If China does not hold up, turn the public service into a performance based outfit and cut them adrift of public funds,then we will at least get some value for money.

That's what makes you good value, Houellebecq, there is a vein of canny conservative wisdom in your cynicism (don't you hate it when the enemy throws flowers!): "the solutions in life invariably come from slight tweaking of current themes that prove to be more sound".
This is the perennial debate between left and right, kicked off by Burke. Yet gradualism has been the theme since the 60's and we've "gradually" lost control.

'Even people living an indigenous existence in the modern world would probably fall about laughing if they learned that industrial man thinks of himself as "free".'

Reminds me of the intro to 'The Gods must be crazy'.

I dunno Poirot, most of the chains people struggle against are self inflicted. Actually it's more that the downsizers and tree changers are busy preaching to people who aren't the least bit bovvered about their materialistic bondage.

It always appears to me as the guilt of people with ideals they don't feel are adequately supported in the existing system. I reckon it's weak. If you really don't want to be a part of it all, you would accept social isolation and marginalisation as a badge of honour. You cant weep about the fact you cant drag people along with your own life philosophy.

There is an amazing contradiction here. If the individual can make a difference, why are you all so upset. Prove it! Why not go ahead and live your life in a hippie commune and damn the rest? Because deep down, you'd feel sad that their having all the fun. You want company in your misery. You want partners in your guilt.

Well, I'm with Yabby. We're all doin' just fine. The wheels are slowly turning, we're making out like bandits, our generations troubles are just that, ours. Let the future look after itself. It always has so far. Humans gorge when they can. So be it. Humans are suckers for competition, pride, sex. So be it. These battles are personal challenges as old as time.

This new sense of obligation is strange to me. Every generation does it's best with the random acts of social organisation that mould it. Were the free-love baby boomers and feminists worried about double income households and childcare and aging women and their fertility? Nope, and nor should they have been.

'tethered to the accoutrements supplied by entities beyond their own prowess.'
Nice words. The also died of polio though. To be fair...

" This is the pontificating stage, which I find has many so-called visionaries and anti-establishment dreamers,...come from slight tweaking of current themes...more sound."

Yeah but if we lived in a corrupt socialist state there would also be those so-called visionaries and anti-establishment dreamers.

It is the slight tweaking that most of us are talking about Houlley, not regime changes for more of the same.

It is easy to poo poo the do-gooders in our comfortable Western society and by comparison there is little to whine about, but does that mean that everything is off limits, that nothing can be improved and that predictions about future events based on current trends is always wrong or not worth some thought?

Fact is slow incremental change is the norm in democratic societies, a bit like Al's gradualism except he thinks it only works in one direction, or Col's Socialism by stealth.

It all depends on the POV you start from, as I see it the gradualism and stealth has gone in the direction of the Right, so why all the right-wingers fussing over socialist plots. The Americans think a public health system is Communism. We are all biased.

Andrew Bolt said recently that his problem with the Left is the implication of moral superiority, the Right being portrayed as all about greed without any altruistic elements (or words to that effect).

I agree with that premise but Bolt does not acknowledge the Right is also culpable. The Tea Party in America must be the worst moralisers. Any type of 'social' reform portrayed as an immoral Communist plot. The pro-gun lobby groups are hell bent on firing up those 'freedom of the individual' passions despite the fact America has the highest death rate due to gun ownership in the world.

The moral superiority forms the basis of all ideology, it stems from a basic disagreement about what works and I reckon those who only see isues from Left/Right perspectives would do well to look beyond those compartmentalised views.

globalisation agenda has nothing to do with socialism.
Squeers,
Yeah, just like Labor is governing with the working class's interests at heart. You'd have to be related to Belly.

Local troubles ignored by the left who parade mentally on a global stage, where their comfortable public service attire has suited them for some 25years of developing arrogance, the them and us attitude prevails. Consider their failures to deliver affordable shelter. Sack them as they don't even realize that the private sector only comes out when the government has gone to far and stuffed up, real time. Get it, Oh not yet. And the abc is the messenger in fault, Why should these false prophets continue with public support via taxes.