A header that mentions the "neoliberal consensus" - good to see pieces recognising that states selling off civic assets may not be seen as a good deal by a majority of the public who like those assets and services and aren't profiting off of them being sold whole sale.
I think we're getting into a position similar to the 20th century - the paradoxes of capitalism are coming home to roost and the inaction of states to safeguard the material needs of the average person is leading towards grievance and a willingness to embrace the far right, even if you don't like them. Liberals are unpopular because they refuse to deal with the issues, left wingers are unpopular because the apparatus of capital control most media and would lose out under a more left wing world so scream bloody hell about anyone to the left of Atilla the Hun. And the right are unpopular because their wish casting politics just can't be done.
"embrace the far right"
As Corbyn and his acolytes show, the far left also has significant power for the disaffected.
But the entire force of capital, which includes the private media and the political establishment, go out of there way to make left wing policies solutions the equivalent of literal Stalinism whilst painting far right rhetoric as "common sense". The Overton window can only go one way for those people - it's the ratchet effect. So people seeing how impossible it is to get left wing solutions (and Corbyn is hardly far left, he proposed a social democratic policy platform that, when polled on issue by issue rather then as "Corbyn's policies", did have popular support) become disaffected and those who desire a far right solution get told it is always possible (because every party panders to them) and that when their policy preference is enacted and doesn't work that's because it wasn't done harshly enough and the answer is to go even more right wing.
"But the entire force of capital". You been at the Koolaid again? What is this 1875 and we are discussing the Communist Manifesto?
At heart most people like capitalism. What they want is for capitalism to be fair - so no unfair advantages of birth, of wealth etc. They want hard work rewarded.
What they don't want is bullshit economic theories about 'capital' and the 'politcal establishment' etc
Capitalism does not reward fairness or meritocracy - those things are not inherently capitalistic. The advantages of birth are backed into capitalism; inheritance whether in money or assets is the highest predictor of wealth later in life. People who work hard are not rewarded under capitalism. We recognised under Covid that their were such things as "essential workers" - who were they? Shop assistants, nurses, public servants and the like - are they the most well paid? Does a CEO or shareholder of a company work whatever ratio it has more than their lowest paid worker? Capitalism rewards those who help accumulate more capital for capitalists. To do otherwise is counter to capitalist mode of production.
So what is your solution then?
Hard work is rewarded - but yes every job comes with its own salary, and some of them are grossly unfair. And yet. Is it right for a CEO to earn millions? Maybe, if they can show that their input actual generates substantially more than that.
Should lower paid jobs be better paid? Yes - in an ideal world people would not need extra money from government if they are working a 37.5h week. But is it right that I earn more as a Uni lecturer than someone that works in retail? I bring a lifetime of experience of my subject to the role, you can be trained for a job on the tills and stacking shelves in days.
Capitalism cannot be left to run without check, for sure, but I have not seen a better arrangement suggested. What do you propose?
From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs - I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable. What that means practically? If you're in favour of a state that would mean, in part, state management of resources, workers councils who own the means of production, the seizing and redistribution of assets from the rich to the poor, etc. etc. If you're not in favour of a state (personally I'm not) you would do what the anarchists did in places like Spain at the outbreak of the civil war and what is happening in Rojava now; community and workers councils making democratic decisions about issues and deciding what to do and trade for themselves. Is this Utopian - yes, of course.
I would be happy in the mean time for more social democratic reform, wealth redistribution, empowerment of unions and individual workers and an increased social safety net. These are the things that would tackle the immediate problems that the "free market" are clearly making worse - inflation (to a degree, climate change will increase the scarcity of lots of essential resources), housing, poverty and malnourishment, etc.
"I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable."
Because HUMAN NATURE. Its how we are wired, I'm afraid. People want stuff. So you basically are an unapologetic communist. Are you Ash Sarkar? She of the luxury communism bent?
In feudal times there were lots of people, including many of those at the bottom of society, who believed it was the natural and right order of things, and they could not conceive of society being ordered in any different way.
There's nothing in human nature that makes capitalism the only, or optimal, way to organise society. We could do things differently if we wanted to. Albeit I would have hoped that the seven quarters of a century since the Communist Manifesto might have provided a few more appealing glimpses of what an alternative might look like than have been provided.
There is also no reason why an anarchist or communist model of managing the economy also couldn’t provide people with stuff - it would just mean that the people who have over accumulated stuff would have less stuff. I’m a champagne socialist - redistribute the access to champagne to the working classes. Bread and roses.
In a stateless economy, it's not champagne you'd be distributing but heroin and other narcotics, and de facto slavery would be commonplace.
See how the USSR provided people with stuff, compared with say the USA (or even the UK).
The USSR was not stateless - it was a union of Soviet States. But also, just after the revolution, the standard of living for the average Russian did greatly improve. Same in China after their revolution. That doesn't mean everything they did to achieve that was good, or the communist state that did it was good, but it was clearly better than what had come previously under the Tsar and Imperial China. Do people here really think the history of Romanov rule, for example, was better than communist Russia?
But in both cases, it then went very wrong very quickly.
In many ways, yes, in other ways progress was made. Again, I don’t defend state communism or what happened under it, but many people were pulled out of poverty by it, in the USSR education and rights for women (for example) was greatly expanded, and the economies essentially went straight from serfdom into industrialisation.
And what of capitalism? Since Reagan and Thatcher, the birth of neoliberalism and the unleashing of the markets, the world has gone from catastrophe to catastrophe. The capitalist organisation of the economy is literally making the planet uninhabitable. Boom and bust cycles were not destroyed, wages have stagnated whilst profits have soared, and the more the state is cut back from supporting people the more people fall into poverty and immiseration.
So apart from the murders, the famines, the closed borders (to stop people leaving), the rationing, the extreme poverty (for all but a very small social elite who lived like Henry VIII), Soviet Russia was awesome?
I didn't say that - at all.
And capitalism has presided over no state orchestrated murders nor ethnic cleansings, no famines or closed borders, no extreme poverty? I mean, we can just look at the history of United Fruit for one example of many of those things - all in the name of a company wanting to keep its profits going against the democratic wishes of a country that didn't want to be controlled by foreign, private capital. We could look at the history of Iran and ask the question "why is it like it is now?" and think about BP and the movement of oil. We could look at the history of Coca Cola, and state funded militias, and the destruction of whole ecosystems and indigenous societies.
And that's pre Reagan and Thatcher - before we get to how modern resource extraction works, how modern labour conditions are so terrible in factories across the world that child labour is commonplace and that anti-suicide netting is needed to prevent workers jumping out of the windows. How often states support capital in their fights against common people who just don't wish to be oppressed and dispossessed and destroyed - all for a few people to live high on massive profits.
If you want an economic model that allows for extreme poverty and a very small social elite who live in unimaginable wealth - you're living under one.
When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, in which direction was the human traffic?
A header that mentions the "neoliberal consensus" - good to see pieces recognising that states selling off civic assets may not be seen as a good deal by a majority of the public who like those assets and services and aren't profiting off of them being sold whole sale.
I think we're getting into a position similar to the 20th century - the paradoxes of capitalism are coming home to roost and the inaction of states to safeguard the material needs of the average person is leading towards grievance and a willingness to embrace the far right, even if you don't like them. Liberals are unpopular because they refuse to deal with the issues, left wingers are unpopular because the apparatus of capital control most media and would lose out under a more left wing world so scream bloody hell about anyone to the left of Atilla the Hun. And the right are unpopular because their wish casting politics just can't be done.
"embrace the far right"
As Corbyn and his acolytes show, the far left also has significant power for the disaffected.
But the entire force of capital, which includes the private media and the political establishment, go out of there way to make left wing policies solutions the equivalent of literal Stalinism whilst painting far right rhetoric as "common sense". The Overton window can only go one way for those people - it's the ratchet effect. So people seeing how impossible it is to get left wing solutions (and Corbyn is hardly far left, he proposed a social democratic policy platform that, when polled on issue by issue rather then as "Corbyn's policies", did have popular support) become disaffected and those who desire a far right solution get told it is always possible (because every party panders to them) and that when their policy preference is enacted and doesn't work that's because it wasn't done harshly enough and the answer is to go even more right wing.
"But the entire force of capital". You been at the Koolaid again? What is this 1875 and we are discussing the Communist Manifesto?
At heart most people like capitalism. What they want is for capitalism to be fair - so no unfair advantages of birth, of wealth etc. They want hard work rewarded.
What they don't want is bullshit economic theories about 'capital' and the 'politcal establishment' etc
Capitalism does not reward fairness or meritocracy - those things are not inherently capitalistic. The advantages of birth are backed into capitalism; inheritance whether in money or assets is the highest predictor of wealth later in life. People who work hard are not rewarded under capitalism. We recognised under Covid that their were such things as "essential workers" - who were they? Shop assistants, nurses, public servants and the like - are they the most well paid? Does a CEO or shareholder of a company work whatever ratio it has more than their lowest paid worker? Capitalism rewards those who help accumulate more capital for capitalists. To do otherwise is counter to capitalist mode of production.
So what is your solution then?
Hard work is rewarded - but yes every job comes with its own salary, and some of them are grossly unfair. And yet. Is it right for a CEO to earn millions? Maybe, if they can show that their input actual generates substantially more than that.
Should lower paid jobs be better paid? Yes - in an ideal world people would not need extra money from government if they are working a 37.5h week. But is it right that I earn more as a Uni lecturer than someone that works in retail? I bring a lifetime of experience of my subject to the role, you can be trained for a job on the tills and stacking shelves in days.
Capitalism cannot be left to run without check, for sure, but I have not seen a better arrangement suggested. What do you propose?
From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs - I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable. What that means practically? If you're in favour of a state that would mean, in part, state management of resources, workers councils who own the means of production, the seizing and redistribution of assets from the rich to the poor, etc. etc. If you're not in favour of a state (personally I'm not) you would do what the anarchists did in places like Spain at the outbreak of the civil war and what is happening in Rojava now; community and workers councils making democratic decisions about issues and deciding what to do and trade for themselves. Is this Utopian - yes, of course.
I would be happy in the mean time for more social democratic reform, wealth redistribution, empowerment of unions and individual workers and an increased social safety net. These are the things that would tackle the immediate problems that the "free market" are clearly making worse - inflation (to a degree, climate change will increase the scarcity of lots of essential resources), housing, poverty and malnourishment, etc.
"I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable."
Because HUMAN NATURE. Its how we are wired, I'm afraid. People want stuff. So you basically are an unapologetic communist. Are you Ash Sarkar? She of the luxury communism bent?
In feudal times there were lots of people, including many of those at the bottom of society, who believed it was the natural and right order of things, and they could not conceive of society being ordered in any different way.
There's nothing in human nature that makes capitalism the only, or optimal, way to organise society. We could do things differently if we wanted to. Albeit I would have hoped that the seven quarters of a century since the Communist Manifesto might have provided a few more appealing glimpses of what an alternative might look like than have been provided.
There is also no reason why an anarchist or communist model of managing the economy also couldn’t provide people with stuff - it would just mean that the people who have over accumulated stuff would have less stuff. I’m a champagne socialist - redistribute the access to champagne to the working classes. Bread and roses.
In a stateless economy, it's not champagne you'd be distributing but heroin and other narcotics, and de facto slavery would be commonplace.
See how the USSR provided people with stuff, compared with say the USA (or even the UK).
The USSR was not stateless - it was a union of Soviet States. But also, just after the revolution, the standard of living for the average Russian did greatly improve. Same in China after their revolution. That doesn't mean everything they did to achieve that was good, or the communist state that did it was good, but it was clearly better than what had come previously under the Tsar and Imperial China. Do people here really think the history of Romanov rule, for example, was better than communist Russia?
But in both cases, it then went very wrong very quickly.
In many ways, yes, in other ways progress was made. Again, I don’t defend state communism or what happened under it, but many people were pulled out of poverty by it, in the USSR education and rights for women (for example) was greatly expanded, and the economies essentially went straight from serfdom into industrialisation.
And what of capitalism? Since Reagan and Thatcher, the birth of neoliberalism and the unleashing of the markets, the world has gone from catastrophe to catastrophe. The capitalist organisation of the economy is literally making the planet uninhabitable. Boom and bust cycles were not destroyed, wages have stagnated whilst profits have soared, and the more the state is cut back from supporting people the more people fall into poverty and immiseration.
So apart from the murders, the famines, the closed borders (to stop people leaving), the rationing, the extreme poverty (for all but a very small social elite who lived like Henry VIII), Soviet Russia was awesome?
I didn't say that - at all.
And capitalism has presided over no state orchestrated murders nor ethnic cleansings, no famines or closed borders, no extreme poverty? I mean, we can just look at the history of United Fruit for one example of many of those things - all in the name of a company wanting to keep its profits going against the democratic wishes of a country that didn't want to be controlled by foreign, private capital. We could look at the history of Iran and ask the question "why is it like it is now?" and think about BP and the movement of oil. We could look at the history of Coca Cola, and state funded militias, and the destruction of whole ecosystems and indigenous societies.
And that's pre Reagan and Thatcher - before we get to how modern resource extraction works, how modern labour conditions are so terrible in factories across the world that child labour is commonplace and that anti-suicide netting is needed to prevent workers jumping out of the windows. How often states support capital in their fights against common people who just don't wish to be oppressed and dispossessed and destroyed - all for a few people to live high on massive profits.
If you want an economic model that allows for extreme poverty and a very small social elite who live in unimaginable wealth - you're living under one.
Capitalism is bad for the environment but communism is catastrophic. Capitalism pollutes oceans but communism dries them up altogether - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea
And the Chinese Great Leap forward killed more people in 3 years than capitalism in a century. A number equivalent to the population of the UK at the time.
Have to say i am surprised the gap between the 2 Tory Parties have narrowed from 17 to 14 in a week
Deltapoll @DeltapollUK · 1h 🚨🚨New Voting Intention🚨🚨 Labour lead narrows to fourteen points in the latest results from Deltapoll. Con 29% (+1) Lab 43% (-2) Lib Dem 10% (+1) Other 19% (+2) Fieldwork: 26th - 29th January 2024 Sample: 2,064 GB adults (Changes from 19th - 22nd January 2024)
Deltapoll had Labour with an eleven point lead only six weeks ago. ( https://deltapoll.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Deltapoll-231211_trackers.pdf ) . You got a hard on over that too. Two weeks later it went up to 14 points for the New Year. Silence from you. We heard nary a peep from you over the sixteen and seventeen point leads they achieved in the January interim either.
Perhaps you are a bit...selective... in the polls you choose to repost?
A header that mentions the "neoliberal consensus" - good to see pieces recognising that states selling off civic assets may not be seen as a good deal by a majority of the public who like those assets and services and aren't profiting off of them being sold whole sale.
I think we're getting into a position similar to the 20th century - the paradoxes of capitalism are coming home to roost and the inaction of states to safeguard the material needs of the average person is leading towards grievance and a willingness to embrace the far right, even if you don't like them. Liberals are unpopular because they refuse to deal with the issues, left wingers are unpopular because the apparatus of capital control most media and would lose out under a more left wing world so scream bloody hell about anyone to the left of Atilla the Hun. And the right are unpopular because their wish casting politics just can't be done.
"embrace the far right"
As Corbyn and his acolytes show, the far left also has significant power for the disaffected.
But the entire force of capital, which includes the private media and the political establishment, go out of there way to make left wing policies solutions the equivalent of literal Stalinism whilst painting far right rhetoric as "common sense". The Overton window can only go one way for those people - it's the ratchet effect. So people seeing how impossible it is to get left wing solutions (and Corbyn is hardly far left, he proposed a social democratic policy platform that, when polled on issue by issue rather then as "Corbyn's policies", did have popular support) become disaffected and those who desire a far right solution get told it is always possible (because every party panders to them) and that when their policy preference is enacted and doesn't work that's because it wasn't done harshly enough and the answer is to go even more right wing.
"But the entire force of capital". You been at the Koolaid again? What is this 1875 and we are discussing the Communist Manifesto?
At heart most people like capitalism. What they want is for capitalism to be fair - so no unfair advantages of birth, of wealth etc. They want hard work rewarded.
What they don't want is bullshit economic theories about 'capital' and the 'politcal establishment' etc
Capitalism does not reward fairness or meritocracy - those things are not inherently capitalistic. The advantages of birth are backed into capitalism; inheritance whether in money or assets is the highest predictor of wealth later in life. People who work hard are not rewarded under capitalism. We recognised under Covid that their were such things as "essential workers" - who were they? Shop assistants, nurses, public servants and the like - are they the most well paid? Does a CEO or shareholder of a company work whatever ratio it has more than their lowest paid worker? Capitalism rewards those who help accumulate more capital for capitalists. To do otherwise is counter to capitalist mode of production.
So what is your solution then?
Hard work is rewarded - but yes every job comes with its own salary, and some of them are grossly unfair. And yet. Is it right for a CEO to earn millions? Maybe, if they can show that their input actual generates substantially more than that.
Should lower paid jobs be better paid? Yes - in an ideal world people would not need extra money from government if they are working a 37.5h week. But is it right that I earn more as a Uni lecturer than someone that works in retail? I bring a lifetime of experience of my subject to the role, you can be trained for a job on the tills and stacking shelves in days.
Capitalism cannot be left to run without check, for sure, but I have not seen a better arrangement suggested. What do you propose?
From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs - I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable. What that means practically? If you're in favour of a state that would mean, in part, state management of resources, workers councils who own the means of production, the seizing and redistribution of assets from the rich to the poor, etc. etc. If you're not in favour of a state (personally I'm not) you would do what the anarchists did in places like Spain at the outbreak of the civil war and what is happening in Rojava now; community and workers councils making democratic decisions about issues and deciding what to do and trade for themselves. Is this Utopian - yes, of course.
I would be happy in the mean time for more social democratic reform, wealth redistribution, empowerment of unions and individual workers and an increased social safety net. These are the things that would tackle the immediate problems that the "free market" are clearly making worse - inflation (to a degree, climate change will increase the scarcity of lots of essential resources), housing, poverty and malnourishment, etc.
"I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable."
Because HUMAN NATURE. Its how we are wired, I'm afraid. People want stuff. So you basically are an unapologetic communist. Are you Ash Sarkar? She of the luxury communism bent?
In feudal times there were lots of people, including many of those at the bottom of society, who believed it was the natural and right order of things, and they could not conceive of society being ordered in any different way.
There's nothing in human nature that makes capitalism the only, or optimal, way to organise society. We could do things differently if we wanted to. Albeit I would have hoped that the seven quarters of a century since the Communist Manifesto might have provided a few more appealing glimpses of what an alternative might look like than have been provided.
There is also no reason why an anarchist or communist model of managing the economy also couldn’t provide people with stuff - it would just mean that the people who have over accumulated stuff would have less stuff. I’m a champagne socialist - redistribute the access to champagne to the working classes. Bread and roses.
In a stateless economy, it's not champagne you'd be distributing but heroin and other narcotics, and de facto slavery would be commonplace.
See how the USSR provided people with stuff, compared with say the USA (or even the UK).
The USSR was not stateless - it was a union of Soviet States. But also, just after the revolution, the standard of living for the average Russian did greatly improve. Same in China after their revolution. That doesn't mean everything they did to achieve that was good, or the communist state that did it was good, but it was clearly better than what had come previously under the Tsar and Imperial China. Do people here really think the history of Romanov rule, for example, was better than communist Russia?
But in both cases, it then went very wrong very quickly.
