Adam The God

Most of your words are gold, Bob, but I disagree with this. I find myself often agreeing with Gary. You might say that says a lot about me, but he points out the moments that are simply not good enough from our perspective. He's hard on Melbourne, but if the game play isn't good enough, it isn't good enough. As for your comment @Pollyanna about playing a defensive player on Daniels, 100% concur. To me that's a very obvious move. One you'd make very early in your plan to stifle the Bulldogs movement. The other would be ensuring that Bontempelli is marked at stoppages and isn't allowed to run around by himself. His scoring shots were embarrassingly easy. Okay, so we're playing Jordon in the midfield, but it simply wasn't VFL standard the amount of room we constantly gave Bontempelli. Yes, smart player and all that, but come on. It'll be interesting to see if we inject any adventure to our game style in Round 1. I'm also over the 'back our guys to win it' approach. We need to plan for the opposition and very deliberately try to curb dangerous influences on the game.

Spot on mate. Oliver is our best player by such a big margin, it's laughable how some Melbourne supporters talk about him. Sure, he can still improve, but his average game is an A+ game for anyone else, outside of probably May, Petracca and on their days Viney or Brayshaw. I hope Lever gets a proper run at it this year, because if he can play 22 games alongside Steven May again, I'll have less concerns about our backline. Tomlinson doesn't have to do much but keep his player quiet and allow May and Lever to intercept. Our backline needs much better run and dash though, so that appears to have been identified again and that's why Hunt looks to be playing off half back. That's where he should stay IMO. I'd love Beveridge as a coach, but alas we have Goodwin. It'll be interesting to see for how long. Our forwardline is an absolute disaster if we don't get first use or surprise a side on the counter, but it's an unsustainable plan. Hopefully with Oliver, Viney and Brayshaw back in there we'll be able to increase supply to a winnable level.

If there was ever a clear sign that Oliver runs our midfield it was today. Take him out and we don't get first use. There were a lot of really ordinary performances. Outside of May and Lever, I'm not sure there was anyone to write home about. That said, Chandler showed some good signs early, ANB tried hard, Jones was relatively clean except for that brain fade off the ground and Fritsch had 6 scoring shots again. Our forwardline hasn't improved at all though, nor has our delivery to it. I know it's difficult because they would have planned for Weideman and Brown, but our forward entries are high, long and hopeful (like 2019-2020). McDonald and Jackson aren't natural forwards and aren't particularly good marks. I'd have Chandler in the forwardline with Kozzie though. I liked that they've given Hunt a licence to run off half back, but I felt Hunt and Langdon delivered the ball inside too many times. Both of them are classic, high up and under kickers. Langdon probably had his worst game for the club too, which didn't help. Oliver, Viney and Brayshaw walk into that team. I wouldn't have Sparrow near by best 22. What is it he offers this group? He doesn't break away from packs, he's not a good kick and he's not a great blanket player either. Jordon has a bit to work on too, if he's going to get a game consistently. It'll be interesting to see how we respond in Round 1. I know it's just one practice game, but I think we're in big trouble here.

Glad he's committed long term. The big signature is Clarry. Put pen to paper already.

A few too many with interrupted pre seasons. Not a good sign.

We had the blazers. They had the 'They know what's coming'. I'm very glad they're a hopeless club these days. Long may it stay that way. Hopefully Hawthorn and Collingwood can join them.

I've noted this before, but we're viewed as grovelers that just take our grant from the MCC Foundation and toddle off. There isn't a great sense of trying to work too closely with the MCC. Maybe that's fine, but that's what I've heard. I also can't speak for the entire board, but the sentiment is certainly within the board room.

This is definitely a step further than the MFC putting together a doco for their own website. Going out to Prime is just very Carlton. Arrogant and in the modern era, no record to show for that arrogance. Utterly cringe. It's not like they were even close to the 8 last year.

Thanks for the insight BB. I have no inside info with regards to the MFC board, but I do know that it isn't particularly applauded within the walls of the MCC boardroom. I hope this isn't a sign of things to come.

Nonsense. One played on the outside and one drives our midfield and has done since his second season.

Interesting. I definitely have an email and was sent stuff to my email as well as my postal address.

Interesting. I definitely have an email and was sent stuff to my email as well as my postal address.

Emotional economics as in behavioural economics? Yeah, behavioural is much more real than the fantasyland that the mainstream presents. I much prefer hard economics rather than soft economics.

Have any MCC/MFC members not received their membership packs yet? I'm still awaiting mine, despite paying for it in August...

Fair enough. I think with access to media and education, for quite a while there we were cognisant of our past ills and could have made a stronger and better society. Then the neoliberals tore that to shreds. I think we can get there, but there needs to be a paradigm shift.

Look, I agree to an extent, but neoliberalism has utterly crippled the Western world. It was always going to end in an ugly fashion. I've always hoped it wouldn't end in fascism, but who knows anymore. It's so successfully hollowed out the Left that leftists think there's no alternative anymore, everyone else thinks centrists are leftists and right wingers are no longer particularly conservative, they're just anti people. It's a ****show that has so successfully hidden itself or rather embedded itself into the fabric of our societies (at the most intimate levels too), that it will take an enormous effort to turn the ship around.

Maybe, but I can't see our current administration changing the way the MCC Board seems to view the MFC.

This is essentially where I sit. I lost the faith throughout 2020, but I'll reserve final judgement until 2021.

