It's a funny old World

It's very easy to criticise. Not so easy to come up with an alternative that's workable. I suppose one sets oneself up for criticism simply by running for office. Brave men and women who are at least trying to stand up for their beliefs in how the country is run. Better that sitting on your backside complaining about it.

First, we get rid of men... Okay, we'll keep a few for breeding stock and to change lightbulbs.

What, getting the easy ones out of the way first, are we/ I think I've lost faith that any such thing exists. But from an economic viewpoint, and let's face it, most things flow on from the economic system, I would like to see a return to sanity in using the concepts of economic rationalism, globalisation, and growth, all of which have become standard bearers for neo-liberal whack jobs. These three can be mathematically modelled and shown to be logical and rational, but the moment humans come into the equation all bets are off. None of them seriously take human needs and priorities into account, and they are the exemplar of the tool becoming the master. If we could return these three to sanity, we would: cease privatising essential human services like health care and power production, we would cease disempowering the work force through removing their job security (contracts rather than jobs, part-time and casual jobs instead of full-time careers), their occupational health and safety measures, their retirement security, their actual health by not demanding that fewer and fewer workers do more and more work over longer and longer hours, and so forth, all in the name of some mythical "productivity" imperative; we would stop outsourcing labour to third world countries in the name of profit growth and instead help them kick start their own industries while returning viability to all local industries the world over, we would block the multi-nationals' drive to world domination by restricting foreign ownership in our countries, we would put a full stop to currency manipulation by hedge funds and the very same multi-nationals, and spend every effort to find a viable way of dealing with the refugees created by war, oppression, famine, economic exploitation, climate change, etc. that acts with human understanding as well as practicalities; and we would realise the ontological absurdity of the concept of infinite growth and reverse the current forced pseudo-growth that seems to drive every major economy in the world at the expense of the vast majority of humans. Of course this begs the question of war. We can't appeal to our collective better nature because clearly we don't have one. I sometimes fantasise about a truly multi-national Peace Keepers Force staffed by soldiers who can be taught to understand that violence is the last resort, funded and equipped pra rata by the major economies, and one which has actual teeth and isn't hamstrung by geo-political pragmatism. A pipe dream, of course. Then there are the issues of universal female emancipation, the poverty traps, religious intolerance, racism, and my head is hurting already. Lash