WENDELL HUSSEY | Cadet | CONTACT

As the nation reels from the fallout of Virgin entering Voluntary Administration, plenty have been left asking what things will look like when all this is over.

If the airline were allowed to completely fold there are grave concerns for the monopoly Qantas would hold.

As a result, people have been pleading with the government to step in and try keep the airline afloat for the public good – in calls that seemingly come at odds to the current system we live in known as capitalism.

Capitalism at its most simplistic definition is an ‘economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state,’ – meaning when a company fails, it should fail.

However, despite the fact that companies set up in a system designed to enhance the accumulation of wealth and capital, fail, ensuring the accumulation of capital by the remaining company/ies, seemingly following the logical process of capitalism, the nation isn’t so sure this is what it’s supposed to be.

“The government needs to just step in an help,” explained one local free-market capitalist Young Liberal named Hugo Whitely.

“Private companies are far more efficient than public ones, except for when they collapse. That’s when the government should interfere in the free market.”

“The government should interfere in the free market sometimes, but not all the time, because the free market ensures the strongest survive, except for when the strongest surviving is bad.”

“But this is an example, when the government should get hands-on and stop the natural process of capitalism taking hold.”

“So we can stay in this perpetual late-stage capitalism phase forever,” he explained.