Interesting watching America from my privileged position of Australia with my own house and JobKeeper payments. That country is not only third world, but corporate power has utterly ruined the majority of the country. How they haven't managed to pass a stimulus is an utter disgrace. In the same way that they managed to politicise COVID 19, they've managed to politicise stimulus. Bernie, AOC and the Squad are proving to be absolutely useless. Unless they force this vote on Medicare for All (can you believe there is still a Western country without it?), they may as well be Pelosi. Due to the lack of stimulus in America, I think they're going to be hit far worse than we are, despite our record private debt levels here. It just all seems to me to be heading either towards anarchy and social and civil unrest, culminating in the end of neoliberalism, or America continues to down the path of the third world. They even resemble Russia with oligarchs and then everything else just nowhere and pitiful. Their infrastructure is crumbling, their small businesses are dying, their people are dying left right and centre. Something has to give here...

A UBI would continue neoliberalism by ensuring the government doesn't need to create jobs and locks people into a self reliance on Government. But most importantly, a UBI would be wildly inflationary and provide no price stability. The numbers make no sense. The JG is meant to be 4.5-5% of the working population (the NAIRU equivalent of "full emoloyment"), not 100%. If everyone gets it, not only do the numbers not make sense, you'd have to find a way of having a counter cyclical tax. But there's absolutely no price stability with it. There's a reason corporate America loves the UBI. It means they don't have to pay decent wages, but the economy has more money in its pockets to buy their products. I know Bill doesn't agree with this, but I think the JG paired with a small basic income (for the 1% that slip through the cracks) is the best solution.

We'll be fine. Our biggest difficulty is remaining diplomatic with China. We don't need direct foreign investment and we don't need other countries. We are incredibly well resourced. We are a lucky country. We need to ensure full employment and a just transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy and tech over the next 10 to 20 years or we're done. It takes political leadership. I don't see it at a federal level currently.

Clayton Oliver by quite a way...

Government interest rates have been 0 since near the top of November. I still think bank interest rates will go down further, but it's certainly a good time to borrow providing you can service it. Interest rates should never go up again, but you're right. They'll probably go up in 5 years time if we're still bungling about with the same economics.

I'd start by reading RECLAIMING THE STATE mate. You're spot on about Australia's geographic superiority for renewable energy and even sustainable agricultural land. But the biggest hurdle we need to get past is the fallacy that free markets are too powerful and that the government needs to get out of the way. It is a lie and any possible situation you can think of, the government has the real control and markets depend on the government, and exist because of the government. Australia cannot be attacked on the foreign exchange, while we float our currency we will never suffer a balance of payments crisis and as long as we maintain monetary sovereignty (unlike the EU and many developing nations), we can greatly improve our domestic economy and then help others. When we help others, if we show leadership in the ecological space and provide financial support where necessary for developing nations to ensure they can develop their own nations without unsustainable ecological degradation, we can start to make a dint in the battle against climate change.

Thanks @dieter. I mentioned the ecological costs in my previous post. We need a just transition for fossil fuel workers and their families to ensure they don't immediately become unemployed, meaning our transition to sustainable industries would be negatively socialised. I've heard Bill Mitchell talk about a just transition, which would be anywhere between 10 and 20 years. You cannot simply close the mines tomorrow. You need to wind them down. Neoliberalism has had dramatic ecological impacts and if we're going to have an habitable planet, we need to deal with this, and quickly. Keating was a great orator but horrible on economics. His lasting legacy will be that he floated the dollar, but his deregulation of the financial sector, quashing of capital controls and wage suppression via the Prices and Incomes Accord of 1983 have been a disaster for our country IMO. Not to mention his sale of national assets like QANTAS (it'd be great for all those workers that just lost their lobs if the airline didn't have to run at a profit even in a recession) and CBA. He could also be credited with starting the depoliticisation of the RBA in this country too. The RBA is independent in name only, I may have written this already somewhere, but the RBA board is appointed by the Government, operates under legislation laid down by government (or politicians) and along with Treasury (the chief public servant in the Treasury sits on the board), decides on the Government interest rate. It's simply so politicians can defer to unelected technocrats that the RBA has been given any sort of 'independence'. As the former RBA Governor Bernie Fraser once said "Given that central banks are created by government legislation and derive their powers from such legislation, they cannot be completely separate from the government". That speech is available on the RBA website. Whitlam was a legitimate progressive, but his Treasurer Bill Hayden became a monetarist and turned the Labor Party into a fiscally conservative party that no longer represents working people. They've never recovered. The back end of the Whitlam Government saw the goal of tight full employment abandoned and when the Labor Party is telling people there is a natural rate of unemployment, then there's no chance of achieving what is laid out in the RBA Act legislation. What I've learned from the economics of Bill Mitchell and co is the importance of history and empirical evidence. The mainstream does not operate in the real world. It is based on a world of barter where money is neutral (anthropologist David Graeber's book DEBT blows this out of the water - there is no anthropological evidence to suggest economies ever operated on barter and markets have always been entwined with the state); households can make superhuman decisions all the time, based on information they could rarely predict consistently; there are no banks; and there is certainly no chance of an endogenously created financial crisis. The latter of course was how the GFC was created, with financial institutions expanding credit unsustainably across the financial sector. That is, because central banks cannot control demand for deposits in private banks, the endogenous demand for credit by households and businesses can drive private debt to unsustainable levels. This IMO is where Australia is currently at. Finally, the con of neoliberalism and its supposed free market approach without government intervention is that in order to privatise and deregulate, you need the government as a massive player to kick start anything. As for profits and wealth creation, it needs the government spending big to the rich in order to operate.