In many ways, yes, in other ways progress was made. Again, I don’t defend state communism or what happened under it, but many people were pulled out of poverty by it, in the USSR education and rights for women (for example) was greatly expanded, and the economies essentially went straight from serfdom into industrialisation.
And what of capitalism? Since Reagan and Thatcher, the birth of neoliberalism and the unleashing of the markets, the world has gone from catastrophe to catastrophe. The capitalist organisation of the economy is literally making the planet uninhabitable. Boom and bust cycles were not destroyed, wages have stagnated whilst profits have soared, and the more the state is cut back from supporting people the more people fall into poverty and immiseration.
So apart from the murders, the famines, the closed borders (to stop people leaving), the rationing, the extreme poverty (for all but a very small social elite who lived like Henry VIII), Soviet Russia was awesome?
I didn't say that - at all.
And capitalism has presided over no state orchestrated murders nor ethnic cleansings, no famines or closed borders, no extreme poverty? I mean, we can just look at the history of United Fruit for one example of many of those things - all in the name of a company wanting to keep its profits going against the democratic wishes of a country that didn't want to be controlled by foreign, private capital. We could look at the history of Iran and ask the question "why is it like it is now?" and think about BP and the movement of oil. We could look at the history of Coca Cola, and state funded militias, and the destruction of whole ecosystems and indigenous societies.
And that's pre Reagan and Thatcher - before we get to how modern resource extraction works, how modern labour conditions are so terrible in factories across the world that child labour is commonplace and that anti-suicide netting is needed to prevent workers jumping out of the windows. How often states support capital in their fights against common people who just don't wish to be oppressed and dispossessed and destroyed - all for a few people to live high on massive profits.
If you want an economic model that allows for extreme poverty and a very small social elite who live in unimaginable wealth - you're living under one.
When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, in which direction was the human traffic?
Again, I do not like nor defend the USSR or its model for economic management - as I have said I am more on the anarchist left. More Bookchin than Bolshevik, more Kropotkin that Kremlin, more Machnovist than Maoist. Can you explain how capitalism is so much better, has no deaths or atrocities under its belt, and is a shining city on a hill? Or is it only I who has to defend my positions from purposeful strawman after strawman?
A header that mentions the "neoliberal consensus" - good to see pieces recognising that states selling off civic assets may not be seen as a good deal by a majority of the public who like those assets and services and aren't profiting off of them being sold whole sale.
I think we're getting into a position similar to the 20th century - the paradoxes of capitalism are coming home to roost and the inaction of states to safeguard the material needs of the average person is leading towards grievance and a willingness to embrace the far right, even if you don't like them. Liberals are unpopular because they refuse to deal with the issues, left wingers are unpopular because the apparatus of capital control most media and would lose out under a more left wing world so scream bloody hell about anyone to the left of Atilla the Hun. And the right are unpopular because their wish casting politics just can't be done.
"embrace the far right"
As Corbyn and his acolytes show, the far left also has significant power for the disaffected.
But the entire force of capital, which includes the private media and the political establishment, go out of there way to make left wing policies solutions the equivalent of literal Stalinism whilst painting far right rhetoric as "common sense". The Overton window can only go one way for those people - it's the ratchet effect. So people seeing how impossible it is to get left wing solutions (and Corbyn is hardly far left, he proposed a social democratic policy platform that, when polled on issue by issue rather then as "Corbyn's policies", did have popular support) become disaffected and those who desire a far right solution get told it is always possible (because every party panders to them) and that when their policy preference is enacted and doesn't work that's because it wasn't done harshly enough and the answer is to go even more right wing.
"But the entire force of capital". You been at the Koolaid again? What is this 1875 and we are discussing the Communist Manifesto?
At heart most people like capitalism. What they want is for capitalism to be fair - so no unfair advantages of birth, of wealth etc. They want hard work rewarded.
What they don't want is bullshit economic theories about 'capital' and the 'politcal establishment' etc
Capitalism does not reward fairness or meritocracy - those things are not inherently capitalistic. The advantages of birth are backed into capitalism; inheritance whether in money or assets is the highest predictor of wealth later in life. People who work hard are not rewarded under capitalism. We recognised under Covid that their were such things as "essential workers" - who were they? Shop assistants, nurses, public servants and the like - are they the most well paid? Does a CEO or shareholder of a company work whatever ratio it has more than their lowest paid worker? Capitalism rewards those who help accumulate more capital for capitalists. To do otherwise is counter to capitalist mode of production.
So what is your solution then?
Hard work is rewarded - but yes every job comes with its own salary, and some of them are grossly unfair. And yet. Is it right for a CEO to earn millions? Maybe, if they can show that their input actual generates substantially more than that.
Should lower paid jobs be better paid? Yes - in an ideal world people would not need extra money from government if they are working a 37.5h week. But is it right that I earn more as a Uni lecturer than someone that works in retail? I bring a lifetime of experience of my subject to the role, you can be trained for a job on the tills and stacking shelves in days.
Capitalism cannot be left to run without check, for sure, but I have not seen a better arrangement suggested. What do you propose?
From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs - I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable. What that means practically? If you're in favour of a state that would mean, in part, state management of resources, workers councils who own the means of production, the seizing and redistribution of assets from the rich to the poor, etc. etc. If you're not in favour of a state (personally I'm not) you would do what the anarchists did in places like Spain at the outbreak of the civil war and what is happening in Rojava now; community and workers councils making democratic decisions about issues and deciding what to do and trade for themselves. Is this Utopian - yes, of course.
I would be happy in the mean time for more social democratic reform, wealth redistribution, empowerment of unions and individual workers and an increased social safety net. These are the things that would tackle the immediate problems that the "free market" are clearly making worse - inflation (to a degree, climate change will increase the scarcity of lots of essential resources), housing, poverty and malnourishment, etc.
"I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable."
Because HUMAN NATURE. Its how we are wired, I'm afraid. People want stuff. So you basically are an unapologetic communist. Are you Ash Sarkar? She of the luxury communism bent?
In feudal times there were lots of people, including many of those at the bottom of society, who believed it was the natural and right order of things, and they could not conceive of society being ordered in any different way.
There's nothing in human nature that makes capitalism the only, or optimal, way to organise society. We could do things differently if we wanted to. Albeit I would have hoped that the seven quarters of a century since the Communist Manifesto might have provided a few more appealing glimpses of what an alternative might look like than have been provided.
There is also no reason why an anarchist or communist model of managing the economy also couldn’t provide people with stuff - it would just mean that the people who have over accumulated stuff would have less stuff. I’m a champagne socialist - redistribute the access to champagne to the working classes. Bread and roses.
In a stateless economy, it's not champagne you'd be distributing but heroin and other narcotics, and de facto slavery would be commonplace.
See how the USSR provided people with stuff, compared with say the USA (or even the UK).
The USSR was not stateless - it was a union of Soviet States. But also, just after the revolution, the standard of living for the average Russian did greatly improve. Same in China after their revolution. That doesn't mean everything they did to achieve that was good, or the communist state that did it was good, but it was clearly better than what had come previously under the Tsar and Imperial China. Do people here really think the history of Romanov rule, for example, was better than communist Russia?
But in both cases, it then went very wrong very quickly.
In many ways, yes, in other ways progress was made. Again, I don’t defend state communism or what happened under it, but many people were pulled out of poverty by it, in the USSR education and rights for women (for example) was greatly expanded, and the economies essentially went straight from serfdom into industrialisation.
And what of capitalism? Since Reagan and Thatcher, the birth of neoliberalism and the unleashing of the markets, the world has gone from catastrophe to catastrophe. The capitalist organisation of the economy is literally making the planet uninhabitable. Boom and bust cycles were not destroyed, wages have stagnated whilst profits have soared, and the more the state is cut back from supporting people the more people fall into poverty and immiseration.
So apart from the murders, the famines, the closed borders (to stop people leaving), the rationing, the extreme poverty (for all but a very small social elite who lived like Henry VIII), Soviet Russia was awesome?
I didn't say that - at all.
And capitalism has presided over no state orchestrated murders nor ethnic cleansings, no famines or closed borders, no extreme poverty? I mean, we can just look at the history of United Fruit for one example of many of those things - all in the name of a company wanting to keep its profits going against the democratic wishes of a country that didn't want to be controlled by foreign, private capital. We could look at the history of Iran and ask the question "why is it like it is now?" and think about BP and the movement of oil. We could look at the history of Coca Cola, and state funded militias, and the destruction of whole ecosystems and indigenous societies.
And that's pre Reagan and Thatcher - before we get to how modern resource extraction works, how modern labour conditions are so terrible in factories across the world that child labour is commonplace and that anti-suicide netting is needed to prevent workers jumping out of the windows. How often states support capital in their fights against common people who just don't wish to be oppressed and dispossessed and destroyed - all for a few people to live high on massive profits.
If you want an economic model that allows for extreme poverty and a very small social elite who live in unimaginable wealth - you're living under one.
When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, in which direction was the human traffic?
Again, I do not like nor defend the USSR or its model for economic management - as I have said I am more on the anarchist left. More Bookchin than Bolshevik, more Kropotkin that Kremlin, more Machnovist than Maoist. Can you explain how capitalism is so much better, has no deaths or atrocities under its belt, and is a shining city on a hill? Or is it only I who has to defend my positions from purposeful strawman after strawman?
Sighs this argument is once again no good being better if it isn't perferct....has capitilism caused deaths and misery yes.....still far better than the left has ever created though via communism which despite you claiming to be an anarchist is what you espouse. If you were an anarchist it would be quite ok for me to come shoot you in the head and there would be no come back because anarchy is no laws....I expect you wouldn't enjoy that
We are having a very productive day at work, and as the resident Grammar Nazi I have been dragged into this debate.
You’re at a bar and you want to order 3 Grey Goose drinks, do you tell the bar staff
1) I want three shots of Grey Goose
2) I want three shots of Grey Geese
3) I want a flock of Vodka
You ask for Grey Goose while holding up 3 fingers, obviously...
Might get you one triple.
Correct answer is "three greys goose", which also has absolutely zero chance of being misinterpreted.
But you wouldn't order "three Johnnies Walker", would you?
Me, I'd say "three grey gooses".
Rationale: The drink is sufficiently removed from what it's named after to allow you to play fast and loose and just choose what sounds best - which is the above.
What's wrong with "Grey Goose times three"?
I would offer to field test phrases in a sample of hostelries, but it's a work night...
A header that mentions the "neoliberal consensus" - good to see pieces recognising that states selling off civic assets may not be seen as a good deal by a majority of the public who like those assets and services and aren't profiting off of them being sold whole sale.
I think we're getting into a position similar to the 20th century - the paradoxes of capitalism are coming home to roost and the inaction of states to safeguard the material needs of the average person is leading towards grievance and a willingness to embrace the far right, even if you don't like them. Liberals are unpopular because they refuse to deal with the issues, left wingers are unpopular because the apparatus of capital control most media and would lose out under a more left wing world so scream bloody hell about anyone to the left of Atilla the Hun. And the right are unpopular because their wish casting politics just can't be done.
"embrace the far right"
As Corbyn and his acolytes show, the far left also has significant power for the disaffected.
But the entire force of capital, which includes the private media and the political establishment, go out of there way to make left wing policies solutions the equivalent of literal Stalinism whilst painting far right rhetoric as "common sense". The Overton window can only go one way for those people - it's the ratchet effect. So people seeing how impossible it is to get left wing solutions (and Corbyn is hardly far left, he proposed a social democratic policy platform that, when polled on issue by issue rather then as "Corbyn's policies", did have popular support) become disaffected and those who desire a far right solution get told it is always possible (because every party panders to them) and that when their policy preference is enacted and doesn't work that's because it wasn't done harshly enough and the answer is to go even more right wing.
"But the entire force of capital". You been at the Koolaid again? What is this 1875 and we are discussing the Communist Manifesto?
At heart most people like capitalism. What they want is for capitalism to be fair - so no unfair advantages of birth, of wealth etc. They want hard work rewarded.
What they don't want is bullshit economic theories about 'capital' and the 'politcal establishment' etc
Capitalism does not reward fairness or meritocracy - those things are not inherently capitalistic. The advantages of birth are backed into capitalism; inheritance whether in money or assets is the highest predictor of wealth later in life. People who work hard are not rewarded under capitalism. We recognised under Covid that their were such things as "essential workers" - who were they? Shop assistants, nurses, public servants and the like - are they the most well paid? Does a CEO or shareholder of a company work whatever ratio it has more than their lowest paid worker? Capitalism rewards those who help accumulate more capital for capitalists. To do otherwise is counter to capitalist mode of production.
So what is your solution then?
Hard work is rewarded - but yes every job comes with its own salary, and some of them are grossly unfair. And yet. Is it right for a CEO to earn millions? Maybe, if they can show that their input actual generates substantially more than that.
Should lower paid jobs be better paid? Yes - in an ideal world people would not need extra money from government if they are working a 37.5h week. But is it right that I earn more as a Uni lecturer than someone that works in retail? I bring a lifetime of experience of my subject to the role, you can be trained for a job on the tills and stacking shelves in days.
Capitalism cannot be left to run without check, for sure, but I have not seen a better arrangement suggested. What do you propose?
From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs - I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable. What that means practically? If you're in favour of a state that would mean, in part, state management of resources, workers councils who own the means of production, the seizing and redistribution of assets from the rich to the poor, etc. etc. If you're not in favour of a state (personally I'm not) you would do what the anarchists did in places like Spain at the outbreak of the civil war and what is happening in Rojava now; community and workers councils making democratic decisions about issues and deciding what to do and trade for themselves. Is this Utopian - yes, of course.
I would be happy in the mean time for more social democratic reform, wealth redistribution, empowerment of unions and individual workers and an increased social safety net. These are the things that would tackle the immediate problems that the "free market" are clearly making worse - inflation (to a degree, climate change will increase the scarcity of lots of essential resources), housing, poverty and malnourishment, etc.
"I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable."
Because HUMAN NATURE. Its how we are wired, I'm afraid. People want stuff. So you basically are an unapologetic communist. Are you Ash Sarkar? She of the luxury communism bent?
In feudal times there were lots of people, including many of those at the bottom of society, who believed it was the natural and right order of things, and they could not conceive of society being ordered in any different way.
There's nothing in human nature that makes capitalism the only, or optimal, way to organise society. We could do things differently if we wanted to. Albeit I would have hoped that the seven quarters of a century since the Communist Manifesto might have provided a few more appealing glimpses of what an alternative might look like than have been provided.
There is also no reason why an anarchist or communist model of managing the economy also couldn’t provide people with stuff - it would just mean that the people who have over accumulated stuff would have less stuff. I’m a champagne socialist - redistribute the access to champagne to the working classes. Bread and roses.
In a stateless economy, it's not champagne you'd be distributing but heroin and other narcotics, and de facto slavery would be commonplace.
See how the USSR provided people with stuff, compared with say the USA (or even the UK).
The USSR was not stateless - it was a union of Soviet States. But also, just after the revolution, the standard of living for the average Russian did greatly improve. Same in China after their revolution. That doesn't mean everything they did to achieve that was good, or the communist state that did it was good, but it was clearly better than what had come previously under the Tsar and Imperial China. Do people here really think the history of Romanov rule, for example, was better than communist Russia?
But in both cases, it then went very wrong very quickly.
In many ways, yes, in other ways progress was made. Again, I don’t defend state communism or what happened under it, but many people were pulled out of poverty by it, in the USSR education and rights for women (for example) was greatly expanded, and the economies essentially went straight from serfdom into industrialisation.
And what of capitalism? Since Reagan and Thatcher, the birth of neoliberalism and the unleashing of the markets, the world has gone from catastrophe to catastrophe. The capitalist organisation of the economy is literally making the planet uninhabitable. Boom and bust cycles were not destroyed, wages have stagnated whilst profits have soared, and the more the state is cut back from supporting people the more people fall into poverty and immiseration.
So apart from the murders, the famines, the closed borders (to stop people leaving), the rationing, the extreme poverty (for all but a very small social elite who lived like Henry VIII), Soviet Russia was awesome?
I didn't say that - at all.
And capitalism has presided over no state orchestrated murders nor ethnic cleansings, no famines or closed borders, no extreme poverty? I mean, we can just look at the history of United Fruit for one example of many of those things - all in the name of a company wanting to keep its profits going against the democratic wishes of a country that didn't want to be controlled by foreign, private capital. We could look at the history of Iran and ask the question "why is it like it is now?" and think about BP and the movement of oil. We could look at the history of Coca Cola, and state funded militias, and the destruction of whole ecosystems and indigenous societies.
And that's pre Reagan and Thatcher - before we get to how modern resource extraction works, how modern labour conditions are so terrible in factories across the world that child labour is commonplace and that anti-suicide netting is needed to prevent workers jumping out of the windows. How often states support capital in their fights against common people who just don't wish to be oppressed and dispossessed and destroyed - all for a few people to live high on massive profits.
If you want an economic model that allows for extreme poverty and a very small social elite who live in unimaginable wealth - you're living under one.
When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, in which direction was the human traffic?
Again, I do not like nor defend the USSR or its model for economic management - as I have said I am more on the anarchist left. More Bookchin than Bolshevik, more Kropotkin that Kremlin, more Machnovist than Maoist. Can you explain how capitalism is so much better, has no deaths or atrocities under its belt, and is a shining city on a hill? Or is it only I who has to defend my positions from purposeful strawman after strawman?
Straw man? You're the one defending an almost entirely theoretical model. Your position is essentially the same as the infamous YouGov poll last week that said "choose between what you have and something hypothetically wonderful". You have dreams and aspirations, fine, but there is no bodycount in your chosen philosophy because it has been tried only sporadically and on a tiny scale.
What countries have successfully implemented your preferred form of governance so we can compare?
A header that mentions the "neoliberal consensus" - good to see pieces recognising that states selling off civic assets may not be seen as a good deal by a majority of the public who like those assets and services and aren't profiting off of them being sold whole sale.
I think we're getting into a position similar to the 20th century - the paradoxes of capitalism are coming home to roost and the inaction of states to safeguard the material needs of the average person is leading towards grievance and a willingness to embrace the far right, even if you don't like them. Liberals are unpopular because they refuse to deal with the issues, left wingers are unpopular because the apparatus of capital control most media and would lose out under a more left wing world so scream bloody hell about anyone to the left of Atilla the Hun. And the right are unpopular because their wish casting politics just can't be done.
"embrace the far right"
As Corbyn and his acolytes show, the far left also has significant power for the disaffected.
But the entire force of capital, which includes the private media and the political establishment, go out of there way to make left wing policies solutions the equivalent of literal Stalinism whilst painting far right rhetoric as "common sense". The Overton window can only go one way for those people - it's the ratchet effect. So people seeing how impossible it is to get left wing solutions (and Corbyn is hardly far left, he proposed a social democratic policy platform that, when polled on issue by issue rather then as "Corbyn's policies", did have popular support) become disaffected and those who desire a far right solution get told it is always possible (because every party panders to them) and that when their policy preference is enacted and doesn't work that's because it wasn't done harshly enough and the answer is to go even more right wing.
"But the entire force of capital". You been at the Koolaid again? What is this 1875 and we are discussing the Communist Manifesto?
At heart most people like capitalism. What they want is for capitalism to be fair - so no unfair advantages of birth, of wealth etc. They want hard work rewarded.
