More loops.

Free markets are efficient.

Free markets outperform all other means of commerce.
Free markets are self correcting. When demand exceeds supply, prices rise and more enter the market. When prices fall and an enterprise is not longer profitable, it fails. History and geography are littered with the skeletons of failed enterprises but at least for a time, we succeed best by doing what we do best.


Free markets are natural.
Yes, Nature is a free market, and that is where it becomes really scary because, like our towns and farms that are littered with the skeletons of failed enterprises, the history and geography of Nature is littered with the skeletons of failed species and we are not immune.

In the free market of Nature, species evolve to fill a slot in the ecosystem. If you fit the slot well, your species thrives. If not, it dies back so populations and resources are in equilibrium.

But we have changed the rules. We no longer evolve to fit our slot. We have found ways to change our slots to fit us, so our numbers have exploded. Can we avoid ‘market correction’? Of course not but we are in denial as has always been our nature. Diligent investigation identifies the problem and accurate identification suggests solutions. So why are we not choosing solutions?

Hope trumps action. Hope makes us feel better so we ignore the hard choices. We have faith that problems will solve themselves eventually one way or another and they do, sometimes killing us in the process.

So, are we on our way to extinction?
All species are but few have gone through the cycle of evolution from emergence to extinction quite so fast. If history is any guide we are on track to be the shortest lived species ever. But there is hope.

We are the first species to predict its own demise and the first to have the technology to prevent it, so there is a choice. Do we choose sustainability and suffer the cost, or do we procrastinate and find ourselves fighting to the death over the scraps?
Both choices are being made now. Some are fighting, some are cooperating. So how do we choose cooperation? How do we stop those are who will choose war in our name?

War has always been the default position and it did serve its purpose in Nature, but all-out war is now too destructive; too final. We can no longer let it happen. So are we thinking? Are we being brave enough to speak up when our friends are spouting political slogans, unaware of the implications? Are we asking the hard question? Are we demanding a future? Are we thinking big-picture, speaking out, voting, evolving?

On a good day, I believe reason will prevail but on a bad day I despair.
Make my day!

Rudd destroys his party, but why?

Australians are intrigued by the sudden resignation of their Foreign Minister. He won a clear victory in the 2007 election to become Prime Minister but was unable get his promised reforms passed.

He wanted so much to be the Green Messiah and take the image of a clean green Australia to Copenhagen. He signed Kyoto but his negotiations with Conservative Leader Turnbull we so soft on polluters that his fatally watered down bill was not supported by the Greens. On the other side of politics, Turnbull, by recognising the need for action on climate change was seen as a turncoat by his natural constituency, Big Business and was replaced by Abbott, the archetype Right Wing denier (and femophobe) who has since taken hate mongering to new lows.

When Rudd returned from Copenhagen to bad polls, he had a temper tantrum and turned his back on Climate Change reform, shocking his supporters and driving the polls even lower.
His cabinet colleagues were unhappy with his autocratic style and blamed his failure to secure climate change legislation, a mining rental tax and health care reform on his inability to negotiate, so he was replaced as Prime Minister by his deputy Julia Gillard who was known to be a team player.

Gillard has since suffered unprecedented vilification by Abbott who is desperate to depict her as incompetent by blocking any legislation that might solve those nagging problems like refugees arriving by boat, he falsely claims is a breach of border security and a major illegal immigrant problem. In fact they are all intercepted so there is no security breach and they are relatively few compared to those who arrive by plane, papers in order and money in the bank, clearly not desperate refugees.

I have been concerned about the effects of climate change for at least thirty years. As soon as I became aware that CO2 concentration was rising towards double its historic level, I said; “We can’t have a change of this magnitude and not have knock-on effects.” I was right, but back then I expected that wisdom to be so self-evident the whole world would take action immediately as happened when CFC’s were shown to be destroying the ozone layer.

