After last week’s glorification of one of the most unedifying characters in elected dictatorship politics – the ultimate puppet for corporate greed, Mr Bob Carr of Macquarie Bank and chief lobbyist for the pokies industry – I have to admit I’ve had enough of Mungo’s column. He is a fine writer who occupies a large proportion of The Echo every week but he seems to be out of touch and out of tune with the political vibrations of this area.
Almost everybody I meet is happy to give an articulate appraisal of the squalid state of national government and its cast of uninspiring hypocrites. We stand as a disillusioned majority seeking a genuine alternative to rampant capitalism.
Any of these characters Mungo flatters on a regular basis would fail to fill even half of the Coorabell village hall if they held a public meeting there with free admission, sausage sizzle and a shuttle bus. Let’s have some real political debate and insight instead of sycophantic, apologetic personality rubbish – we can find that all over the ABC.
Alan Hainsworth, Byron Bay
Capitalism should not be condemned, since we haven’t had capitalism. A system of capitalism presumes sound money, not fiat money manipulated by a government decreed central bank. Capitalism cherishes voluntary contracts and interest rates that are determined by savings, not credit creation by a central bank. It’s not capitalism when the system is plagued with incomprehensible rules regarding mergers, acquisitions, and share sales, along with wage controls, price controls, protectionism, corporate subsidies, international management of trade, complex and punishing corporate taxes, privileged government contracts to the military-industrial complex, and a foreign policy controlled by corporate interests. Add to this centralised federal mismanagement of agriculture, education, health, superannuation, banking and welfare. This is not capitalism!
To condemn free-market capitalism because of anything going on today makes no sense. There is no evidence that capitalism exists today. We are deeply involved in an interventionist-planned economy that allows major benefits to accrue to the politically connected. By all means, condemn the fraud and the current system, but please, call it by its proper names — Keynesian inflationism, interventionism, and corporatism.