What they don't want is bullshit economic theories about 'capital' and the 'politcal establishment' etc
Capitalism does not reward fairness or meritocracy - those things are not inherently capitalistic. The advantages of birth are backed into capitalism; inheritance whether in money or assets is the highest predictor of wealth later in life. People who work hard are not rewarded under capitalism. We recognised under Covid that their were such things as "essential workers" - who were they? Shop assistants, nurses, public servants and the like - are they the most well paid? Does a CEO or shareholder of a company work whatever ratio it has more than their lowest paid worker? Capitalism rewards those who help accumulate more capital for capitalists. To do otherwise is counter to capitalist mode of production.
So what is your solution then?
Hard work is rewarded - but yes every job comes with its own salary, and some of them are grossly unfair. And yet. Is it right for a CEO to earn millions? Maybe, if they can show that their input actual generates substantially more than that.
Should lower paid jobs be better paid? Yes - in an ideal world people would not need extra money from government if they are working a 37.5h week. But is it right that I earn more as a Uni lecturer than someone that works in retail? I bring a lifetime of experience of my subject to the role, you can be trained for a job on the tills and stacking shelves in days.
Capitalism cannot be left to run without check, for sure, but I have not seen a better arrangement suggested. What do you propose?
From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs - I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable. What that means practically? If you're in favour of a state that would mean, in part, state management of resources, workers councils who own the means of production, the seizing and redistribution of assets from the rich to the poor, etc. etc. If you're not in favour of a state (personally I'm not) you would do what the anarchists did in places like Spain at the outbreak of the civil war and what is happening in Rojava now; community and workers councils making democratic decisions about issues and deciding what to do and trade for themselves. Is this Utopian - yes, of course.
I would be happy in the mean time for more social democratic reform, wealth redistribution, empowerment of unions and individual workers and an increased social safety net. These are the things that would tackle the immediate problems that the "free market" are clearly making worse - inflation (to a degree, climate change will increase the scarcity of lots of essential resources), housing, poverty and malnourishment, etc.
"I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable."
Because HUMAN NATURE. Its how we are wired, I'm afraid. People want stuff. So you basically are an unapologetic communist. Are you Ash Sarkar? She of the luxury communism bent?
In feudal times there were lots of people, including many of those at the bottom of society, who believed it was the natural and right order of things, and they could not conceive of society being ordered in any different way.
There's nothing in human nature that makes capitalism the only, or optimal, way to organise society. We could do things differently if we wanted to. Albeit I would have hoped that the seven quarters of a century since the Communist Manifesto might have provided a few more appealing glimpses of what an alternative might look like than have been provided.
There is also no reason why an anarchist or communist model of managing the economy also couldn’t provide people with stuff - it would just mean that the people who have over accumulated stuff would have less stuff. I’m a champagne socialist - redistribute the access to champagne to the working classes. Bread and roses.
In a stateless economy, it's not champagne you'd be distributing but heroin and other narcotics, and de facto slavery would be commonplace.
See how the USSR provided people with stuff, compared with say the USA (or even the UK).
The USSR was not stateless - it was a union of Soviet States. But also, just after the revolution, the standard of living for the average Russian did greatly improve. Same in China after their revolution. That doesn't mean everything they did to achieve that was good, or the communist state that did it was good, but it was clearly better than what had come previously under the Tsar and Imperial China. Do people here really think the history of Romanov rule, for example, was better than communist Russia?
But in both cases, it then went very wrong very quickly.
In many ways, yes, in other ways progress was made. Again, I don’t defend state communism or what happened under it, but many people were pulled out of poverty by it, in the USSR education and rights for women (for example) was greatly expanded, and the economies essentially went straight from serfdom into industrialisation.
And what of capitalism? Since Reagan and Thatcher, the birth of neoliberalism and the unleashing of the markets, the world has gone from catastrophe to catastrophe. The capitalist organisation of the economy is literally making the planet uninhabitable. Boom and bust cycles were not destroyed, wages have stagnated whilst profits have soared, and the more the state is cut back from supporting people the more people fall into poverty and immiseration.
So apart from the murders, the famines, the closed borders (to stop people leaving), the rationing, the extreme poverty (for all but a very small social elite who lived like Henry VIII), Soviet Russia was awesome?
I didn't say that - at all.
And capitalism has presided over no state orchestrated murders nor ethnic cleansings, no famines or closed borders, no extreme poverty? I mean, we can just look at the history of United Fruit for one example of many of those things - all in the name of a company wanting to keep its profits going against the democratic wishes of a country that didn't want to be controlled by foreign, private capital. We could look at the history of Iran and ask the question "why is it like it is now?" and think about BP and the movement of oil. We could look at the history of Coca Cola, and state funded militias, and the destruction of whole ecosystems and indigenous societies.
And that's pre Reagan and Thatcher - before we get to how modern resource extraction works, how modern labour conditions are so terrible in factories across the world that child labour is commonplace and that anti-suicide netting is needed to prevent workers jumping out of the windows. How often states support capital in their fights against common people who just don't wish to be oppressed and dispossessed and destroyed - all for a few people to live high on massive profits.
If you want an economic model that allows for extreme poverty and a very small social elite who live in unimaginable wealth - you're living under one.
When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, in which direction was the human traffic?
Again, I do not like nor defend the USSR or its model for economic management - as I have said I am more on the anarchist left. More Bookchin than Bolshevik, more Kropotkin that Kremlin, more Machnovist than Maoist. Can you explain how capitalism is so much better, has no deaths or atrocities under its belt, and is a shining city on a hill? Or is it only I who has to defend my positions from purposeful strawman after strawman?
Straw man? You're the one defending an almost entirely theoretical model. Your position is essentially the same as the infamous YouGov poll last week that said "choose between what you have and something hypothetically wonderful". You have dreams and aspirations, fine, but there is no bodycount in your chosen philosophy because it has been tried only sporadically and on a tiny scale.
What countries have successfully implemented your preferred form of governance so we can compare?
I'm not sure anarchism qualifies as a form of "governance".
Although I've heard it said that at least it's better than no governance at all.
We are having a very productive day at work, and as the resident Grammar Nazi I have been dragged into this debate.
You’re at a bar and you want to order 3 Grey Goose drinks, do you tell the bar staff
1) I want three shots of Grey Goose
2) I want three shots of Grey Geese
3) I want a flock of Vodka
You ask for Grey Goose while holding up 3 fingers, obviously...
Might get you one triple.
Correct answer is "three greys goose", which also has absolutely zero chance of being misinterpreted.
But you wouldn't order "three Johnnies Walker", would you?
Me, I'd say "three grey gooses".
Rationale: The drink is sufficiently removed from what it's named after to allow you to play fast and loose and just choose what sounds best - which is the above.
What's wrong with "Grey Goose times three"?
I would offer to field test phrases in a sample of hostelries, but it's a work night...
Could always order a proper drink instead…. Grey Goose, and neat vodka in general, is the preserve of Eastern Europeans, mob bosses, and wannabes.
A header that mentions the "neoliberal consensus" - good to see pieces recognising that states selling off civic assets may not be seen as a good deal by a majority of the public who like those assets and services and aren't profiting off of them being sold whole sale.
I think we're getting into a position similar to the 20th century - the paradoxes of capitalism are coming home to roost and the inaction of states to safeguard the material needs of the average person is leading towards grievance and a willingness to embrace the far right, even if you don't like them. Liberals are unpopular because they refuse to deal with the issues, left wingers are unpopular because the apparatus of capital control most media and would lose out under a more left wing world so scream bloody hell about anyone to the left of Atilla the Hun. And the right are unpopular because their wish casting politics just can't be done.
"embrace the far right"
As Corbyn and his acolytes show, the far left also has significant power for the disaffected.
But the entire force of capital, which includes the private media and the political establishment, go out of there way to make left wing policies solutions the equivalent of literal Stalinism whilst painting far right rhetoric as "common sense". The Overton window can only go one way for those people - it's the ratchet effect. So people seeing how impossible it is to get left wing solutions (and Corbyn is hardly far left, he proposed a social democratic policy platform that, when polled on issue by issue rather then as "Corbyn's policies", did have popular support) become disaffected and those who desire a far right solution get told it is always possible (because every party panders to them) and that when their policy preference is enacted and doesn't work that's because it wasn't done harshly enough and the answer is to go even more right wing.
"But the entire force of capital". You been at the Koolaid again? What is this 1875 and we are discussing the Communist Manifesto?
At heart most people like capitalism. What they want is for capitalism to be fair - so no unfair advantages of birth, of wealth etc. They want hard work rewarded.
What they don't want is bullshit economic theories about 'capital' and the 'politcal establishment' etc
Capitalism does not reward fairness or meritocracy - those things are not inherently capitalistic. The advantages of birth are backed into capitalism; inheritance whether in money or assets is the highest predictor of wealth later in life. People who work hard are not rewarded under capitalism. We recognised under Covid that their were such things as "essential workers" - who were they? Shop assistants, nurses, public servants and the like - are they the most well paid? Does a CEO or shareholder of a company work whatever ratio it has more than their lowest paid worker? Capitalism rewards those who help accumulate more capital for capitalists. To do otherwise is counter to capitalist mode of production.
So what is your solution then?
Hard work is rewarded - but yes every job comes with its own salary, and some of them are grossly unfair. And yet. Is it right for a CEO to earn millions? Maybe, if they can show that their input actual generates substantially more than that.
Should lower paid jobs be better paid? Yes - in an ideal world people would not need extra money from government if they are working a 37.5h week. But is it right that I earn more as a Uni lecturer than someone that works in retail? I bring a lifetime of experience of my subject to the role, you can be trained for a job on the tills and stacking shelves in days.
Capitalism cannot be left to run without check, for sure, but I have not seen a better arrangement suggested. What do you propose?
From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs - I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable. What that means practically? If you're in favour of a state that would mean, in part, state management of resources, workers councils who own the means of production, the seizing and redistribution of assets from the rich to the poor, etc. etc. If you're not in favour of a state (personally I'm not) you would do what the anarchists did in places like Spain at the outbreak of the civil war and what is happening in Rojava now; community and workers councils making democratic decisions about issues and deciding what to do and trade for themselves. Is this Utopian - yes, of course.
I would be happy in the mean time for more social democratic reform, wealth redistribution, empowerment of unions and individual workers and an increased social safety net. These are the things that would tackle the immediate problems that the "free market" are clearly making worse - inflation (to a degree, climate change will increase the scarcity of lots of essential resources), housing, poverty and malnourishment, etc.
"I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable."
Because HUMAN NATURE. Its how we are wired, I'm afraid. People want stuff. So you basically are an unapologetic communist. Are you Ash Sarkar? She of the luxury communism bent?
In feudal times there were lots of people, including many of those at the bottom of society, who believed it was the natural and right order of things, and they could not conceive of society being ordered in any different way.
There's nothing in human nature that makes capitalism the only, or optimal, way to organise society. We could do things differently if we wanted to. Albeit I would have hoped that the seven quarters of a century since the Communist Manifesto might have provided a few more appealing glimpses of what an alternative might look like than have been provided.
There is also no reason why an anarchist or communist model of managing the economy also couldn’t provide people with stuff - it would just mean that the people who have over accumulated stuff would have less stuff. I’m a champagne socialist - redistribute the access to champagne to the working classes. Bread and roses.
In a stateless economy, it's not champagne you'd be distributing but heroin and other narcotics, and de facto slavery would be commonplace.
See how the USSR provided people with stuff, compared with say the USA (or even the UK).
The USSR was not stateless - it was a union of Soviet States. But also, just after the revolution, the standard of living for the average Russian did greatly improve. Same in China after their revolution. That doesn't mean everything they did to achieve that was good, or the communist state that did it was good, but it was clearly better than what had come previously under the Tsar and Imperial China. Do people here really think the history of Romanov rule, for example, was better than communist Russia?
But in both cases, it then went very wrong very quickly.
In many ways, yes, in other ways progress was made. Again, I don’t defend state communism or what happened under it, but many people were pulled out of poverty by it, in the USSR education and rights for women (for example) was greatly expanded, and the economies essentially went straight from serfdom into industrialisation.
And what of capitalism? Since Reagan and Thatcher, the birth of neoliberalism and the unleashing of the markets, the world has gone from catastrophe to catastrophe. The capitalist organisation of the economy is literally making the planet uninhabitable. Boom and bust cycles were not destroyed, wages have stagnated whilst profits have soared, and the more the state is cut back from supporting people the more people fall into poverty and immiseration.
So apart from the murders, the famines, the closed borders (to stop people leaving), the rationing, the extreme poverty (for all but a very small social elite who lived like Henry VIII), Soviet Russia was awesome?
I didn't say that - at all.
And capitalism has presided over no state orchestrated murders nor ethnic cleansings, no famines or closed borders, no extreme poverty? I mean, we can just look at the history of United Fruit for one example of many of those things - all in the name of a company wanting to keep its profits going against the democratic wishes of a country that didn't want to be controlled by foreign, private capital. We could look at the history of Iran and ask the question "why is it like it is now?" and think about BP and the movement of oil. We could look at the history of Coca Cola, and state funded militias, and the destruction of whole ecosystems and indigenous societies.
And that's pre Reagan and Thatcher - before we get to how modern resource extraction works, how modern labour conditions are so terrible in factories across the world that child labour is commonplace and that anti-suicide netting is needed to prevent workers jumping out of the windows. How often states support capital in their fights against common people who just don't wish to be oppressed and dispossessed and destroyed - all for a few people to live high on massive profits.
If you want an economic model that allows for extreme poverty and a very small social elite who live in unimaginable wealth - you're living under one.
When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, in which direction was the human traffic?
Again, I do not like nor defend the USSR or its model for economic management - as I have said I am more on the anarchist left. More Bookchin than Bolshevik, more Kropotkin that Kremlin, more Machnovist than Maoist. Can you explain how capitalism is so much better, has no deaths or atrocities under its belt, and is a shining city on a hill? Or is it only I who has to defend my positions from purposeful strawman after strawman?
Straw man? You're the one defending an almost entirely theoretical model. Your position is essentially the same as the infamous YouGov poll last week that said "choose between what you have and something hypothetically wonderful". You have dreams and aspirations, fine, but there is no bodycount in your chosen philosophy because it has been tried only sporadically and on a tiny scale.
What countries have successfully implemented your preferred form of governance so we can compare?
None and no-one ever will. Its entirely happy-clappy bullshit with no relation to how people think and behave.
A header that mentions the "neoliberal consensus" - good to see pieces recognising that states selling off civic assets may not be seen as a good deal by a majority of the public who like those assets and services and aren't profiting off of them being sold whole sale.
I think we're getting into a position similar to the 20th century - the paradoxes of capitalism are coming home to roost and the inaction of states to safeguard the material needs of the average person is leading towards grievance and a willingness to embrace the far right, even if you don't like them. Liberals are unpopular because they refuse to deal with the issues, left wingers are unpopular because the apparatus of capital control most media and would lose out under a more left wing world so scream bloody hell about anyone to the left of Atilla the Hun. And the right are unpopular because their wish casting politics just can't be done.
"embrace the far right"
As Corbyn and his acolytes show, the far left also has significant power for the disaffected.
But the entire force of capital, which includes the private media and the political establishment, go out of there way to make left wing policies solutions the equivalent of literal Stalinism whilst painting far right rhetoric as "common sense". The Overton window can only go one way for those people - it's the ratchet effect. So people seeing how impossible it is to get left wing solutions (and Corbyn is hardly far left, he proposed a social democratic policy platform that, when polled on issue by issue rather then as "Corbyn's policies", did have popular support) become disaffected and those who desire a far right solution get told it is always possible (because every party panders to them) and that when their policy preference is enacted and doesn't work that's because it wasn't done harshly enough and the answer is to go even more right wing.
"But the entire force of capital". You been at the Koolaid again? What is this 1875 and we are discussing the Communist Manifesto?
At heart most people like capitalism. What they want is for capitalism to be fair - so no unfair advantages of birth, of wealth etc. They want hard work rewarded.
What they don't want is bullshit economic theories about 'capital' and the 'politcal establishment' etc
Capitalism does not reward fairness or meritocracy - those things are not inherently capitalistic. The advantages of birth are backed into capitalism; inheritance whether in money or assets is the highest predictor of wealth later in life. People who work hard are not rewarded under capitalism. We recognised under Covid that their were such things as "essential workers" - who were they? Shop assistants, nurses, public servants and the like - are they the most well paid? Does a CEO or shareholder of a company work whatever ratio it has more than their lowest paid worker? Capitalism rewards those who help accumulate more capital for capitalists. To do otherwise is counter to capitalist mode of production.
So what is your solution then?
Hard work is rewarded - but yes every job comes with its own salary, and some of them are grossly unfair. And yet. Is it right for a CEO to earn millions? Maybe, if they can show that their input actual generates substantially more than that.
Should lower paid jobs be better paid? Yes - in an ideal world people would not need extra money from government if they are working a 37.5h week. But is it right that I earn more as a Uni lecturer than someone that works in retail? I bring a lifetime of experience of my subject to the role, you can be trained for a job on the tills and stacking shelves in days.
Capitalism cannot be left to run without check, for sure, but I have not seen a better arrangement suggested. What do you propose?
From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs - I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable. What that means practically? If you're in favour of a state that would mean, in part, state management of resources, workers councils who own the means of production, the seizing and redistribution of assets from the rich to the poor, etc. etc. If you're not in favour of a state (personally I'm not) you would do what the anarchists did in places like Spain at the outbreak of the civil war and what is happening in Rojava now; community and workers councils making democratic decisions about issues and deciding what to do and trade for themselves. Is this Utopian - yes, of course.
I would be happy in the mean time for more social democratic reform, wealth redistribution, empowerment of unions and individual workers and an increased social safety net. These are the things that would tackle the immediate problems that the "free market" are clearly making worse - inflation (to a degree, climate change will increase the scarcity of lots of essential resources), housing, poverty and malnourishment, etc.
"I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable."
Because HUMAN NATURE. Its how we are wired, I'm afraid. People want stuff. So you basically are an unapologetic communist. Are you Ash Sarkar? She of the luxury communism bent?
In feudal times there were lots of people, including many of those at the bottom of society, who believed it was the natural and right order of things, and they could not conceive of society being ordered in any different way.
There's nothing in human nature that makes capitalism the only, or optimal, way to organise society. We could do things differently if we wanted to. Albeit I would have hoped that the seven quarters of a century since the Communist Manifesto might have provided a few more appealing glimpses of what an alternative might look like than have been provided.
There is also no reason why an anarchist or communist model of managing the economy also couldn’t provide people with stuff - it would just mean that the people who have over accumulated stuff would have less stuff. I’m a champagne socialist - redistribute the access to champagne to the working classes. Bread and roses.
In a stateless economy, it's not champagne you'd be distributing but heroin and other narcotics, and de facto slavery would be commonplace.
See how the USSR provided people with stuff, compared with say the USA (or even the UK).
The USSR was not stateless - it was a union of Soviet States. But also, just after the revolution, the standard of living for the average Russian did greatly improve. Same in China after their revolution. That doesn't mean everything they did to achieve that was good, or the communist state that did it was good, but it was clearly better than what had come previously under the Tsar and Imperial China. Do people here really think the history of Romanov rule, for example, was better than communist Russia?
But in both cases, it then went very wrong very quickly.
In many ways, yes, in other ways progress was made. Again, I don’t defend state communism or what happened under it, but many people were pulled out of poverty by it, in the USSR education and rights for women (for example) was greatly expanded, and the economies essentially went straight from serfdom into industrialisation.
And what of capitalism? Since Reagan and Thatcher, the birth of neoliberalism and the unleashing of the markets, the world has gone from catastrophe to catastrophe. The capitalist organisation of the economy is literally making the planet uninhabitable. Boom and bust cycles were not destroyed, wages have stagnated whilst profits have soared, and the more the state is cut back from supporting people the more people fall into poverty and immiseration.
