CELEBRATE THE ORDINARY

It might also be said to be the professionalisation of normal.

When I was applying for a building permit in 2013 I was advised after some considerably problems with Golden Plains Council that there was no way a mere mortal could ever succeed in getting everything approved without professional intervention and that intervention cost money. D.I.Y? Preposterous.
What am I rabbiting on about this month? You may recall in the Christmas Edition of the Linton Astonisher the story of Robert Ingersoll, the free thinker.

“Each man is responsible in making a living for himself and his kin using all his knowledge and skills”

Oh! How true that may have once been. Once upon a time there used to be ‘General Practitioners’ and not just in the medical profession. They were called general as they covered a wide area of expertise and could advise you what you needed to have, or do, or go through to achieve a certain end. Most adults did their own legwork, filled out their own forms to lodge and even did their own tax returns. It was called personal responsibility and it was a learning curve to take you into an independent future.

Somehow, someone, somewhere made the decision that as clerical workers would begin to decline with the advent of computers so new jobs had to be created to fill the void and to maintain low unemployment. In some ways this meant that it would be an advantage for specialists to emerge, high priests of pen and ink.

The nomenclature of government changed to collateral and leverage, potential university students could no longer understand their own educational applications ending up in a situation where teachers colleges are turning our educationalists without full literacy and numeracy skills.

Where will this drive to have someone else do it for you ever end?

WHERE HAS CAPITALISM GONE?

As a committed Socialist and a firm believer in balance and fairness for all I am often referred to by the disparaging description of 'red ragger'. On the contrary I am surprisingly a keen supporter not only of true democracy (representing the electors not the party) and true capitalism (the free market opportunity).

Capitalism:

I buy something from your shop which you buy from a manufacturer, who pays workers to make the product I buy. They, the employees in turn, with their wages, buy my product which I pay someone else to deliver from a factory of workers making my whatnots. That is a manufacturing economy.

I walk into a Sandwich shop which makes me a salad roll. They made up the roll from ingredients, hopefully, sourced locally, grown by small farmers producing high quality fruit and vegetables which they sell to the roll-maker. The grower then buys my product and the cycle starts again. This is an agricultural economy.

My car breaks down and I take it to a garage and engage, hopefully a skilled mechanic, to make the necessary repairs they identify. I pay the mechanic either with my product (bartering) or with the money you gave me when you bought my whatnot. This is called a service economy.

In a way all of these different activities interact with each other and an advanced economy produces everything its population needs and sells the surplus overseas.

Communism:

If you take all three examples given above and change that free choice to ownership by the state, where the government controls how much is made, when it is made, where it is sold and at what price. They determine how much workers will be paid, the hours they work, the holidays they don't get and set the rate for bribes. It's like Animal Farm everyone is equal, some are more equal than others and we will determine how equal you are.

The only good side to Communism is the governments ability to direct entire economies and populations, see also China, unlike the exciting mess of capitalism, in to producing things faster to the detriment of the quality that competition creates.

Socialism:

This is where I stand. Socialism is really Capitalism with the exception that the investors, the shareholders, the management and the future of the company are all determined by the members or employees. In a sense we already have a form of socialism with the RACV or Credit Unions, members joining together for a common cause, or Dairy Farmers who, as individuals cannot provide both supply and distribution themselves so join together as a group to market their product.

Socialism is NOT Communism. Socialism is those who create the economy should share in the economy, reward for hard work and dare I say it, nothing for the slackers and some social help for those who can neither work nor malinger.

Look at our planet peoples. We all stuck on this rock together so we should work together. The rich are getting richer through corporate tribalism and as we see, tribalism (Corporations) destroy everything in their path and entire economies for the sake of a few Boardroom Emirs.

CAPITALISM IS DEAD, LONG LIVE GREED

If you know of Stalin, Hitler, Mugabe and Murdoch get ready for the unparalleled evils of Woolworths, Coles, Apple and Google.

