You're wrong. I do think I'm lucky. In fact, I know I am. Most people in the world were born in worse conditions than I was. I was one of the small lucky percentage born in a first world country at the time (in my case UK). I had no privileges, it was a working class family, but even so, percentage wise, when you take the whole Earth population into account I was lucky and still am. But why should that mean we should accept the status quo? It's easy to look at other countries and say, yes, they have it worse off, we are lucky and should appreciate it, and to a degree, that is true. But if you look back in history, you could say that of the time for example when women didn't have equal rights. "Hey, they were better off than the women in most countries maybe they should just shut up and accept things. Could be a lot of worse for them." This is just one example of many. If you are suggesting that I think Australia should go to an anarchic system asap, you are mistaken. I know most people here aren't ready for it. I don't know what the path to it is, but I feel we should be introducing the ideas to people as much as we can and those that like them can take them onboard and those who don't, don't have to. Maybe the best way would be to do an experiment, say have one or more areas in the world that could try this system and see how it goes, and only those who wanted to, would have to do it. The problem is that govts have essentially locked up every square metre of the planet and jealously guard their monopolistic privileges.
With increased freedom comes increased personal responsibility. Most people can't hack it and run to the security blanket of someone promising to provide for their every need and then act shocked that nobody can fix everything or fulfill such a wish. There's no real need to respond to your "issues" as they are nonsense as soon as you scratch the surface but you don't seem to be interested in having a system that works better based on fundamental human rights but a patch work system that is made up as you go along based on whatever the power brokers dream up for better or for worse. "If it ain't broke don't fix it" hey? Well my mobile phone in the 90's worked pretty darn well. Why the heck did Steve Jobs and Co waste so much time developing the iPhone's etc? What a waste. They should have been happy to squat in their thatched roof hovel hoeing weeds out of their plot of land that their King had kindly granted them the opportunity to work under fear of torture or death if they should even dare to learn to question why the King was the one allowed to live in the castle and have the privilege of crapping out of a window and hanging up their clothes in the toilet so that the urine smell kept down the fleas.
for every dollar generated by government, 25c goes to public sevice, 40c goes to welfare. That leaves 35c for all other essential services, and we wonder why the debt has gone for ZERO to SEVEN BILLION in 6 years. Good luck changing the vote buying strategys of either of these partys
WTF are you talking about "an experiment"? You're describing the world as it exists today. There is nothing stopping you from hopping on a plane an visiting some of the "freer" countries where there is no functional government and everyone just gets by on their own. If you need ideas about which parts of "the experiment" to research, look up the Travel Advice section of the Department of Foreign Affairs website and skip to all the country's marked "Do not travel to"/"Exercise extreme caution".
You really have no idea except for the line "most people cant hack it " Thats where the system we have rules its for" most people" you only have dreams of a utopia that doesnt exist .
Exactly. See Post #31 Since the large (but useful) divergence from the opening topic, the main discussion has been around the fact that Libertarians are fundamentally about increasing individual freedoms. Individual freedoms and effective enforcement of the consequent private property rights are relatively very strong under most Liberal Democratic economies and they are the ones that have been proven time and time again to create the environment for successful, sustained economic and social development. The size of Government within those economies is a secondary issue to the presence of the freedoms and private property rights. "The host survives and thrives despite the parasite" is a pretty good analogy.
Oh please... Give me examples. People one hundred years from now will treat your words the same way people we treat people who thought the system was just fine 100 years ago. You have no concept of human history beyond whatever your age is. You think this Oz system is so clean huh? let me tell you something? When everything's going great, a blind eye is turned to all kinds of corruption. Why? Because people are making money. Guess what happens the moment things start going sour. That's when all the stories start coming out. That's when we'll find out just how much on the straight and narrow Aussie, aussie, aussie is. I'll bet a few silver coins it won't be very much. Actually I've found the whingeing Aussie syndrome to be just as common.
Exactly. The utopia doesn't exist (and true utopia is a fiction while humans remain in their present state of evolution). The system we have is primarily the result of an historical random walk infused here and there with ideology. But that ideology has led to the significant success we see around us (i.e. not being the richest, most powerful person in the kingdom yet resorting to wearing flea-ridden clothes that smell of wee and poo and crapping out of windows). The next round of ideological infusion will hopefully see the resurgence of the dynamism of England in the 1700s and accelerated by the US in the 1800's to circa 1970.