So apart from the murders, the famines, the closed borders (to stop people leaving), the rationing, the extreme poverty (for all but a very small social elite who lived like Henry VIII), Soviet Russia was awesome?
I didn't say that - at all.
And capitalism has presided over no state orchestrated murders nor ethnic cleansings, no famines or closed borders, no extreme poverty? I mean, we can just look at the history of United Fruit for one example of many of those things - all in the name of a company wanting to keep its profits going against the democratic wishes of a country that didn't want to be controlled by foreign, private capital. We could look at the history of Iran and ask the question "why is it like it is now?" and think about BP and the movement of oil. We could look at the history of Coca Cola, and state funded militias, and the destruction of whole ecosystems and indigenous societies.
And that's pre Reagan and Thatcher - before we get to how modern resource extraction works, how modern labour conditions are so terrible in factories across the world that child labour is commonplace and that anti-suicide netting is needed to prevent workers jumping out of the windows. How often states support capital in their fights against common people who just don't wish to be oppressed and dispossessed and destroyed - all for a few people to live high on massive profits.
If you want an economic model that allows for extreme poverty and a very small social elite who live in unimaginable wealth - you're living under one.
When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, in which direction was the human traffic?
Again, I do not like nor defend the USSR or its model for economic management - as I have said I am more on the anarchist left. More Bookchin than Bolshevik, more Kropotkin that Kremlin, more Machnovist than Maoist. Can you explain how capitalism is so much better, has no deaths or atrocities under its belt, and is a shining city on a hill? Or is it only I who has to defend my positions from purposeful strawman after strawman?
Straw man? You're the one defending an almost entirely theoretical model. Your position is essentially the same as the infamous YouGov poll last week that said "choose between what you have and something hypothetically wonderful". You have dreams and aspirations, fine, but there is no bodycount in your chosen philosophy because it has been tried only sporadically and on a tiny scale.
What countries have successfully implemented your preferred form of governance so we can compare?
I'm not sure anarchism qualifies as a form of "governance".
Although I've heard it said that at least it's better than no governance at all.
Anarchism is no governement at all though. Its a situation where those willing to be violent rule and everyone else obeys
Have we got to a consensus on the difference between the “12-15 pt lead” and “20-25 pt lead” pollsters by the way? I think we had concluded it was mostly in the treatment of the don’t know’s?
Well done on limiting your booze intake so successfully
I am belatedly doing the same but hoping to find a medium course of still drinking at times but also having half the week entirely sober etc
Question: how do you cope with the boredom? That is what vexes me, still. Booze used to agreeably fill an evening. Now the hours stretch. Yes I read and go to the gym and watch movies and that’s nice but wow there is a lot of time to fill, nonetheless
Sometimes I just want to go to bed at 10pm even if I’m not tired because unconsciousness is less boring
I haven't had a drink since NYE, this is my fourth time doing Dry January. Since doing it the first time I've found the amount I drink has dropped without any real effort on my part, largely by not drinking in the house and not going to the pub as much. I love alcohol as a social drug but I was never one for nailing a load of cans in front of the TV like mates of mine can do. But even the glass or two of wine or glass of whisky at home has dwindled to virtually nothing. I've found that in my 40s the hangovers are now so bad and long-lasting I just don't go to the pub as much as I used to either. From being 17 to late-30s it was three/four times a week, probably drinking a gallon a time. Now, thanks to using a drink tracking app I started using for my first Dry Jan, I find I average ten days drinking a month, and most of those days are only one or two units. I love a proper sesh in the pub with my mates but it takes me two or three days to get over it. I can cope with the headache, it's the two or three days of lethargy and increasingly bad hangxiety that have curbed by pub visits.
So I have a lot more sober time these past few years. I love it. I read more - and more importantly, remember what I've read. I take longer, more frequent walks, which the dog appreciates. I try and go for a run a few times a week. I play the guitar - badly. I recently got into listening to podcasts. Plus there's always YouTube. I'm also considering whether I want to do a PhD part-time while working, but that way madness may well lie so I blow hot and cold with the notion.
But I'm very rarely bored. Not like you were on a rainy Sunday afternoon in the 80s when I was growing up and there was nothing on TV. That was proper boredom.
I go to bed when I'm tired, usually about 11 but two nights last week it was half 9. If that's boring, so be it - FOMO isn't a thing for me anymore!
I've also cut down on caffeine - I have two builders teas first thing them that's me. As I've hit middle age my body just can't deal with alcohol and caffeine like it did when I was younger. I hit it hard when I was young, I shovelled everything into me I could get my hands on, but I'm glad those days are behind me. I just can't do it now. Nor do I want to.
I wish I could go out on a Friday for a gallon without it wiping out my weekend, but sometimes you just wanna get pissed and talk rubbish with your mates, don't you? So I take the hit and the missus moaning at me for wasting my weekend...
That's a long-winded way of saying I enjoyed getting hammered when I was young, but I prefer a clear head now, and I always manage to keep myself amused.
I water down every alcoholic drink I have now, which means I never get to the hangover stage. My theory was that you never beat the two or three pint buzz, and any more after that was just giving you worse hangovers without making the night better. Now I can’t drink alcohol that’s not watered down, albeit I do probably drink too often
I think that's spot on, and I find the lack of lower alcohol, but still tasty, beer incredibly annoying. I'd like to have one pint of 4% beer, and follow it by 2% ones. That would mean my body is processing the alcohol at roughly the same rate I'm drinking, and it won't feel like cheating. It would obviously almost halve how much beer I drank out on a curry night with my mates too.
A header that mentions the "neoliberal consensus" - good to see pieces recognising that states selling off civic assets may not be seen as a good deal by a majority of the public who like those assets and services and aren't profiting off of them being sold whole sale.
I think we're getting into a position similar to the 20th century - the paradoxes of capitalism are coming home to roost and the inaction of states to safeguard the material needs of the average person is leading towards grievance and a willingness to embrace the far right, even if you don't like them. Liberals are unpopular because they refuse to deal with the issues, left wingers are unpopular because the apparatus of capital control most media and would lose out under a more left wing world so scream bloody hell about anyone to the left of Atilla the Hun. And the right are unpopular because their wish casting politics just can't be done.
"embrace the far right"
As Corbyn and his acolytes show, the far left also has significant power for the disaffected.
But the entire force of capital, which includes the private media and the political establishment, go out of there way to make left wing policies solutions the equivalent of literal Stalinism whilst painting far right rhetoric as "common sense". The Overton window can only go one way for those people - it's the ratchet effect. So people seeing how impossible it is to get left wing solutions (and Corbyn is hardly far left, he proposed a social democratic policy platform that, when polled on issue by issue rather then as "Corbyn's policies", did have popular support) become disaffected and those who desire a far right solution get told it is always possible (because every party panders to them) and that when their policy preference is enacted and doesn't work that's because it wasn't done harshly enough and the answer is to go even more right wing.
"But the entire force of capital". You been at the Koolaid again? What is this 1875 and we are discussing the Communist Manifesto?
At heart most people like capitalism. What they want is for capitalism to be fair - so no unfair advantages of birth, of wealth etc. They want hard work rewarded.
What they don't want is bullshit economic theories about 'capital' and the 'politcal establishment' etc
Capitalism does not reward fairness or meritocracy - those things are not inherently capitalistic. The advantages of birth are backed into capitalism; inheritance whether in money or assets is the highest predictor of wealth later in life. People who work hard are not rewarded under capitalism. We recognised under Covid that their were such things as "essential workers" - who were they? Shop assistants, nurses, public servants and the like - are they the most well paid? Does a CEO or shareholder of a company work whatever ratio it has more than their lowest paid worker? Capitalism rewards those who help accumulate more capital for capitalists. To do otherwise is counter to capitalist mode of production.
So what is your solution then?
Hard work is rewarded - but yes every job comes with its own salary, and some of them are grossly unfair. And yet. Is it right for a CEO to earn millions? Maybe, if they can show that their input actual generates substantially more than that.
Should lower paid jobs be better paid? Yes - in an ideal world people would not need extra money from government if they are working a 37.5h week. But is it right that I earn more as a Uni lecturer than someone that works in retail? I bring a lifetime of experience of my subject to the role, you can be trained for a job on the tills and stacking shelves in days.
Capitalism cannot be left to run without check, for sure, but I have not seen a better arrangement suggested. What do you propose?
From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs - I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable. What that means practically? If you're in favour of a state that would mean, in part, state management of resources, workers councils who own the means of production, the seizing and redistribution of assets from the rich to the poor, etc. etc. If you're not in favour of a state (personally I'm not) you would do what the anarchists did in places like Spain at the outbreak of the civil war and what is happening in Rojava now; community and workers councils making democratic decisions about issues and deciding what to do and trade for themselves. Is this Utopian - yes, of course.
I would be happy in the mean time for more social democratic reform, wealth redistribution, empowerment of unions and individual workers and an increased social safety net. These are the things that would tackle the immediate problems that the "free market" are clearly making worse - inflation (to a degree, climate change will increase the scarcity of lots of essential resources), housing, poverty and malnourishment, etc.
"I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable."
Because HUMAN NATURE. Its how we are wired, I'm afraid. People want stuff. So you basically are an unapologetic communist. Are you Ash Sarkar? She of the luxury communism bent?
In feudal times there were lots of people, including many of those at the bottom of society, who believed it was the natural and right order of things, and they could not conceive of society being ordered in any different way.
There's nothing in human nature that makes capitalism the only, or optimal, way to organise society. We could do things differently if we wanted to. Albeit I would have hoped that the seven quarters of a century since the Communist Manifesto might have provided a few more appealing glimpses of what an alternative might look like than have been provided.
There is also no reason why an anarchist or communist model of managing the economy also couldn’t provide people with stuff - it would just mean that the people who have over accumulated stuff would have less stuff. I’m a champagne socialist - redistribute the access to champagne to the working classes. Bread and roses.
In a stateless economy, it's not champagne you'd be distributing but heroin and other narcotics, and de facto slavery would be commonplace.
See how the USSR provided people with stuff, compared with say the USA (or even the UK).
The USSR was not stateless - it was a union of Soviet States. But also, just after the revolution, the standard of living for the average Russian did greatly improve. Same in China after their revolution. That doesn't mean everything they did to achieve that was good, or the communist state that did it was good, but it was clearly better than what had come previously under the Tsar and Imperial China. Do people here really think the history of Romanov rule, for example, was better than communist Russia?
But in both cases, it then went very wrong very quickly.
In many ways, yes, in other ways progress was made. Again, I don’t defend state communism or what happened under it, but many people were pulled out of poverty by it, in the USSR education and rights for women (for example) was greatly expanded, and the economies essentially went straight from serfdom into industrialisation.
And what of capitalism? Since Reagan and Thatcher, the birth of neoliberalism and the unleashing of the markets, the world has gone from catastrophe to catastrophe. The capitalist organisation of the economy is literally making the planet uninhabitable. Boom and bust cycles were not destroyed, wages have stagnated whilst profits have soared, and the more the state is cut back from supporting people the more people fall into poverty and immiseration.
So apart from the murders, the famines, the closed borders (to stop people leaving), the rationing, the extreme poverty (for all but a very small social elite who lived like Henry VIII), Soviet Russia was awesome?
I didn't say that - at all.
And capitalism has presided over no state orchestrated murders nor ethnic cleansings, no famines or closed borders, no extreme poverty? I mean, we can just look at the history of United Fruit for one example of many of those things - all in the name of a company wanting to keep its profits going against the democratic wishes of a country that didn't want to be controlled by foreign, private capital. We could look at the history of Iran and ask the question "why is it like it is now?" and think about BP and the movement of oil. We could look at the history of Coca Cola, and state funded militias, and the destruction of whole ecosystems and indigenous societies.
And that's pre Reagan and Thatcher - before we get to how modern resource extraction works, how modern labour conditions are so terrible in factories across the world that child labour is commonplace and that anti-suicide netting is needed to prevent workers jumping out of the windows. How often states support capital in their fights against common people who just don't wish to be oppressed and dispossessed and destroyed - all for a few people to live high on massive profits.
If you want an economic model that allows for extreme poverty and a very small social elite who live in unimaginable wealth - you're living under one.
When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, in which direction was the human traffic?
Again, I do not like nor defend the USSR or its model for economic management - as I have said I am more on the anarchist left. More Bookchin than Bolshevik, more Kropotkin that Kremlin, more Machnovist than Maoist. Can you explain how capitalism is so much better, has no deaths or atrocities under its belt, and is a shining city on a hill? Or is it only I who has to defend my positions from purposeful strawman after strawman?
You don't have a position so much as a fantasy where people will all have more stuff (not to mention free access to gender-affirming medical treatment) but work less, industrial society will flourish but will miraculously be environmentally friendly because it won't be capitalist, and we will all live in harmony with each other.
Many moons ago, I knew a nice guy who was an anarchist, and was very much into the history of anarchism in the UK. He drew up a map of the different anarchist groups that had existed over the years, and their splits (with few mergers...). I think it was meant to show how anarchism was wonderful.
A header that mentions the "neoliberal consensus" - good to see pieces recognising that states selling off civic assets may not be seen as a good deal by a majority of the public who like those assets and services and aren't profiting off of them being sold whole sale.
I think we're getting into a position similar to the 20th century - the paradoxes of capitalism are coming home to roost and the inaction of states to safeguard the material needs of the average person is leading towards grievance and a willingness to embrace the far right, even if you don't like them. Liberals are unpopular because they refuse to deal with the issues, left wingers are unpopular because the apparatus of capital control most media and would lose out under a more left wing world so scream bloody hell about anyone to the left of Atilla the Hun. And the right are unpopular because their wish casting politics just can't be done.
"embrace the far right"
As Corbyn and his acolytes show, the far left also has significant power for the disaffected.
But the entire force of capital, which includes the private media and the political establishment, go out of there way to make left wing policies solutions the equivalent of literal Stalinism whilst painting far right rhetoric as "common sense". The Overton window can only go one way for those people - it's the ratchet effect. So people seeing how impossible it is to get left wing solutions (and Corbyn is hardly far left, he proposed a social democratic policy platform that, when polled on issue by issue rather then as "Corbyn's policies", did have popular support) become disaffected and those who desire a far right solution get told it is always possible (because every party panders to them) and that when their policy preference is enacted and doesn't work that's because it wasn't done harshly enough and the answer is to go even more right wing.
"But the entire force of capital". You been at the Koolaid again? What is this 1875 and we are discussing the Communist Manifesto?
At heart most people like capitalism. What they want is for capitalism to be fair - so no unfair advantages of birth, of wealth etc. They want hard work rewarded.
What they don't want is bullshit economic theories about 'capital' and the 'politcal establishment' etc
Capitalism does not reward fairness or meritocracy - those things are not inherently capitalistic. The advantages of birth are backed into capitalism; inheritance whether in money or assets is the highest predictor of wealth later in life. People who work hard are not rewarded under capitalism. We recognised under Covid that their were such things as "essential workers" - who were they? Shop assistants, nurses, public servants and the like - are they the most well paid? Does a CEO or shareholder of a company work whatever ratio it has more than their lowest paid worker? Capitalism rewards those who help accumulate more capital for capitalists. To do otherwise is counter to capitalist mode of production.
So what is your solution then?
Hard work is rewarded - but yes every job comes with its own salary, and some of them are grossly unfair. And yet. Is it right for a CEO to earn millions? Maybe, if they can show that their input actual generates substantially more than that.
Should lower paid jobs be better paid? Yes - in an ideal world people would not need extra money from government if they are working a 37.5h week. But is it right that I earn more as a Uni lecturer than someone that works in retail? I bring a lifetime of experience of my subject to the role, you can be trained for a job on the tills and stacking shelves in days.
Capitalism cannot be left to run without check, for sure, but I have not seen a better arrangement suggested. What do you propose?
From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs - I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable. What that means practically? If you're in favour of a state that would mean, in part, state management of resources, workers councils who own the means of production, the seizing and redistribution of assets from the rich to the poor, etc. etc. If you're not in favour of a state (personally I'm not) you would do what the anarchists did in places like Spain at the outbreak of the civil war and what is happening in Rojava now; community and workers councils making democratic decisions about issues and deciding what to do and trade for themselves. Is this Utopian - yes, of course.
I would be happy in the mean time for more social democratic reform, wealth redistribution, empowerment of unions and individual workers and an increased social safety net. These are the things that would tackle the immediate problems that the "free market" are clearly making worse - inflation (to a degree, climate change will increase the scarcity of lots of essential resources), housing, poverty and malnourishment, etc.
"I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable."
Because HUMAN NATURE. Its how we are wired, I'm afraid. People want stuff. So you basically are an unapologetic communist. Are you Ash Sarkar? She of the luxury communism bent?
In feudal times there were lots of people, including many of those at the bottom of society, who believed it was the natural and right order of things, and they could not conceive of society being ordered in any different way.
There's nothing in human nature that makes capitalism the only, or optimal, way to organise society. We could do things differently if we wanted to. Albeit I would have hoped that the seven quarters of a century since the Communist Manifesto might have provided a few more appealing glimpses of what an alternative might look like than have been provided.
There is also no reason why an anarchist or communist model of managing the economy also couldn’t provide people with stuff - it would just mean that the people who have over accumulated stuff would have less stuff. I’m a champagne socialist - redistribute the access to champagne to the working classes. Bread and roses.
In a stateless economy, it's not champagne you'd be distributing but heroin and other narcotics, and de facto slavery would be commonplace.
See how the USSR provided people with stuff, compared with say the USA (or even the UK).
The USSR was not stateless - it was a union of Soviet States. But also, just after the revolution, the standard of living for the average Russian did greatly improve. Same in China after their revolution. That doesn't mean everything they did to achieve that was good, or the communist state that did it was good, but it was clearly better than what had come previously under the Tsar and Imperial China. Do people here really think the history of Romanov rule, for example, was better than communist Russia?
That depends what period you're looking at. From the time of Catherine II, till the end of the Romanovs, capital punishment was used less frequently than between 1917 - 1953, in favour of internal exile. Of course, there was serfdom until 1861, but then the Communists also made extensive use of slave labour, up till 1953. Soviet industrialisation was impressive (with US manufacturers providing a huge level of technology), along with the performance of the Red Army. But life in the countryside, where most citizens lived, was dire, with famine, forcible collectivsation, dekulakisation, all taking their toll on the population.
It was impressive because it came at the cost of 6 million lives.
A header that mentions the "neoliberal consensus" - good to see pieces recognising that states selling off civic assets may not be seen as a good deal by a majority of the public who like those assets and services and aren't profiting off of them being sold whole sale.
I think we're getting into a position similar to the 20th century - the paradoxes of capitalism are coming home to roost and the inaction of states to safeguard the material needs of the average person is leading towards grievance and a willingness to embrace the far right, even if you don't like them. Liberals are unpopular because they refuse to deal with the issues, left wingers are unpopular because the apparatus of capital control most media and would lose out under a more left wing world so scream bloody hell about anyone to the left of Atilla the Hun. And the right are unpopular because their wish casting politics just can't be done.
"embrace the far right"
As Corbyn and his acolytes show, the far left also has significant power for the disaffected.
