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.)