Interesting to see Michael Costa on the Bolt Report trying to get the focus off leadership and back to ALP policy and the need to improve it. The problem is that this calls for a massive change in the thought processes of everyone connected with the ALP, including all the rusted-on media hacks who refuse to be bothered by anything like policies and their results.
The problem starts with the intellectual leadership, indeed with the whole social democrat philosophy and the situation is not going to improve a great deal under Coalition leadership even if some of the most disastrous policies are unwound. A survey reported by Andrew Norton revealed that even among conservative voters, support for a bunch of classical liberal policies rated very low, so low as to approximate zero for many of them.
On the topic of intellectual leadership, what are the academics doing to help classical liberalism? Of course most of them are not classical liberals so it is silly to expect them to help, but how can they justify a situation where the core ideas of people like Hayek, Popper and Mises are only distant rumours even among (supposedly) well educated people?
Has the situation in the universities improved since 1989 when I surveyed the schools of philosophy, sociology and politics in the (then) 21 universities? This was before I discovered Mises in a serious way, and the aim was to find whether students at that time would get any exposure to Popper and Hayek. The answer was that you had to be incredibly lucky to hear about Hayek and much the same applied to Popper apart from the regulation treatment that he did some interesting work a long time ago that was superseded by Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend and others.
I wanted to repeat the survey a few years later but after the Dawkins reforms disaster there were too many “universities” to survey.
Any anecdotal reports about the current situation?
A more immediate issue is to consider the economic thought (for want of a better word) of the class of ’98, i.e., those Labor federal parliamentarians swept into Canberra on the basis of not only a rejection of Howard’s taxation reform, but who perceived the economic reform agenda of Keating as contributing to the 1996 landslide.
Of course, two important figures in the class of ’98 are Rudd and Gillard.
Julie Novak
19 Feb 12 at 11:13 am
rafe,
Good points on how little known were Hayek and Popper and certainly Mises. Friedman was just a wildman in the wings back then too.
That did not stop the Left attributing to Hayek and Friedman great political influence despite the fact that few knew of these two retired professors or agreed with them. Hayek was truly obscure
Rather than a crisis of ideology, look at the current policy dilemmas as two, three parties competing for the middle class vote. Not much of a working class vote that solidly votes one way or another.
The Australian political party confusion is the same confusion in Europe where many parties must compete for the same middle-class constituency with highly nuanced packages of policies.
the number of swinging voters is now 40%+ (50%?) rather than the 20% when we were lads. this makes policy design challenging and requires much more skill because the swinging voter is interested in results.
Jim Rose
19 Feb 12 at 11:25 am
Rafe,two comments relevant to Economics:
-most academic economists are left-leaning.Hence,the importance of IPA,CIS,etc.
-we no longer teach the history of our subject.The ideas of some of the scholars you mention may be incorporated in courses,but nobody discusses their sources.
Tom Valentine
19 Feb 12 at 11:29 am
The ALP has lurched to the left. Whether this is structural or cyclical I don’t know for sure. I tend to see it as cyclical as many people are like the Bourbons – they learn nothing and forget nothing. Look at the young Marxists demonstrating on the streets as if 1989 never happened.
Viva
19 Feb 12 at 11:39 am
Hayek was truly obscure
Well until Thatcher started banging The Constitution of Liberty on the parliamentary wood.
Adrien
19 Feb 12 at 11:52 am
But what are the results that the swinging voters want to see?:)
In addition to my survey in 1989 there was a CIS review of the major economics texts used for HSC around Australia at the time. Keynes ruled!
Rafe
19 Feb 12 at 12:05 pm
You mean the bit about how the product of Locke’s servant’s labour belongs to Locke.
or the bit about Hobbe’s Golden Rule?
If we got rid of Locke and followed Hobbes, there would be no GFC.
MaryT
19 Feb 12 at 12:07 pm
Rafe, surely you meant the Dawkins “reforms”.
Mother Hubbard's Dog
19 Feb 12 at 1:18 pm
Tom, I agree that most academic economists are left-leaning. Many others are centre-left. 30 years of research showing this topped-off with Dan Klein’s work with voter registrations of academics is one of the great secrets of modern political discourse.
When John Quiggin rages against the dying of the light and against modern economics in general, most of his perceived opponents are only a bit to the right of him politically, and vote much the same way as him. see http://econ4obama.blogspot.co.nz/2008/09/66-of-economists-are-economists-for.html suggesting that 66% of economists voted for the second most liberal member of the U.S. senate in 2008.
Tom Sargent is a life-long democratic party voter but who is also a fiscal conservative. Robert Lucas voted for Obama too.
The enthusiasm with which the public service worked with the Hawke-Keating reforms and New Labour in the UK was working with a like–minded outlook that also was aware of the consequences of opportunity costs and the slopes of demand and supply curves. Alan Blinder called it hard-heads but soft hearts.
Jim Rose
19 Feb 12 at 1:57 pm
How can you be an economist when you hate 70% of the economy!?
.
19 Feb 12 at 2:04 pm
Yes,Ishould have added-most academics hold business and commerce in contempt.Their attitudes extend into the bureaucracy and media.
Tom Valentine
19 Feb 12 at 2:29 pm
It’s just a matter of supporting the interests of 90% of the people.