But the entire force of capital, which includes the private media and the political establishment, go out of there way to make left wing policies solutions the equivalent of literal Stalinism whilst painting far right rhetoric as "common sense". The Overton window can only go one way for those people - it's the ratchet effect. So people seeing how impossible it is to get left wing solutions (and Corbyn is hardly far left, he proposed a social democratic policy platform that, when polled on issue by issue rather then as "Corbyn's policies", did have popular support) become disaffected and those who desire a far right solution get told it is always possible (because every party panders to them) and that when their policy preference is enacted and doesn't work that's because it wasn't done harshly enough and the answer is to go even more right wing.
"But the entire force of capital". You been at the Koolaid again? What is this 1875 and we are discussing the Communist Manifesto?
At heart most people like capitalism. What they want is for capitalism to be fair - so no unfair advantages of birth, of wealth etc. They want hard work rewarded.
What they don't want is bullshit economic theories about 'capital' and the 'politcal establishment' etc
Capitalism does not reward fairness or meritocracy - those things are not inherently capitalistic. The advantages of birth are backed into capitalism; inheritance whether in money or assets is the highest predictor of wealth later in life. People who work hard are not rewarded under capitalism. We recognised under Covid that their were such things as "essential workers" - who were they? Shop assistants, nurses, public servants and the like - are they the most well paid? Does a CEO or shareholder of a company work whatever ratio it has more than their lowest paid worker? Capitalism rewards those who help accumulate more capital for capitalists. To do otherwise is counter to capitalist mode of production.
So what is your solution then?
Hard work is rewarded - but yes every job comes with its own salary, and some of them are grossly unfair. And yet. Is it right for a CEO to earn millions? Maybe, if they can show that their input actual generates substantially more than that.
Should lower paid jobs be better paid? Yes - in an ideal world people would not need extra money from government if they are working a 37.5h week. But is it right that I earn more as a Uni lecturer than someone that works in retail? I bring a lifetime of experience of my subject to the role, you can be trained for a job on the tills and stacking shelves in days.
Capitalism cannot be left to run without check, for sure, but I have not seen a better arrangement suggested. What do you propose?
From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs - I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable. What that means practically? If you're in favour of a state that would mean, in part, state management of resources, workers councils who own the means of production, the seizing and redistribution of assets from the rich to the poor, etc. etc. If you're not in favour of a state (personally I'm not) you would do what the anarchists did in places like Spain at the outbreak of the civil war and what is happening in Rojava now; community and workers councils making democratic decisions about issues and deciding what to do and trade for themselves. Is this Utopian - yes, of course.
I would be happy in the mean time for more social democratic reform, wealth redistribution, empowerment of unions and individual workers and an increased social safety net. These are the things that would tackle the immediate problems that the "free market" are clearly making worse - inflation (to a degree, climate change will increase the scarcity of lots of essential resources), housing, poverty and malnourishment, etc.
"I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable."
Because HUMAN NATURE. Its how we are wired, I'm afraid. People want stuff. So you basically are an unapologetic communist. Are you Ash Sarkar? She of the luxury communism bent?
In feudal times there were lots of people, including many of those at the bottom of society, who believed it was the natural and right order of things, and they could not conceive of society being ordered in any different way.
There's nothing in human nature that makes capitalism the only, or optimal, way to organise society. We could do things differently if we wanted to. Albeit I would have hoped that the seven quarters of a century since the Communist Manifesto might have provided a few more appealing glimpses of what an alternative might look like than have been provided.
There is also no reason why an anarchist or communist model of managing the economy also couldn’t provide people with stuff - it would just mean that the people who have over accumulated stuff would have less stuff. I’m a champagne socialist - redistribute the access to champagne to the working classes. Bread and roses.
In a stateless economy, it's not champagne you'd be distributing but heroin and other narcotics, and de facto slavery would be commonplace.
See how the USSR provided people with stuff, compared with say the USA (or even the UK).
The USSR was not stateless - it was a union of Soviet States. But also, just after the revolution, the standard of living for the average Russian did greatly improve. Same in China after their revolution. That doesn't mean everything they did to achieve that was good, or the communist state that did it was good, but it was clearly better than what had come previously under the Tsar and Imperial China. Do people here really think the history of Romanov rule, for example, was better than communist Russia?
But in both cases, it then went very wrong very quickly.
In many ways, yes, in other ways progress was made. Again, I don’t defend state communism or what happened under it, but many people were pulled out of poverty by it, in the USSR education and rights for women (for example) was greatly expanded, and the economies essentially went straight from serfdom into industrialisation.
And what of capitalism? Since Reagan and Thatcher, the birth of neoliberalism and the unleashing of the markets, the world has gone from catastrophe to catastrophe. The capitalist organisation of the economy is literally making the planet uninhabitable. Boom and bust cycles were not destroyed, wages have stagnated whilst profits have soared, and the more the state is cut back from supporting people the more people fall into poverty and immiseration.
So apart from the murders, the famines, the closed borders (to stop people leaving), the rationing, the extreme poverty (for all but a very small social elite who lived like Henry VIII), Soviet Russia was awesome?
I didn't say that - at all.
And capitalism has presided over no state orchestrated murders nor ethnic cleansings, no famines or closed borders, no extreme poverty? I mean, we can just look at the history of United Fruit for one example of many of those things - all in the name of a company wanting to keep its profits going against the democratic wishes of a country that didn't want to be controlled by foreign, private capital. We could look at the history of Iran and ask the question "why is it like it is now?" and think about BP and the movement of oil. We could look at the history of Coca Cola, and state funded militias, and the destruction of whole ecosystems and indigenous societies.
And that's pre Reagan and Thatcher - before we get to how modern resource extraction works, how modern labour conditions are so terrible in factories across the world that child labour is commonplace and that anti-suicide netting is needed to prevent workers jumping out of the windows. How often states support capital in their fights against common people who just don't wish to be oppressed and dispossessed and destroyed - all for a few people to live high on massive profits.
If you want an economic model that allows for extreme poverty and a very small social elite who live in unimaginable wealth - you're living under one.
When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, in which direction was the human traffic?
Again, I do not like nor defend the USSR or its model for economic management - as I have said I am more on the anarchist left. More Bookchin than Bolshevik, more Kropotkin that Kremlin, more Machnovist than Maoist. Can you explain how capitalism is so much better, has no deaths or atrocities under its belt, and is a shining city on a hill? Or is it only I who has to defend my positions from purposeful strawman after strawman?
Straw man? You're the one defending an almost entirely theoretical model. Your position is essentially the same as the infamous YouGov poll last week that said "choose between what you have and something hypothetically wonderful". You have dreams and aspirations, fine, but there is no bodycount in your chosen philosophy because it has been tried only sporadically and on a tiny scale.
What countries have successfully implemented your preferred form of governance so we can compare?
I'm not sure anarchism qualifies as a form of "governance".
Although I've heard it said that at least it's better than no governance at all.
Anarchism is no governement at all though. Its a situation where those willing to be violent rule and everyone else obeys
You don't vote, though, do you? You think every party we've got, and every politician representing them, are a waste of space. Isn't that right?
Well done on limiting your booze intake so successfully
I am belatedly doing the same but hoping to find a medium course of still drinking at times but also having half the week entirely sober etc
Question: how do you cope with the boredom? That is what vexes me, still. Booze used to agreeably fill an evening. Now the hours stretch. Yes I read and go to the gym and watch movies and that’s nice but wow there is a lot of time to fill, nonetheless
Sometimes I just want to go to bed at 10pm even if I’m not tired because unconsciousness is less boring
I haven't had a drink since NYE, this is my fourth time doing Dry January. Since doing it the first time I've found the amount I drink has dropped without any real effort on my part, largely by not drinking in the house and not going to the pub as much. I love alcohol as a social drug but I was never one for nailing a load of cans in front of the TV like mates of mine can do. But even the glass or two of wine or glass of whisky at home has dwindled to virtually nothing. I've found that in my 40s the hangovers are now so bad and long-lasting I just don't go to the pub as much as I used to either. From being 17 to late-30s it was three/four times a week, probably drinking a gallon a time. Now, thanks to using a drink tracking app I started using for my first Dry Jan, I find I average ten days drinking a month, and most of those days are only one or two units. I love a proper sesh in the pub with my mates but it takes me two or three days to get over it. I can cope with the headache, it's the two or three days of lethargy and increasingly bad hangxiety that have curbed by pub visits.
So I have a lot more sober time these past few years. I love it. I read more - and more importantly, remember what I've read. I take longer, more frequent walks, which the dog appreciates. I try and go for a run a few times a week. I play the guitar - badly. I recently got into listening to podcasts. Plus there's always YouTube. I'm also considering whether I want to do a PhD part-time while working, but that way madness may well lie so I blow hot and cold with the notion.
But I'm very rarely bored. Not like you were on a rainy Sunday afternoon in the 80s when I was growing up and there was nothing on TV. That was proper boredom.
I go to bed when I'm tired, usually about 11 but two nights last week it was half 9. If that's boring, so be it - FOMO isn't a thing for me anymore!
I've also cut down on caffeine - I have two builders teas first thing them that's me. As I've hit middle age my body just can't deal with alcohol and caffeine like it did when I was younger. I hit it hard when I was young, I shovelled everything into me I could get my hands on, but I'm glad those days are behind me. I just can't do it now. Nor do I want to.
I wish I could go out on a Friday for a gallon without it wiping out my weekend, but sometimes you just wanna get pissed and talk rubbish with your mates, don't you? So I take the hit and the missus moaning at me for wasting my weekend...
That's a long-winded way of saying I enjoyed getting hammered when I was young, but I prefer a clear head now, and I always manage to keep myself amused.
I water down every alcoholic drink I have now, which means I never get to the hangover stage. My theory was that you never beat the two or three pint buzz, and any more after that was just giving you worse hangovers without making the night better. Now I can’t drink alcohol that’s not watered down, albeit I do probably drink too often
I think that's spot on, and I find the lack of lower alcohol, but still tasty, beer incredibly annoying. I'd like to have one pint of 4% beer, and follow it by 2% ones. That would mean my body is processing the alcohol at roughly the same rate I'm drinking, and it won't feel like cheating. It would obviously almost halve how much beer I drank out on a curry night with my mates too.
Bitter shandy is my suggestion. Doombar Shandy if possible
Half a Cider with half sparkling water in the summer
Sparkling water with wine or Prosecco is my other tip. After a while it’s hard to believe you actually like the taste of full strength alcohol. Well that’s my opinion anyway
Often in pubs though they serve you a whole glass of wine with added water… that’s better than only wine, but doesn’t really stop you drinking less
Every single academic conference I go to is doom laden. There is deep deep worry in the academic community about where current trends are taking us....
So I teach on the MBA programme at a leading London business school. We visited a leading european car manufacurer this year... they had electrified one of their brands and sold thousand of cars they could not deliver... they had taken the money, but the copper, lithium, rare minerals and quality steel was in such short supply that it led to a crisis for the company. Anyway they were open about this. After I spoke to one of the top top execs of this firm and said: look out on the streets at the fleet of vehicles driving around. What is the likelihood of those being replaced 1:1 with electric or hydrogen by 2040 or 2050..... he said: "Nil... it isn't happening... mobility as we have known it since ww2 is going to become a luxury." I asked him what should be done.... he said "we have to redesign cities so the car isn't needed like today" 🤷
The consumption opportunities and level of material prosperity people have become accustomed to over the last 80 years is an aberration historical terms and it is about to drop away.
I am no sort of leftist, but if we look back eg 25 years to 1999, we were not exactly living on gruel and sending our children to school shoeless in the snow.
What the world needs is not for the rich world to get disproportionately richer, it is for the poorer world to catch up with the middling/richer world. The is essential not only because it is right, but also because there is no other way to stem the increasing flow of economic and political migrants.
Something that has been entertaining to watch has been the legacy car companies taking the view that they will just order batteries and batteries will appear. The rest of a EV requires the same materials as an ICE - excepting the electric motors.
If you are buying the entire output of a factory, year in, year out, then you need to own a factory. They worked this out with engines. But I guess they forgot that lesson.
I attended one seminar on EVs, at a bank a few years back, where it was all “we will buy that in from China, of course”.
A header that mentions the "neoliberal consensus" - good to see pieces recognising that states selling off civic assets may not be seen as a good deal by a majority of the public who like those assets and services and aren't profiting off of them being sold whole sale.
I think we're getting into a position similar to the 20th century - the paradoxes of capitalism are coming home to roost and the inaction of states to safeguard the material needs of the average person is leading towards grievance and a willingness to embrace the far right, even if you don't like them. Liberals are unpopular because they refuse to deal with the issues, left wingers are unpopular because the apparatus of capital control most media and would lose out under a more left wing world so scream bloody hell about anyone to the left of Atilla the Hun. And the right are unpopular because their wish casting politics just can't be done.
"embrace the far right"
As Corbyn and his acolytes show, the far left also has significant power for the disaffected.
But the entire force of capital, which includes the private media and the political establishment, go out of there way to make left wing policies solutions the equivalent of literal Stalinism whilst painting far right rhetoric as "common sense". The Overton window can only go one way for those people - it's the ratchet effect. So people seeing how impossible it is to get left wing solutions (and Corbyn is hardly far left, he proposed a social democratic policy platform that, when polled on issue by issue rather then as "Corbyn's policies", did have popular support) become disaffected and those who desire a far right solution get told it is always possible (because every party panders to them) and that when their policy preference is enacted and doesn't work that's because it wasn't done harshly enough and the answer is to go even more right wing.
"But the entire force of capital". You been at the Koolaid again? What is this 1875 and we are discussing the Communist Manifesto?
At heart most people like capitalism. What they want is for capitalism to be fair - so no unfair advantages of birth, of wealth etc. They want hard work rewarded.
What they don't want is bullshit economic theories about 'capital' and the 'politcal establishment' etc
Capitalism does not reward fairness or meritocracy - those things are not inherently capitalistic. The advantages of birth are backed into capitalism; inheritance whether in money or assets is the highest predictor of wealth later in life. People who work hard are not rewarded under capitalism. We recognised under Covid that their were such things as "essential workers" - who were they? Shop assistants, nurses, public servants and the like - are they the most well paid? Does a CEO or shareholder of a company work whatever ratio it has more than their lowest paid worker? Capitalism rewards those who help accumulate more capital for capitalists. To do otherwise is counter to capitalist mode of production.
So what is your solution then?
Hard work is rewarded - but yes every job comes with its own salary, and some of them are grossly unfair. And yet. Is it right for a CEO to earn millions? Maybe, if they can show that their input actual generates substantially more than that.
Should lower paid jobs be better paid? Yes - in an ideal world people would not need extra money from government if they are working a 37.5h week. But is it right that I earn more as a Uni lecturer than someone that works in retail? I bring a lifetime of experience of my subject to the role, you can be trained for a job on the tills and stacking shelves in days.
Capitalism cannot be left to run without check, for sure, but I have not seen a better arrangement suggested. What do you propose?
From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs - I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable. What that means practically? If you're in favour of a state that would mean, in part, state management of resources, workers councils who own the means of production, the seizing and redistribution of assets from the rich to the poor, etc. etc. If you're not in favour of a state (personally I'm not) you would do what the anarchists did in places like Spain at the outbreak of the civil war and what is happening in Rojava now; community and workers councils making democratic decisions about issues and deciding what to do and trade for themselves. Is this Utopian - yes, of course.
I would be happy in the mean time for more social democratic reform, wealth redistribution, empowerment of unions and individual workers and an increased social safety net. These are the things that would tackle the immediate problems that the "free market" are clearly making worse - inflation (to a degree, climate change will increase the scarcity of lots of essential resources), housing, poverty and malnourishment, etc.
"I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable."
Because HUMAN NATURE. Its how we are wired, I'm afraid. People want stuff. So you basically are an unapologetic communist. Are you Ash Sarkar? She of the luxury communism bent?
In feudal times there were lots of people, including many of those at the bottom of society, who believed it was the natural and right order of things, and they could not conceive of society being ordered in any different way.
There's nothing in human nature that makes capitalism the only, or optimal, way to organise society. We could do things differently if we wanted to. Albeit I would have hoped that the seven quarters of a century since the Communist Manifesto might have provided a few more appealing glimpses of what an alternative might look like than have been provided.
There is also no reason why an anarchist or communist model of managing the economy also couldn’t provide people with stuff - it would just mean that the people who have over accumulated stuff would have less stuff. I’m a champagne socialist - redistribute the access to champagne to the working classes. Bread and roses.
In a stateless economy, it's not champagne you'd be distributing but heroin and other narcotics, and de facto slavery would be commonplace.
See how the USSR provided people with stuff, compared with say the USA (or even the UK).
The USSR was not stateless - it was a union of Soviet States. But also, just after the revolution, the standard of living for the average Russian did greatly improve. Same in China after their revolution. That doesn't mean everything they did to achieve that was good, or the communist state that did it was good, but it was clearly better than what had come previously under the Tsar and Imperial China. Do people here really think the history of Romanov rule, for example, was better than communist Russia?
But in both cases, it then went very wrong very quickly.
In many ways, yes, in other ways progress was made. Again, I don’t defend state communism or what happened under it, but many people were pulled out of poverty by it, in the USSR education and rights for women (for example) was greatly expanded, and the economies essentially went straight from serfdom into industrialisation.
And what of capitalism? Since Reagan and Thatcher, the birth of neoliberalism and the unleashing of the markets, the world has gone from catastrophe to catastrophe. The capitalist organisation of the economy is literally making the planet uninhabitable. Boom and bust cycles were not destroyed, wages have stagnated whilst profits have soared, and the more the state is cut back from supporting people the more people fall into poverty and immiseration.
So apart from the murders, the famines, the closed borders (to stop people leaving), the rationing, the extreme poverty (for all but a very small social elite who lived like Henry VIII), Soviet Russia was awesome?
I didn't say that - at all.
And capitalism has presided over no state orchestrated murders nor ethnic cleansings, no famines or closed borders, no extreme poverty? I mean, we can just look at the history of United Fruit for one example of many of those things - all in the name of a company wanting to keep its profits going against the democratic wishes of a country that didn't want to be controlled by foreign, private capital. We could look at the history of Iran and ask the question "why is it like it is now?" and think about BP and the movement of oil. We could look at the history of Coca Cola, and state funded militias, and the destruction of whole ecosystems and indigenous societies.
And that's pre Reagan and Thatcher - before we get to how modern resource extraction works, how modern labour conditions are so terrible in factories across the world that child labour is commonplace and that anti-suicide netting is needed to prevent workers jumping out of the windows. How often states support capital in their fights against common people who just don't wish to be oppressed and dispossessed and destroyed - all for a few people to live high on massive profits.
If you want an economic model that allows for extreme poverty and a very small social elite who live in unimaginable wealth - you're living under one.
When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, in which direction was the human traffic?
Again, I do not like nor defend the USSR or its model for economic management - as I have said I am more on the anarchist left. More Bookchin than Bolshevik, more Kropotkin that Kremlin, more Machnovist than Maoist. Can you explain how capitalism is so much better, has no deaths or atrocities under its belt, and is a shining city on a hill? Or is it only I who has to defend my positions from purposeful strawman after strawman?
Straw man? You're the one defending an almost entirely theoretical model. Your position is essentially the same as the infamous YouGov poll last week that said "choose between what you have and something hypothetically wonderful". You have dreams and aspirations, fine, but there is no bodycount in your chosen philosophy because it has been tried only sporadically and on a tiny scale.
What countries have successfully implemented your preferred form of governance so we can compare?
I'm not sure anarchism qualifies as a form of "governance".
Although I've heard it said that at least it's better than no governance at all.
Anarchism is no governement at all though. Its a situation where those willing to be violent rule and everyone else obeys
You don't vote, though, do you? You think every party we've got, and every politician representing them, are a waste of space. Isn't that right?
