The perfectly reasonable question arising from your post is whether you purposefully waste resources of time, energy and money, so as to make it more difficult to achieve an end that you are aiming at.

If you do, then the stupidity of your thesis is obvious.

And if you don’t, then you are a hypocrite; and there’s no reason why anyone else should follow your call to be more inefficient.

But the thesis is even more confused and ignorant than that. Because even if you do try to be less efficient in producing something, let’s say widgets, because you would prefer more leisure, then all that means is that you have reached the point where the disutility of producing widgets, is greater than the utility of using scarce resources for purposes of leisure, or singing Kumbaya around the campfire.

It doesn’t mean you value economic inefficiency. It just means that you now value more highly, using scarce resources for some other purpose.

People *cannot ever* value economic inefficiency higher than economic efficiency. The very fact of human action necessarily implies that people are using scarce resources to achieve their most highly valued ends. If they weren't, then they would be using scarce resources to acheive some other goal with priority, in which case, we must conclude that they are using scarce resources as best they know how to acheive their most valued ends. If they are not aiming at one thing, they are aiming at another.

If instead of buying a pencil from the stationer’s for $1, you buy it from the Legacy stand for $1.50, you should really enter that in your books as “stationery $1, charity $50c”. Similarly, if instead of walking straight to the shops, I detour via the park for my health, that doesn’t mean I prefer inefficiency. It means I prefer maximal efficiency in achieving each of the ends I am trying to achieve in my value scale, as best I know how with the limitations of resources I've got.

The same necessarily applies to all human action. How could it be otherwise?

> China's customers .. are being served by their own industries, not ours.
Which is why VW's were the most common car in Beijing when I was there recently. Yes, of course.

> the Chinese who are exploiting new markets, not us - just look at the figures:
Here are some figures for you:
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-05-13/foreign-investment-in-china-jumps-for-a-ninth-month-update1-.html
Many of China's CONSUMER exports are the produce of Western CORPORATE intellectual property and manufacturing licenses - it's just a matter of where in the spectrum of things you pull your figures from.

> So you clearly got that one totally arse-backwards, didn't you.
Nope.

> And let's have a look at that disaster area, the US, while we are about it.
This assumes that the US dollar is correctly valued. The strident complaints by the US about the renminbi being UNDERVALUED are to hide the fact that the US dollar is grossly OVERVALUED.

> Going down the gurgler really fast, wouldn't you say?
Me and many others.

> But what's this? http://www.tradingeconomics.com/Economics/Balance-Of-Trade.aspx?Symbol=USD
I quote the first line of this page: "The United States reported a balance of trade deficit equivalent to 42.8 Billion USD in July of 2010". A deficit of US$43Bn is a healthy economy? I'm beginning to suspect that you're an economist!

> There is your "expanding customer base", Beelzebub! The USA is buying stuff like crazy.
.. and going broke in the process. You ARE an economist!

You're trying to pull the old trick of selective, plausible deniability, Pericles. Pollies and economists are past masters at it, but you seem to be practising it in reverse.

Beelzebub,

You majored in Economics? I seriously doubt it. If you did, it was wasted, as you certainly didn't let economics interfere with your socialist dogma. That you offered to do a dissertation (usually a post graduate research document) indicates that you have no clue as to what a dissertation is.

The statistics generated by the bureau are according to world recognised metrics so as not to be as impartial as possible. I wonder what stunning source of information you use? Did you chat to a few of your mates?

> You majored in Economics? I seriously doubt it.

Shadow Minister, please take off your specs, clean and polish them carefully, and replace them; then find the 'Page Up' button on your keyboard, and concentrate carefully. With diligence and perseverance, you may eventually find this before your eyes:

> Perhaps your next post will be about something of which you know more, such as nuclear physics.
It was my major, and if you'd like a dissertation I'd be happy to oblige.

Would you like to discuss the anomolous properties of the nuclear strong interaction? It would mean starting a new thread, of course, but I'd expect a clear understanding of the implications of nonlinear electrodynamics for energetically saturated bounded n-dimensional space as a basis for discussion.

P.S.:
> The statistics generated by the bureau are according to world recognised metrics so as not to be as impartial as possible.
I thoroughly agree. These statistics are anything but impartial.

The destruction of a State Labor Party.
From the Cambridge Catalogue website:
"Power Crisis, by former minister and Labor historian Rodney Cavalier, is the latest volume in the Australian Encounters series (jointly published by Cambridge University Press and the National Centre for Australian Studies (NCAS), Monash University). It will be launched in Sydney by Senator John Faulkner, who may well have some words about the current plight of Australian Labor, and MCed by Dr Tony Moore, commissioning editor of Australian Encounters and Director of NCAS.
Power Crisis is an explosive account of the self-destruction of the New South Wales Labor government, which has seen a turnover of four premiers in five years. Cavalier exposes the backstage dramas of the ALP and tells the story not told by the media. He draws on history to illuminate the crisis. Featuring interviews with ex-premiers Iemma and Rees, this book contrasts the current turmoil and self-indulgence within New South Wales Labor over generations before, and asks, “What went wrong?”

“This is a forensic and penetrating analysis of the crisis facing modern Labor. Cavalier is unrivalled in his ability to identify the dilemmas of the present but locate them in historical context.”
– Paul Kelly, The Australian
“Rodney Cavalier analyses the root causes of the crisis to explain why government in NSW has become a grim game of musical chairs. He reveals a bitter conflict between an elected Labor government and the party that created it. The problem for modern Labor is the hijacking of party and government by a professional political class — operatives on big salaries with minimal life experience or connection to the broader community”
– Dr. Tony Moore, Director of NCAS
- and doesn't this also apply, and minimum concern for our workers, not only for the state of NSW, but for our country of Australia.