In response to a post I put up yesterday, one reader asked about my reading the SMH:
Why do it to yourself?
The answer is very simple and it has 2 parts. The first part is, it is boring to only read stuff with which I agree. But secondly, as a student of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, I am always minded to his advice that:
If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.
This is not a suggestion that Ross Gittins or the SMH are my enemy. It’s their ideas that are the enemy. To wit, recently writing in the SMH, Gittins offered this:
one of my guiding principles is that governments should manage the economy for the many, not the few.
and herein is the dialectical problem.
Apart from the obvious that the government does not manage the economy - it manages the government which by virtue of its insane size and power, distorts and influences the economy - I have a fundamental problem with the idea of government working for some but not others.
In my distant universe, government creates and protects the conditions of a well functioning economy. The defence of life, liberty, and property. Not equality and fairness. In trying to make some richer by making some poorer, the government makes everyone poorer.
But in a further demonstration of his ignorance and idiocy, Gittins offers this:
Neoliberalism is the doctrine that what’s good for BHP is good for Australia.
Really. Is it? Um no.
Neoliberalism is about free markets and free people. Something anathematic to both BHP and Gittins apparently.
This nonsense was a precursor to Gittins talking about the productivity benefits of kids being able to read. On this I completely agree with him.
Yet it seems that Gittins, having fallen from the top of the idiot tree, and having hit every branch on the way down, he is unable to see the problem.
Education in Australia is a government monopoly. From testing, to accreditation, to curriculum.
Yes. There are private schools in Australia but what they teach is controlled by government, who they employ is controlled by government, and the teachers they hire are produced by government (in government controlled and accredited universities).
The garbage education outcomes are not a consequence of neoliberalism but of GOVERNMENT.
If Gitto wants better education outcomes, perhaps he advocate for more neoliberalism and less statism.
Buffoon!
Nailed it, Sparty!