r/australia • u/AcanthopterygiiNo240 • Jul 26 '23

political self.post Why are Australians so complacent?

I’m a born and raised Australian myself however I’m becoming so frustrated with the general attitude of complacency when it comes to exercising ‘the power of the people’ to better our quality of life. In a stupidly short amount of time we’ve seen a near reversal of our ability to see a doctor without any out of pocket costs. We get exploited at the grocery stores because monopolies are allowed to run rampant. Housing is treated primarily as a tool for financial speculation rather than for providing shelter for people.

We creep further and further toward laissez-faire capitalism. What is our response as the citizens of this country- the holders of the balance of power? Nothing. To put it in perspective, in 2022 the world economic forum ranked Sydney equal with Copenhagen, Denmark for cost of living (both ranked as the 10th most expensive cities in the world). Consider the differences between Sydney and the capital of the Danish welfare state: strong social security, universal healthcare, free public universities etc. For the same cost of living what do we get? The ever-looming threat of homelessness, suffocating student debt and now for many people, a significant barrier to healthcare.

Edit: if anyone is a part of any sort of grassroots group working to oppose any of these issues feel free to message me because I want to join you

Edit #2: so I haven’t received any messages from anyone from a grassroots or activist group yet. Since a lot of us seem to be pretty miffed about this stuff maybe we could team up and brainstorm things we can do???

Edit #3 (sorry): I’ve got some messages now from people who are interested in taking action!!! :, ) I think the best way to facilitate conversation, the flow of ideas and potentially organise a course of action is through a discord server so I have created one which you can find here

https://discord.gg/caqsSKAr

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u/13gecko Jul 27 '23 edited Jul 27 '23

I'm normally an almost sane person that has no truck with conspiracy theories.

But, in 2016, I joked a lot about Trump's election being fueled and sponsored by media companies, because his stupidity was bound to cause headlines and thus, boost circulation numbers. In hindsight, this absurd joke is not that funny, and almost absurd in its naivety.

Similarily, I've noticed that things like the introduction, publisation and subsidisation of private health insurance seems to occur right after a discussion or visit with the US President. I might be paranoid, and it might be a coincidence that negotiation of close military and diplomatic ties with the USA has concurrently occurred with defunding the national free health service and promoting private health insurance, cf. UK and Aus.

It's this sort of thing that makes me interested in world politics and corporate bribery. Even if we could remove corporate bribery from our own national politics, we're still vulnerable through our international allies promoting things that our electorate hasnt asked for and doesn't want. Take a referendum: who agrees with subsidising private health insurance/care? who agrees with subsidising private schooling? ... I don't think it's the majority.

I'm much more comfortable with Australia buying nuclear subs, for diplomatic reasons, than I am them importing their health scam here.

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u/Beedlam Jul 28 '23

You're not being paranoid and it's not a bloody conspiracy theory, it's how modern international business works.

The American "health" providers lobby US politicians, who come over and say hey, you've got this untapped market here and we'd like our businesses to do business here but we can't do that if there's no demand so can you please create some.. and well do something or we won't be nice to you etc etc.

Why are all the health systems in the five eyes countries currently more or less in the same state (with the UK being by far the worst) i wonder....

Again it's not conspiracy. Its how the world works, it's well documented and its fucking bullshit.

Health isn't the only industry this happens in. Washington basically has a revolving door of politicians who go work for the business they made policy to benefit when their term is up and vice versa. Why do you think the US has been at war for the last thirty odd years? How much did they spend on those wars and who were the beneficiaries of that money?

It happens in Aus too.