The Self-sufficiency Debate. Individuals.

As usual I would ask what is the problem. If we are to debate self-sufficiency per se, then the discussion is black and white. 

I would argue the problem is more, Pareto is real, how do we live with it?

As usual with Pareto we have 20% of workers busting their gut and 80% just cruising along. The first material point is that the 80% do not want to be part of the 20%. On the other hand, they do want the dignity of work. They want to be useful and they need to be fulfilled.

This is the mistake that Whitlam and Gillard made. The 80% don’t want to go to University.

So, what to do with the 80%. As we have discussed, Harari’s answer is the UBI. 

Rex Connor said it in the early seventies. Australia is a wealthy country; the idea is to dig up the wealth and sell it offshore so that no Australian has to work. We have had a good shot at that. 

Adam Creighton has done some work on the real unemployment rate in Australia. I think some of that is starting to surface during this crisis. The starting point is to find out just how many do work, and how many hours.

The youth are bored because education standards have been dumbed down both at school and University. In the last few weeks parents have just started to figure out the kids can do their school work in a couple of hours a day. 

The debate has started on to manufacture or not to manufacture, however the focus of the debate is only on economic grounds. There needs to be cultural, physical, and political elements brought into the equation. You cannot say we need to do something for strategic sovereignty without quantifying it. 

There are discussions about the health costs of locking people up. This needs to be weighed against the health cost of not locking people up. 

This brings me to a key point. I believe that people should not be allowed to be in the discussion if they do not put their objectives and values on the table. It is easy to take pot shots at people who have put it all out there. This is a major problem with our parliamentary system. The Greens and the independents can sit in parliament and knock down ideas, criticise objectives and question values without ever putting theirs on the table.

I business I always believed a Vision statement had to have two quantifications a goal and a time. Parties arguing with motherhood statements will always win.

We have seen the results of computer modelling in many fields. It doesn’t work for a number of reasons of which one is that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. 

1. For our National security we need a level of self-sufficiency.
2. All people need to have dignity and be fulfilled in their careers.
3. We need to look at the supply chain and develop efficiencies from disintermediation.
4. We cannot measure the price of a product in monetary terms alone.
   1. Politics 
      1. Sovereignty – Border control.
      2. Vulnerability
   2. Culture. 
      1. Freedom and human rights.
      2. Religious Freedom
      3. Environmental Standards.
         1. Energy.
         2. Waste treatment
         3. Emissions
      4. O.H & S Standards.
      5. General Wokeness.
   3. Economic.
      1. Disintermediation.
      2. Return on investment