It would be good to see 'social inclusion' supersede the divisive policy of multiculturalism. It would be the best thing that ever happened if multiculturalism had "had its day", as some delegates believed. It was unasked for and undemocratic in the first place, and it remains so.

The author has given a good description of the confusion surrounding the idea of social inclusion.

But he has not given a definition of what social inclusion is. The closest he comes is a grab-bag of desirable things: being able to ‘secure a job’, ‘access services’, ‘connect with others’ and so on.

But “once you have missed the first button hole, you’ll never manage to button up’.
Goethe

If we start with the wrong theory, we will end with the wrong conclusion. Marxian errors do not self-rectify for no other reason than that they are given a name-change.

For example, using the state’s coercive powers to take people’s private property, and then giving that property to someone else, does not bring the receiver into the mainstream market economy, because by definition, the mainstream market economy works by private property rights, not by state confiscations for socialist purposes.

The so-called third way is not “a modern and fresh approach”, it is exactly the same old socialist approach of anti-social envy, economic ignorance, hostility to private property, and legalised theft that keeps on failing, and then getting a name change that makes no difference to the outcomes in practice.

Doing this does not “raise national prosperity”, it actively destroys the capital accumulation that is the basis of the general rise in the standard of living.

It does not “create a fair and decent society”, it actively attacks people for being productive and responsible and employing people, creating a society in which the ruling political class use force and threats to take from the productive class, so as to bribe a growing dependent class for votes, so as to continue the unearned privileges of both.

At the same time, it is the single biggest factor causing the poverty and disadvantage it is intended to remedy.

Australia already has a comprehensive “employee share ownership” scheme. It’s called starting your own business. But by far the biggest restrainer is government.

The author’s economic ignorance does not comprehend that the interventions he advocates, make the outcomes worse *from the interventionists’ own point of view*.

I suspect that often, social inclusion is manipulated to justify its logical opposite, social exclusion - in Aboriginal education for example, often 'inclusive curriculum' means little more than Indigenous Studies or specific VET subjects in the curriculum for Indigenous kids - which can end up being little more than a new form of exclusion from the rest of the curriculum and the school population.

Meanwhile, 24,000 Indigenous people have graduated from universities around the country, 10,000 are currently studying, and close to seventy thousand have, at some time of other, been enrolled at universities - about a quarter of the adult population. Now THAT'S inclusion, or at least a big step towards it.

I've worried for some years that the equal rights agenda of the sixties and early seventies, surely an inclusive agenda, was quietly abandoned by Indigenous 'leaders' in the early to mid-seventies, in favour of a politically safer and easier cultural agenda - 'our own' this and that, strident calls to recognise difference (as if Indigenous people hadn't always been thought of as different!): hey presto ! five thousand Indigenous organisations, employing tens of thousands, all beavering away (or at least, being paid to beaver away) on what was (and still is) basically an exclusionist agenda.

And now that agenda is going down the drain, not before time: the Intervention has shown the bankruptcy of the exclusionist approach, and it's likely to be extended to many other parts of Australia. But to where the university graduates are ? Not likely - they are overwhelmingly working and living in an inclusive society, NOT under the control of Indigenous organisations but operating in a more-or-less open society, and not interested in making their livings off their own people either.

Joe Lane

It’s a modern and fresh approach that views everyone as a potential wealth creator and invests in their human capital.

What load of wishy washy sell out to the capitalist system.

Inclusion does not mean getting a piece of the capitalist pie in fact it is almost the opposite.
People need to be able to live without being forced to subvert their values to a system that measures success in dollars.
The term multi-culturalism means allowing others to have space to be them selves without competing for resources.
This form of inclusion as proposed is an attempt prop up a failing system not an approach which recognizes the right to individual and if necessary seperate value systems to live in the same community.

Well said Beefyboy:

Excellent definition, but the self interest crowd just don't or won't get it. They believe a bland homogeneous community that is servile to the god "consumerism" is the only way - an impossibility. We are all different, even within our respective cultures; acceptance and inclusion is the only way forward.

Focussing on differences; be it sexual orientation, appearance, gender or even accent is a waste of time and achieves nothing - something that Leigh manages to do with alacrity (achieving nothing). If there was an award for being the first and most bigoted post on any thread he'd win.

