gough and let a coup happen.
Kevin'll probably be next if he doesn't have a stroke first, the poor man.
I'm told to be positive writing on these pages - so I shall.
Clearly these last few weeks we've seen enough of the adversarial, inflexible game in politics - then Bingo goes Wall Street.

I'd urge Australians to back off from greed - stop pretending we can play with unsecured credits (Monopoly money is more honest)and get back to thinking about true quality of life (a lovely term Bill Mc Mahon taught me).

The historical fact is that capitalism, with all its shortcomings, is the only system that has increased the "economic welfare of every individual", and ironically it was the wealthy few who engendered the economic prosperity of the masses. It's the logic of the system itself that creates this reality. For if the capitalist system of production is based on mass production then the corollary to this is mass consumption.

And who will take the helm after the present failure of the system other than rejuvenated capitalism based on the Schumpeterian principle of entrepreneurship and "creative destruction"?

http://avant-gardestrategies.typepad.com

Although capitalism appears to increase the wealth of each individual, there are other costs.

It's a system that depends on ever-increasing markets and limitless resources to feed itself. When either of these disappear, it's in trouble.

The increasing resource dependency also makes it a system that actually destroys that which makes it possible for it to exist in the first place.

It also needs social hierarchies to create an aspirational component so participants can have something to strive for yet simultaneously needs to maintain a high level of consumers and an army of workers.

There are only two kinds of people who believe that something can keep growing forever - madmen and economists.

Excellent posts, Ludwig and Wobbles, agree totally with every word.

Imagine what could be achieved if we could harness the same sense of urgency and channel the same energy, currently being expended in saving Wall Street, into saving the planet!

Depressingly, the 'wisdom' I'm hearing filtering through at the moment is that we actually need to put climate change abatement measures on hold while we focus on getting Wall Street cranked up again.

Bashir

"..it seems that leaders of the capitalist world entertained their citizens and the entire world population by extrapolating the menace of climate change while hiding the deluge coming to rob them of their homes and hard earned pensions."

Personally, I think this is drawing rather a long bow, but you could well be right. I think you should have drawn a distinction though between those you accuse of this deliberate deceit and the genuine environmental crusaders like Al Gore, especially when he in particular is dubbed as being part of the establishment elite. I'm not sure you intended it, but your statement could also I think be read as downgrading the importance of global warming, which would be just plain wrong.

Global warming and the current 'financial global overheating' are both symptoms of the same malady. The same solutions - some limits on growth, some strong regulatory control, some emphasis on equity and some retreat from credit-fuelled consumption - would bring both problems back under control. But unfortunately the chance of this ever happening, as Bugsy said, is 'fat'!

Very perspicacious Bronwyn.

David

Bronwyn

Agree with you, Ludwig and Wobbles.

I am staggered at the speed with which the US Fed Gov acted on this - I'm sure that the Hurricane Katrina survivors would've been really impressed on how, when it comes to the money market, action is always taken.

And of course moving across to sustainable living - now put on the back burner.

Listening to the radio, apparently a paltry $3Billion would feed all children in Third World countries, where the Freak are our priorities? Must save the wealthy at all costs - literally!

I'd like to see this:

"1. APPOINT A SPECIAL PROSECUTOR TO CRIMINALLY INDICT ANYONE ON WALL STREET WHO KNOWINGLY CONTRIBUTED TO THIS COLLAPSE. Before any new money is expended, Congress must commit, by resolution, to criminally prosecute anyone who had anything to do with the attempted sacking of our economy. This means that anyone who committed insider trading, securities fraud or any action that helped bring about this collapse must go to jail. This Congress must call for a Special Prosecutor who will vigorously go after everyone who created the mess.....

2. THE RICH MUST PAY FOR THEIR OWN BAILOUT. They may have to live in 5 houses instead of 7. They may have to drive 9 cars instead of 13. The chef for their mini-terriers may have to be reassigned. But there is no way in hell, after forcing family incomes to go down more than $2,000 dollars during the Bush years, that working people and the middle class are going to fork over one dime to underwrite the next yacht purchase....

25% of major U.S. corporations currently pay NO federal income tax. Federal corporate tax revenues currently amount to 1.7% of the GDP compared to 5% in the 1950s. If we raise the corporate income tax back to the level of the 1950s, that gives us an extra $500 billion."

From Michael Moore. http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php?messageDate=2008-10-01

Yeah, "fat chance" and "buckleys" to that ever happening.

And consider the following from Tom Wolfe, they're getting away with it:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/28/opinion/28wolfe.html?th&emc=th