Unfortunately, the end-game of capitalism is self-destructive. We are already entering its twilight years, where no job is safe because corporations need to make ever-larger profits. You sack people, downsize, and find that there are less consumers who can afford your products. Better put the prices up - even less consumers.
Our politicians are unable to fix these problems, because they are at the whim of the market. Whether it is funding political campaigns or destroying Spain’s economy because investors didn’t like its government’s policies, The Market currently rules the world - to the detriment of us all.
The extent of market failure is shown most obviously in the US, where in a country of strident capitalism a self-described socialist nearly got the chance to run for the presidency! Twenty years ago, you couldn’t say the word ‘socialist’ there without being derided and laughed at.
The next thirty to fifty years are likely to be a nightmare for the world. We will see capitalism eat itself while the Earth warms unheeded because it’s ‘an externality’. One wonders how bad the next ‘dark ages’ will be.
You can’t ensure anything if you don’t control it - and that is one of the major problems with this charge to privatisation.
You’re blaming the wrong economist. Keynes was buried by the Chicago school. He favoured active government, and Chicago said free markets. When the GFC hit, Keynes was resurrected by even the most strident ‘free market’ advocates - because he was right! And Australia was particularly lucky, acting fast to keep the market alive at whatever cost was necessary. I’m not sure we would be in such good shape had a conservative government been in power at the time - although they may well have done the same thing.
Of course, we do not have ‘free markets’ - we have markets that suit the loudest/richest voices in the room. ‘Free’ trade agreements are nothing of the sort, while all kinds of industry protection are in place locally, nationally and globally! And of course, there is no free movement of labour - almost nobody wants that.
Finally, I see from the SMH article linked by the OP that (presumably tongue-in-cheek) “As everyone knows, the public sector is lazy and wasteful, whereas competition and the profit motive make the private sector very efficient”. This is one of those oft-repeated statements that is made by people who don’t know any better or who are pandering to those who don’t know better. The profit motive does not improve service delivery, it merely means you have to pay extra so shareholders can get their cut! As for deregulation, it is simple stupidity to believe that any large business is able to self-regulate.