Such practitioners can be tagged ‘social democratic economists’. You can find them in most universities where modern academics have built careers without having to pass Menzies security checks.
MaryT
19 Feb 12 at 2:39 pm
Jinmaro, how much of your time is devoted to keeping alive the multiple personalities:
Jinmaro
Freddie
Isher
lik3
MaryT
Pip
Jenny
philomena
Just askin’
90% of the people benefit from an expanding bureacracy, lower public sector productivity, higher taxes and a record amount of regulatory barriers to entry?
You must have scored an epic amount of coke as a student nurse, mate.
.
19 Feb 12 at 2:42 pm
There’s “sally” over at Troppo too.
I always had a soft spot for Isher. Isher was a high class hooker, who according to Phil around 80% of her family had sexual relationships with Bishops, cardinals and popes. No priests as they were too low down the totem pole.
JC
19 Feb 12 at 2:46 pm
Sensible economic policy is about protecting the interests of all the people who are net taxpayers.
Rafe
19 Feb 12 at 3:03 pm
Rafe, I wonder if you could provide a link to the report of that Andrew Norton survey.
Mother Hubbard's Dog
19 Feb 12 at 3:04 pm
Dumb Dot Dash
Many people benefit from an expanding bureacracy, higher taxes and a record amount of regulatory barriers to entry.
Public sector productivity has increased.
So your paper is returned with a zero out of 10.
MaryT
19 Feb 12 at 3:04 pm
These are just raving untruths.
.
19 Feb 12 at 3:09 pm
Oh FFS. WHY is Hillard chosing NOW to reignite Keating era history wars? Gillard has no gravitas in the intellectual and scholarly realms, and will just make herself appear even more ridiculous and completely inappropriate as a Prime Minister. And then the G-G weighs in. The last thing we need is another William Deane, making a complete buffoon of herself by basing public speeches on garbled Australian history.
Darwin bombing was ‘our Pearl Harbour’: Gillard
http://www.theage.com.au/national/darwin-bombing-was-our-pearl-harbour-gillard-20120219-1tgr1.html#ixzz1mnXOdEGp
Peter Patton
19 Feb 12 at 3:19 pm
Tom,
Peter Klein wrote a great update at http://mises.org/daily/2318 called Why Intellectuals Still Support Socialism
Builds on Hayek’s idea of allocation of talent: exceptionally intelligent people who favor the market tend to find opportunities for success in the business or professional world). Those who are highly intelligent but ill-disposed towards the market are more likely to choose an academic career.
Klein also reminds that Murray Rothbard noted that the functions of the economist on the free market differ strongly from those of the economist on the hampered market. In a purely free market, the economist can explain the workings of the market economy – a vital task, especially since the untutored person tends to regard the market economy as sheer chaos – but he can do little else.
Klein has a great comment:
Jim Rose
19 Feb 12 at 3:20 pm
Darwin bombing was our Pearl Harbour. Yes, and Lithgow is our New York City.
Infidel Tiger
19 Feb 12 at 3:21 pm
Mary, you are soooo awful! Good one.
Entropy
19 Feb 12 at 3:21 pm
Apart form the involvement of nipponse zeros, what in the hell is the equivalence?
One, a sneak attack that occurred before the declaration of war on a country that was not at war, that significantly damaged the capacity of America to wage war, and killed thousands of people.
Compared with a much smaller scale incident against a country already at war with Japan? I suppose a lot of white people were killed. There is that.
Entropy
19 Feb 12 at 3:27 pm
PP, the comment about ‘our pearl harbour’ shows a poor understanding of national security policy.
Australian defence policy since 1901 has been based on having a great and powerful friend who has common enough interests with us to lead them to defend us, perferably before well the homeland is physically attacked.
Australia is too vast and small in population and defence forces to defend at the border. Much better to fight offshore before any military threat comes near us.
Jim Rose
19 Feb 12 at 3:28 pm
Has a profile ever been done on Gillard’s staffers, her policy inner-circle, her “set”? I’ve now formed the impression that she is surrounded by an insular, naive, uneducated hive-mind of junior Dawkins University Media Studies graduates. And that’s it!
Peter Patton
19 Feb 12 at 3:30 pm
Jim, it also shows atrocious ignorance about US history, despite the fact we have all been inundated with US history whether through Hollywood, TV drama and docos, school/uni history study since the day we were born.
Peter Patton
19 Feb 12 at 3:34 pm
Dumb Dot Dash
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blockquote{background:url(images/quote.gif) no-repeat top left;padding:0 0 0 30px;min-height:25px}
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In your opinion. But then you haven’t heard about the “efficiency dividend”.
Maybe you haven’t worked in the public sector.
I was recently in a bad state with burst, gangrenous appendix – the staff in intensive care in the public sector and later in the surgical ward in the public sector were absolutely BRILLIANT, EFFICIENT, and PRAISEWORTHY. Word cannot express the value of the public sector although the voluntary sector is also praise worthy for the work they do.
Dumb, Dot, Dash is just jealous.
MaryT
19 Feb 12 at 3:41 pm
PP, Saw the other night a (rather poorly dressed for an appearance on TV) ex-labour staffer on a sky-TV panel with Gerard Henderson and others.
The ex-labour staffer referred to Abbott as ‘an idiot’. No wonder they are losing 60-40.
