I just noticed in Coles that I can buy a Coles branded foil pouch of cooked brown rice (150g worth) that you re-heat in the microwave, for $1.50. It was made in India from Spanish rice, and ended up in Brisbane.
That pathway to get here seems kinda wasteful, if you ask me. And don't get me on the topic of fish processing in Thailand...
This wastefulness largely comes from our bankers no longer lending for wealth-creation purposes which create jobs. If this continues we'll grow peanuts here and get them salted and roasted somewhere else and then reimport them for welfare-assisted people to buy. One of the problems with the neoclassical economists in this country, never seeing banker welfare that they didn't love, is that they were blinded to market failure of this sort. So they think all this clear failure is just the free market at work. When its no free market and its not supplying enough work.
ReplyDeleteThey say they are for a free market but when you talk about some functioning free market model for banking they are heading for the door.
Also when an Aussie economist gets economies of scale in their head they cannot get it out of their head. Even when the cartelised finance system has been throwing the ecology of business out of whack for many decades now. If you want a well-balanced economy every large factory has to be supported by networks of smaller guys, tooled up to the teats, and full of highly skilled workers. Thats what we have lost and thats why we cannot seem to get projects done quickly and under budget any more. We are headed downward and every person has to be fearful about their job at all times now. Whereas the 50's and 60's had a well-balanced economy. And if you weren't happy with your boss its a short walk to find another job close to home.
ReplyDelete"That pathway to get here seems kinda wasteful, if you ask me. And don't get me on the topic of fish processing in Thailand."
ReplyDeleteThere you go. Here we have something we both agree on, that some of your free enterprise critics will disagree with both of us on. A breakthrough. Where me and Steve agree on something its worth alerting the media.
In a healthy economy we might see one or two rare anomalies like this. But they should be rare and they should be fleeting. A healthy small business environment would wipe most of this sort of thing out. Its a sign of two things. Our transport infrastructure, outside of local to foreign port infrastructure, is grossly inefficient. It means our only really good cargo transport is domestic to foreign port. But it also means that small business finds it hard to accumulate producer goods to scoop up any unemployed and scoop up any obvious market opportunity.
Wow. Finally an anti-banking welfarism post from Catallaxy. Thats been about 15 years in the making.
ReplyDeletehttp://catallaxyfiles.com/2020/01/19/screwed/
Does this mean they are coming good? I wasn't blue in the face angry with everyone last time I managed to infiltrate, if thats any barometer. I'm just stunned that they are coming around. Especially as this spartacus fellow might be a pseudonym for Sinclair himself. Plus Sinclair wasn't gratuitously nasty last time. Things may be getting better.