This article, like others I have read on this theme, is long on generalities and assertions and short on specifics. How do we go about regulating markets to reign in rampent whatever and improve the quality of life? And how, as one other commentators has noted, will we prevent these market interventions for simply being a handout to certain groups in society - perhaps grants to activists who will then spend their time explaining why they should receive more grants.

The problem with market interventions is that they have effects often completely different from the ones intended - particularly in Australia. The author would be better employed explaining just how he would design his market interventions to achieve a specific result.

Kevin Rudd's neoliberalism argument was simply an attempt to pin the Global Financial Crisis on the previous Howard government. The argument is simplistic and is absurd.

We are obviously in a crisis but to resort to socialism is surely not the answer. Compare East and West Germany before unification. Ask yourself why Deng Xiaoping introduced reforms to China? Socialism is a great idea but it doesn't work.

Note to the Faithful: I advocate a market-based economy, not a centralised, socialist, or communist (fascist anyone?) economy. There are a million ways to organise market economies. My article is an attempt to break us out of ideology so we can see that.

You may believe governments are innately wicked, but that's your story, not mine. The evidence I cite is against you.

You may believe unfettered markets are innately good, but the evidence I cite (and the crashing sounds all around us) are against you.

Markets are powerful, and so are wild horses. We've tried hitching our wagon to wild horses and giving them their head, and we're crashing in the ditch. Proposing to tame and harness the wild horses is just sensible. It does not imply getting out in front and pulling the horses along, it implies harnessing their power to our purposes.

AJFA, the 17 years of alleged prosperity (many didn't share it) were fuelled by borrowing (and a mining boom that has been squandered). The bills are coming due. See Steve Keen's Deeper in Debt, Centre for Policy Development, http://www.cpd.org.au . Even so the performance STILL didn't match the post-war years, as the evidence I cited makes obvious. Back then, the "natural" rate of unemployment was apparently something less than 1.3%.

BN, Curmudgeon, et al. This is a 1300-word essay. If you want policies and much more detail try my 500-page book, Economia. It's hard to get now but should be in a library near you.

Re-introduce competition into the domestic goods and services economy to return freedom of expression,invention,performance and choice as green labors big government and its regulated conformity is killing the economy, as we are now witnessing.

To continue the current smart milking, pogrom, of the now less productive private sector, by government fiat, while feeding the lefts green rolling agenda, has produced this clusterf..k And no, that does not mean government bureaucracy and their public servants, spending 7 more years delivering obstructionism for their own empire building, as they have done since rejecting competition policy reforms.

Geoff,

"AJFA, the 17 years of alleged prosperity (many didn't share it) were fuelled by borrowing (and a mining boom that has been squandered). "

Who didn't share it? The families that recieved generous handouts such as family tax payments and the baby vbonus, all paid by massive company tax revenues?

The unemployed, most of whom found work and therefore had much bigger incomes?

Minimum wage employees, who real incomes increased nearly every single year under the Howard govt?

Seniors and carers, who would recieve annual bonusses on top of their fortnightly payments?

I'm afraid your claim simply dosen't stack up to reality.

"The bills are coming due. See Steve Keen's Deeper in Debt, Centre for Policy Development, http://www.cpd.org.au . "

I'm afraid the only bills that are coming due will be from Kevin Rudd's excessive and poorly targeted handouts, 80% of which was saved or used to pay debt, rather than spent. Of the small fraction that was spent, many of it has been going on pokies, booze, prostitution, Asian imports and residents in other countries.

"Even so the performance STILL didn't match the post-war years, as the evidence I cited makes obvious. Back then, the "natural" rate of unemployment was apparently something less than 1.3%."

That period involved recovery from a Great Depression and a world war, so growth was always going to be greater as economies emerged from those very depressed years.

And back then, there was a very serious shortage or workers, because Australia was under populated. Hence why there was a huge migration program.

As a result, you are not comparing apples with apples.

Geoff - we are hardly going to read the book if the essay doesn't say anything new or different, or offer any specific solutions.. and I can assure you of this. Nothing whatever will change. How long do you reckon for the recovery? The great depression was several years but that was because of the US Snoot-Hawley bill (look it up - but check spelling), rather than the stock market crash. Two American legislators tried to protect their own countrymen and women by messing with the markets and ended up hurting everyone.. As no-one is seriously messing with trade barriers this time I would expect about a year for this lot, but that's just a guess.. I am not against messing with the markets, incidentally, but you really have to know what you are doing to get it right..