The biggest mistake in politics is to believe your own propaganda and under-estimate an opponent. Abbott is about to claim his second prime ministerial scalp.
Assuming that your opponents are ignorant or steeped in moral turpitude, preferably both, is comforting but its leaves you open to not taking the time to make the best analysis and arguments, including through a fearless inventory of your own arguments and goals, and it leaves you tactically vulnerable.
Abbott (and Reagan) benefited greatly from being under-estimated and dismissed as intellectual lightweights and lacking in appeal to ordinary voters.
American politics is littered with, as George Will said eloquently, the bleached bones of those who underestimated Ronald Reagan. Thatcher too was underestimated by countless politicians she later ate alive.
Jim Rose
19 Feb 12 at 3:45 pm
Eeu. Too much information.
Appendix is not rocket-sience, you nimrod. General surgeons handle that crap. It’s the lowest of the low.
JC
19 Feb 12 at 3:48 pm
Productivity has not increased. They get a lower budget – so what – the output of many of these new departments is worthless.
Of course you were. More left wing fantasies about how great bureaucracies and Government waste are. Hospitals are hardly the thing that is objectionable anyway. I suppose those IC staff were helped by the wasteful stimulus, deficit and unaccountability of the bureaucracy around this current Federal ALP Government?
.
19 Feb 12 at 3:51 pm
Jim Rose
You may have managed a thought here:
However do not conflate the necessary ill-disposition with capitalism (and monopoly), with some non-existant generalised ‘ill-disposition’ against the market.
MaryT
19 Feb 12 at 3:52 pm
Jinmaro:
What pays for your wages?
.
19 Feb 12 at 3:53 pm
JC
Try it, you may change your mind.
MaryT
19 Feb 12 at 3:53 pm
PP, I should add there have been lots of forgettable opposition leaders over time.
many successful PMs ignore the opposition leader and some do not even mention them by name because it only raises their profile and breaks the maxim that you never interrupt an opponent when they are making a mistake.
PMs never want to debate opposition leaders on TV during elections because it raises their profile and treats them as a viable alternative.
Jim Rose
19 Feb 12 at 3:54 pm
‘
Another profession Jinmaro has under his cap.
Poet
Surgeon
Nurse
Agronomist
Economist
Bureacrat
Government consultant
Jinmaro went to uni for 15 years, apparently.
.
19 Feb 12 at 3:55 pm
Why put myself at unnecessary risk?
JC
19 Feb 12 at 3:56 pm
More like 19 years…
Jinmaro I ought to put my money where my mouth is and fund every political blog in Australia and ban yourself, Homer Paxton, Graeme Bird, BilB and other dishonest, insane or otherwise idiotic trolls.
.
19 Feb 12 at 3:57 pm
This truly is quite shocking. In NSW at least, History has been compulsory in all schools from Years 7 to 10 for nearly 20 years. At the end of Year 10, there is a School Certificate exam in Australian History. The largest chunks of the exam test knowledge of Aboriginal Industry stuff and the UN. Despite this compulsory 4 years of History, kids come out completely ignorant of the bombing of Darwin. They leave thinking that “military history” means demonstrating against Vietnam conscription at Monash Uni circa 1970.
Peter Patton
19 Feb 12 at 4:02 pm
Patton,
A few years ago on Big Brother, some dumb tart didn’t know what the Vietnam war was.
I reached for my luger.
.
19 Feb 12 at 4:04 pm
Dot, you forgot Merchant Banker.
Mother Hubbard's Dog
19 Feb 12 at 4:21 pm
can you please do it again, in front of a mirror.
MaryT
19 Feb 12 at 4:23 pm
Please forget my last post, it was ridiculous because dumb, dot dash only fires blanks.
MaryT
19 Feb 12 at 4:25 pm
I assume you said that because as a former merchant banker Jinmaro, you are also psychotic and only care about the top ten per cent of society.
Maybe you can write a poem about it later.
.
19 Feb 12 at 4:25 pm
Patton
What survey (or other) results showed:
MaryT
19 Feb 12 at 4:27 pm
Rhyming slang.
Mother Hubbard's Dog
19 Feb 12 at 4:32 pm
JC
A service to the blogosphere.
MaryT
19 Feb 12 at 4:33 pm
What would you know about quality education, male nurse? Or are you a poet laureate or an agronomist today? Are you a man today or not, Jinmaro?
.
19 Feb 12 at 4:36 pm
Mary T
I didn’t mention any ‘survey’. I was clearly talking about School Certificate syllabus and exams.
Peter Patton
19 Feb 12 at 4:45 pm
Depends how you define interests, MaryT, graduate of Social Engineering 101.
I’m glad you don’t define mine (once we get rid of Labor) and I’ll work as hard as I can to ensure that other people are aware of how you intend to define theirs to your socialist vision, because it is clear your definitions will send them and their offspring and this country into a spiral descent into poverty.
Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.
19 Feb 12 at 4:50 pm
Elizabeth
What policy, supported by 90% of the people, is a socialist vision?
What policy, supported by 90% of the people, sends the country into a spiral descent into poverty.
MaryT
19 Feb 12 at 4:57 pm
And you MaryT have your head up your backside, where its inflation is causing considerable obstruction, hence your constipated thought.
Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.
19 Feb 12 at 4:57 pm
Lizzie strikes again!
Keep sucking, phil.
Rabz
19 Feb 12 at 5:00 pm
Peter patton
OK, so which part of school syllabus sets;
as a learning outcome or course objective?
What exam markers sheet has this as a model answer to which exam question?
MaryT
19 Feb 12 at 5:00 pm
Elizabeth
You did not answer the question?
You have taken-off in some weird direction about backsides. What is the logic?
MaryT
19 Feb 12 at 5:04 pm
Good grief MaryT, you are the most boring man alive.
wreckage
19 Feb 12 at 5:08 pm
Until the parasites’ hosts die.
Then it’s time to go a whole lot ‘o’ greek.
Rabz
19 Feb 12 at 5:08 pm
Dumb, Dot, Dash
I am an expert on Australian Quality Assurance issues in the higher education sector, and have served on many curriculum advice committees.
I have also worked in policy development for many skills formation initiatives under previous governments.
I have also cpmpleted major projects in ‘school to work transition’.
Plus other stuff.
I do write poetry. I have a poem about Dumb, Dot, Dash, but it is not suitable for public hearing before 9pm.
MaryT
19 Feb 12 at 5:12 pm
Knock yourself out Mary.
Here’s the 2010 SC Exam
http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/schoolcertificate/sc2010/2010-SCT-AHGCC.pdf
And here’s the 2008 SC Exam.
http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/schoolcertificate/sc2008/2008-SCT-AHGCC.pdf
Peter Patton
19 Feb 12 at 5:14 pm
Oh dear, so YOU are one of the Gang of Uneducated Luvvies responsible for this shit? It never ceases to amaze me at how anxious and insecure you lot are, with this constant need to SELF-identify as “experts”. What exactly is your “expertise”?
Peter Patton
19 Feb 12 at 5:17 pm
So, MaryT, what you’re telling us is that you’re a professional paper shuffler with special expertise in demonstrating the practical applicability of Parkinson’s Law.
Mother Hubbard's Dog
19 Feb 12 at 5:18 pm
This guy is like Frank N Furter and Walter Mittie on crank.
.
19 Feb 12 at 5:20 pm
Australian Quality Assurance issues?
You mean, you work in the fruit and veg section of Wollies.
Skills Formation Initiatives?
Homes Science or Completing Centrelink Forms?
Peter Patton
19 Feb 12 at 5:23 pm
“I am an expert on Australian Quality Assurance issues in the higher education sector, and have served on many curriculum advice committees.”
At last, the real explanation for our higher education problems. And I thought it was the Dawkins debacle.
Sorry guys, I usually try not to feed the trolls.
Rafe
19 Feb 12 at 5:26 pm
Rafe I recommend you delete all of Jinmaro’s accounts and aliases.
.
19 Feb 12 at 5:27 pm
Slight error – I wasthat, I am now retired with a very nice flow of superannuation.
I suppose Peter Patton has not heard of AUQA, although it has morphed into some new agency now?
Oh, well, can’t be helped. AUQA did not sell vegetables although some of the rightwing views put to AUQA were probably written by vegetables.
MaryT
19 Feb 12 at 5:32 pm
Rafe, what is wrong with the ALP doesn’t boil down to their lack of Classical Liberalism or relate to Hayek/Popper etc’s absence on various curricula. It’s a spiritual void and I suspect that it will shortly manifest on the Right as well.
Adrien
19 Feb 12 at 5:33 pm
Mary, I could not care less about obscure sheltered workshops for mediocre leftist admin types. We are talking about Australian history.
Peter Patton
19 Feb 12 at 5:36 pm
Adrien – if you are right the ALP are far sicker than the Libs. The ALP don’t even realise how far they have wandered off the reservation.
.
19 Feb 12 at 5:39 pm
Another profession Jinmaro has under his cap.
Poet
Surgeon
Nurse
Agronomist
Economist
Bureacrat
Government consultant
Merchant banker
Education quality assurance officer
I forgot oiled up tranny, with 23 years of university level education. Jinmaro worked for 24 years across nine different jobs (none of them entry level) and is now retired on “good super”.
.
19 Feb 12 at 5:45 pm
Wow, big surprise, Mary turns up and “candy” stops posting.
MPD is a tough racket.
.
19 Feb 12 at 5:51 pm
There’s a fine thesis waiting to be written about a movement that started out trying to improve the lot of the worker, achieved that goal then looked around for something else to do. It settled (eventually) on gaining increased political power for the rewards and lever-grasps of incumbency, then, when traditional support beams (union power) looked like caving in, it forged alliances with green crypto-totalitarians.
The story is ongoing. But what professor wants his clutch of hatchlings working on such a thing?
blogstrop
19 Feb 12 at 5:59 pm
The ALP has been fucked since Hawkeating decoupled the ALP from the trade union movement, and the broader working class. It might have been a form of suicide, except they found an alternative source of funding, grass-roots mobilization, and useful idiots come election time. This alternative source was not based on class, but on race.
But the tragedy for Labor is that while all these taxpayer-funded race-based vanguards have grown into a well-oiled, well-funded network that covers not only the whole nation, but has deep links internationally, but also taps deep into our culture, and political discourses, they still cannot overcome the fact that ‘race/ethnicity’ can never have the appeal that Labor was able to tap with class.