Suggestions for an award are welcome:

I suggest the Glistening Raspberry.

PS

On this occasion 'attacking the man' is completely relevant given that it is the 'Leighs' and 'Wing-a-lings' of this world who allow prejudice and hatred to flourish as they demonstrate their inability to understand concepts like "social inclusion" or "multiculturalism".

Interesting article that takes a different look at social inclusion through the concept of employee share ownerhsip.

It is not until you have felt excluded from society for various reasons (disability, unemployment, illness)that you can really understand the feeling of desolation for many people who are on the outer looking in to other people going about their 'normal' lives.

I concur with beefyboys comments.

Personally I don't want to live with a third world country mentality where it is seen as okay for many to live in squalor and poverty so that others can live obscenely wealthy lifestyles.

For too long we have lived with the idea that those who possess capital (usually in the form of debt) are inherently possessed with greater rights than those who provide labour. Some companies overseas are already reaping the benefits of employee share ownership where all players hold a vested interest in the success of the business.

I don't agree with Wing Ah Ling's view that the third way is yet another socialist approach - it seeks to balance the vested interests of capitalism with social responsibility.

Wing talks about property rights as sacrosanct in relation to all other rights. As if ownership outweighs any other issue such as the means by which property is acquired. Is there to be no moral considerations at all in regard to exploitation, environmental degradation or corruption in the pursuit of property?

The idea of social inclusion also means creating a level playing field and equal access to opportunity.

I smell some public service type bulldust, and an 'equality of outcomes' attitude from the posters. Look at the list...

To be socially included, all Australians must be given the *opportunity* to:

* secure a job;
Tick!
* access services;
Tick!
* connect with others in life through family, friends, work, personal interests and local community;
Tick!
* deal with personal crisis such as ill health, bereavement or the loss of a job;
Up to the individual's outlook and effort I suppose. Tick!

* have their voice heard.
By whom? Guvment? That's a laugh. That very statement is a sure indication of hippy left wing everyone just needs a hug crap.

So, with the exception of some of the mentally disabled, all of Australia is 'socially included'.

Now that's settled, the rest of the speel about employee 'inclusion' is socialist rubbish. To the risk takers go the spoils, and so it should be. Put up your own time, money and effort for risk, and if you do well you may become an employer. If you're happy being an employee, you're free to invest in the company you work for if you think that's a good idea

Beefyboy
What you say would be fine if politicians got the money for social inclusion policies from a moonbeam. But they don’t. They get it by forcibly taking it from other people who themselves are faced with the same problem of a scarcity of resources. This is the bit that the interventionists always ignore. They assume that there is an unlimited supply of capital out there that they can get to pay for their schemes. There isn’t. The people who end up paying are not the rich people they hope to milk, but the poor and disadvantaged. Thus the interventions make things worse.

The need to compete for resources is not because of capitalism. It is because both nature and society impose certain limitations on resource availability. For example there is a natural limit on time, because we all die. And there is a social limit on the amount of other people’s labour you can have spent for your benefit, because other people want to use their labour for their own benefit.

This problem cannot be made to go away by governmental confiscations. They can only be made more destructive *no matter what their adherents think*.

Fractelle
In case you haven’t noticed, neither Beefyboy nor the author gave a definition of social inclusion.

What is it? Not a description: a definition.

Pelican
You do not address the problems of exploitation, environmental damage, or corruption by simply assuming that they don’t apply to government.

Force and fraud are illegal under capitalism and no-one is arguing that they are justified. But both are legal under government, which relies on both for its continued existence.

No-one explains *how* government’s legal monopoly of force or fraud is supposed to produce the superior results that are claimed for it.

You just assume it, but the assumption is wrong.

All
There are two main problems:
1. Tax does not, on balance, take from the richer and give to the poorer. It takes from the poor and middle class, and gives to the middle class and the rich.
2. The interventions themselves generate social problems of disadvantage, for example, subsidising vast armies of comfortable middle-class university-educated bureaucrats to administer programs that keep poor people dependent and marginalised.

The dichotomy between individual freedom and private property on the one hand, and ‘social responsibility’ on the other, is a complete furphy. In fact human society arises out of, and is entirely an artefact of, freedom and property, in the absence of which society collapses amidst enormous human rights abuses and environmental destruction.

