Mitchell/Squeers,

Thank you for posting that passage by Tim Jackson - imagine....

Stern,

If nothing else, please read the last two paragraphs of the above passage, let it rest lightly on your mind and allow it to permeate. In doing so, your idea of the needs of humanity will be enhanced.

*Aussie workers don't 'own' (have total control over) those assets until they reach retirement age*

Yes they do, they just can't spend the money, apart from
circumstances of extreme hardship. Workers can change funds, start
their own fund, combine with other workers to start a new fund,
if they please. That money is held in their name, nobody else.
Some people prefer to invest in ethical funds or green funds,
that is all possible.

*Yabby... super is not on the horizon for most workers, it is simply stolen from their wages, without their consent, and goes, in a hit and miss manner, into a superfund that they have absolutely no control over.*

TBC, 1.3 trillion $ is serious money, not to be sneezed at, owned
by workers, paid for mostly by employers on their behalf. Workers
are free to choose their fund. In cases of extreme hardship, they
can even cash in the money early.

So my point stands. Australian workers own most the Australia's
means of production. That money is in workers names, nobody else.

*Buying shares in existing companies produces nothing at all*

Not so Grim. Buy BHP shares and their dividends will stay in Australia
and are paid into your account. If a company needs money, like
during the GFC, they issue rights issues, which provides them with
working capital. If you think that working capital is not important
in business, you don't know much about business. Banks for one, need
Tier 1 Capital. Rights issues is one way of raising that money.

*It is a 'secret' business, an arcane mystery, a priestly activity,*

Not so, TBC. It sounds like you simply don't understand it and
because you don't understand it, you claim it is secret.

Poirot “On the one hand (in the blue corner) you tell us that it is not the capitalist philosophy that is the problem, it's the way that humans implement it, (being the greedy, esteem seeking souls that they are). And on the other hand you won't give the same treatment to Marxist philosophy by separating it from past practice”

Oh wrong (nothing new in Poirot getting it wrong)

Difference

Capitalism assumes all people are primarily responsible for themselves and their children

Thus

Those who cannot feed themselves should not be breeding like rabbits.

Nature determines who will die off.

Capitalists do not pretend to play God or decide who will live or who will die, they leave that to nature, fate and basically, what amounts to survival of the fittest. Where the strong and capable get to populate the world (too bad for the meek... they were never going to inherit it anyway)

However, collectivists are more selective

Collectivists consciously decided who they will allow to live or die – hence, Robespierre’s Terrors Lenin’s Kulaks, Stalin’s Gulags, Chinas Prisons, East Germany’s Stasi, Cambodia’s Killing Fields

Not survival of the fittest but

survival of the cowered and oppressed, along with the self-appointed collectivist masters (those who are completely ruthless and capable of crawling over the bodies of their victims to get to the top of the heap – like Stalin and Pol Pot) and death to anyone who dares think or speak out against the collectivists.

TBC “ Do tell me where to find a national road system, or canal system, or airline system that pays its way without public subsidies, I am sure we are all ears/eyes.”

Virgin Blue, Delta

In fact, the UK canal and railway networks were both created with private capital.

As for capitalism.. capitalism has never denied the need for government

However, the sort of government which builds roads and erects street lights is a different beast to the one which decides how many children you will be allowed, what you are allowed to see on the internet or where you will be allowed to live.

"Workers are free to choose their fund"... sort of.

But only within the compulsion of being forced into super in the first place, and then having the reality of it all being reduced to nothing when the next GFC hits, and then being told that it was always buyer beware, so they only have themselves to blame for losing it all just as they were about to retire.

You can run your own fund, but for most people on 'ordinary' wages it is not worth the effort.

I have a relative, a worker, who runs his own fund. It consumes his life as he winces over 'movements' all the time....which is why most really don't pay too much attention to it... too busy working and getting on with the more interesting aspects of their lives.

But adopting a 'hunter gatherer' approach to super is fine, if you have the time and inclination for that.

'Owning' the money is something of an illusion.

"paid for mostly by employers on their behalf"... hang on... the 9% super was always 'owned' by employees. It was turned into privatised pensions through a swap, wage off-sets for super.It is not a 'gift' from happy employers.

And where it is more than 9%, that would have been a negotiated outcome too. If you are going to misrepresent the employers 'generosity' in this way, you'd have to be saying that employers pay the income tax for their employees too... true, but not true too.

*There is no way you can describe the domination of Woolworths or Coles (for just one example) as healthy capitalism*

Not so Severin, for of course especially since their new ownership,
Coles and Woolies compete fiercely not only between each other,
but with IGA, Costco, Aldi and a host of meat, vegie and other
speciality stores.

In fact our market is very nearly overserviced with retail, any
more new players could push grocery prices up, not down, for
the following reason:

Lets take Coles. They have net earnings of 3c in the Dollar. But
they have high fixed costs. Rent, wages, electricity and many
other fixed costs are there with more or less turnover and they
absorb around 20c in the Dollar. The average spend per customer at
Coles is 50$. If they could push that up to 60$, overheads would be
spread across more goods, they can afford to drop their prices to
compete. If turnover decreases, overheads stay the same, costs
per unit increases, they can either increase prices or make a loss,
at which point they will shut the store.

BTW, you have this bee in your bonnet about increasing GDP in a
finite world. Much economic activity is about services not goods.
You could tomorrow start a doggie walking service, a call girl
service or a cleaning service. You would be adding GDP and not
really wearing out the planet.

Stern,

Being labelled "wrong" by your one-dimensional self is something I shall wear as a badge of honour.

You wrote: "Capitalism has never denied the need for government."
How very accommodating of it.
I've just been reading Krishan Kumar's "Prophecy and Progress".
He wrote: - "...When we engage in contempory debates about the "free market" verses the planned (ie, politicised) economy, we are posing an opposition that is historically and sociologically unreal, and which is based on an illusion fostered by a too schematic view of nineteenth-century European history. For it is wrong to see these two principles as equal, sociological "universals". The sociological norm across time and space is overwhelmingly "politics in command". It is the "free market" principle that is the anomaly, and the fact that it is not immediately apparent is due to an historical accident which placed the "free market" at the centre of the original process of European industrialization....There took place a separation of economic and political realms that was "highly eccentric", historically and sociologically speaking; and which gave rise to the unprecedented and erroneous belief in a "natural" economy based on the operations of the untrammelled market...So the miracle occurred - a society in which, for once, wealth was mightier than the sword.