Is price now the only paradigm for motivation?

The current fascination with paymore politics (based on financial incentives and taxes ) is a clear sign of desperation in our democracies - esp in relation to conservation ( which ,because it doesn't seem to come naturally to many,  causes desperation with the market worshipers who rely on mechanisms that make natural or should i say simple trading sense .Household economics is never as simple as the market . Ask anyone who has tried to run their homes like they run their agencies .
You see our forefathers in the West have always used incentives, but they used them in well targeted way ; What is  precarious with giving the whole country a virus ,  is that we won't know we are sick and uncompetitive till its too late. What is that big weight of bureau we all say - even now ! Because conservation policies  can destroy competitive edge policies,  the tax must be known to work eventually for better growth ( be really well placed and targeted ) Any paint job to dress them up as acceptable,  is just a waste of time .Has a waste of time ever stopped anyone from going down that road ?
 Relying on the idea of the market origins of everything,( Could be like allowing the rich to survive because they are best fitted to survive )  is that such mechanisms are trusted to have miracle working power they clearly do not.

Without proper targeting , taxes are just taxes ( but what poly's care if they get handed , on a plate a reason for some more of them. Australia's Carbon Tax) If nothing , it's a chance for our poly's to do some good in this world - something we mere Plebes don't seem to be able to do for ourselves . We are being forced to be good and .  well ....they know what's good for us- at least they think they do. It was pretty obvious they thought so as they kissed and hugged each other when the legislation went through last week . There was no caution amongst those Fabians,  from the greatest of all Fabians who thought that the greatest evil is often done in the name of the best intention - Its" just not possible ". "The decision feels so right " and "that's what God made us like didn't he"  ? Its alright by him - isn't it ( not that we have checked ) ???"
Clearly if you accept nothing in this note you might be persuaded by this tug at the forelocks of angels who aren't,  we think,  there , to consider that the feeling of human powerlessness is the main driver for grabbing at a source of power that is , at best , only partial. Men ,it seems to some of our leaders,  have no decent motivation , apart form that which we,  the good government , provide for them . Worse,  the toolbox we inherited from our forebears is now considered by the consensus ness of wise "out of date,  crude and somehow  inefficient and cumbersome and therefore" irrelevant" ( that great old excuse of the unthinking )   .Something simple is very popular with a lot of people,  and Carbon Tax is just that - very simple . ( so simple that PM Julia thought they ( normally such untrustworthy sorts ) could sell it by using shoe leather.  ( the expectation and the reality,  at the time, suggest  she was hanging,  as we suggest,  from cloud nine on this )

 The only weapon left for the government in conservation policy is the one of the enemies weapons - the motivation of price ( So is the market really still an enemy ?  We are taxing 50 BIG businesses - now thats  the only enemy left NOW . No NOW we are not against the system the capitalists use,  just the product - sounds beautifully simple logic to me. As Ellul said,  if you focus on what you want , you will get it somehow. If you worry too much about how you won't see it coming and catch the wave of marketing the how

  Taking away choice used to be considered SINful in the West .But its Ok-- the best intentions are involved .  The presumption of justified action to take away our power to choose is not a small one-- that , at least , was an issue raised before such taxes were introduced.
The deceptive part of the present push in Victoria has been the small nature of the increase .
The way we are going in Australia , the tax budget will lose itself on the hunt for that perfect price for discouraging disobedience . The dummies only need look around the corner at the rich to see whose worried by the price rise they think does so much good in improving behaviour .If only they had taken the 2nd lessons in proper accountancy they would know that margins are the key decsion makers and wouldn't be so keen on their careless distortions . The rich and wasteful are not worried . This silly simplicity comes directly via grand indifference  from the conjoined twin babies of the worship of technique and denial of the dual nature of man within the advisors .
My point is , our forefathers used reasoning with the regard to financial disincentives in particular because sometimes the majority regarded some choices as bad .In the case of the Carbon Tax just living is Bad,  therefore everyone pays . The reasoning used to make punchy the impact and identified the SIN . Post modern taxes don't dare punching anyone ( rather we just hope that by spreading them thinly , noone will notice them ) risk accusing anyone of a particular SIN except the universal sin of being ( eg farting, eating and producing carbon dioxide )  Some would rightly say that universal taxes can  infact be appropriate where the people n general can't visualise the problem-- but that is a much bigger topic for another day.
My problem is really not with taxes  but the overblown presumptions of motivation that are currently being attached to them
Somehow the left , in particular, have stopped believing ( if they ever did ) in their old gurus of reason( like Rouseau ) . The left have finally confessed what they have been denying most of their lives " People are not good and they don't listen .."   So now in 2011we are at a point of agreement .  But  as a far as what we do about the problem , no agreement. We do not accept that old quickfix "  men  neeed to be forced to be good " that is now their clear modus operandi  
I personally think the state of the left is a reflection of their age and their situation in history and the history of their own failed ideas .  Having denied their inheriance in the idea of  fallen man they now have to face it as reality ( all the education and revolution in education is not enough) . With the triots in the UK ( or whatever sound facts reflect social instability, like the numbers of women bringing up children without a partner) -- we are forced back to square one to think square one again .
having denied mum and dad the role of hard handedness they take it up themselves . Dr Phil said yeasreday that you can't understand a problem ( like anger) until you accept in yourself .
Change in direction ( the seed of good conservation ) comes not from charging higher entrance fees at Disneyworld (or more correctly Marketworld -MW) but  making people aware that MW is not always the best possible way to get most of what you need.
Infact , if you have more than one way to get to somewhere , you have more motivation to both go places, enjoy the view and get around the costly and distracted pedantry of those who think only one road is the raod to take. ( If not below the belt just a little too low?)



Jesus turned the public interest in the local disaster of Siloam (a local tower crushing people)  around to remind the audience that the unstable buildings of our own making crowd in  around us and are well able to crush us completely . Sustainability was on his mind ;he was determined to try to prevent more building collapses.    The market may just see collapses as just more opportunities for the rich to make more more easily , leaving democracy out there in the cold ( as it seems to be doing with OCCUPY messages )
Democracies only work , like Jesus's words , if they cut somewhere on prevention . The trouble with slowly turning up the heat can  be that we get  deformed and denial prone logic from the victims of a non lethal but heavy collision.- instead of  conservation of momentum and speed in another direction.

Slow cooking the frogs

Labor caucus think they are very clever--They are,   but not convincing or competent.  Following the very old and dumb idea that you can have a tax without having a tax - a Claytons tax.

 Instead of targeting the trouble,  they call all the people trouble .Works for a while - till the people smell projection .Provided they are not cooked first .
Even the ABCTV jounos think its a good idea not realising that when the worlds use of fossil fuels decreases in ten years time -these fast moving flighty types will be saying "  it was all their doing" . Brilliant heavenly politics .
They take the religious nature of our constituency and use it .
Beats ignoring it like the media have been for years.

Invisible foundations come with the invisible clothes

This weeks Tax summit may have been good for a laugh ( people yawning everywhere) but it was seriuosly stupid also in both form and content .
Other blogs of mine in recent times reflect on the increasing occupation of positions of high office by children or trusting souls who move where angels fear to tread .  My faith knows no such territory either here on earth or in families . Such places are pure fiction supported only by the plethora of smoothed over television equivalents of fantasy  that  try to tell us what we don't want to hear -- we are not all friends and we don't all like what we do to each other
To try pack them in under the rafters is to risk certaing an almighty explosion - in real life .


http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/George_Santayana/