I know – I’ve been involved in too many Commonwealth-State negotiations, occasionally as part of the recalcitrant party. I can only imagine the horror of being a Brussels bureaucrat tied up in these ones.

The BIL was just telling me how he bought an Ipad Mini with sis’s flybuys she earns as a quango PS exec, after enjoying a weekende in Hobart too. Such things are above the great unwashed it seems although in SA with around 23000 on the PH waiting list, while they watch certain elements with bums on seats trash a dwindling stock with horrendous maintenance costs, some reward points for the 4 weeks bond and the ability to bid for a seat at the table might arouse the odd enthusiast, particularly if they’d prefer to spend their meagre incomes on housing, rather than the beer, smokes and pokies, etc. Trash the joint and you’re going to have to find those bond and reward dollars all by yourself in real dollars, rather than going cap in hand with some heart tugger to get another bond out of Jove again.

Private RE agents have some remarkable IT tools at their disposal nowadays to manage the rational intelligent marketplace for the majority and that allows them efficiencies to handle a lot more properties for absentee landlords than in the past. They can walk around at an inspection and call up the original property photos from the cloud and compare to the present state and a picture’s worth a thousand words chum. Any tenant who thinks they can fall behind in the rent, or not keep the property up to scratch, or want’s to bother the landlord for a light bulb or tap washer change will soon find themselves on the outer for the next lease renewal, because there are plenty of tenants who know the drill. The same agents who can manage any restricted secondary market without all that PS red tape and with those readily accessible cloud pics can rotate inspections with another agent for consistency of umpiring. Don’t like the 2 umpire system then pay up front for a third umpire ruling and you’ve done your dough or reward dollars if you lose the appeal.

Not hard to think of ways and means for the RE agents to reward good tenancy and manage a secondary restricted market accordingly with some of the best PH approaching the free market in a continuum, thereby removing that leap at present and as some move up into the free market others are feeding in at the cheaper end of the PH sector. Whether the education set want to nuance the process and tack on some penalty points for not getting the kids to school, etc, well that’s up to them, but fundamentally it’s time to get the basics right and not keep pissing dough up against the wall on those who don’t want to hear the message.

This seems like the argument of a slave master (or any other elite ruler) justifying their position of giving other people work to do, because you know, it’s for their own good really.

That sounds like an argument against welfare.

For society as a whole, envy becomes self destructive (although it probably benefits some individuals) as the envious focus their energy on seeking ways to tear other people down

Envy sounds like a good way to describe the attitude of those against welfare.

Unlike you though, I dont think the beauty-contest was going to work, nor do I think we should give it a go at this late stage. Given the current high exchange rate, we’d be swapping one loss-making subsidy-addict for another.

The truth seems to be that as human nature is constituted, man rapidly degenerates unless he has some hard work to do, some difficulties to overcome; and that some strenuous exertion is necessary for physical and moral health.

This seems like the argument of a slave master (or any other elite ruler) justifying their position of giving other people work to do, because you know, it’s for their own good really. Imagine the decay if left to themselves!

It also makes a good justification for a status system, give that people tend to strive for status anyhow, might as well keep them occupied while they do it. For their own good of course. A status system provides incentive to strive but using envy as a motivational force (especially a political motivational force) offers the temptation of quick success — rather than work hard up the ranks, just rip down the people who seem to be ahead of you. For society as a whole, envy becomes self destructive (although it probably benefits some individuals) as the envious focus their energy on seeking ways to tear other people down, and those who have something to lose focus their energy on guarding, or hiding what they do have.

Dr Jarrett is saying there are elements to our traditional culture that we must change if we are to stop the violence that is destroying us, and she is right. Things are much worse now than the old days because of the grog, the drugs and the awful welfare dependency that is sucking the life out of us. There are elements of our culture that are really good and should be kept, but we should be prepared to do what everybody else in the world has done and change our ways to solve the new problems we have now and that our old law has no tools to solve.

Bess Price

My hope is that the National Curriculum will break the political dead-lock over failing schools: that open league tables will start to make it so clear which schools are really bad, that education authorities will bite the bullet and truly let some schools go under, replaced by better ones.

We know where the bad and failing schools are now so what’s the point of bureaucrats going to great lengths to come up with the same answers with some more esoteric computer models? Why do the well to do educated, particularly leftys, keep thinking they’re going to change the world if they just throw a few more billion Gonskis at education? A fatal attraction to re-education camps I suppose and if at first you don’t succeed knock em down and build shiny some new ones for another great leap forward.

We know it’s all about values and bad values equals bad schools that only teachers with some higher calling want to knock themselves out over and there’ll never be enough of them to go around. The answer is to fix the bad areas with incentive for the right values. After all that’s what those seeking private schooling or the tightly zoned Clayton’s privates know implicitly and those school results aint about the extra dough spent on them, although there’s a lot more of that from parents with the right values and concomitant incomes naturally. It’s all about lil Johnn’ys peers and their values and unlike the public system of last resort, if Johnny doesn’t want to fit in well his folks are free to take him elsewhere and good riddance.

