That Amory Lovins video is exceptionally good and should be broadcast on every media station like a Catastrophic Fire Warning. It’s certainly on brief.

Despite the money being ours, Ralph, I don’t know what has become of it. Nor do I think a collective dive under Australia’s sofa cushions is going to yield the desired result.

What society changing events indeed?!…along with things like releasing money into the market place as Credit rather than Debt? But that’s a whole ‘nuther story…almost .

When you consider that that missing $72 Billion is only part of what goes missing and then stack that up against great stuff that it could’ve been used for like this – http://bit.ly/wPpl1 (download free eBook here – http://bit.ly/wPpl1 ) & this – http://bit.ly/J1Epr and then wrap it all up in ‘Duty of Care’, then the state of our country (let alone the Planet), is not only clearly & economically repairable, but any continuance of the current ‘State of Play’ is simply CRIMINAL!!! Not to mention embarrassing…

In Amory Lovins’ peer-reviewed, book (link above), ‘Winning the Oil Endgame’ (which incidentally was co-sponsored by the US Pentagon), he & his co-authors estimate $180 Billion to retool the ENTIRE transport industries (i.e land sea & air), & build a complete (with proper economies of scale), advanced bio-fuel industry (& no, not the ones that the media & politicians say are currently unvialbe or can’t be done), for THE WHOLE OF THE USA!!! Let me say that again $180 Billion for the WHOLE OF THE USA!!!

So what could we have done with that $72 Billion here in Australia, that the workers of Australia donated to entities unknown?

Geez! You don’t reckon 1+1 actually does equal 2 do ya? And if it does, does that raise the possibility that Australian Business Owners & Governments may have something to explain? Hmmm! It’s a toughy!

Ok! So if the above doesn’t illustrate enough of a drain on our country, then you can add this to the mix:

My Government backed small business, having had an estimated investment to date of approximately $200,000.00 (NOT including the wages of Gov’t personnel, Service Providers etc), and a projected income of over $800,000.00 in it’s first 2 years of operation, was deemed unworthy of supporting to the tune of $25,000.00 by banks & other ‘Small Business Supporting’ lending institutions…even though they were happy to get me $27,000.00 in debt for capital equipment in the first place.

Now don’t forget to multiply this NATIONALLY BORN COST by the number of small business failures. What is that number? Good question. Just the fact that the ‘experts’ & ‘pundits’ can’t agree on what the actual or even average rate of SME Failures is, is in my view evidence enough to support my illustration. But here…see for yourself:

Page 14 of this Lake Macquarie Council Home Based Business Research Paper (published in 2001), quotes a figure of ‘74% small business failure rate in the first 5 years’ – http://www.lakemac.com.au/downloads/Nova%20HBB%20Report.pdf

This article from The Australian (October 2007), ‘Exploding the Myth of SME Failure Rates’…well it explodes something…like any hope of ever making sense of it…gee! I wonder why that is? – http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/opinion/exploding-the-myth-of-sme-failure-rates/story-e6frg9lf-1111114570616

So even if you believe the pundit’s view – i.e. ‘don’t worry it’s not as bad as EVERYONE IN HISTORY thinks’ – and use their figures, I reckon we’d still be pretty gobsmacked if someone actually added it up…properly?

I reckon that at best, it’s a bluddy lot of money, time, resources & most importantly and most often ignored, PEOPLE, down the gurgler in the name of progress, efficiency, transparency, accountability and the good ol’ ‘Common Wealth’.

Sound Business Acumen?

Are you happy to work longer & longer so that our country (i.e. you), can continue to bear such unaccounted-for costs?

Do you still reckon that our current (& historic), economy is ‘rational’?

You know we’re soaking in it?…

Cheers

Stephen G

The only thing I can add to your fine treatise is this: imagine if all that overtime were spent on REAL volunteer work (e.g. youth mentoring, tree planting)?! What a society-changing event THAT would be.

Thank you, as ever, for fueling our debate.

First of all – bluddy nicely spotted there Cobba

It seems almost inescapable, that in attempting to address the collapse of my nubile small business, that my tendency to look for causes rather than band-aid symptoms is leading inexorably toward a Global Campaign for Common Sense. Though even the term ‘Common Sense’, along with ‘Common Wealth’, has become diluted beyond any meaningful recognition, let alone comprehension.

Now I don’t want to tag, by virtue of context, ‘Baby Boomers’ as the sole cause of such issues as outlined in that article – http://bit.ly/1J4tnJ . I believe we all share responsibility not only for it’s cause but for its solution.

What jumped out of that article at me was this bit:

“Total unpaid overtime worked is the equivalent of 1.16 million new full-time jobs that have not been created. That equates to $72 billion in lost wages – money that could be taxed.”

Is this symptomatic and indicative of the accuracy and efficacy of our current systems of ‘accounting’ & ‘accountability’? What are the ramifications of this observation? What are it’s implications?

On the one hand it reflects one of the good things about our culture…that folks are willing to ‘go the extra mile’. To do that bit extra ’cause it’s ‘the right thing’ to do and because it helps.

And personally I don’t have a problem with $72 Billion dollars not being taxed. What I have a problem with is this:

WHERE THE BLUDDY HELL HAS THAT $72 BILLION DOLLARS GONE???!!!

I’ll be back

Cheers

Stephen G

Perhaps if we all got married we could be the Oldmeadow near the Village in the Glen that Has Sings? Ok! I won’t be waiting for THAT video to come out

Re: Genealogy – I dunno if I’d go that far Cobba…but a Bard by any other name?

Cheers

Stephen G

I couldn’t click through to your site because you dropped the .au off the address. We don’t want to lose any lovely visitors due to a typo!

I’ll dive under the hood and fix it now, but just keep that in mind for next time.

Thanks also for your wonderful feedback about the Morgan blog this morning. Can’t believe we made someone cry!

Thanks Paul and thank you Stephen – you make me laugh. Thought I’d share this other common baby boomer thang – multiple marriages. I’ve been married three times (no wonder I’m more confident with horses!). I inherited Oldmeadow with my third and final (five years and we’re still hanging in there) marriage. I didn’t marry for the name but couldn’t have nthought of a better one.

My Dad, 87 years old and still maried to 88-year-old Mum, recently commented ‘Jude you’re a great judge of horses but a lousey judge of men but you’ve done alright this time.’