I remember well, Nic. When you called up about a fault you spoke to a real person who actually tried to help. They came out and fixed your phone for free. They had employees who did the work and not contractors who could mark your fault as fixed merely because they’d called out and been unable to find your address. They tried to provide the same level of service in Birdsville and Brisbane. They paid their billions in profits into consolidated public revenue here in Australia, not in Singapore.

All the improvements in telecommunications worth having since the 1980s are down to technology, not private competition.

On the more general point of efficiency - which is more efficient, the US private competitive health insurance system, or the public monopoly Medicare? Hint: over a quarter of Americans aren’t covered at all, yet it costs about twice as much per head.

The reality is that some services some of the time can be delivered very efficiently by the private sector, but that the public sector can also deliver some services very efficiently. One major benefit we get from the public sector as citizens, however, is that we actually get a say in how public sector services are delivered.

Thank you for your back-handed concern nic…i’m quite fine in fact, unlike your poor self who seems to be getting themselves in a muddle by the moment. No longer responding to the thread for one. Still, that’s your CHOICE.

As for Julie…her feeble attempts to denigrate Swann & distract today by feeding into a BS campaign in tandem w/ some in the corporate media was somethin’ pathetic to behold. Like the majority of cars today, she is running on problematic fuel & creating unnecessary pollution when there could be CLEANER air.

lol adrian. I’m off before the kindly but forceful moderators arrive….;)

They tinfoil him here, they tinfoil him there…

N’

That’s a question I often ask myself.

What worries me is that people seems to think that reality is base on your perception…

nic, you’d be better off reading the parliamentary statements delivered by Julie Bishop, Shadow Minister for tabloid humour & distraction it seems, far more simplistic & obvious…right up yer alley going by your comments.

Thou dost protest too much. You & Julie B. might want to think that one thru…particularly going by today’s amateur dramatics.

As for your concern about using money as you see fit…isn’t it handy you’re going to get a tax cut? And the lack of interest rate rises the past few mths. would’ve kept a few more bucks in your pocket rather than filling the coffers of overseas investors…as they did under Howie & co. RIGHT?

And before you say it i am assuming that adrian is talking about the “bigger” picture of what the world can sustain. His opinion is just as valid on this as mine however as though i know oil will run out “one day” no one can say that that day is today and there is every likelihood that an alternantive will arise as humans are pretty adaptive if history is any guide.

“necessity is the mother of invention”. Though this is all still just another opinion!

Adrian, competition is always good. You probably don’t remember what life was like under Telecom in the 80s, but modern Telstra is a shining paragon of customer service in comparison.

Of course i know that working hard doesnt “automatically” make you more money, it will however almost always guarantee that you make you more then not working hard. Not that money is all that important to me…just trying to make a point.

As to the rest of your post, thats fine if it pisses you off…just dont expect others to change the way they live to please you

To make it easier for you to understand it pisses me off that people think that they are automatically entitled to an ever increasing share of the earth’s diminishing resources because they just happen to be born in Australia in the latter half of the twentieth century. And that they don’t have to really actually do anything but whinge when the reality starts to bite.

But hey, I don’t expect you to understand.

I hedged my pessimism with many conditional statements.

I pay you the credit of assuming that you may do the same with your optimistic statements.

I merely invoke the cautionary principle to add weight to my pessimism.

I think we’re all going to be amazed at the power of high energy prices to improve energy efficiency.

So people feeling entitled to keep more of the money they worked for is pissing you off?

Jeez, then I wonder why we don’t generally ditch market mechanisms and embrace socialism. Doesn’t post-War economic history actually suggest the opposite to your point?

I don’t doubt that you may wonder about this Paulus.

That mindset is not inconsistent with one who thinks that reductio ad absurdum is a telling rhetorical strategy.

I am no socialist, however, I fear that the coming energy crisis is of a similar magnitude to a major war. Waging a major war on the basis of market forces would be foolish — indeed absurd.

The 1973 case is quite different. That fuel shortage was politically created. OPEC demonstrated its political muscle. This time round is different. There is no political fix that will give the world another 35 years of cheap hydrocarbons.