But back to Rudd. I have no doubt he is trying to force his party to re-elect him as Prime Minister because he thinks he can turn around the party’s popularity as he did in 2007, but he is deluded.
Image trumped ability then but he was a failure as Prime Minister. On the day before his resignation, I said to IXL.’ What Rudd needs to do is say he totally supports Gillard, agrees she is the best person for the job and he will not be challenging her.’ That would have swung his supporters behind her and the next election would have been winnable, and more to the point, Labor’s reform agenda would have been secured.

Thanks to Gillard and her ability to work with her own cabinet and maintain the support of Independents and Greens, that agenda has essentially been achieved although on the way she handed Abbott the whip he has wielded ever since, insisting she is a liar. We can nit-pick and harp on her election promise not introduce a carbon tax and maybe we should quote John Howard who introduced the concept of the ‘non-core’ promise, but she was committed to a carbon trading scheme so the temporary imposition of the tax, although it has a bureaucratic (and political) cost, will start the move we must make to a nil-carbon economy. However, if an election is called before the positive results of those reforms can be demonstrated, they will be scrapped by Abbott and we will again join the US as the only two developed nations where climate change scientists are dismissed as alarmist and Big Businesses dictates public policy on climate change.

My prediction:
Rudd will lose and in a third pivotal hissy fit, will resign his seat. There will be a by-election that Labor will lose. Abbott will try his damndest to woo Peter Slipper back from the Speaker’s chair and force Labor’s Craig Thompson, the man suspected of having a grotty past, to resign. Either way, Gillard is unlikely to survive until the next election and will lose government to a leader who has no policies except that he promises to undo all Labor’s reforms. He is selling the concept that government by a party that has a set ideology that economic growth is sacred no matter what the long term cost and believes the Market will fix everything is preferable to one that governs by negotiation and consensus.

Abbott will quickly move to a double dissolution to break the Greens’ control of the Senate and Bob Menzies' Lucky Country will again feel secure that Daddy is in charge and we can go on living the good life, ignoring the fact we are the World’s Worst Per-capita Polluters, letting everyone else do the hard yards while we bask in temporary wealth of our China-driven mining boom.

magpie soup

His career in the can… let me rephrase that.

Andy Warhol, young upstart
Made us wonder 'What is art?"
Repeated Monroes,
Soup cans in rows,
Scotch paper, paint, a shopping cart!

Dandy Andy minestrone at Magpie Tales.

Homing Magpie-pigeon

Calling Home

I love my bike, I must confess
But reading maps, well, somewhat less.
Lost, alone,
Aha! A phone!
“Please Mummy, bring my GPS!”

.....................

Take your GPS and find Magpie Tales for real poems and stories!

In the Loop.

I am worried about Jim.

Jim is in an outer loop of the economy, a very precarious place to be. But first let me explain the ‘loops’.

Primary Producers are at the centre where all loops begin. They grow and raise food so they are not working in an expendable industry. My maternal grandfather was a farmer who used horses for everything from hauling logs to powering the sulky that took him and Grandma to town. But that all changed when he bought a tractor. Tractors do not eat grass and do not self propagate, so his purchase started a second line of loops that include tractor manufacturers, whose demand for materials created the next level of loops of miners, oil drillers, refiners, service mechanics, you get the picture.

More tractor manufacturers joined in so dealerships sprang up and new loops were formed that managed sales for manufacturing, a services not directly producing food or an object we can see and feel. But soon the dealer no longer had time to sweep out his showroom so he hired a cleaner and yet another loop was created.


Then the cleaner became so busy he hired Jim’s Pooch Grooming Service and now, every Thursday morning, Deefer gets a wash and a brush, her claws trimmed and anal glands expressed and yet another class of loops was added. We need these loops to create employment as productivity increases and industry continues to automate but we now have more people in outer loops than inner loops and it is these outer loops that are first to go when money gets tight.