Property rights arise out of the principle of self-ownership. It’s not that they are “sacrosanct” – holy of holies – it’s that they are axiomatic. Anyone advocating the violation of property rights is involved in denying the principle of self-ownership. They are thus *necessarily* involved in a self-contradiction. Everyone agrees with the principle of self-ownership, either explicitly or implicitly, because if they deny it, by their speech-act they are asserting ownership of their body.

There is no intrinsic conflict between property and freedom on one hand, and social responsibility on the other, that is not adequately covered by the laws against force and fraud.

Violations of property rights, including all socialism, are anti-social, not extra-social.

The destructiveness of Marxian errors cannot be redeemed by name-changes, wishful thinking, or vain conceptions about how morally superior you are.

Houllebecq is right.

Wing Ah Ling
Of course governments are not beacons of light in regards to corruption or being responsible for environmental damage etc but at least we can vote them out at the next election. Although I must admit we suffer a bit from the tweedledee tweedledum syndrome under our current electoral system.

I am not suggesting that we go about taking people's houses or other property at will. In our system of democracy we are required to give of some of our property through our taxes - but for that we get services like health care. Even if we don't get to use all those services there is security in knowing there is a safety net should we need one.

Arguing for social equity is not socialist twaddle or in the category of 'everyone needs a hug' mentality. These are flippant statements that hide from the real issues.

Please define what you think would constitute a violation of property rights?

We get one twenty-millionth of a say once every three years on whether to sack the government, however the other party's policies are at least 90 percent the same. We have no remedy whatsoever if we elect politicians on the basis of their promises which they then fail to perform - in other words, fraud. We get no chance to withhold payment if we are dissatisfied. Hidden taxes are rife. The motivation to force others to pay is rife, if not dominant. Vested interests can and do specialise full-time in lobbying governments for special privileges paid for under compulsion by everyone else and called 'the public interest'.

With market transactions, every dollar is a vote. We don't have to participate in any transactions we don't want. It is illegal to lie to induce us to enter into the transaction. Single or in a class we have a remedy in federal law, state law, common law, equity, corporations law and criminal law. We can sack them, so far as concerns ourselves, in every single transaction. No need to persuade millions of others to agree. They cannot simply take money out of our bank account. There is no opportunity to force others to pay. They cannot threaten us with being physically seized or locked up in a cage in order to force us to pay, or to obey; but this anti-social method underlies all governmental revenue and action.

Violation of property right means taking or using someone else's property without their consent.

Please define social equity.

The people of the country have to pay for health services one way or the other. The idea that we can provide more, better or fairer health services by paying under compulsion through a huge monopoly of force and fraud, who in turn sponsor huge corporate vested interests, acting through huge centralised bureaucracies, is simply not reality-based.

Nothing you or the author have said justifies the use of force or fraud that needs to be justified in arguing for governmental interventions.

Jardine KJ.

What a crashingly boring and miserable post.

Everything is reducible to dollars and cents? There are no values other than economic? Ultimately there are no rights other than property rights?

I can't see why you are posting on an article about social inclusion, because you appear to believe neither in society nor inclusion - except perhaps to the extent that one might buy a place.

Your diatribe about the faults of democracy - wailing that you're only one of 21 million, etc - is cynical and bankrupt. I don't imagine you have any affinity for Mahatma Gandhi's saying "YOU must be the change that you wish to see in the world."

Just cop out and leave it all to money, right?

A surefire recipe for life to be "poor, nasty, brutish and short."

Jardine KJ
Your faith in the markets appears immovable but how can you argue that we don’t have to participate in money transactions as if we always have a choice?

How does one choose not to pay bank fees, when salaries are automatically paid into a bank account? You can choose to change banks but there is no real competition they all charge ridiculous fees for using your money to raise profits for their shareholders and for exorbitant salaries and bonuses to CEOs which are not even performance based.

Even shareholders who have a vested interest in a business have their votes ignored in favour of Executive will. I agree that the law gives us certain protections but the law does not control every aspect of the market. And when it does, it is only useful to us if it is enforced.