Which is not the same as believing that there should be no laws or governments. I just disagree with out current political institution
Well done on limiting your booze intake so successfully
I am belatedly doing the same but hoping to find a medium course of still drinking at times but also having half the week entirely sober etc
Question: how do you cope with the boredom? That is what vexes me, still. Booze used to agreeably fill an evening. Now the hours stretch. Yes I read and go to the gym and watch movies and that’s nice but wow there is a lot of time to fill, nonetheless
Sometimes I just want to go to bed at 10pm even if I’m not tired because unconsciousness is less boring
I haven't had a drink since NYE, this is my fourth time doing Dry January. Since doing it the first time I've found the amount I drink has dropped without any real effort on my part, largely by not drinking in the house and not going to the pub as much. I love alcohol as a social drug but I was never one for nailing a load of cans in front of the TV like mates of mine can do. But even the glass or two of wine or glass of whisky at home has dwindled to virtually nothing. I've found that in my 40s the hangovers are now so bad and long-lasting I just don't go to the pub as much as I used to either. From being 17 to late-30s it was three/four times a week, probably drinking a gallon a time. Now, thanks to using a drink tracking app I started using for my first Dry Jan, I find I average ten days drinking a month, and most of those days are only one or two units. I love a proper sesh in the pub with my mates but it takes me two or three days to get over it. I can cope with the headache, it's the two or three days of lethargy and increasingly bad hangxiety that have curbed by pub visits.
So I have a lot more sober time these past few years. I love it. I read more - and more importantly, remember what I've read. I take longer, more frequent walks, which the dog appreciates. I try and go for a run a few times a week. I play the guitar - badly. I recently got into listening to podcasts. Plus there's always YouTube. I'm also considering whether I want to do a PhD part-time while working, but that way madness may well lie so I blow hot and cold with the notion.
But I'm very rarely bored. Not like you were on a rainy Sunday afternoon in the 80s when I was growing up and there was nothing on TV. That was proper boredom.
I go to bed when I'm tired, usually about 11 but two nights last week it was half 9. If that's boring, so be it - FOMO isn't a thing for me anymore!
I've also cut down on caffeine - I have two builders teas first thing them that's me. As I've hit middle age my body just can't deal with alcohol and caffeine like it did when I was younger. I hit it hard when I was young, I shovelled everything into me I could get my hands on, but I'm glad those days are behind me. I just can't do it now. Nor do I want to.
I wish I could go out on a Friday for a gallon without it wiping out my weekend, but sometimes you just wanna get pissed and talk rubbish with your mates, don't you? So I take the hit and the missus moaning at me for wasting my weekend...
That's a long-winded way of saying I enjoyed getting hammered when I was young, but I prefer a clear head now, and I always manage to keep myself amused.
I water down every alcoholic drink I have now, which means I never get to the hangover stage. My theory was that you never beat the two or three pint buzz, and any more after that was just giving you worse hangovers without making the night better. Now I can’t drink alcohol that’s not watered down, albeit I do probably drink too often
I think that's spot on, and I find the lack of lower alcohol, but still tasty, beer incredibly annoying. I'd like to have one pint of 4% beer, and follow it by 2% ones. That would mean my body is processing the alcohol at roughly the same rate I'm drinking, and it won't feel like cheating. It would obviously almost halve how much beer I drank out on a curry night with my mates too.
Bitter shandy is my suggestion. Doombar Shandy if possible
Half a Cider with half sparkling water in the summer
Sparkling water with wine or Prosecco is my other tip. After a while it’s hard to believe you actually like the taste of full strength alcohol. Well that’s my opinion anyway
Often in pubs though they serve you a whole glass of wine with added water… that’s better than only wine, but doesn’t really stop you drinking less
Many moons ago, I knew a nice guy who was an anarchist, and was very much into the history of anarchism in the UK. He drew up a map of the different anarchist groups that had existed over the years, and their splits (with few mergers...). I think it was meant to show how anarchism was wonderful.
Have we got to a consensus on the difference between the “12-15 pt lead” and “20-25 pt lead” pollsters by the way? I think we had concluded it was mostly in the treatment of the don’t know’s?
Seems so
This must be a unique situation really. Govt elected with a huge majority gets rid of leader who wasn’t that unpopular with their voters… and replaces with two leaders who are unpopular with them
Well done on limiting your booze intake so successfully
I am belatedly doing the same but hoping to find a medium course of still drinking at times but also having half the week entirely sober etc
Question: how do you cope with the boredom? That is what vexes me, still. Booze used to agreeably fill an evening. Now the hours stretch. Yes I read and go to the gym and watch movies and that’s nice but wow there is a lot of time to fill, nonetheless
Sometimes I just want to go to bed at 10pm even if I’m not tired because unconsciousness is less boring
I haven't had a drink since NYE, this is my fourth time doing Dry January. Since doing it the first time I've found the amount I drink has dropped without any real effort on my part, largely by not drinking in the house and not going to the pub as much. I love alcohol as a social drug but I was never one for nailing a load of cans in front of the TV like mates of mine can do. But even the glass or two of wine or glass of whisky at home has dwindled to virtually nothing. I've found that in my 40s the hangovers are now so bad and long-lasting I just don't go to the pub as much as I used to either. From being 17 to late-30s it was three/four times a week, probably drinking a gallon a time. Now, thanks to using a drink tracking app I started using for my first Dry Jan, I find I average ten days drinking a month, and most of those days are only one or two units. I love a proper sesh in the pub with my mates but it takes me two or three days to get over it. I can cope with the headache, it's the two or three days of lethargy and increasingly bad hangxiety that have curbed by pub visits.
So I have a lot more sober time these past few years. I love it. I read more - and more importantly, remember what I've read. I take longer, more frequent walks, which the dog appreciates. I try and go for a run a few times a week. I play the guitar - badly. I recently got into listening to podcasts. Plus there's always YouTube. I'm also considering whether I want to do a PhD part-time while working, but that way madness may well lie so I blow hot and cold with the notion.
But I'm very rarely bored. Not like you were on a rainy Sunday afternoon in the 80s when I was growing up and there was nothing on TV. That was proper boredom.
I go to bed when I'm tired, usually about 11 but two nights last week it was half 9. If that's boring, so be it - FOMO isn't a thing for me anymore!
I've also cut down on caffeine - I have two builders teas first thing them that's me. As I've hit middle age my body just can't deal with alcohol and caffeine like it did when I was younger. I hit it hard when I was young, I shovelled everything into me I could get my hands on, but I'm glad those days are behind me. I just can't do it now. Nor do I want to.
I wish I could go out on a Friday for a gallon without it wiping out my weekend, but sometimes you just wanna get pissed and talk rubbish with your mates, don't you? So I take the hit and the missus moaning at me for wasting my weekend...
That's a long-winded way of saying I enjoyed getting hammered when I was young, but I prefer a clear head now, and I always manage to keep myself amused.
I water down every alcoholic drink I have now, which means I never get to the hangover stage. My theory was that you never beat the two or three pint buzz, and any more after that was just giving you worse hangovers without making the night better. Now I can’t drink alcohol that’s not watered down, albeit I do probably drink too often
I think that's spot on, and I find the lack of lower alcohol, but still tasty, beer incredibly annoying. I'd like to have one pint of 4% beer, and follow it by 2% ones. That would mean my body is processing the alcohol at roughly the same rate I'm drinking, and it won't feel like cheating. It would obviously almost halve how much beer I drank out on a curry night with my mates too.
Every single academic conference I go to is doom laden. There is deep deep worry in the academic community about where current trends are taking us....
So I teach on the MBA programme at a leading London business school. We visited a leading european car manufacurer this year... they had electrified one of their brands and sold thousand of cars they could not deliver... they had taken the money, but the copper, lithium, rare minerals and quality steel was in such short supply that it led to a crisis for the company. Anyway they were open about this. After I spoke to one of the top top execs of this firm and said: look out on the streets at the fleet of vehicles driving around. What is the likelihood of those being replaced 1:1 with electric or hydrogen by 2040 or 2050..... he said: "Nil... it isn't happening... mobility as we have known it since ww2 is going to become a luxury." I asked him what should be done.... he said "we have to redesign cities so the car isn't needed like today" 🤷
The consumption opportunities and level of material prosperity people have become accustomed to over the last 80 years is an aberration historical terms and it is about to drop away.
I am no sort of leftist, but if we look back eg 25 years to 1999, we were not exactly living on gruel and sending our children to school shoeless in the snow.
What the world needs is not for the rich world to get disproportionately richer, it is for the poorer world to catch up with the middling/richer world. The is essential not only because it is right, but also because there is no other way to stem the increasing flow of economic and political migrants.
Something that has been entertaining to watch has been the legacy car companies taking the view that they will just order batteries and batteries will appear. The rest of a EV requires the same materials as an ICE - excepting the electric motors.
If you are buying the entire output of a factory, year in, year out, then you need to own a factory. They worked this out with engines. But I guess they forgot that lesson.
I attended one seminar on EVs, at a bank a few years back, where it was all “we will buy that in from China, of course”.
Wait until the Chinese battery factories, or their political bosses, decide that domestic EV production is more important than battery exports.
Something that has been entertaining to watch has been the legacy car companies taking the view that they will just order batteries and batteries will appear. The rest of a EV requires the same materials as an ICE - excepting the electric motors.
If you are buying the entire output of a factory, year in, year out, then you need to own a factory. They worked this out with engines. But I guess they forgot that lesson.
I attended one seminar on EVs, at a bank a few years back, where it was all “we will buy that in from China, of course”.
It's a brilliant plan up until the point that the JapaneseKoreans Chinese who actually make the stuff realise that they could sell their goods to your customers. Any business that falls into such a trap deserves to be destroyed.
They reveal that Kemi Badenoch is a net drag on the Conservative vote, even amongst 2019 Tory voters (12-20), but only let on the positive number, (35), for Boris
A header that mentions the "neoliberal consensus" - good to see pieces recognising that states selling off civic assets may not be seen as a good deal by a majority of the public who like those assets and services and aren't profiting off of them being sold whole sale.
I think we're getting into a position similar to the 20th century - the paradoxes of capitalism are coming home to roost and the inaction of states to safeguard the material needs of the average person is leading towards grievance and a willingness to embrace the far right, even if you don't like them. Liberals are unpopular because they refuse to deal with the issues, left wingers are unpopular because the apparatus of capital control most media and would lose out under a more left wing world so scream bloody hell about anyone to the left of Atilla the Hun. And the right are unpopular because their wish casting politics just can't be done.
"embrace the far right"
As Corbyn and his acolytes show, the far left also has significant power for the disaffected.
But the entire force of capital, which includes the private media and the political establishment, go out of there way to make left wing policies solutions the equivalent of literal Stalinism whilst painting far right rhetoric as "common sense". The Overton window can only go one way for those people - it's the ratchet effect. So people seeing how impossible it is to get left wing solutions (and Corbyn is hardly far left, he proposed a social democratic policy platform that, when polled on issue by issue rather then as "Corbyn's policies", did have popular support) become disaffected and those who desire a far right solution get told it is always possible (because every party panders to them) and that when their policy preference is enacted and doesn't work that's because it wasn't done harshly enough and the answer is to go even more right wing.
"But the entire force of capital". You been at the Koolaid again? What is this 1875 and we are discussing the Communist Manifesto?
At heart most people like capitalism. What they want is for capitalism to be fair - so no unfair advantages of birth, of wealth etc. They want hard work rewarded.
What they don't want is bullshit economic theories about 'capital' and the 'politcal establishment' etc
Capitalism does not reward fairness or meritocracy - those things are not inherently capitalistic. The advantages of birth are backed into capitalism; inheritance whether in money or assets is the highest predictor of wealth later in life. People who work hard are not rewarded under capitalism. We recognised under Covid that their were such things as "essential workers" - who were they? Shop assistants, nurses, public servants and the like - are they the most well paid? Does a CEO or shareholder of a company work whatever ratio it has more than their lowest paid worker? Capitalism rewards those who help accumulate more capital for capitalists. To do otherwise is counter to capitalist mode of production.
So what is your solution then?
Hard work is rewarded - but yes every job comes with its own salary, and some of them are grossly unfair. And yet. Is it right for a CEO to earn millions? Maybe, if they can show that their input actual generates substantially more than that.
Should lower paid jobs be better paid? Yes - in an ideal world people would not need extra money from government if they are working a 37.5h week. But is it right that I earn more as a Uni lecturer than someone that works in retail? I bring a lifetime of experience of my subject to the role, you can be trained for a job on the tills and stacking shelves in days.
Capitalism cannot be left to run without check, for sure, but I have not seen a better arrangement suggested. What do you propose?
From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs - I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable. What that means practically? If you're in favour of a state that would mean, in part, state management of resources, workers councils who own the means of production, the seizing and redistribution of assets from the rich to the poor, etc. etc. If you're not in favour of a state (personally I'm not) you would do what the anarchists did in places like Spain at the outbreak of the civil war and what is happening in Rojava now; community and workers councils making democratic decisions about issues and deciding what to do and trade for themselves. Is this Utopian - yes, of course.
I would be happy in the mean time for more social democratic reform, wealth redistribution, empowerment of unions and individual workers and an increased social safety net. These are the things that would tackle the immediate problems that the "free market" are clearly making worse - inflation (to a degree, climate change will increase the scarcity of lots of essential resources), housing, poverty and malnourishment, etc.
"I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable."
Because HUMAN NATURE. Its how we are wired, I'm afraid. People want stuff. So you basically are an unapologetic communist. Are you Ash Sarkar? She of the luxury communism bent?
In feudal times there were lots of people, including many of those at the bottom of society, who believed it was the natural and right order of things, and they could not conceive of society being ordered in any different way.
There's nothing in human nature that makes capitalism the only, or optimal, way to organise society. We could do things differently if we wanted to. Albeit I would have hoped that the seven quarters of a century since the Communist Manifesto might have provided a few more appealing glimpses of what an alternative might look like than have been provided.
There is also no reason why an anarchist or communist model of managing the economy also couldn’t provide people with stuff - it would just mean that the people who have over accumulated stuff would have less stuff. I’m a champagne socialist - redistribute the access to champagne to the working classes. Bread and roses.
In a stateless economy, it's not champagne you'd be distributing but heroin and other narcotics, and de facto slavery would be commonplace.
See how the USSR provided people with stuff, compared with say the USA (or even the UK).
The USSR was not stateless - it was a union of Soviet States. But also, just after the revolution, the standard of living for the average Russian did greatly improve. Same in China after their revolution. That doesn't mean everything they did to achieve that was good, or the communist state that did it was good, but it was clearly better than what had come previously under the Tsar and Imperial China. Do people here really think the history of Romanov rule, for example, was better than communist Russia?
But in both cases, it then went very wrong very quickly.
In many ways, yes, in other ways progress was made. Again, I don’t defend state communism or what happened under it, but many people were pulled out of poverty by it, in the USSR education and rights for women (for example) was greatly expanded, and the economies essentially went straight from serfdom into industrialisation.
And what of capitalism? Since Reagan and Thatcher, the birth of neoliberalism and the unleashing of the markets, the world has gone from catastrophe to catastrophe. The capitalist organisation of the economy is literally making the planet uninhabitable. Boom and bust cycles were not destroyed, wages have stagnated whilst profits have soared, and the more the state is cut back from supporting people the more people fall into poverty and immiseration.
So apart from the murders, the famines, the closed borders (to stop people leaving), the rationing, the extreme poverty (for all but a very small social elite who lived like Henry VIII), Soviet Russia was awesome?
I didn't say that - at all.
And capitalism has presided over no state orchestrated murders nor ethnic cleansings, no famines or closed borders, no extreme poverty? I mean, we can just look at the history of United Fruit for one example of many of those things - all in the name of a company wanting to keep its profits going against the democratic wishes of a country that didn't want to be controlled by foreign, private capital. We could look at the history of Iran and ask the question "why is it like it is now?" and think about BP and the movement of oil. We could look at the history of Coca Cola, and state funded militias, and the destruction of whole ecosystems and indigenous societies.
And that's pre Reagan and Thatcher - before we get to how modern resource extraction works, how modern labour conditions are so terrible in factories across the world that child labour is commonplace and that anti-suicide netting is needed to prevent workers jumping out of the windows. How often states support capital in their fights against common people who just don't wish to be oppressed and dispossessed and destroyed - all for a few people to live high on massive profits.
If you want an economic model that allows for extreme poverty and a very small social elite who live in unimaginable wealth - you're living under one.
When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, in which direction was the human traffic?
Again, I do not like nor defend the USSR or its model for economic management - as I have said I am more on the anarchist left. More Bookchin than Bolshevik, more Kropotkin that Kremlin, more Machnovist than Maoist. Can you explain how capitalism is so much better, has no deaths or atrocities under its belt, and is a shining city on a hill? Or is it only I who has to defend my positions from purposeful strawman after strawman?
Straw man? You're the one defending an almost entirely theoretical model. Your position is essentially the same as the infamous YouGov poll last week that said "choose between what you have and something hypothetically wonderful". You have dreams and aspirations, fine, but there is no bodycount in your chosen philosophy because it has been tried only sporadically and on a tiny scale.
What countries have successfully implemented your preferred form of governance so we can compare?
I'm not sure anarchism qualifies as a form of "governance".
Although I've heard it said that at least it's better than no governance at all.
Anarchism is no governement at all though. Its a situation where those willing to be violent rule and everyone else obeys
You don't vote, though, do you? You think every party we've got, and every politician representing them, are a waste of space. Isn't that right?
Which is not the same as believing that there should be no laws or governments. I just disagree with out current political institution
You just said (in defending capitalism) that relative merit is what counts. In particular it's better than the left's alternative of communism. I think that's right btw.
Surely the same applies to this matter of voting. You think none of them are much cop. Fine. But how come you don't weigh them against each other and choose the least bad?
Have we got to a consensus on the difference between the “12-15 pt lead” and “20-25 pt lead” pollsters by the way? I think we had concluded it was mostly in the treatment of the don’t know’s?
Seems so
This must be a unique situation really. Govt elected with a huge majority gets rid of leader who wasn’t that unpopular with their voters… and replaces with two leaders who are unpopular with them
Shame he completely fouled his own bed by his involvement in the Paterson, Partygate and Pincher fiascos.
Have we got to a consensus on the difference between the “12-15 pt lead” and “20-25 pt lead” pollsters by the way? I think we had concluded it was mostly in the treatment of the don’t know’s?
Seems so
This must be a unique situation really. Govt elected with a huge majority gets rid of leader who wasn’t that unpopular with their voters… and replaces with two leaders who are unpopular with them
Goes on to be beaten by opposition about whom the public thinks “meh”.
I miss “precedented” times. I worry that chasing Boris out will be the moment we all look back on as the beginning of the rise of an actual Trump like populist.
A quite interesting piece on the starting day of the Edinburgh pavement parking ban (which is full of holes).
The sharp case is on a street on the grid between the coast and the high street in Portobello, Regent Street. The carriageway is ~6.2m wide; wall to wall is ~8.7m wide; ie ~1.25m footways.
The two edge cases are:
'If we want to park both sides, and leave room for vehicles to drive through, we have to park on the pavements.'
and
'If the pavements are blocked like this both sides, I won't leave my house because I would have to wheel my wheelchair down the carriageway."
Pavements are not constructed to bear the weight of vehicles, especially large or commercial ones. the resulting damage to paving slabs, wearing courses, displaced kerbs is often considerable.
