The pond realises it might have raised expectations this morning by mentioning the expert offering of Jamie, reptile "contributor" (rather than Australian taxpayer employee sheltering behind a paywall), and then not following through and delivering the goods …
It's true that the pond was bitterly disappointed, shattered, that the cult master Lobbecke, hadn't been given a chance to make something of this …
Well, the pond decided it had to redeem itself, and make a late Thursday offering, for specialists only … which is to say, loons who are crazy enough to expose themselves to Paterson's curse … (keep the cows away, oh please keep the cows up in the back paddock) …
What a bleak beginning. Not even an illustration. Don't the reptiles realise that a picture of Nazis will do the same for them as for SBS or Mark Felton?
As for the actual text, why after world war two? Why not after the Spanish flu? Oh wait, the Weimar republic … that's a bit tricky.
Any mention of the Marshall plan?
(here, pdf)
Seems not. Let us not talk of government helping government, let us instead talk in a dismissive way about the Marshall Plan, and toss it aside in a line, along with those feeble surrender monkeys in France and NHS Britain ...
Is it wrong for the pond to say that this enabled an era where Labor schemes like the Snowy River were stolen, and Ming the merciless took credit for higher education scholarships and sundry other signs of a burgeoning tendency for government to offer solutions?
Perhaps not, perhaps just get the final gobbet over and done, with the pond's tasks for the day finally complete … swallowing a little piety and a goodly dose of cliché , not least the opening line on offer here …which as experts will note is a variant form of billy goat buttism, using the sub-section allowing "none of this is to suggest", despite everything that's gone before being exactly that kind of suggestion:
Not a thought as to whether the virus might linger in the herd? Just blithe spirits and the certainty that we can all be balloons, and bounce back to what the IPA always does quickly?
Any notion that it might be a tad difficult for some, especially in the international travel and tourist and hospitality games? Nah, just do what comes naturally, and all will be well …
And remember …
Mmm - I thank the pond for exposing this bit of sludge, but that is not to suggest it is part of draining the swamp.
ReplyDeleteThe Wiki tells me that Senator Paterson was a 'writer' for the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, before being taken up by the IPA, where he accumulated the necessary string of titles.
So it is unlikely that his reading on how countries fared after WWII would have included serious study of Mancur Olson's 'The Rise and Decline of Nations'. Well, it was published several years before Paterson was born, so is of a pre-enlightenment era. Better to cherry pick some conversation by Erhard, and draw an entire thesis from that.
Olson made a case that all groups with a common interest in personal benefit tend to become a drag on any economy, because they are more concerned with the portion that comes to their interest, than the advancement of the economy as a whole. The likely virtue of major crises is that they might reduce the influence of these groups, or simply show that there is no basis to their forecasts of doom if their special interests are not met - which can free an economy for its recovery phase.
But, none of that was likely to be considered within a Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and certainly not the IPA.
Other Anonymous.
What to say after that ? I really can't think of anything appropriate, OA, so I'll just go with a "what he said".
DeleteBut for one small thought, if, as James the Pat says, "But the lesson of history is that emergency measures in times if crises are unsustainable in normal times", then shouldn't we just stay in crisis ? After all, "so far, so good".
Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.
DeleteOther Anonymous
As thick as a plank.
DeleteHow many planks does it take to become a member of the IPA?
The version I heard JC was 'thick as two short planks'. I have no idea when or from whom I learned that.
DeleteIndeed, OA, and with war comes 'rally round the flag' and "reasons" for a wide, and deep, range of oppressions.
No mention of the role of trade unions in Germany's post-ww2 economy.... such a surprise.
ReplyDeleteAnd no mention of how the wonderful Germans created the Comet which, despite its gruesome failures, began the jet airliner era that we have all enjoyed for many a fine decade now.
ReplyDeleteThey did create the Porsche and modernised the VW Beetle though. And now they own the whole British vehicle manufacturing industry, including Rolls-Royce and the British don't really have an aviation industry. So it goes.
GB - I was waiting for you to draw attention to the Senator's 'stability that came to characterise the Menzies era'. Some spectacular inflation, credit squeeze, close-run elections, the Petrov 'reality show', jailing a couple of hapless newspaper folk from, oh, Bankstown - well, it might have seemed stable compared with his first, work experience term as PM.
ReplyDeleteOther Anonymous
The faults of Menzies were legion, of course, including his attempt to preserve freedom of assembly by banning the communist party. But all gone now, OA, and at one with yesterday's sev'n thousand (symbolic) years. Though I do remember, a few decades ago, hearing a radio interview in which Menzies recalled Bob Saint Mary cataloguing the worst things that Menzies had done, and Menzies confessing that were the only things he had ever done. Can't recall them all now but a major one was opening up the universities. Bob St Mary blamed Menzies for having done that without having ensured a sufficient supply of capable academic staff.
DeleteBut you couldn't ever get that across to our happy juvenile sen who never lived through any of it, could you. Besides, it was a stable era: 17 years of day after day Menzies who did but see her passing by ...
And I really enjoyed the 1961 Holt-Menzies credit squeeze - it got me and my father up into north-western Victoria working on the sultana harvest; him in Mildura, me in Robinvale amongst the soldier settlement farms. 'Course it wasn't quite so hot back then.