Far for it for a socialist to preach on behalf of capitalism but I have, and still maintain, a certain respect for the free enterprise system of times past. To me true capitalism is the right for every individual to make his or her way in the world as they see fit, to produce things, to sell things, to make profits and to employ others to do the work for them. I think I have said before that capitalism is really a system of ‘perpetual motion’ each action in turn producing another action which, in the fullness of time, brings us back to the start and the process begins again.

Each complete cycle hopefully adds just a small amount to the domestic product of the nation which should be enough to allow the population to grow and be gainfully employed, for wages and conditions to slowly improve and bring an entire nation into a state of comfort, and lay the groundwork for our future generations. Control of wages and subsequent prices while still remaining free and competitive is important to avoid unreasonable inflation which eats away at wages and conditions and begins to create poverty rather than prevent it.

I would have thought it fair that an owner should be compensated ten times more than his lowest paid worker. If a standard wage for the worker was $800.00 a month then it is reasonable that an owner be allowed to earn $8,000 in the same period. After all the owner is the one who puts up the money and takes the risk so they should be compensated accordingly.

In recent decades however we have seen owners (or at least the Executives on behalf of the owners) earn in excess of 200 times more. If the average wage was still $800 a month an Executive can now rip off

$ 160,000 before it reaches the bottom line and subsequently what the owners or shareholders will receive. This has meant owners still receive about the same as they did before except a fortune has been redirected, almost fraudulently, before the benefits flow on to the workers or even the purchasers of the product.

What we see in this new century is no longer benefiting from the sweat of your brow or the result of your intelligence but the acquisition of wealth through acquisition. Take the supermarkets. They have not benefited from good business or even fair trading. They have not sought to be faster, provide a better product, a better service or to fairly compete on the open market. They have borrowed from the Financiers and bought out their competitors or subsidized prices below cost to their competitors, they have acquired wealth by bribery and stealth and not through good business acumen.

A former Woolworths Executive decried the fact that the producer of a product no longer decided on the price it would sell for to make a fair profit, but that the supermarkets now dictate to the producer, even to the point of driving them out of business, the price which the supermarket will pay regardless of the value it will eventually sell for. This tactic of course drives out competitors who try to buy and sell in a fair trading environment.

Cashed up supermarkets then buy up huge swathes of other businesses as well, adding to their outlets for distribution and putting further unfair pressure on the rest of the engine of the economy, smaller businesses. hotels, service stations, distribution systems, credit cards, telephone companies and advertising agencies, hardware stores, liquor sales, chemists, newspaper outlets and dozens of other ‘hidden’ acquisitions which will force out their competitors. The Australian supermarket system, as with its media ownership, is the most noncompetitive in the world, little wonder shoppers now look overseas for their purchases and deny our local economy the opportunity to engage in true capitalism.

BE A SAVVY BUYER

MORON IN A HURRY - Would an unthinking person expect to believe that what they saw was what should have been seen.

Seek the best deal around – Oh how many times have I bought something off the cuff to find the same product 20% cheaper at the next store. Now I go for three quotes/prices every time. Don't be swayed by rewards as nothing these days is free and certainly avoid entering spurious competitions on shop counters.

DECREPIT ANNUATE - Would a person of advanced age and weakened mental capacity be able to differentiate one from the other. As a decrepit myself sometimes you have to look for the finer details on labels (yr/model/etc) instead of just believing both products look the same.

DEVELOPING INFANT - Would a child of tender years understand the image or the process.

Is it simple even for a child to recognise what is happening in easy to understand terms, in other words avoid legal documents that seem not to be in everyday language.

REASONABLE PERSON - Would a normal citizen expect to receive what was promised.

The Extended Warranty is not worth paying for. 12 Months is standard but even after a few years should a product, like a brick, break down in five years you may still have legal rights to compensation in cash or kind. 'That the product did not live up to realistic expectations'.

Naturally if you Nuke every meal in the house of 12 months you might expect the microwave to break down from exhaustion but if its is 1-2 times a week you should expect it to last past 5 years.

