I lack the telepathic ability to tell what young people are thinking
Aidan,
There are many young intelligent & decent people & I know how they think. Decently !
Sadly, there are many, many more young who were denied the ability to think by those who are now running institutions & are generally in charge of the show !
Once these vermin are removed from the swamp, this new wave of young adults will start sorting out the intolerable mess the past three generation created !
The West will rejuvenate now that the east has done its dash !

I'd like to share a story.

Several weeks back a family member went to buy some trailers, and I went along with them to pick them up.

They got 2 trailers;
1/ A Dual Axle 8 x 5 with a 900mm Cage and a Canvas Cover (Fully Enclosed)
2/ A Single Axle 7 x 5 Tipper Trailer with a 600mm cage

Both included 14" spare wheels and 12mths rego - Total Price $5000 both

Some observations when we went to pick them up:

The company SEEMED like it may have once been an Australian company, that had maybe fallen on hard times and was taken over by Chinese owners.
(This is an assumption - I may be mistaken)

But what I got to thinking about here was that Aussies can't compete.
Where an Australian business owner might fail doing the best he can with what he has here in Australia, a Chinese business owner can succeed through their language and business contacts back in China.

I've been thinking over this for the past few weeks, and if you think about it it's like a complete fire sale of everything we have at pennies on the pound.

We can't win.

Our businesses fail, get sold for nothing when they're no longer profitable here;
Get Chinese owners and the company is instantly profitable and revitalised.

Profitable business opportunities everywhere if you're Chinese;
The dole queue awaits if your an Aussie in any kind of manufacturing.
The Chinese will take all you've built for a handful of shrapnel.

I hate to sound racist, or imply resentment towards foreigners;
I'm simply just stating a business fact.

If an Aussie bloke and a Chinese bloke are playing poker;
They Chinese bloke's got a leg up to take all the Aussie bloke's chips.

Globalism and free trade gave others an unfair advantage.

We can't win.

[Cont.]

We really are stupid.
We think inviting the Chinese here for education is the way to go.
Boy are we dumb.
Once they get here and are educated, where do you think the first place is they look for business opportunities?

Australia has literally been shooting itself in the head, and we advertise it.
'Come to Australia for a world class education'
We think we're successful because they're all here.

Boy are we dumb, I said that already didn't I.

Australia has been attempting to commit suicide, and we're succeeding.

Anytime you want to remind yourself of the facts
- Just remember the box trailer -

Dear Foreign Communist friends;
We have an entire country here we'd like to give away
Not only are we liquidating all national assets below cost,
- If you'd like to come here for our 'World Class Education' well show you exactly how to do it.
Unlimited Business Opportunities await.

AC
The same tune was played back in the late seventies, calling-out the Japanese for exactly the same crime.
Yapoon bombing comes to mind.
Within a fairly short time they became totally insignificant.

Wonder will Chinese follow the same path?

Further Thoughts on Vote Selling.
I'd like to have the opportunity to list my vote for sale on EBay, and auction it off in a business sense,
Payment through the PayPal facility.

The problem as I see it with this "democratic" (sic) system, is its cut-off point at the political level for the benifits of corruption to be the windfall it is. It defines our lack of power over the everyday implications of survival in life.

Ttbn observes it well, when he complains of our lack of power over who we actually vote for. The little recognised rip-off part, where we are expected to vote for some nondescript representative selected by the political cabal for purposes and reasons entirely of their own.
It's the level of rip-off which is invisible to most.

Dan

"Globalism and free trade gave others an unfair advantage.

We can't win." (Armchair Critic)

True. And it's the same throughout the West. It didn't have to be like that, but our dipstick politicians handed manufacturing and jobs over to the Third World at the Lima Convention. We were going to replace what we chucked away by being smarter. But smart people wouldn't have gone global and shot themselves in the foot, as they did, and we are still going down, down, down. We are not smart.

And, Dan. The Chinese ascendancy is nothing like the Japanese boom after the war. The Japanese are more western than they are Asian, and they are now suffering the same fate as we are. We are not dealing with a country called China, we are dealing with the Chinese Communist Party, which our 'smart' people are allowing to take us over by osmosis, along with South China Sea trade and Pacific Islands right on our doorstep