Outer Loop jobs depend on our discretionary dollar. They include restaurant staff, tour operators and Jim’s Mowing, the specialist BBQ cleaner and I must not leave out the busty blonde who bursts into the blue-collar work place in her van offering espresso coffee and hot pies to blokes who gather around to admire her legs and torso while spending twenty times the cost of a cut lunch and thermos of coffee.

When the Great Depression peaked in the late 30’s, over half the population here worked on the land so when sons and daughters lost their town jobs they came home where there was a cow to milk, some chooks for eggs, a few fruit trees and a veggie patch so they did not starve and were hale and healthy when the economy recovered..

Now, Agriculture here in Oz employs less than one in forty so where do our sons and daughters go if unemployment hits 30% or worse?
We are facing fundamental and worldwide shifts in energy, environment, population and wealth distribution. We need a survival plan and leaders to explain it and guide us through it.

It seems they are here, but their voices are being drowned out by populists of the Right, who insist the Market will sort out all those loops we created while we were running up our credit cards and the Left which seems more interested in same sex marriage. Both are aided and abetted by media continuing to direct our attention to which celeb is cheating on whom, obscuring the fact we are in crisis and desperately in need of a global plan and a social contract to deliver it.

That mix of undermined respect for leaders, voyeurism, platitudes, scandal and lies leaves us confused. Confusion leads to anger and so we get Greece. There, rioting is threatening the fabric of their society and it is spreading. So what are our politicians doing as they jostle for power? They are talking war. Should we be surprised? Of course not.

That will get our attention away from their appalling economic management and the diminishing habitat of the brown breasted miniature whistling duck! To fight each other is in our genes so war it will be and our last chance to address the issues of environment, energy and population will be abandoned. Are we really that stupid?

......................

Note: No disrespect is intended towards the many good people who work in service industries, including Jim's franchises. 
I am really concerned for their futures, as I am for Humanity as a whole.

Magpie Colours

Images

Still bodies,
black or white,
Entwined or dumped.
asleep or dead.
Beautiful collage
or reminder of Auschwitz.


Sorry folks, no chuckles here today. But try your luck at Magpie Tales where Tess's friends give and give.

Big Jack

He’s narrow at the shoulder
And he’s wider at the hip.
He wears his momma’s underwear,
Her shoes and dress and slip.

But say his name throughout the West
And desperados quake
‘Cos he’s a mile more dangerous
Than any rattle snake.

He wears his four-gun tied up high,
Wears specs to aid his sight
And in his belt a diction'ry,
To get his cuss words right.

But should some rustlers comes to town
To challenges him to fight,
He lifts his skirts and shows his wares,
And outlaws run in fright.

Cos underneath that female garb
I’ve seen it and it’s true,
A Gatling gun, two hand grenades
And tattoos writ in blue:

“You wanna play? Then I‘m your man,”
It says, and they all cower.
“Undo your belt and drop your pants
Let’s see your fi-re power!”

But not a man has ever stayed
To draw, or call his bluff
And most went straight right afterwards
They knew they'd had enough!

..............................................

With a respectful nod to the wonderful
Auntie Jack show.
Image borrowed from Wikipedia.
PS. This is the sort of nonsense that comes to mind when one is sleep deprived.

RIP Magpie

Here lies the body of Jessica Kelly,
Who stuffed so much cake and tart in her belly,
That she could not eat
Her veggies and meat
And choked on a huge slice of strawberry jelly!

More offerings can be seen at Magpie Tales.

Bluebell 55 word challenge.

The Car God.

As it approached we ran to see what was pushing it, but saw nothing.
It had a voice, a rumbling; a language of no words as it carried the holy man, keeper of its demons.
In wonder and fear, we dedicated our lives to its mysteries.
But we should have burnt it.

Written for Bluebell Books.

Magpie with hubris or spot the red face..

“A child could do better,” I said.
“So why does this shyster have cred?”
‘Because his vermilions
are selling for millions,’
"I see," I said. "Is my face red?”

A Philistine in the presence of the cognoscenti has a duty to reveal his ignorance.
Poems and stories by the latter can be found at Magpie Tales.