ALTERNATIVES – I buy my microwaves at physical auctions for about $20 a go and run them into the ground. It's a far cheaper option and you have a chance to see it before you buy. Having said that avoid on-line auctions unless you check them out. Some, maybe even eBay, might keep telling you that you've been outbid until you reach almost the retail price – then add postage, Sucker !!!

AVOID PHONE SALES – I always request what they are selling by email as confirmation of who they are and what they are selling before I proceed. If they can't provide you with what is really a 'Letter of Authenticity' with which you might be able to take legal action against them tell them to piss off until they do.

FINALLY – If you are ever in doubt contact ASIC or your State Consumer Affairs or even better CHOICE Magazine.

ONE STEP FORWARD TWO STEPS BACK

All governments speak with forked tongues to please their corporate masters and collect as much ill-gotten revenue as possible.

As an example of this trade in hypocrisy we might look at Australian gamblers. The government profits massively from gambling through its taxes and then makes half-hearted attempts to warn us that gambling is a big problem or the big pharmaceutical companies who bribe doctors to prescribe opioids and then we have the health system saying we have an opioid problem. Why not just send Medicare money through to Sharp, Stick and Dome directly, buy up their product for destruction and save a million addictions to start with.

Lately a three pronged assault has been made on the alcohol industry. First the impractical 0.05 and lose your licence, secondly all the health warnings about two standard drinks in four hours is healthy but three is binge drinking, finally in a bid to get outlets closer to home the Victorian government has launched a program to help cafes, bars and school tuckshops to get a liquor licence.

Where do we go and how do we throw out these morons before they get totally consumed by taxes on vice.

‘DON’T LEAVE EXPERIMENTAL PAPERS LYING AROUND FREE-THINKERS’

The Astonisher has always had an unwritten policy that when making decisions that they should, as often as possible, be either left to sheer chance or never made at all. A decision delayed keeps ones mind busy and can’t hurt anybody unless you’re a surgeon.

I came to this conclusion a dozen or so years back when I was accidentally browsing through some papers that my ex-partner was reading then about ‘Conformity, Compliance and Acceptance.’ What caught my eye was some experimental data from tests applied to a different range of people to record their reactions under certain circumstances.

One of the tests showed that when giving electric shocks to a subject, the more distant or detached the subject the more severe the shocks could become before the person applying the treatment refused to go any further. The voltage applied was less severe when the subject was in the same room than if they were out of sight. So it was that the idea that our public servants, including politicians, don’t give a fuck about you or me is that they don’t have to come face-to-face with us and can apply as much pain as they want without consequence.

Obedience to instruction also varied depending on whether the person applying the shocks were on their own or in the presence of a ‘perceived’ superior authority. There was less compliance to instruction when it was received over a telephone. So if the Town Clerk is standing in front of you, with the power to make your life a fucking misery, then you are bound to do exactly as you are told.

Another test showed that people tend to conform to those around them, adopt the same corrupt and unethical practices and will even follow orders that under normal circumstances they would find morally repulsive. This might explain why large bureaucratic structures, with volumes of instructions on how one should act under different circumstances, will inevitably, and sometimes inadvertently force employees to follow certain procedures that may be an anathema to an individual acting alone. And so it in confrontations with local councils they will act immorally in favour of a council contractor regardless of the best interests of the ratepayers.

Other experiments showed that some people assisted in the consensus process of decision making either ‘because they didn’t want to upset their peers’ or ‘ wanted to be liked’. Extreme examples of this same phenomena can be applied to Hitler in WW2 Pol Pot in Cambodia and Australia on Nauru.

What breeds ‘obedience’? Physical and emotional distance from the ratepayer, closeness and legitimacy of authority, institutional authority by way of Acts and other instruments of control, the way the group is packaged and who is supporting who, and the liberating effect of group influence emanating from the Lunchroom all effect a persons responses.