It's notable that in Scotland heavy commercial vehicles have an exception from the Pavement Parking Ban for unloading. That's one loophole.
Every single academic conference I go to is doom laden. There is deep deep worry in the academic community about where current trends are taking us....
So I teach on the MBA programme at a leading London business school. We visited a leading european car manufacurer this year... they had electrified one of their brands and sold thousand of cars they could not deliver... they had taken the money, but the copper, lithium, rare minerals and quality steel was in such short supply that it led to a crisis for the company. Anyway they were open about this. After I spoke to one of the top top execs of this firm and said: look out on the streets at the fleet of vehicles driving around. What is the likelihood of those being replaced 1:1 with electric or hydrogen by 2040 or 2050..... he said: "Nil... it isn't happening... mobility as we have known it since ww2 is going to become a luxury." I asked him what should be done.... he said "we have to redesign cities so the car isn't needed like today" 🤷
The consumption opportunities and level of material prosperity people have become accustomed to over the last 80 years is an aberration historical terms and it is about to drop away.
I am no sort of leftist, but if we look back eg 25 years to 1999, we were not exactly living on gruel and sending our children to school shoeless in the snow.
What the world needs is not for the rich world to get disproportionately richer, it is for the poorer world to catch up with the middling/richer world. The is essential not only because it is right, but also because there is no other way to stem the increasing flow of economic and political migrants.
Something that has been entertaining to watch has been the legacy car companies taking the view that they will just order batteries and batteries will appear. The rest of a EV requires the same materials as an ICE - excepting the electric motors.
If you are buying the entire output of a factory, year in, year out, then you need to own a factory. They worked this out with engines. But I guess they forgot that lesson.
I attended one seminar on EVs, at a bank a few years back, where it was all “we will buy that in from China, of course”.
Wait until the Chinese battery factories, or their political bosses, decide that domestic EV production is more important than battery exports.
Like for like, how much more than an unfueled normal car does an EV weigh?
Have we got to a consensus on the difference between the “12-15 pt lead” and “20-25 pt lead” pollsters by the way? I think we had concluded it was mostly in the treatment of the don’t know’s?
Seems so
This must be a unique situation really. Govt elected with a huge majority gets rid of leader who wasn’t that unpopular with their voters… and replaces with two leaders who are unpopular with them
Shame he completely fouled his own bed by his involvement in the Paterson, Partygate and Pincher fiascos.
He’s still the most popular choice amongst 2019 Tories. I think he always was. The Tory MPs who forced him out should have remembered they owed their seats/jobs to him and just ridden the storm
A header that mentions the "neoliberal consensus" - good to see pieces recognising that states selling off civic assets may not be seen as a good deal by a majority of the public who like those assets and services and aren't profiting off of them being sold whole sale.
I think we're getting into a position similar to the 20th century - the paradoxes of capitalism are coming home to roost and the inaction of states to safeguard the material needs of the average person is leading towards grievance and a willingness to embrace the far right, even if you don't like them. Liberals are unpopular because they refuse to deal with the issues, left wingers are unpopular because the apparatus of capital control most media and would lose out under a more left wing world so scream bloody hell about anyone to the left of Atilla the Hun. And the right are unpopular because their wish casting politics just can't be done.
"embrace the far right"
As Corbyn and his acolytes show, the far left also has significant power for the disaffected.
But the entire force of capital, which includes the private media and the political establishment, go out of there way to make left wing policies solutions the equivalent of literal Stalinism whilst painting far right rhetoric as "common sense". The Overton window can only go one way for those people - it's the ratchet effect. So people seeing how impossible it is to get left wing solutions (and Corbyn is hardly far left, he proposed a social democratic policy platform that, when polled on issue by issue rather then as "Corbyn's policies", did have popular support) become disaffected and those who desire a far right solution get told it is always possible (because every party panders to them) and that when their policy preference is enacted and doesn't work that's because it wasn't done harshly enough and the answer is to go even more right wing.
"But the entire force of capital". You been at the Koolaid again? What is this 1875 and we are discussing the Communist Manifesto?
At heart most people like capitalism. What they want is for capitalism to be fair - so no unfair advantages of birth, of wealth etc. They want hard work rewarded.
What they don't want is bullshit economic theories about 'capital' and the 'politcal establishment' etc
Capitalism does not reward fairness or meritocracy - those things are not inherently capitalistic. The advantages of birth are backed into capitalism; inheritance whether in money or assets is the highest predictor of wealth later in life. People who work hard are not rewarded under capitalism. We recognised under Covid that their were such things as "essential workers" - who were they? Shop assistants, nurses, public servants and the like - are they the most well paid? Does a CEO or shareholder of a company work whatever ratio it has more than their lowest paid worker? Capitalism rewards those who help accumulate more capital for capitalists. To do otherwise is counter to capitalist mode of production.
So what is your solution then?
Hard work is rewarded - but yes every job comes with its own salary, and some of them are grossly unfair. And yet. Is it right for a CEO to earn millions? Maybe, if they can show that their input actual generates substantially more than that.
Should lower paid jobs be better paid? Yes - in an ideal world people would not need extra money from government if they are working a 37.5h week. But is it right that I earn more as a Uni lecturer than someone that works in retail? I bring a lifetime of experience of my subject to the role, you can be trained for a job on the tills and stacking shelves in days.
Capitalism cannot be left to run without check, for sure, but I have not seen a better arrangement suggested. What do you propose?
From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs - I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable. What that means practically? If you're in favour of a state that would mean, in part, state management of resources, workers councils who own the means of production, the seizing and redistribution of assets from the rich to the poor, etc. etc. If you're not in favour of a state (personally I'm not) you would do what the anarchists did in places like Spain at the outbreak of the civil war and what is happening in Rojava now; community and workers councils making democratic decisions about issues and deciding what to do and trade for themselves. Is this Utopian - yes, of course.
I would be happy in the mean time for more social democratic reform, wealth redistribution, empowerment of unions and individual workers and an increased social safety net. These are the things that would tackle the immediate problems that the "free market" are clearly making worse - inflation (to a degree, climate change will increase the scarcity of lots of essential resources), housing, poverty and malnourishment, etc.
"I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable."
Because HUMAN NATURE. Its how we are wired, I'm afraid. People want stuff. So you basically are an unapologetic communist. Are you Ash Sarkar? She of the luxury communism bent?
In feudal times there were lots of people, including many of those at the bottom of society, who believed it was the natural and right order of things, and they could not conceive of society being ordered in any different way.
There's nothing in human nature that makes capitalism the only, or optimal, way to organise society. We could do things differently if we wanted to. Albeit I would have hoped that the seven quarters of a century since the Communist Manifesto might have provided a few more appealing glimpses of what an alternative might look like than have been provided.
There is also no reason why an anarchist or communist model of managing the economy also couldn’t provide people with stuff - it would just mean that the people who have over accumulated stuff would have less stuff. I’m a champagne socialist - redistribute the access to champagne to the working classes. Bread and roses.
In a stateless economy, it's not champagne you'd be distributing but heroin and other narcotics, and de facto slavery would be commonplace.
See how the USSR provided people with stuff, compared with say the USA (or even the UK).
The USSR was not stateless - it was a union of Soviet States. But also, just after the revolution, the standard of living for the average Russian did greatly improve. Same in China after their revolution. That doesn't mean everything they did to achieve that was good, or the communist state that did it was good, but it was clearly better than what had come previously under the Tsar and Imperial China. Do people here really think the history of Romanov rule, for example, was better than communist Russia?
But in both cases, it then went very wrong very quickly.
In many ways, yes, in other ways progress was made. Again, I don’t defend state communism or what happened under it, but many people were pulled out of poverty by it, in the USSR education and rights for women (for example) was greatly expanded, and the economies essentially went straight from serfdom into industrialisation.
And what of capitalism? Since Reagan and Thatcher, the birth of neoliberalism and the unleashing of the markets, the world has gone from catastrophe to catastrophe. The capitalist organisation of the economy is literally making the planet uninhabitable. Boom and bust cycles were not destroyed, wages have stagnated whilst profits have soared, and the more the state is cut back from supporting people the more people fall into poverty and immiseration.
So apart from the murders, the famines, the closed borders (to stop people leaving), the rationing, the extreme poverty (for all but a very small social elite who lived like Henry VIII), Soviet Russia was awesome?
I didn't say that - at all.
And capitalism has presided over no state orchestrated murders nor ethnic cleansings, no famines or closed borders, no extreme poverty? I mean, we can just look at the history of United Fruit for one example of many of those things - all in the name of a company wanting to keep its profits going against the democratic wishes of a country that didn't want to be controlled by foreign, private capital. We could look at the history of Iran and ask the question "why is it like it is now?" and think about BP and the movement of oil. We could look at the history of Coca Cola, and state funded militias, and the destruction of whole ecosystems and indigenous societies.
And that's pre Reagan and Thatcher - before we get to how modern resource extraction works, how modern labour conditions are so terrible in factories across the world that child labour is commonplace and that anti-suicide netting is needed to prevent workers jumping out of the windows. How often states support capital in their fights against common people who just don't wish to be oppressed and dispossessed and destroyed - all for a few people to live high on massive profits.
If you want an economic model that allows for extreme poverty and a very small social elite who live in unimaginable wealth - you're living under one.
When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, in which direction was the human traffic?
Again, I do not like nor defend the USSR or its model for economic management - as I have said I am more on the anarchist left. More Bookchin than Bolshevik, more Kropotkin that Kremlin, more Machnovist than Maoist. Can you explain how capitalism is so much better, has no deaths or atrocities under its belt, and is a shining city on a hill? Or is it only I who has to defend my positions from purposeful strawman after strawman?
Straw man? You're the one defending an almost entirely theoretical model. Your position is essentially the same as the infamous YouGov poll last week that said "choose between what you have and something hypothetically wonderful". You have dreams and aspirations, fine, but there is no bodycount in your chosen philosophy because it has been tried only sporadically and on a tiny scale.
What countries have successfully implemented your preferred form of governance so we can compare?
I'm not sure anarchism qualifies as a form of "governance".
Although I've heard it said that at least it's better than no governance at all.
Anarchism is no governement at all though. Its a situation where those willing to be violent rule and everyone else obeys
You don't vote, though, do you? You think every party we've got, and every politician representing them, are a waste of space. Isn't that right?
Which is not the same as believing that there should be no laws or governments. I just disagree with out current political institution
You just said (in defending capitalism) that relative merit is what counts. In particular it's better than the left's alternative of communism. I think that's right btw.
Surely the same applies to this matter of voting. You think none of them are much cop. Fine. But how come you don't weigh them against each other and choose the least bad?
Because I think voting under our current system doesn't change anything, doesn't matter who gets in frankly. Why would I bother when I think it makes no difference. My belief is we need root and branch reform of out politics if we are going to move away from it. I already posted a header on a way I think would be better even if not all of the proposals were accepted and I don't believe it favoured left or right so wasn't politically biassed.
A header that mentions the "neoliberal consensus" - good to see pieces recognising that states selling off civic assets may not be seen as a good deal by a majority of the public who like those assets and services and aren't profiting off of them being sold whole sale.
I think we're getting into a position similar to the 20th century - the paradoxes of capitalism are coming home to roost and the inaction of states to safeguard the material needs of the average person is leading towards grievance and a willingness to embrace the far right, even if you don't like them. Liberals are unpopular because they refuse to deal with the issues, left wingers are unpopular because the apparatus of capital control most media and would lose out under a more left wing world so scream bloody hell about anyone to the left of Atilla the Hun. And the right are unpopular because their wish casting politics just can't be done.
"embrace the far right"
As Corbyn and his acolytes show, the far left also has significant power for the disaffected.
But the entire force of capital, which includes the private media and the political establishment, go out of there way to make left wing policies solutions the equivalent of literal Stalinism whilst painting far right rhetoric as "common sense". The Overton window can only go one way for those people - it's the ratchet effect. So people seeing how impossible it is to get left wing solutions (and Corbyn is hardly far left, he proposed a social democratic policy platform that, when polled on issue by issue rather then as "Corbyn's policies", did have popular support) become disaffected and those who desire a far right solution get told it is always possible (because every party panders to them) and that when their policy preference is enacted and doesn't work that's because it wasn't done harshly enough and the answer is to go even more right wing.
"But the entire force of capital". You been at the Koolaid again? What is this 1875 and we are discussing the Communist Manifesto?
At heart most people like capitalism. What they want is for capitalism to be fair - so no unfair advantages of birth, of wealth etc. They want hard work rewarded.
What they don't want is bullshit economic theories about 'capital' and the 'politcal establishment' etc
Capitalism does not reward fairness or meritocracy - those things are not inherently capitalistic. The advantages of birth are backed into capitalism; inheritance whether in money or assets is the highest predictor of wealth later in life. People who work hard are not rewarded under capitalism. We recognised under Covid that their were such things as "essential workers" - who were they? Shop assistants, nurses, public servants and the like - are they the most well paid? Does a CEO or shareholder of a company work whatever ratio it has more than their lowest paid worker? Capitalism rewards those who help accumulate more capital for capitalists. To do otherwise is counter to capitalist mode of production.
So what is your solution then?
Hard work is rewarded - but yes every job comes with its own salary, and some of them are grossly unfair. And yet. Is it right for a CEO to earn millions? Maybe, if they can show that their input actual generates substantially more than that.
Should lower paid jobs be better paid? Yes - in an ideal world people would not need extra money from government if they are working a 37.5h week. But is it right that I earn more as a Uni lecturer than someone that works in retail? I bring a lifetime of experience of my subject to the role, you can be trained for a job on the tills and stacking shelves in days.
Capitalism cannot be left to run without check, for sure, but I have not seen a better arrangement suggested. What do you propose?
From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs - I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable. What that means practically? If you're in favour of a state that would mean, in part, state management of resources, workers councils who own the means of production, the seizing and redistribution of assets from the rich to the poor, etc. etc. If you're not in favour of a state (personally I'm not) you would do what the anarchists did in places like Spain at the outbreak of the civil war and what is happening in Rojava now; community and workers councils making democratic decisions about issues and deciding what to do and trade for themselves. Is this Utopian - yes, of course.
I would be happy in the mean time for more social democratic reform, wealth redistribution, empowerment of unions and individual workers and an increased social safety net. These are the things that would tackle the immediate problems that the "free market" are clearly making worse - inflation (to a degree, climate change will increase the scarcity of lots of essential resources), housing, poverty and malnourishment, etc.
"I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable."
Because HUMAN NATURE. Its how we are wired, I'm afraid. People want stuff. So you basically are an unapologetic communist. Are you Ash Sarkar? She of the luxury communism bent?
In feudal times there were lots of people, including many of those at the bottom of society, who believed it was the natural and right order of things, and they could not conceive of society being ordered in any different way.
There's nothing in human nature that makes capitalism the only, or optimal, way to organise society. We could do things differently if we wanted to. Albeit I would have hoped that the seven quarters of a century since the Communist Manifesto might have provided a few more appealing glimpses of what an alternative might look like than have been provided.
There is also no reason why an anarchist or communist model of managing the economy also couldn’t provide people with stuff - it would just mean that the people who have over accumulated stuff would have less stuff. I’m a champagne socialist - redistribute the access to champagne to the working classes. Bread and roses.
In a stateless economy, it's not champagne you'd be distributing but heroin and other narcotics, and de facto slavery would be commonplace.
See how the USSR provided people with stuff, compared with say the USA (or even the UK).
The USSR was not stateless - it was a union of Soviet States. But also, just after the revolution, the standard of living for the average Russian did greatly improve. Same in China after their revolution. That doesn't mean everything they did to achieve that was good, or the communist state that did it was good, but it was clearly better than what had come previously under the Tsar and Imperial China. Do people here really think the history of Romanov rule, for example, was better than communist Russia?
That depends what period you're looking at. From the time of Catherine II, till the end of the Romanovs, capital punishment was used less frequently than between 1917 - 1953, in favour of internal exile. Of course, there was serfdom until 1861, but then the Communists also made extensive use of slave labour, up till 1953. Soviet industrialisation was impressive (with US manufacturers providing a huge level of technology), along with the performance of the Red Army. But life in the countryside, where most citizens lived, was dire, with famine, forcible collectivsation, dekulakisation, all taking their toll on the population.
It was impressive because it came at the cost of 6 million lives.
All Communist states have failed (I'd no longer call China 'communist'). Why is an interesting question.
A few years back I read a very good, but very odd, book called 'Red Plenty', I think by Francis Spufford. It highlights how the Soviet Union looked as though it might economically eclipse the west in the 1950s and 1960s, but utterly failed in the 1970s and 1980s. My takehome from it is that the failure was largely because the entire thing was built on a pyramid of lies.
The top would tell factories what to produce, and how much, regardless of capability. If a factory failed to meet quotas, it meant the manager would get sacked. So they would report that they'd met the quotas. And as the market economy was rudimentary at best, they could get away with it. Then people above the managers would lie to their superiors, who would lie to their superiors.
I reckon the same is going on in China at the moment. Their entire internal market is based on lies.
I can't remember where the anecdote was from, but there was one about a Russian laundrette. It was given the order to produce a certain number of tonnes of scrap. So they had to scrap perfectly good machines to meet the quota, and then put in orders to buy new machines. Because obviously, laundrettes are in the scrap business.
Have we got to a consensus on the difference between the “12-15 pt lead” and “20-25 pt lead” pollsters by the way? I think we had concluded it was mostly in the treatment of the don’t know’s?
Seems so
This must be a unique situation really. Govt elected with a huge majority gets rid of leader who wasn’t that unpopular with their voters… and replaces with two leaders who are unpopular with them
Shame he completely fouled his own bed by his involvement in the Paterson, Partygate and Pincher fiascos.
He’s still the most popular choice amongst 2019 Tories. I think he always was. The Tory MPs who forced him out should have remembered they owed their seats/jobs to him and just ridden the storm out
It must have occurred to many of them that they’d be no worse, and probably better, off.
One can argue it was morally right he be chucked out, but politically it was always bonkers.
Every single academic conference I go to is doom laden. There is deep deep worry in the academic community about where current trends are taking us....
So I teach on the MBA programme at a leading London business school. We visited a leading european car manufacurer this year... they had electrified one of their brands and sold thousand of cars they could not deliver... they had taken the money, but the copper, lithium, rare minerals and quality steel was in such short supply that it led to a crisis for the company. Anyway they were open about this. After I spoke to one of the top top execs of this firm and said: look out on the streets at the fleet of vehicles driving around. What is the likelihood of those being replaced 1:1 with electric or hydrogen by 2040 or 2050..... he said: "Nil... it isn't happening... mobility as we have known it since ww2 is going to become a luxury." I asked him what should be done.... he said "we have to redesign cities so the car isn't needed like today" 🤷
The consumption opportunities and level of material prosperity people have become accustomed to over the last 80 years is an aberration historical terms and it is about to drop away.
I am no sort of leftist, but if we look back eg 25 years to 1999, we were not exactly living on gruel and sending our children to school shoeless in the snow.
What the world needs is not for the rich world to get disproportionately richer, it is for the poorer world to catch up with the middling/richer world. The is essential not only because it is right, but also because there is no other way to stem the increasing flow of economic and political migrants.
Something that has been entertaining to watch has been the legacy car companies taking the view that they will just order batteries and batteries will appear. The rest of a EV requires the same materials as an ICE - excepting the electric motors.
If you are buying the entire output of a factory, year in, year out, then you need to own a factory. They worked this out with engines. But I guess they forgot that lesson.
I attended one seminar on EVs, at a bank a few years back, where it was all “we will buy that in from China, of course”.