No system will ever be squeaky clean ....NEVER . get used to it . I didnt say it was ........its not as bad as some & that is as good as it gets :lol:
You are joking, right? Okay, from this list... ...Somalia ranks better than Australia in terms of "freedom". Seriously people, go out and see some of the world. You're in the very privileged position of being able to come back again if you idea of "freedom" doesn't turn out to be as great as you thought it would be.
^ I thought we dealt with the Go to Somalia meme here Besides which, you are cherry picking a word not the broader concept.
Somalia is perfectly in keeping with the broader concept. It is the closest to a libertarian system of living - as described by libertarians - as can be found anywhere and has an immeasurable amount of freedom by virtue of the very limited government. It also happens to be a complete shithole. The world is full of shitholes that would rank highly on the libertarian check-list of desirable attributes but the extreme poverty, violence and lack of access to internet forums seem to turn people off from moving there.
Its has to be the media. In fact, the whole information triad industries of media, education and entertainment all have swing in strongly behind support for liberty. At the moment, all three are dominated by hard-core, ultra-leftist marxist-feminists. For me to look at the way the Courier mail has carried on about the Campbell Newman's reforms in Queensland to reduce the size of government really sickens me. Anyone who doesn't read the Courier mail wouldn't know what I'm talking about, but they have 100% opposed Campbell Newman's bureaucracy reduction initiatives vehemently, all the way, and it has affected the public's perception. I mean, Campbell Newman had a big mandate for change. Labor was reduced from a comfortable majority to a bare 7 seats in a parliament of 89 seats. The LNP won 90% of the seats. Yet as soon as they implement reforms, the incessant bleating of the media, aided and abetted by the education and entertainment sectors grew deafening. Now Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey are making it clear they intend to reduce the size of government federally as well: http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2012/04/the-end-of-the-age-of-entitlement/ And just you see. Go to theconversation.edu.au and see the constant bleating the leftist academics produce against Abbott and Hockey and in favour of Gillard and Swan. Go to thepunch.com.au or www.abc.net.au/news/thedrum/ and see the incessant whining the leftist journalists make about Abbott and Hockey and argue in favour of Gillard and Swan. Look at how many celebrities come out on Twitter in support of Gillard and Swan. Its an irresistible cultural force that impresses Statism upon on us, and the only way we can fight back I'm afraid is to engage them vigourously and passionately. We must find champions of liberty and small government in the media, the universities, and the entertainment industry and powerfully support them. And we must elect a Liberal government in 2013. Campbell Newman in Qld shows us that the Libs are serious about reducing the size of Government. I trust the Libs because Peter Costello paid back all the Sovereign Debt we owed, which is why we have survived the GFC so well up until now. We must be rid of the Socialists and Statists who currently run the country: they are the most socialist and Statist government in living memory. And they've swung things so far to the left that, without a drastic swing back the right by Abbott, far beyond the centre, but to the drastic right, a new norm of left-wing thinking will be entrenched in our culture. http://www.ipa.org.au/publications/2080/be-like-gough-75-radical-ideas-to-transform-australia
When you talk about places like this, you're talking about societies that never evolved beyond being primitive tribal societies, and then you try to compare them to our developed western societies. You're going to think I'm racist, but people decended from European backgrounds are just straight up more capable of civilisation. Being Civilised and being Statist aren't the same thing. You cannot use Somalia as a valid comparison to the kind of society we Libertarians want to create because they are a different people to us. Your left wing brain will explode because I've brought race into the discussion, I know, but the British Empire was such a force for good in the world, and, in some parts of the world, should never have been allowed to have independence from British influence, because they are primitive, tribal and destructive people. Look at what happened to the wonderful country of Rhodesia. That place was truly a paradise on Earth. Now look at it! Zimbabwe is a synonym for hyper-inflation. We westerners are far more civilised inherently, by virtue of our long and distinquished culture and heritage, our advanced educations, our technology, a million things distinguish us. Simply put, we are better than they are, and so its so disingenuous of you to point to their society and infer that it is in anyway analogous to ours (or the society we want to create).
And no true Scotsman would want to move there either I fear. (Don't worry, I'm not offended. That was the best laugh I've had all day).