Several experiments reveal that someone who punctures unanimity deflates its social power and observing someone else’s dissent, even if it is wrong, increases our own independence. So the Astonisher has become, in a small way, that instrument to debunk the bullshit that comes out of local council offices and other concrete-minded entities. As a result of this we hope that the readership will be more likely to make the right self-determining decisions if they feel someone is on their side.

Add to this the fact that people once publicly committed to a position, seldom yield to social pressure. Umpires and referees rarely reverse their initial judgments in footy matches, and neither do we. People conform based on desires to fulfill others’ expectations and often to gain acceptance. Conformity is greater when people respond before they can reflect. Conformity results from acceptance of evidence about reality. We conform because we want to be liked and approved, or we want to be right.

So I recommend, as I am often pulling myself up for not doing it, that if we want good things to happen or to give honest answers we need to consider who is around at the time, who holds the authority and is the balance of power between us and them equal?

Each of these tests showed, as it is applied against good practices in management, that real face-to-face involvement in decision making was most likely to create a more honest environment, more likely to happen, and thus lead to more positive outcomes.

If people don’t want to participate then we are at fault not them.

DEAR DOCTOR

DEAR DOCTOR COLUMN

Rarely asked questions, and some strange occurrences, at the Skipton Medical Centre.

When I pull out my nose hairs why do my eyebrows dissappear?

A man who accidentally bit his native tongue.

The patient who wanted to be discharged by saying he was as healthy as Elvis Presley.

A lady asking about these new revolutionary diet fads

“There is one called eat less and exercise more which doesn’t sound right to me”.

The patient admitted in an emergency who was advised that he should burn off some of his fat. The Doctor never thought that anyone could set their tongue alight.

As part of questioning to determine how a mans diet was going he was asked how his movements were going.

“Well” said the man, “ my last poo was so good that my spinal cord is still dissolving in the septic. But that’s not all Doctor, when I went the day before my dump was halfway round the bend before it left my anus.”

The patient with a dose of diahroea after eating a bowl of really hot Chilli.

“I had such a tummy upset that I spent the whole night blowing spackle all over the toilet.”

A man had to have his foreskin attended to because he got it caught in a pencil sharpener. His girlfriend had told him she couldn’t see the point.

On Thursday we had a visit from male and female Dentists. Doctors Oral and Hardy. He’s an Oral Surgeon and she just likes Oral.

A lady who had the runs so badly that she was able to pass it through her flyscreen.

A final word from our wonderful Receptionist.

“You never remember the thing that kills you”

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MENTAL HEALTH MONTHLY REPORT

There were several patients referred to the Smythesdale Clinic last month.

There was the self-loathing schitzophrenic who hated every one of his other selves too.

The man who tried to catch Disassociative Amnesia but failed. This disease causes the memory to be erased on a regular basis and he thought it would be great if he could forget who he owed money too.

The Clinic tried out a new Psychiatrist. He had nearly three weeks of experience and even treated the three personalities in his head yesterday as a demonstration.

We all sat through a training session to update us on ‘Cotard Delusion’.

It is a rare mental disorder in which a person believes he or she is either dead, do not exist, is putrifying or somehow mislaid his or her blood and internal organs. In other words they feel actually gutless.

It was probably named after a Frenchman to celebrate their courage in two World Wars.

A disabled lady who claimed her memory was so bad she had even lost one of her legs.

Then we had a referral from the Pediatrician. She brought with her a young baby who was so beautiful that she felt it should appear in Nappy Ads as a Turd. After her he mentioned he had an appointment with a Mother who wanted some tender, caring medication for her pre-teen son.

While he was here he exposed a fascinating medical fact to us all. “You know” he said “when we are concieved we all start off as just a little arsehole. It is a fact that there are many who work for our Council that never grew beyond that stage, they just grew bigger”.

The single woman from Happy Valley who believed that if she committed suicide she could collect on her life insurance and buy a husband from the Phillipines.

The short story writer from the Astonisher who said his life keeps coming to a halt every time his printer pauses.

We are looking forward to a visit from a Six Therapist from New Zealand. I remember her last visit. She was a perfect pear shape. 48, 78, 180.