History shows that when we let the private sector self-regulate honesty and transparency is thrown out the window in favour of profit maximisation. Governments are also guilty but it is easier to hold them to account.

Competition does not always work in allowing the consumer to influence the market because often (1) the consumer is not fully aware of all the information to make a choice and (2) if an industry is colluding as a whole the concept of choice is removed.

Remember the foray into self-regulation by the food industry? Lack of attention to food safety and kitchen hygiene led to increased cases of food poisoning in Victoria. Butchers continue to spray preservatives on meat to make it look redder that cause all sorts of illnesses in many people.

Just recently on ABC News (last night I think) it was reported that pesticide residue levels are rising on fruit and veg and the government is thinking of re-introducing testing again.

Cont..

Pelican
Clearly perfection is not an option either way, as humans are imperfect.

Yes there are problems of conflicts of interest, fraud, imperfect knowledge etc.

But exactly the same problems inhere in governments too. Worse, governments can and routinely do legalise their own frauds and conflicts of interest.

For example, misleading and deceptive conduct are illegal in both federal and state law, but only “in trade or commerce”. In government and politics, they are not illegal, and politicians are notorious for breaking promises we relied on in voting.

At least shareholders have the option of not investing in a company. But you try not paying tax and see what happens. It is even more perverse, because it’s much easier to avoid paying tax the more wealth you’ve got, yes?

In fact governments have in an interest in using their power to provoke crises, aggrandizing their own power, prestige and wealth as a result: hence the ‘war on’ drugs, ‘war on’ terror etc.

The imperfect knowledge of the market involves the imperfect knowledge of its millions, or billions, of individual participants. This knowledge set is astronomically greater than the imperfect knowledge of a committee, or politburo, which is the main reason socialism doesn’t work in practice.

A business has a direct interest in not poisoning its own customers. But a government employee gets paid the same whether his actions protect the public or not.

“If a private business fails to perform its basic intended purpose, it ceases to exist. If a government department fails to perform its basic intended purpose, it gets bigger.”
P.J. O’Rourke

There is no evidence or reason for the claim that government provides a better remedy; its remedy is only more visible, that is all.

But most importantly, profit is a direct result of the behaviour of the mass of the people in preferring a particular good to all other things they could have spent the money on. Profit is the means by which the masses control the allocation of capital; and have sovereignty in directing the production process towards what they consider most urgent.

Capitalists, corporate executives, and shareholders are all unconditionally subject to the sovereignty of the mass of the people as consumers. Capitalism is mass production for the masses. If a capitalist fails to supply what they demand, he suffers serious losses or bankruptcy.

By contrast, the negative feedback mechanism to government is far more attenuated and imperfect because
1. voting is compulsory (you can’t build any theory of consent on that)
2. tax is compulsory (ditto)
3. the state claims a legal monopoly of the use of force and fraud, which are illegal under capitalism
4. both parties offer virtually similar policies
5. voting is only once every three years
6. we cannot vote on any given law, policy or governmental action (except in a referendum)
7. this means that the electoral process does not even provide any way of knowing whether a majority is *in fact* in favour of any given law, policy or action
8. the result is imposed on you whatever you voted.

It is a fiction that governments are more representative of the people, than the people are of themselves.

Governments compulsorily indoctrinate each rising generation with their claim that they “represent” everyone in anything they do, but there is little or no evidence for this claim.

Private businessmen would be imprisoned for a fraction of the fraud that is taken for granted every day for politicians. For example, John Howard orchestrated the confiscation of 10 percent of the entire economy – billions worth – on promises he then failed to perform. But no prison for him.

Glorfindel
Your mishmash of misrepresentations, personal argument, and assuming what is in issue, merely demonstrates what satisfies your own intellectual standards.

But more to the point, we are all agreed that social inclusion is good if it is undertaken on a voluntary basis.

The only issue is that I am denying that you are ethically justified in using force to fund it.

Therefore it is not me, but you who are arguing that there is nothing more important than dollars and cents, you fool.

Social Inclusion seems to me to be one of those phylosophical or ideaological terms that can mean whatever one wants.

Julia Gillard never refered to employee participation in the running of the business that employed him. In fact in her whole speech (authors link) she never gave any real or practical example of what she was on about.