In a major war involuntary sacrifice may be necessary. Similarly, I fear that the coming energy crisis may also require involuntary sacrifice. I hope I’m wrong, but the cautionary principle would appear to apply here.

The involuntary sacrifice of paying taxes to encourage certain modes of behaviour and to discourage others will, I fear, appear to be quite moderate in the shadow of feared coming developments.

BTW, I think you’re full of it on the public service comments nic…I’ve seen plenty of people vote against their own interests but I also recall the somersaults & backflips Howie & co. did when the public thought they’d lose MEDICARE.

King John was a real acrobat sometimes…one gooey acrobat hangin’ all over those polls…but hey, YOU do what you want to do w/ your money. Build a statue to the glory of monopolisation for all I care…I can always take a leak on it on my way back from the publicly-funded clinic, just to show my level of appreciation.

You know THE CLINIC don’t ya nic?…the COMMUNITY ONE built to last & serve the needs of the people, including disadvantaged children…instead of building & serving in another temporary RESOURCE WAR.

Still, you keep your glittering coins to yerself. We know who you SERVE. You don’t run a SELF-service station do ya?

That MONUMENT to MONOPOLISATION of yours might attract a flock of seagulls over time. Plenty of those around thanx to Costello & his cheque book gratis of the taxpayer. Noisy seagulls w/ bonuses shoved under their wings. They don’t stay long tho. Eventually the pigeons takeover & give the statue the coating it deserves.

I’m w/ you on “the sense of entitlement” thing adrian. Amazing how many greedily fed at the trough knowing they were causing a shortage but now the Sugar Daddy has been exiled it’s all “poor me, feed me…bloody Rudd…SNORT”.

Not like the Aussies I used to know. I might go to that clinic once or twice just to get a sense of where my health is…but I avoided health-care cards cause I knew others needed them more…& kept the trip to the Doctor to a minimum…considerin’ my chronic health problems. But now those who FED & FED & FED & blew their own organ walls down are harpin’ on because the well might get drier.

And the petrol to feed the car that is parked 10-20 minutes down the road from the doc’s office & supermarket is gettin’ too expensive to keep up the gorging, bingeing, smoking & gambling.

Like I said, people “get on yer bike!” Or use those legs the way they were meant to be used. As for those who are sadly unable to do so…hopefully the government will see fit to further assist you in your mobility needs.

Tired of the OINK & SNORT & WINGE.

Adapt. That’s how we survived. And w/ a little help from our friends…& government…when REAL NEED arises.

Paulus, if you meant that, all other things being equal, nations with lower taxes on petrol consumption could demand effectively a higher proportion of petrol available on the open market, why didn’t you say it?

What you have just stated is, essentially, an assumption of Robert’s argument that nations would have to cut fuel taxes if they see other nations doing it.

I was stating this, in my own clumsy phrasing, in order to disagree with it. I don’t think this is what would actually happen, not least because there is already a very wide divergence in tax rates around the globe.

That being the case, economies that relied more upon market mechanisms to regulate petrol consumption will face much more abrupt adjustments than those economies that did not.

Jeez, then I wonder why we don’t generally ditch market mechanisms and embrace socialism. Doesn’t post-War economic history actually suggest the opposite to your point?

I’m particularly thinking of the way the market responded to the OPEC supply squeeze of 1973. Car makers, particularly European and Japanese, rushed to produce low-consumption small cars, and consumers rushed to buy them — even in the US. If I’m not mistaken, that led to a greater reduction in average petrol consumption than any government-mandated target has ever done.

Or, for a more recent example, notice how Toyota decided off its own bat to produce in Australia its new line of fuel-efficient hybrids, even before Rudd turned up to offer them a wad of cash.

But you have fun in your make believe world where governments are always bad (inefficient), and the private sector always good (efficient), and the rest of us will get on with trying to negotiate the imperfect world where shades of grey actually exist.

I’ve actually just read the comments thread at Tim Blair’s blog. I am not the nic who posted the somewhat offensive comment about your name there. I probably should start to use more letters in my id.