Labor’s new reliance on race-based partisanship will always be frustrated by the fact that not only across different races, but within these racial groupings there are also the same cleavages of class, lifestyle, temperament.
It was Keating who realized the electoral power of recruiting the Aboriginal Industry, and that is why he committed to the explosion in funding the Aboriginal Industry. He had also recognized the electoral power of Sunni Arabs – particularly Lebanese – which is why he built the desert concentration camps to keep the ‘Vietnamese Balts’ and other Asians out, as they were eating into the humanitarian quota, which Labor wanted reserved foe relatives of the Shake Your Hilaly set.
It was Keating who made this funding of the Aboriginal Industry and the Multiculti Industry, a structural item in Commonwealth budgets. Thus, whereas once the ALP electoral machine could rely on the stand-over money from the 50% of Australians who paid dues to a trade union, now grass root mobilization could be conducted by high salaried luvvies employed in the leviathan of race agencies across the nation and abroad.
But as has become clear, the interests of Aborigines qua Australian citizens are far too often at odds with the interests of those who get rich as members of the Aboriginal Industry.
Psychologically, the ALP increasingly resembles a schizophrenic, or the deteriorating sanity of a dog who lives in a commune, but has no single owner or carer. That is why we have witnessed the explosion of lying in ALP culture.
Peter Patton
19 Feb 12 at 6:06 pm
Rafe,
not so much Dawkin’s legacy as due to an older political system
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okPnDZ1Txlo
Well worth watching it all – bit of a surprise and I wonder whether the Prussian method of schooling was adopted here as well.
Louis Hissink
19 Feb 12 at 6:13 pm
Patton
So how come various Catallaxy types were all swimming around getting contracts, grants and onto committees within the EET portfolio (DEET, DETYA, NBEET, etc)?
Were they ‘mediocre leftist types’?
Maybe a FOI request would produce some interesting data about Catallaxy flag wavers and their own sucking on the public-teet.
Good old right-wingers – say one thing, do another.
MaryT
19 Feb 12 at 6:37 pm
Mary, when any of that is mentioned on this thread in an attempt to claim ‘expert’ status on the subject of Australian History, and the PM/GG’s interventions, perhaps THEN your hand-waving might be relevant.
Peter Patton
19 Feb 12 at 6:43 pm
“Shake Your Hilaly”
Love it!
Rabz
19 Feb 12 at 6:47 pm
The Sheik he drove his Cadillac
He went a cruisin’ down the ville
The Muezzin was a standing
On the radiator grille
The Sharif don’t like it
Rockin’ the Casbah
Rockin’ the Casbah
The Sharif don’t like it
Rockin’ the Casbah
Rockin’ the Casbah
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJ9r8LMU9bQ&ob=av2e
Peter Patton
19 Feb 12 at 6:58 pm
Awesome, Pete.
One of my favourite all time songs.
Here’s another…
Rabz
19 Feb 12 at 7:05 pm
You couldn’t afford it on AIN wages, Jinmaro.
.
19 Feb 12 at 7:44 pm
Thanks Adrien but I did make the point about the lack of classical liberalism at large, not just in the ALP. That is partly an intellectual thing and partly spiritual, in a loose sense. It is a crisis of the intellectual culture, of the “house of intellect” as Barzun called it. Getting up to speed on classical liberalism and its leading thinkers is not sufficient but at some level, like among the university-educated, it is necessary.
Imagine the state of our industry and commerce if practically nobody was keeping up with advances in science and science-based technologies.
Rafe
19 Feb 12 at 7:52 pm
Rafe, just what Unis have you surveyed.
From a number of universities I have learnt from Popper and especially Friedman.
Friedman wasn’t a great supporter of Hayek’s ideas.
It appears here no-one has looked at Hayek and Sraffa’s debate and then Kaldor.
Incidentally by 1933 Hayek had rejected liquidationism and endorsed some some of public works expenditure in a depression!
Not surprising after what happenened above.
On your Marx
19 Feb 12 at 7:57 pm
The 21 universities in 1989. Not 100% response. The schools were philosophy, sociology and politics, did not do economics.
What were the universities where you learned from Popper (and what did you learn)?
Rafe
19 Feb 12 at 8:00 pm
For a start Macquarie and Sydney.
Both economic faculties allowed for Popper and his methods
I came out out University a friedmanite.
Alas I did a Masters and found out deregulation made a mess of monetarism.
Freidman and Keynes have a lot in common.
On your Marx
19 Feb 12 at 8:09 pm
Ask for your course fees back.
.
19 Feb 12 at 8:20 pm
“The biggest mistake in politics is to believe your own propaganda and under-estimate an opponent.”
Exactly what happened with the Japanese and Singapore, defenders all thought they were short and blind with teeth that stuck out and would be a walk over. Confused their point of attack despite observation of boats massing from Aussie soldiers who swam out at night (this was disregarded, naturally, bit like the priest from Bathurst Island who radioed in that the Japanese were enroute to Darwin) by driving trucks with lights on to another location at night and back with lights off, over and over. Of course the battle hardened troops were at the wrong location. It was a terrible chapter in our history.
Bit like the ALP today, really.
