Jardine, why are you so hell-bent on completely denouncing government?

What is the alternative to government?

At this stage I completely don’t get your rationale. I am struggling to establish the very foundation of your argument.

Once that has been achieved, we can delve into the next level and I will answer any pertinent questions you put to me, if I can see that there is a point in continuing with our discussion…. and for as long as you answer my questions in return.

I wrote: << Please allow me to step past your copious questions and try to explore why you are so intent on government not being able to direct us towards a sustainable society. >>

Doesn’t mean I won’t answer them. Please just give me a reason why I should go to the trouble. Thankyou.

What's this, Ludwig? Paranoia...?

>>And what about this assertion that I am on a government pension? Wow, methinks you have cooked your goose with this one. This is a total invention of yours, pulled out of thin air and then asserted as fact.<<

Tell me, where did I refer to you...?

"You see the answer to be a reduction in economic power. Which is fine for someone on an indexed government pension living in the backwoods. But such people are in a considerable minority; most Australians live in our fine cities, quite happily supporting the woop-woop folks' carefree beach lifestyle, right up until the point where they want to lecture us all on what we should and shouldn't do."

Obviously, there was something in what I said that struck a chord with you, otherwise you would not have identified yourself so readily with it.

This one was aimed at your thought processes.

>>Um…. what’s this about dotage??<<

It was an observation based on my personal experience, in which I expressed my sadness at the way you come across...

"The people I know personally who think like you are invariably in their dotage, and carry on like two-bob watches about how the country is being overrun by immigrants."

>>Tis me who has had to chase you up on numerous occasions to get you to answer my questions!<<

What questions? Your last reference was typical...

>>I picked you up on a fundamental error to which you offered no response. Most unusual for you. Strongly gives the impression that you realise that you are wrong and could give no reply other than to admit this: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=5719#159980<<

There was no actual question there. Just an assertion, that you quickly modified into meaninglessness. What's to answer?

And while we are sniping, Ludwig, what about this little gem?

>>Peri, open ye eyes and look at the real world! For goodness sake, you are asserting something which is patently and obviously not the case (which you are wont to do, often)<<

Let me try to make it a little clearer for you, since it is a concept that is "patently and obviously" entirely foreign to you - i.e., how to run a profitable long-term business.

This was my observation that you had problems with:

"Businesses are very much, even 'fundamentally', concerned about the sustainability of the raw materials that drive their business"

These raw materials come in a number of forms, depending upon the business. If the company is, say, Atlassian, one of the most successful software companies in Australian history, their basic raw material is brilliant software developers. In order to survive and grow, they need access to a constant stream of such talent, which, in the numbers they require, is unavailable in Australia.

http://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/hro/news/1020943/software-firm-atlassian-goes-european-bus-tour-recruit-developers-days

There is no point in pretending that the resources you need to run your company can simply be plucked out of the air. You have to plan.

It's the same with water. If your company is dependent upon the supply of water at a particular volume, you need to make sure that supply is not just available today, but into the future as well. Anything else is simply commercial suicide.

Please re-read the whaling saga. There is no evidence whatsoever that the game-plan of the Japanese whaling fleet is to empty the ocean of whales. Anyone who understands marginal profitability can tell you that at when the cost of acquiring the next whale outstrips its profit content, whaling will stop. If they were to do otherwise, they would be - yes - committing commercial suicide.

Once again: it is a fundamental concept of business that you take care that the raw material that is essential to your business doesn't run out. You will faithfully articulate, every year in your annual report to your shareholders, your concrete plans to do precisely this.

<< And while we are sniping, Ludwig… >>

Yes, aren’t we ever!

So Pericles, my old OLO mate of quite few years’ standing, as with our last discussion, I will attempt to bypass the snipery and refocus.

As I see it, the great flaw in your business ethos is that businesses have to compete with each other, and if one lays back on the procurement of a particular item, resource or type of employee, because they want to secure the source of these things into the long-term, its competitors will just simply take the bit that was laid back on!

Some businesses may wish to be sustainable in the long term (well, you can’t be sustainable in the short term, as sustainability is inherently a long-term principle), but their competitive environment may well not let them.

This may not apply to all businesses, but it is certainly a very important point to consider, especially when there is strong competition over a resource that is in limited or declining supply.

You seem to be completely missing this all-important point.

This is why government regulation is vital. (Gee I think I’ve said all this before somewhere!)

continued

Secondly, as I’ve said before; the real world does not support your assertion that businesses think and act sustainably. Far from it. In fact, so far from it that was really quite amazed at what I was reading when you first asserted this point!

Pericles, your assertion has some truth to it, but it is far from the whole picture. When competition for resources is strong, it could well be a matter of a company striving to secure what it can in the short term in order to survive in the short term, and simply not having the option of preserving resources in the interests of its longer term survival.

Indeed, when there are many companies drawing on the same resource, it is just not possible for each company, with its own individual plan done in complete isolation from all the other companies, to secure the sustainability of that resource.

All the companies involved need to work together towards the same plan. But this would sit in conflict with the competitive ethos (and there could be legal problems about collusion as well). So it just doesn’t happen.

This is where government comes in and needs to implement regulations that make sure that the resource in question remains sustainable. Water is a prime example of this sort of thing.

Ludwig
Suppose you say that the baby bonus should be abolished. And suppose someone answers: "What? What is the alternative to government deciding what babies to fund? Why are you hell-bent on abolishing government?"

Well that's a misrepresentation of the issues, and a personalization of the argument, isn't it? Recognising that government should not be paying the baby bonus does not require arguing that government should be abolished, does it? The question is not what is the alternative to government in general, it is what is the alternative to government specifically paying the baby bonus, and the alternative is: *not* paying the baby bonus. It's a perfectly valid, and better, policy option.

"I am struggling to establish the very foundation of your argument."

The very foundation of my argument is that government is incapable of managing sustainability, EVEN IN ITS OWN TERMS. Why do I say this? Because as I have shown, and you cannot refute, government is not capable of knowing the values it would need to achieve, to achieve sustainability.

But the discussion will be pointless if you are not interested in learning how your beliefs are wrong. If you're not interested, please say so, and we'll just leave the discussion at my having categorically disproved your entire argument, and you being completely unable to answer my argument, except by persisting in illogical beliefs.

*My* interest in learning whether I'm wrong is proved by the fact that I am giving you the questions which will prove me wrong, and you're not answering them. Can you?