Australia learned the hard way...don't confuse Trump with a chump.

OMG This is one of the best written posts and I can't give you Rep.

 

Lol! Aw! That's really nice, LRL. I consider myself repped. Thank you.

 

There are numerous serious trade issues that really are not solvable outside of forming trade agreements. Issues of intellectual property, trade practices, worker's rights, etc., abound.

You need to dial back the rhetoric.

 

As I have said before. We are easily bought off.

It was interesting to listen to him in the interview as he believes internet shopping has a limited lifespan, although it will create a great deal of carnage in the meantime.

I have just returned from a meeting in Sydney. It was a think tank of sorts.

The topic of future employment was on the agenda. To say that there was not a lot of positive views put forward would be an understatement.

The consensus was that a foreseeable doubling of unemployment looks likely over the next ten years but that will all be dependent on how the Australian public takes to both internet giants.

Almost everybody believed that bricks and mortar retailing is under massive pressure. Considering that most retailers, smaller family run and owned especially, are on bare bones currently with both wage pressure and lease pressure, the damage will be massive and far reaching.

Australia will not notice for a few years and then the axe will fall, right on the back of our necks. The welfare system will balloon exponentially and the government will be unable to respond for the lack of revenue being obtained. It truly is a disaster in the making.

$26 million seems like a great donation, but considering he will save five times that in tax, and then claim the $26 million back against his already meagre Australian tax bill, gain great exposure for his wonderful donation, and it all spells wonderful slight of hand. He didn't get to where he is by being a fool.

Progression is important, but also dangerous if done without conscience.

 

Interesting post S, personally I am well positioned for an ecommerce boom and have been working towards this for the past 8 to 9 years, however I agree those who aren't will be in for a huge shock.

Don't know if you're aware of Google's Eddystone program, it's the use of beacons by brick and mortar stores, to push notifications to shoppers in the vicinity, i.e. if they're in the store, 10% discount notification on their mobile phone (if they're running Google Chrome) or i.e.. bus stops, push notifications of the particular bus route for that stop. It will help bring more fluidity to brick and mortar stores when integrating ecommerce... referred to as the internet of things.

Back to China/Alibaba, they opened a data centre in Australia and more than 1000 physical stores in Australia and New Zealand, I believe it's because he understands there will always be a place for brick and mortar (using the internet of things to incorporate ecommerce), the problem is we will see ecommerce digging away at brick and mortar stores initially for some time and where it will stabilise is impossible to know.

I also agree with Jack Ma... said "when trade stops war starts" I think if you're not trading for it you are fighting over it, so interesting he felt the need to express this.

 

This is the great blunder of the naïve left. We imagine (vainly, and arrogantly), that our kindness is of such exceptional quality, that these brown pets will necessarily want to emulate it. Not only that, but you have not the first clue of what these people are thinking and planning.

 

Nope, nope, and nope. Australians expressed their insular experience post-war, but soon saw that southern European migrants and Ten Pound Poms were perfectly suited to the country and the culture - embracing both. Then the Indo-Chinese came as refugees, and also adapted and embraced. Then the mainland Chinese came, and did the same. White Australians have been absolutely fine with all these groups, since the 1960s. Then the Lebanese came, and many of them didn't adopt and embrace. White Australians (and Chinese Australians, and Greek Australians, and Vietnamese Australians, and Italian Australians) didn't particularly like this.

Australians (whether Anglo, Chinese, Indian, Greek etc) don't care what colour, race or religion migrants are, they care about BEHAVIOUR.

 

White Australia's interest in other cultures is food and street colour - and that's exactly where it stops. I've met very few white people (in my entire life) who genuinely embrace non-white cultures. As in, LIVE it.

FTR, this isn't about racism. Australians aren't racist, IMO (see my post, above).

 

Oh I am so sorry and bow to your superior intelligence.

 

And yet, now the Lebanese are part of the furniture and their culture is valued and appreciated too. It's taken time for us to accept every new culture. Each of them has been whinged about, viewed with suspicion and insulted, including the ten pound Poms.

Don't you remember "They’re a Weird Mob", Crank? It was a satire written by an Italian immigrant exposing Australian bigotry. Remember "Kingswood Country", " The Wog Boy", "Acropolis Now"?

Don't you remember all the hype about Vietnamese immigrants running hard drugs and whores? All the negative press portraying Vietnamese as evil? Don't you remember Pauline Hanson's first election campaign and parliamentary maiden speech where she claimed we were being overrun by Asians and had to stop immigration immediately? Do you remember the hatred and mistrust of the Japanese you and I were raised with? Now we smile when we see a busful pile out in their Hello Kitty outfits to get their photos taken at the local tourist stop.

There is nothing new in us being wary, distrustful and suspicious of a new class of immigrants. We always are. We don't welcome any group unreservedly and we never have. We're slow to warm up to them and pretty nasty until we do. It takes us years and years to accept them. It's so slow, we don't even notice when we do. And it's not because of anything the new group is doing it's just about time. They stop being unfamiliar over time, and the familiar isn’t scary, it's normal .

 

Why would you live someone else's culture?

 

The hatred being built up by some within society is far greater then what happened in those previous cases, this is akin and in a way related to a much more sinister and evil chapter in the Brief History of Mankind

 

True. Very, very true. The fear mongering Vietnamese bashing was bad, but this is much, much worse and it's international. I am far more afraid of the hate and fear that is being created, heightened, maintained and manipulated than I could ever be of a Muslim jihadi or ISIL. It reminds of the buildup to every bloody revolution in history, every civil war and World War Two.

And for what? So the plunder of the Middle East can continue unquestioned? So we never ask why people are fleeing their homes in millions? And now they're beating the war drum about Iran again, the country that takes the 4th highest number of refugees in the world. Bombing the crap out of Iran is one way to cut down refugee numbers, I suppose.

 

It's all a smokescreen, there are much more dangerous and sinister things.

 

Which period of history are you thinking of? I have mental images of a few. The French cheering on the guillotine crops up a lot. And gas ovens. And the Russian and Chinese revolutions.

 

all of them in a way, but for direct comparison I would be looking for gas chambers being built.

 

God. I just had a mental image of strange fruit hanging from a big old fig tree in Sydney or Melbourne or Brisbane. A lynching. Sometimes I hate having a knowledge of history and an imagination.