It’s the market for housing that sorts out the values and with some of the dearest housing in the world now and the rising cost of private ed, the values set with 2 -4 kids are even selling up in the outer areas to pay high rents in the inner ring areas to get their kids into the well known and tightly zoned Clayton’s privates and they’re saving a bundle, while denuding their vacated suburbs of said higher aspirationals. Meanwhile what happens in the Housing Trust burbs? (we’ll leave the indigenous badlands to the usual imagination because they’re busy with a specially devised, national Dreamtime curriculum anyway)

Well what happens with public housing is, once you’re fortunate enough to get your butt into one, end of aspiration because the next step up is the private market and that’s a helluva gap and with so many on the waiting list behind you, taking a chance on opportunity somewhere else is out of the question so you’re stuck with the usual dropkicks and junkies who managed to wangle a Trusty in the past. No incentive and a bridge too far and it won’t be long before the new chum and sprogs settle into the ambience of the joint and this is what that long waiting list is aspiring to. All their kids need are some more Gonskis and a Canberra curriculum to get their values humming again. Yes Virginia there…

So what is really needed? Well we already know that from the successful aspirationals. These people need a restricted secondary market for public housing just the same in order to reward good values and chasten those with bad ones. Forthwith all existing tenants have an imediate 12 months lease with right of renewal just like free market tenants and all qualified prospective tenants are free to bid fot the existing stock upon renewal. That can be with real dollars and reward dollars earned for good tenancy and let the secondary market rip. Under such a scenario a single widow taking up a 3br home couldn’t outbid a single mum with 2 kids and their allocated per capita reward dollars, although there’s nothing to stop 3 qualified singles bidding with theirs. Get the PS out of it and put it in the hands of the private RE agents now with some suitable checks and balances. Also it may be a phase in period is needed whereby existing tenants are allocated extra reward dollars in their bank (assuming no major behavioural or proprty abuse to date) and those dollars are reduced annually over say the next 2 or 3 years to get them used to the new marketplace for their rental property. That’s the best national curriculum you can give them and Bess Price’s mob too if you can pull yer heads out of the Dreamtime.

The stuff I am talking about is quietly done.

I expect the reverse is the case. Spontaneous outpouring may be an exception, but whenever I bump into philanthropy I can’t help but think of all the time and money wasted wining and dining important people, having ‘functions’ in which people lavish very large lunches on each other, dress up to the nines, jockey for positions next to the important people and all the rest. How much of the effort and the money gets to the beneficiaries. And of course the beneficiaries have to be worthy – and of course worthy when judged from a distance. They have to be photogenic too. Guide dogs – well puppies anyway – starving kids. Not adults with cleft lips, or the unemployed or those with bad backs.

Of course government is the mirror image of this. It’s revenue raising is usually (I’m thinking) a fair bit more efficient, and it can give money according to more ‘objective’ criteria. Naturally enough that’s not always a good thing, but often it is.

I appreciate that you don’t agree with it, but I’m a bit dismayed that you can’t see anything in it. I guess if you see it as trying to impose some strictures from the outside as it were, via public notions of ‘taste’ it seems pretty off. If on the other hand you think of it as some heartfelt expression of what he thinks of as worthwhile – which is then expressed outwardly it’s a different thing. I see it as an expression of personal modesty – and I hope you regard modesty or humility as a virtue.

Generally speaking, purchasing a flash car is a highly conspicuous thing to do. Of course it could be done because of a deep love of cars, or beautiful things and/or the love of its design and/or craftsmanship. But mostly such things are bought for show. Is Marshall trying to organise some mass movement of snobbish disapproval? I don’t know. I doubt it, but such consumption is generally undertaken for reasons that are associated with its conspicuousness. He’s saying that that is not to be admired while taking pleasure in beautiful things is to be admired. I don’t know if you agree, but a lot of people would understand what he’s getting at.

Further he’s lauding the idea that public munificence is a venue in which instincts of aggrandisement can be advanced in a way that is ethically edifying. I think one might say that such public pursuit of beauty is ethically similar to bravery in defence of others rather than just oneself, and actions born of patriotism rather than simple self-interest.

So pollies are almost always privately nice people forced by the incentives they face to behave like public pricks.

True- and then there’s Kevin Rudd

The Porsche Suv is not much diff to other cheaper Suvs …….buying a SUV simply because it has the same badge as a ’2 seat’ type sports car, is absurd.

Ps I am no libertarian.

So pollies are almost always privately nice people forced by the incentives they face to behave like public pricks.

After the first QLD flood emergency people gave very generously , then the government put a levy on for flood relief. So when the next flood emergency happened there were much less in the way of voluntary donations.
The voluntary community group I belong to does a fair bit , quietly, and its operating costs are very small.
Free association solutions often work better ,than a ever more complex, hierarchical, bureaucracy.

But you’re quite right of course, if you laud conspicuous consumption, then the complementary response from the down at heel is envy.

Then again I’ve always thought one of the greatest insights into political economy was offered by Algernon in The Importance of Being Earnest “Really, if the lower orders dont set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them?”

Funny thing is that I always thought he was a bit of a prick. Turned out he was quite nice fellow.