Helen Armstrong
19 Feb 12 at 8:24 pm
I did a Masters Macro course; nothing heterodox, let alone radical. But the lecturer presented a lot of different, sometimes contradictory, approaches to specific issues. For example, he (and the textbook) showed how economic theory can both support and reject the welfare of a minimum wage, and completely unregulated wage determination. The lecturer was no anarchist, or even a leftist, he was just very good at emphasizing that economic theory is not like Physics, and that theoretical insights are often very determined and constrained by peculiar historcal contexts.
Peter Patton
19 Feb 12 at 8:28 pm
Rafe, I did mineral economics at Macquarie during 1976 and can’t remember which text it was but I was not at all impressed with the lack of rigour, let alone the point of the course.
It was during that year that I had a casual look see in the Library and came across a small book “The Theory of Money and Credit” by someone I had never heard of – Mises. Took it out and read it over the weekend and the rest is history as they say. I have read Human action, and most of Mises’ deliberations, but until that foray into the library, I had no inkling that there might be another strand of economic thinking though I did sense there were some points of difference between Galbraith, who I was told was an economic giant, (in more ways than one) and Friedman who was also but not in all respects.
Louis Hissink
19 Feb 12 at 9:14 pm
A nice demonstration of the danger of letting students wander unsupervised in libraries!
Indeed, the danger of libraries.
Rafe
19 Feb 12 at 9:17 pm
I only ever found Free to Choose, Liberty and Capitalism, Capitalism the Unknown Ideal and An Introduction to Neo Austrian Economics.
Glad I did, but I had the internet and mises.org, etc.
.
19 Feb 12 at 9:20 pm
If anyone claimed anything about Australian History – it was you.
Alone.
My expertise was elsewhere.
MaryT
19 Feb 12 at 9:24 pm
dot, you should have read the Age Monthly Review.
Rafe
19 Feb 12 at 9:26 pm
This is the survey that Mother Hubbard’s Doggie wanted to see. It shows that voters with strong liberal views are incredibly thin on the ground (still Andrew Norton has opened up a base in Carlton).
Rafe
19 Feb 12 at 9:40 pm
WHere was your expertise, Mezza? In a box in the attic, behind the clock in the nursery? I bet it has run away and now spends all its time up against the wall with sailors.
Rococo Liberal
19 Feb 12 at 9:43 pm
Thanks Rafe. Norton seems to think the electorate may be too “relaxed and comfortable” to want to rock the boat.
Howard’s legacy is still with us.
Mother Hubbard's Dog
19 Feb 12 at 9:48 pm
Mary Troll, you and I posted simultaneously together at 4.47 and I have been away since (and I might add, this brings to mind that I usually have much nicer simultaneous experiences to think on than this
)
First though deary, a point of Quality Assurance – as you’ve nominated here that you’re so good at it. The correct grammar is ‘fewer’ rather than ‘less’ (as in your tedious visual post somewhere on how the Labor Party is so hopelessly right wing – you’ve been hopping all over the Cat like an irritated marsupial, so it may not be on this thread).
Now – your substantive point on which you demanded from me ‘an answer’: 90% of Australians want socialism, just as you do. Answer: you’re demented. See your doctor.
Do let me tell you what some surveys put up to 85% of Australians as wanting though. It is ‘no carbon tax’. Now that is a real policy, not some abstraction in your addled edu-bureaucratic head, a real policy which the people have roundly rejected. Go figure, Mary.
Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.
19 Feb 12 at 9:54 pm
Elizabeth
No one can follow you. The questions were:
You need to read sentances from start to finish. Not just the odd word or so. Then you will not make such a hash of your following posts.
MaryT
19 Feb 12 at 10:03 pm
Mary, Mary, you dope, you were the one demanding evidence that Australian high school students are brainwashed, and therefore ignorant of Australian history, just like the current PM and GG. You pitted your ‘expertise’ against my point. Some ‘expert’, you dreary airhead.
Peter Patton
19 Feb 12 at 10:14 pm
Excellent! Very funny piece of verbal imagery indeed.
And 90% of Australians want socialism? MaryT needs to lay off the heroin a bit. Switch to something milder, dear, like crack.
We are actually rather a chirpy bunch of pretty conservative, laid back, small scale Imperialists. Our protectorates are doing OK (just ask the Solomon Islanders).
Mk50 of Brisbane
19 Feb 12 at 10:16 pm
Patton
you are confused.
The question was:
“OK, so which part of school syllabus sets;
that
as a learning outcome or course objective?
What exam markers sheet has this as a model answer to which exam question?
Does anyone know where the brainwashing came from?
Where did all this stuff about Australian History come from?
Patton’s patent mixture, I reckon.
MaryT
19 Feb 12 at 10:26 pm
MK50
Who said 90% of Australians want socialism?
What was the full sentance?
MaryT
19 Feb 12 at 10:29 pm
Credibility, dear, credibility.
Elizabeth has it all over you. She’s a perspicacious commenter here. You are a troll.
Mk50 of Brisbane
19 Feb 12 at 10:34 pm
You’re the one who raises these 90% of whatever non-questions Mary Troll.
“learning outcomes” and “course objectives”? What the fuck? I know this nonsense inside out and backwards and I despise people like you who have ruined a perfectly good education system with such highly interpretable bullshit-speak. Don’t bring it here, because you won’t get away with it. It is meaningless garbage in the mouths of people like you. No doubt you insisted on putting ‘a critical understanding of’ in every objective you ever wrote: code for give it a Marxist spin.
Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.
19 Feb 12 at 10:40 pm
MaryT’s daft questions
My answers: none and none. However, there are policies that MaryT apparently imagines are supported by 90% of the people that are both a socialist vision and would send the country into a spiral descent into poverty.
Mother Hubbard's Dog
19 Feb 12 at 10:40 pm
ps. Mary the Quality person: sentence is spelt with an ‘e’ not an ‘a’.
Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.
19 Feb 12 at 10:41 pm
Elizabeth
yes it was hard for the slower enchelons of the education system to catch onto the new paradigm.
Those who were too comfortable in the old Wyndham schooling system and in the old CAE’s and teachers colleges often used to cry like you.
How come you are still crying.
MaryT
19 Feb 12 at 10:45 pm
M H Dog
That is my answer too.
Its elizabeth’s problem now.
But she cannot deal with two things at once.
MaryT
19 Feb 12 at 10:47 pm
Anybody who wants to understand why there has been such a stampede out of the government school system need only read the Olympian airhead, Mary T.
Peter Patton
19 Feb 12 at 10:47 pm
No need to remind us Peter.
JC
19 Feb 12 at 10:52 pm
Mary, I won’t tell you what my echelons were, in case it makes you weep.
I am a very private person.
Bag your brain.
Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.
19 Feb 12 at 10:54 pm
Yes marx, we all believe ya.
JC
19 Feb 12 at 10:55 pm
Rafe, there is one good reason that liberalism doesn’t really register with voters, that is that they have never been exposed to it.
Almost all political figures are on the authoritarian side of the Political Compass. This makes sense – why would you become a politician if you don’t think you should tell other people what to do?
Most teachers also fall into that part of the spectrum. Most parents probably do too, as far as their children are concerned.
Mother Hubbard's Dog
19 Feb 12 at 10:56 pm
Elizabeth
What are you rying to imply or hide?
It will probably make me laugh?
MaryT
19 Feb 12 at 10:56 pm
MaryT
What is an enchelon?
Mother Hubbard's Dog
19 Feb 12 at 10:57 pm
ps again, Mary the Quality person: Echelons is not spelt, or pronounced, as enchelons. Sorry to have to do this to you all the time, but you see, linguistic quality actually matters. Tell Julia too.
Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.
19 Feb 12 at 10:57 pm
MHD – snap!
Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.
19 Feb 12 at 10:58 pm
MaryT does have frequent recourse to the corporate-speak bullsh*t generator, doesn’t she?
We paid a high price to have our kids schooled in the Catholic system. Better education, much better teachers who were accountable for outcomes. Still too much crap in the subject lines of course. But you could do something about it.
Mk50 of Brisbane
19 Feb 12 at 10:58 pm
What you get in a Mexican restaurant menu after enchilada.
JC
19 Feb 12 at 10:59 pm
Not hiding a thing, Mary Troll. It is you who is into self-disclosure and appeals to a very marginal authority.
Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.
19 Feb 12 at 10:59 pm
I believe it’s the protrusion sticking out of his frilly knickers.
Infidel Tiger
19 Feb 12 at 11:00 pm
Patton
If public funding was means tested by institution weighted by students and education needs, the stampede would be the other way.
Howard stuffed it up, with so-called Geo-Coding.
I am not sure what the latest funding system is, but assuredly the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
MaryT
19 Feb 12 at 11:01 pm
off to the coalfields again tomorrow, so farewell. Have fun with the troll-squishing, ladies!
Mk50 of Brisbane
19 Feb 12 at 11:01 pm
You’re rying too hard, MaryT.
Gab
19 Feb 12 at 11:01 pm
I bet she wears shoulder pads and has big hair.
Peter Patton
19 Feb 12 at 11:03 pm
It’s tragic. We out to dinner this evening and there were people cooking on the street at every corner. I’ve never seem so many poor people in Australia. It reminded me a lot of the poorest parts of India. Kids were on the side of the ride missing limbs and begging.
JC
19 Feb 12 at 11:04 pm
OMG, Mary’s quality assurance is based on logic and quantitative reasoning mastered from AEU press releases.
Peter Patton
19 Feb 12 at 11:05 pm
Bollocks. Go as I do to Roma, or Moranbah, Gladstone, Alpha, Mt Isa, Dampier, Onslow, etc and see hard-working, skilled people earning $120,000-$350,000 for their skilled labour!
They do it in spite of your precious public education system, which fits them for little more than welfare dependency.
And now I really must go.
Mk50 of Brisbane
19 Feb 12 at 11:06 pm
My dear Mary, you were the one who introduced weeping into the discourse. I’m glad to hear that you may wish to have a laugh instead; laughter is therapeutic and you certainly need some therapy.
I think actually you are seeking God. Many socialists are lost souls clinging to a patently false and substitute religion. You keep referring to your need for ‘an answer’. I have absolutely no idea what your question is, and so cannot help you at all. Perhaps the Good Lord can.
Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.
19 Feb 12 at 11:10 pm
“I’ve never seem so many poor people in Australia”
It is so tough that people on welfare have much higher living standards than those middle earners in say the Great Depression.
kelly liddle
19 Feb 12 at 11:18 pm
I wonder if Patton can actually answer the question?
