[LINK] Benefits of a digital economy enabled by the NationalBroadband Network

[Tom Koltai]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: link-bounces at mailman.anu.edu.au 
> [mailto:link-bounces at mailman.anu.edu.au] On Behalf Of Stilgherrian
> Sent: Wednesday, 22 September 2010 7:15 AM
> To: Link list
> Subject: Re: [LINK] Benefits of a digital economy enabled by 
> the NationalBroadband Network
> 
> 
> On 22/09/2010, at 6:37 AM, George Bray wrote:
> > [...]
> > 
> > The opposition communications spokesman, Malcolm Turnbull, 
> said when 

>http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2010/s3011623.htm

>I find it interesting that when he steers away from the prepared
talking points, he twice mentions 
>"destruction of wealth" in relation to the international fibre
over-build of the late 20th century. 
>The viewpoint is very much that of the investment banker: the money
should have been invested 
>elsewhere for the better short-term gain.

>There's nothing wrong with that viewpoint, of course, at least in the
right context. 
>The very question is whether this is the right context.

>Stil

Karl Marx, the father of economics would argue that the destruction of
individual wealth is in fact the rightful re-alignment of the assets
amongst the proletariat.

Let me see, Malcolm has a Blue Party membership card... Ahhh, that
explains it, 


Karl said:
Quote/
My inquiry led me to the conclusion that neither legal relations nor
political forms could be comprehended whether by themselves or on the
basis of a so-called general development of the human mind, but that on
the contrary they originate in the material conditions of life, the
totality of which Hegel, following the example of English and French
thinkers of the eighteenth century, embraces within the term "civil
society"; that the autonomy of this civil society, however, has to be
sought in political economy. The study of this, which I began in Paris,
I continued in Brussels, where I moved owing to an expulsion order
issued by M. Guizot. The general conclusion at which I arrived and
which, once reached, became the guiding principle of my studies can be
summarised as follows:

In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into
definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely
relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development
of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations
of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real
foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure, and to
which correspond definite forms of consciousness. The mode of production
of material life conditions the general process of social, political,
and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that
determines their existence, but their social existence that determines
their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material
productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing
relations of production or - this merely expresses the same thing in
legal terms - with the property relations within the framework of which
they have operated hitherto. From forms of development, of the
productive forces, these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins
an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation
lead, sooner or later, to the transformation of the whole, immense,
superstructure.

In studying such transformations, it is always necessary to distinguish
between the material transformation of the economic conditions of
production, which can be determined with the precision of natural
science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic, or philosophic -
in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this
conflict and fight it out. Just as one does not judge an individual by
what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of
transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this
consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material
life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production
and the relations of production
/Quote

So there you have it.

Those opposed to the NBN are obviously not economists or have no formal
foundation or knowledge in how society effects massive beneficial
advancement. 

TomK