So I think the author is drawing a long bow if he wants it to include his ideology of workers deciding how a business is to be operated, and getting dividends without sharing the risk, by buying shares.

It seems ominous that the subject was raised at a forum to discuss multiculturalism. If one googles 'social inclusion' the same phylosophical speel comes up. The only practical things get mentioned when the priorities are talked about. Then things like the disabled and aboriginals are spoken about.

At this point, it seems to me that the rusted on multiculturalists and the aboriginal 'self determination' lobby are two groups that could have some concerns. If it helps to rid us of those it would be a plus.

My concern is that the idea comes from the UK and I have not seen many good ideas come from the UK for many years.

Maybe the economic downturn has slowed the progress of the social inclusion agenda and it will be worthwhile watching for any future progress.

What_is_Men_Going_Their_Own_Way_(MGTOW)_about?

It_is_basically_a_statement_of_independence,_and_irrelevance - men declaring_themselves_free_of_the social_expectations_of_women_and western_culture_as_a_whole,_because_both_have_come_to_hate_men - "we are_independent, and_you_are_irrelevant."

Western_culture_has_turned_on_men. Phrases_like "male violence", "toxic masculinity" and "testosterone poisoning" heap_shame_and_blame on men, for_no_other_crime_than_having_been_born_with_the_set_of genitals_which_is_not_currently_in_fashion. Men_and_women, masculinity_and_femininity, have_been_cast_as_opponents_in_a_death struggle_for_dominance. Dozens_of_castrati_in_academia_literally howl over "The Decline of Males" or_anything_talking_about_the_end_of_men.

At_the_same_time, while_women_have_been_freed_of_their_old traditional_roles_and_expectations, with_increasingly_frequent outrageous_and_destructive_results, men_have_been_locked_by_an increasing body of anti-male laws into a very rigid caricature of their traditional roles and expectations. In consumption-driven western culture, the male role has been boiled down into provider of money and designated perpetrator for whatever constructed victim hood any woman tries to claim.

Yes, certainly some men do want to have a family, or at least children. But women seem to suffer more from not having had them, and men have had a lot of years to get used to the idea recently. It doesn't make much sense any more to breed more little reasons for the government to intrude into your life so you can support its massive ponzi scheme of social entitlements which relies on an ever growing population to support it.

Men have figured out that both women and government need them a lot more than they need either.

Women and daddy government have essentially criminalized any interaction men can have with women these days. Anything that makes a woman "fee-yuhl unsafe" is enough to land a man in jail, or cost him his career and his social reputation, or cost him a lot of money, or all of the above. A father exists in the lives of his children not as a fundamental right, but at the indulgence of the mother.

Men basically have most of the rights we need, as long as we treat women like they have the plague. The vast majority of the new intrusive laws govern what used to be the most intimate interactions between men and women. They have all been redefined in terms of power, and conflict, and the ever present "oppression."

If_the_only_way_men_can_avoid "oppressing" all these strong-as-men-but-oh-so-fragile-when-offended princess wannabes is to steer as clear of them as possible, a lot of men are quite ready to do that.

Jardine KJ
Well we are in agreement that no system will be perfect. I tend to lean more toward some regulatory control simply because of those imperfections.

The trick is of course in getting the balance right ('scuse the cliche') between regulation and the situation where business is not strangled by overly bureacratic restrictions and impositions. For small business those bureacratic requirements are at times counterproductive and serve no real purpose.

In the big picture I cannot see that the ordinary person has much power to influence big business no matter how idealistic the theory of free markets and competition.

This is not to create the impression that I am naive about the infallibility of governments only that I believe we are better for some relevant and well targeted regulation than without. While imperfect, when the government/public service errs changes are easily made simply because of political expediency. The demise of the Howard goverment was due to a failure to gauge how far to push the electorate - too far removed from transparency and the democratic process.

The modern public service is constantly changing in tandem with political change as it always has done, perhaps even more now that the public is increasingly educated and hence expect more from their governments and from democracy. How we might seek to be more involved in the democratic process is a worthy goal. That we can achieve greater public involvement in policy making than just a three yearly election process.

(Although sometimes I do despair we are ever more manipulated and hope for some more radical thinkers who dare to venture outside the proverbial economic square we have set for ourselves.)