“…which part of school syllabus sets;
that
as a learning outcome or course objective?
He has tried all the usual rightwing diversions.
what’s next?
MaryT
20 Feb 12 at 8:44 am
I was taught Hayek as an undergrad and have been involved in subjects that have taught Hayek at three different unis over the last ten years. My current subject there is no Hayek, but the kids will be reading Friedman next to Clark’s work on Marx.
cheers
Dave
Dave
20 Feb 12 at 10:05 am
As I have tirelessly and unselfishly pointed out to you above, Mary T, any course requiring ‘a critical understanding of ..” as an ‘objective’ of whatever it is the course should achieve, is clearly what Peter P is referring to. Most social science (and even other areas) university course outlines written during the 1990′s and into the naughties have (hey, let’s have some Kevin Speak) a Marxist ‘programmatic specificity’ (the latter years demonstrating an even more abstruse Marxist intent).
Objectives set like loose canons in this manner, objectives no doubt given your Committee seal of Quality Approval, allow old Marxist warriors from the 1970′s to relive in class and lecture hall their demo glory days circa Monash Uni, 1970, and to then pretend that they are actually teaching students something analytically useful.
You really are a sad case, you know, Mary Troll, defending the indefensible.
Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.
20 Feb 12 at 2:08 pm
The Gonski Report on School Funding has just been released. As usual, on matters quantitative and related to education, the Fairfax commentary has been written by people with an IQ of 80. Maybe a separate thread is in order?
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/surplus-before-schools-as-gonski-report-decries-student-disadvantage-20120220-1tin1.html#ixzz1mtCOlzfR
Peter Patton
20 Feb 12 at 2:33 pm
Excellent. If the Oz take is to believed – and The Oz is not much better when it comes to numbers and education (IQ more likely to be 105) – Gonsk recommends the neoliberal Swedish model for vouchers!
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/review-of-private-school-funding-urges-government-subsidies/story-fn59niix-1226275831793
Peter Patton
20 Feb 12 at 2:35 pm
Mary, for the love of god, I linked two recent School Certificate History, Geography, and Civics exams.
Peter Patton
20 Feb 12 at 2:37 pm
Peter:
How are they defining “failing” schools exactly?
A school filled with not so smart kids could actually be defined as failing when in fact the opposite could be the case, it could be succeeding which of course is totally dependent on teacher quality and the quality of the kids.
Tipping more money into schools populated by below average kids is wasting money and doing a disservice to them.
JC
20 Feb 12 at 2:44 pm
Peter Patton;
If that is all you’ve got, then clearly:
“military history” does NOT mean demonstrating against Vietnam conscription at Monash Uni circa 1970″
QED
Whether the syllabus suits catallaxy dogma is a different matter. Most would not know how to answer Q17 of the 2010 paper.
MaryT
20 Feb 12 at 3:15 pm
For a good number of them the real answer is of course B
JC
20 Feb 12 at 3:23 pm
JC
Thanks, I knew someone would jump right in.
MaryT
20 Feb 12 at 3:42 pm
…and what – tell the truth?
.
20 Feb 12 at 3:49 pm
No doubt the Fairfax spastics have misrepresented the Report, but one LIE that needs to be cleared up immediately is that under current funding arrangements, account is not taken of a government school’s make-up. We are constantly hearing LP-type luvvies moaning that “government schools enrol more Aborigines, students with disabilities” and so on.
And so, the Fairfax luvvie says
But even government schools are ALREADY funded at different rates. EXISTING government programs already give an individual school a top up for ever Aborigine, Maori, or student with a disability. Numerous programs give even more for each student with low NAPLAN scores, and other indicators of social disadvantage/dissolution.
The funding per student at government schools in Mt.Druitt and Broadmeadow are nearly DOUBLE the funding of government schools in a normal area like Burwood in Sydney. And for Aboriginal schools, the funding is TRIPLE.
There is no need for the Gonski Report, as all this data is already available on the bloody MySchool site. Why does our national IQ halve whenever education policy – particular funding – is debated? You do not skills beyond Year 9 to understand it. If we removed the moronising influence of the AEU from the debate, the whole issue would be so much clearer.
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/surplus-before-schools-as-gonski-report-decries-student-disadvantage-20120220-1tin1.html#ixzz1muRGApaq
Peter Patton
20 Feb 12 at 7:47 pm
Nope – demonstate they are unemployable in the schooling system.
MaryT
20 Feb 12 at 8:05 pm
Bad smell still drifting around here, 20.05, guys.
Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.
20 Feb 12 at 9:19 pm
Lizzie
Just ignore her/him. There’s no point in engaging with the troll.
JC
20 Feb 12 at 9:22 pm
Lizzie – I am convinced beyond any doubt that the troll was formerly known as ‘bartleby’.
Its sniffy dismissal of Pickering last evening was the giveaway.
Rabz
20 Feb 12 at 9:24 pm
Dot - if you are right the ALP are far sicker than the Libs. The ALP don’t even realise how far they have wandered off the reservation.
If the Libs are sick too then neither have they obviously. I suspect that the disease is ubiquitously infectious.
Adrien
21 Feb 12 at 8:37 pm