Wait until the Chinese battery factories, or their political bosses, decide that domestic EV production is more important than battery exports.
Like for like, how much more than an unfueled normal car does an EV weigh?
A corresponding BEV is about half a tonne heavier than an ICE vehicle.
These are Norway figures, which are probably a good example as the most developed BEV market:
Every single academic conference I go to is doom laden. There is deep deep worry in the academic community about where current trends are taking us....
So I teach on the MBA programme at a leading London business school. We visited a leading european car manufacurer this year... they had electrified one of their brands and sold thousand of cars they could not deliver... they had taken the money, but the copper, lithium, rare minerals and quality steel was in such short supply that it led to a crisis for the company. Anyway they were open about this. After I spoke to one of the top top execs of this firm and said: look out on the streets at the fleet of vehicles driving around. What is the likelihood of those being replaced 1:1 with electric or hydrogen by 2040 or 2050..... he said: "Nil... it isn't happening... mobility as we have known it since ww2 is going to become a luxury." I asked him what should be done.... he said "we have to redesign cities so the car isn't needed like today" 🤷
The consumption opportunities and level of material prosperity people have become accustomed to over the last 80 years is an aberration historical terms and it is about to drop away.
I am no sort of leftist, but if we look back eg 25 years to 1999, we were not exactly living on gruel and sending our children to school shoeless in the snow.
What the world needs is not for the rich world to get disproportionately richer, it is for the poorer world to catch up with the middling/richer world. The is essential not only because it is right, but also because there is no other way to stem the increasing flow of economic and political migrants.
Something that has been entertaining to watch has been the legacy car companies taking the view that they will just order batteries and batteries will appear. The rest of a EV requires the same materials as an ICE - excepting the electric motors.
If you are buying the entire output of a factory, year in, year out, then you need to own a factory. They worked this out with engines. But I guess they forgot that lesson.
I attended one seminar on EVs, at a bank a few years back, where it was all “we will buy that in from China, of course”.
Wait until the Chinese battery factories, or their political bosses, decide that domestic EV production is more important than battery exports.
Like for like, how much more than an unfueled normal car does an EV weigh?
(Thinking shipping costs).
Usually around 200kg or thereabouts, but it depends a lot on the platform and how it’s designed and manufactured.
Cars designed as EVs from the ground up, tend to be considerably lighter than cars that can accommodate both EV and ICE powertrains.
We are having a very productive day at work, and as the resident Grammar Nazi I have been dragged into this debate.
You’re at a bar and you want to order 3 Grey Goose drinks, do you tell the bar staff
1) I want three shots of Grey Goose
2) I want three shots of Grey Geese
3) I want a flock of Vodka
You ask for Grey Goose while holding up 3 fingers, obviously...
Might get you one triple.
Correct answer is "three greys goose", which also has absolutely zero chance of being misinterpreted.
But you wouldn't order "three Johnnies Walker", would you?
Me, I'd say "three grey gooses".
Rationale: The drink is sufficiently removed from what it's named after to allow you to play fast and loose and just choose what sounds best - which is the above.
What's wrong with "Grey Goose times three"?
I would offer to field test phrases in a sample of hostelries, but it's a work night...
That's probably the way to go for people who dislike the grammatical heresy of "three grey gooses". But for me it's second best.
Where I would use that formulation is for something like egg and chips.
Have we got to a consensus on the difference between the “12-15 pt lead” and “20-25 pt lead” pollsters by the way? I think we had concluded it was mostly in the treatment of the don’t know’s?
Seems so
This must be a unique situation really. Govt elected with a huge majority gets rid of leader who wasn’t that unpopular with their voters… and replaces with two leaders who are unpopular with them
Shame he completely fouled his own bed by his involvement in the Paterson, Partygate and Pincher fiascos.
He’s still the most popular choice amongst 2019 Tories. I think he always was. The Tory MPs who forced him out should have remembered they owed their seats/jobs to him and just ridden the storm
But how could they? He was disgraced and ejected from parliament.
Every single academic conference I go to is doom laden. There is deep deep worry in the academic community about where current trends are taking us....
So I teach on the MBA programme at a leading London business school. We visited a leading european car manufacurer this year... they had electrified one of their brands and sold thousand of cars they could not deliver... they had taken the money, but the copper, lithium, rare minerals and quality steel was in such short supply that it led to a crisis for the company. Anyway they were open about this. After I spoke to one of the top top execs of this firm and said: look out on the streets at the fleet of vehicles driving around. What is the likelihood of those being replaced 1:1 with electric or hydrogen by 2040 or 2050..... he said: "Nil... it isn't happening... mobility as we have known it since ww2 is going to become a luxury." I asked him what should be done.... he said "we have to redesign cities so the car isn't needed like today" 🤷
The consumption opportunities and level of material prosperity people have become accustomed to over the last 80 years is an aberration historical terms and it is about to drop away.
I am no sort of leftist, but if we look back eg 25 years to 1999, we were not exactly living on gruel and sending our children to school shoeless in the snow.
What the world needs is not for the rich world to get disproportionately richer, it is for the poorer world to catch up with the middling/richer world. The is essential not only because it is right, but also because there is no other way to stem the increasing flow of economic and political migrants.
Something that has been entertaining to watch has been the legacy car companies taking the view that they will just order batteries and batteries will appear. The rest of a EV requires the same materials as an ICE - excepting the electric motors.
If you are buying the entire output of a factory, year in, year out, then you need to own a factory. They worked this out with engines. But I guess they forgot that lesson.
I attended one seminar on EVs, at a bank a few years back, where it was all “we will buy that in from China, of course”.
Wait until the Chinese battery factories, or their political bosses, decide that domestic EV production is more important than battery exports.
Like for like, how much more than an unfueled normal car does an EV weigh?
(Thinking shipping costs).
Looks like about 250kg.
A battery seems to be around 450kg, but an EV car saves some weight elsewhere.
Every single academic conference I go to is doom laden. There is deep deep worry in the academic community about where current trends are taking us....
So I teach on the MBA programme at a leading London business school. We visited a leading european car manufacurer this year... they had electrified one of their brands and sold thousand of cars they could not deliver... they had taken the money, but the copper, lithium, rare minerals and quality steel was in such short supply that it led to a crisis for the company. Anyway they were open about this. After I spoke to one of the top top execs of this firm and said: look out on the streets at the fleet of vehicles driving around. What is the likelihood of those being replaced 1:1 with electric or hydrogen by 2040 or 2050..... he said: "Nil... it isn't happening... mobility as we have known it since ww2 is going to become a luxury." I asked him what should be done.... he said "we have to redesign cities so the car isn't needed like today" 🤷
The consumption opportunities and level of material prosperity people have become accustomed to over the last 80 years is an aberration historical terms and it is about to drop away.
I am no sort of leftist, but if we look back eg 25 years to 1999, we were not exactly living on gruel and sending our children to school shoeless in the snow.
What the world needs is not for the rich world to get disproportionately richer, it is for the poorer world to catch up with the middling/richer world. The is essential not only because it is right, but also because there is no other way to stem the increasing flow of economic and political migrants.
Something that has been entertaining to watch has been the legacy car companies taking the view that they will just order batteries and batteries will appear. The rest of a EV requires the same materials as an ICE - excepting the electric motors.
If you are buying the entire output of a factory, year in, year out, then you need to own a factory. They worked this out with engines. But I guess they forgot that lesson.
I attended one seminar on EVs, at a bank a few years back, where it was all “we will buy that in from China, of course”.
Wait until the Chinese battery factories, or their political bosses, decide that domestic EV production is more important than battery exports.
Like for like, how much more than an unfueled normal car does an EV weigh?
A corresponding BEV is about half a tonne heavier than our already bloated ICE vehicles.
These are Norway figures, which are probably a good example as the most developed BEV market:
Every single academic conference I go to is doom laden. There is deep deep worry in the academic community about where current trends are taking us....
So I teach on the MBA programme at a leading London business school. We visited a leading european car manufacurer this year... they had electrified one of their brands and sold thousand of cars they could not deliver... they had taken the money, but the copper, lithium, rare minerals and quality steel was in such short supply that it led to a crisis for the company. Anyway they were open about this. After I spoke to one of the top top execs of this firm and said: look out on the streets at the fleet of vehicles driving around. What is the likelihood of those being replaced 1:1 with electric or hydrogen by 2040 or 2050..... he said: "Nil... it isn't happening... mobility as we have known it since ww2 is going to become a luxury." I asked him what should be done.... he said "we have to redesign cities so the car isn't needed like today" 🤷
The consumption opportunities and level of material prosperity people have become accustomed to over the last 80 years is an aberration historical terms and it is about to drop away.
I am no sort of leftist, but if we look back eg 25 years to 1999, we were not exactly living on gruel and sending our children to school shoeless in the snow.
What the world needs is not for the rich world to get disproportionately richer, it is for the poorer world to catch up with the middling/richer world. The is essential not only because it is right, but also because there is no other way to stem the increasing flow of economic and political migrants.
Something that has been entertaining to watch has been the legacy car companies taking the view that they will just order batteries and batteries will appear. The rest of a EV requires the same materials as an ICE - excepting the electric motors.
If you are buying the entire output of a factory, year in, year out, then you need to own a factory. They worked this out with engines. But I guess they forgot that lesson.
I attended one seminar on EVs, at a bank a few years back, where it was all “we will buy that in from China, of course”.
Wait until the Chinese battery factories, or their political bosses, decide that domestic EV production is more important than battery exports.
Like for like, how much more than an unfueled normal car does an EV weigh?
(Thinking shipping costs).
Usually around 200kg or thereabouts, but it depends a lot on the platform and how it’s designed and manufactured.
Cars designed as EVs from the ground up, tend to be considerably lighter than cars that can accommodate both EV and ICE powertrains.
Thanks. Interesting. Hadn’t considered the saving on the rest of the mechanism. By 2035, we aren’t going to need to be forced to switch are we?
My only worry is that there will be enough left over petrol stations for me to still be driving my DB5 and my E Type well into the 2050s after I make my millions and buy them.
Have we got to a consensus on the difference between the “12-15 pt lead” and “20-25 pt lead” pollsters by the way? I think we had concluded it was mostly in the treatment of the don’t know’s?
Seems so
This must be a unique situation really. Govt elected with a huge majority gets rid of leader who wasn’t that unpopular with their voters… and replaces with two leaders who are unpopular with them
Shame he completely fouled his own bed by his involvement in the Paterson, Partygate and Pincher fiascos.
He’s still the most popular choice amongst 2019 Tories. I think he always was. The Tory MPs who forced him out should have remembered they owed their seats/jobs to him and just ridden the storm
But how could they? He was disgraced and ejected from parliament.
Won’t speak for @isam but I think that, with a party closing ranks, he could have won the by-election.
In a way, his party is to be applauded for sticking to its principles on Boris, in the end, and just deciding his face didn’t fit.
Every single academic conference I go to is doom laden. There is deep deep worry in the academic community about where current trends are taking us....
So I teach on the MBA programme at a leading London business school. We visited a leading european car manufacurer this year... they had electrified one of their brands and sold thousand of cars they could not deliver... they had taken the money, but the copper, lithium, rare minerals and quality steel was in such short supply that it led to a crisis for the company. Anyway they were open about this. After I spoke to one of the top top execs of this firm and said: look out on the streets at the fleet of vehicles driving around. What is the likelihood of those being replaced 1:1 with electric or hydrogen by 2040 or 2050..... he said: "Nil... it isn't happening... mobility as we have known it since ww2 is going to become a luxury." I asked him what should be done.... he said "we have to redesign cities so the car isn't needed like today" 🤷
The consumption opportunities and level of material prosperity people have become accustomed to over the last 80 years is an aberration historical terms and it is about to drop away.
I am no sort of leftist, but if we look back eg 25 years to 1999, we were not exactly living on gruel and sending our children to school shoeless in the snow.
What the world needs is not for the rich world to get disproportionately richer, it is for the poorer world to catch up with the middling/richer world. The is essential not only because it is right, but also because there is no other way to stem the increasing flow of economic and political migrants.
Something that has been entertaining to watch has been the legacy car companies taking the view that they will just order batteries and batteries will appear. The rest of a EV requires the same materials as an ICE - excepting the electric motors.
If you are buying the entire output of a factory, year in, year out, then you need to own a factory. They worked this out with engines. But I guess they forgot that lesson.
I attended one seminar on EVs, at a bank a few years back, where it was all “we will buy that in from China, of course”.
Wait until the Chinese battery factories, or their political bosses, decide that domestic EV production is more important than battery exports.
Like for like, how much more than an unfueled normal car does an EV weigh?
(Thinking shipping costs).
Looks like about 250kg.
A battery seems to be around 450kg, but an EV car saves some weight elsewhere.
If the non-EV car is 1500 kg, then the increase in axle weight is from 750kg to 875kg. Road wear is proportional to the fourth power of axle weight, so that's an increase of 85% in road wear.
That sounds like a lot, but it's nothing compared to HGVs.
Every single academic conference I go to is doom laden. There is deep deep worry in the academic community about where current trends are taking us....
So I teach on the MBA programme at a leading London business school. We visited a leading european car manufacurer this year... they had electrified one of their brands and sold thousand of cars they could not deliver... they had taken the money, but the copper, lithium, rare minerals and quality steel was in such short supply that it led to a crisis for the company. Anyway they were open about this. After I spoke to one of the top top execs of this firm and said: look out on the streets at the fleet of vehicles driving around. What is the likelihood of those being replaced 1:1 with electric or hydrogen by 2040 or 2050..... he said: "Nil... it isn't happening... mobility as we have known it since ww2 is going to become a luxury." I asked him what should be done.... he said "we have to redesign cities so the car isn't needed like today" 🤷
The consumption opportunities and level of material prosperity people have become accustomed to over the last 80 years is an aberration historical terms and it is about to drop away.
I am no sort of leftist, but if we look back eg 25 years to 1999, we were not exactly living on gruel and sending our children to school shoeless in the snow.
What the world needs is not for the rich world to get disproportionately richer, it is for the poorer world to catch up with the middling/richer world. The is essential not only because it is right, but also because there is no other way to stem the increasing flow of economic and political migrants.
Something that has been entertaining to watch has been the legacy car companies taking the view that they will just order batteries and batteries will appear. The rest of a EV requires the same materials as an ICE - excepting the electric motors.
If you are buying the entire output of a factory, year in, year out, then you need to own a factory. They worked this out with engines. But I guess they forgot that lesson.
I attended one seminar on EVs, at a bank a few years back, where it was all “we will buy that in from China, of course”.
Wait until the Chinese battery factories, or their political bosses, decide that domestic EV production is more important than battery exports.
Like for like, how much more than an unfueled normal car does an EV weigh?
A corresponding BEV is about half a tonne heavier than our already bloated ICE vehicles.
These are Norway figures, which are probably a good example as the most developed BEV market:
Every single academic conference I go to is doom laden. There is deep deep worry in the academic community about where current trends are taking us....
So I teach on the MBA programme at a leading London business school. We visited a leading european car manufacurer this year... they had electrified one of their brands and sold thousand of cars they could not deliver... they had taken the money, but the copper, lithium, rare minerals and quality steel was in such short supply that it led to a crisis for the company. Anyway they were open about this. After I spoke to one of the top top execs of this firm and said: look out on the streets at the fleet of vehicles driving around. What is the likelihood of those being replaced 1:1 with electric or hydrogen by 2040 or 2050..... he said: "Nil... it isn't happening... mobility as we have known it since ww2 is going to become a luxury." I asked him what should be done.... he said "we have to redesign cities so the car isn't needed like today" 🤷
The consumption opportunities and level of material prosperity people have become accustomed to over the last 80 years is an aberration historical terms and it is about to drop away.
I am no sort of leftist, but if we look back eg 25 years to 1999, we were not exactly living on gruel and sending our children to school shoeless in the snow.
What the world needs is not for the rich world to get disproportionately richer, it is for the poorer world to catch up with the middling/richer world. The is essential not only because it is right, but also because there is no other way to stem the increasing flow of economic and political migrants.
Something that has been entertaining to watch has been the legacy car companies taking the view that they will just order batteries and batteries will appear. The rest of a EV requires the same materials as an ICE - excepting the electric motors.
If you are buying the entire output of a factory, year in, year out, then you need to own a factory. They worked this out with engines. But I guess they forgot that lesson.
I attended one seminar on EVs, at a bank a few years back, where it was all “we will buy that in from China, of course”.
Wait until the Chinese battery factories, or their political bosses, decide that domestic EV production is more important than battery exports.
Like for like, how much more than an unfueled normal car does an EV weigh?
(Thinking shipping costs).
Usually around 200kg or thereabouts, but it depends a lot on the platform and how it’s designed and manufactured.
Cars designed as EVs from the ground up, tend to be considerably lighter than cars that can accommodate both EV and ICE powertrains.
Thanks. Interesting. Hadn’t considered the saving on the rest of the mechanism. By 2035, we aren’t going to need to be forced to switch are we?
My only worry is that there will be enough left over petrol stations for me to still be driving my DB5 and my E Type well into the 2050s after I make my millions and buy them.
Don’t worry, there will still be petrol stations around in 2050. And if you have a DB5 and an E Type, you won’t care too much if you have to drive a few miles more than you’re used to, in order to fill up, because every mile in one of those is worth savouring.
Porsche and others are spending millions on synthetic fuels, because they want to keep the 911 and motorsport programme alive. F1 will be run on fully synthetic fuels in a couple of years’ time.
Have we got to a consensus on the difference between the “12-15 pt lead” and “20-25 pt lead” pollsters by the way? I think we had concluded it was mostly in the treatment of the don’t know’s?
Seems so
This must be a unique situation really. Govt elected with a huge majority gets rid of leader who wasn’t that unpopular with their voters… and replaces with two leaders who are unpopular with them
Shame he completely fouled his own bed by his involvement in the Paterson, Partygate and Pincher fiascos.
He’s still the most popular choice amongst 2019 Tories. I think he always was. The Tory MPs who forced him out should have remembered they owed their seats/jobs to him and just ridden the storm
Up to a couple of points, Lord Copper.
The electoral point is that, overall, he's not that much more popular among 2019 Conservatives than Rishi and he has significantly more negatives. This is from Mori in the last week or so;
Second is that, sure, Conservative MPs ought to have known what they were getting when they made Boris their leader, and that it wouldn't be cost-free. But even then, there's a limit. How would you feel if your ultimate boss knowingly put a sex pest in place as your line manager? And then lied about it?
Have we got to a consensus on the difference between the “12-15 pt lead” and “20-25 pt lead” pollsters by the way? I think we had concluded it was mostly in the treatment of the don’t know’s?
Seems so
This must be a unique situation really. Govt elected with a huge majority gets rid of leader who wasn’t that unpopular with their voters… and replaces with two leaders who are unpopular with them
Shame he completely fouled his own bed by his involvement in the Paterson, Partygate and Pincher fiascos.
He’s still the most popular choice amongst 2019 Tories. I think he always was. The Tory MPs who forced him out should have remembered they owed their seats/jobs to him and just ridden the storm
Up to a couple of points, Lord Copper.
The electoral point is that, overall, he's not that much more popular among 2019 Conservatives than Rishi and he has significantly more negatives. This is from Mori in the last week or so;
Second is that, sure, Conservative MPs ought to have known what they were getting when they made Boris their leader, and that it wouldn't be cost-free. But even then, there's a limit. How would you feel if your ultimate boss knowingly put a sex pest in place as your line manager? And then lied about it?
Your last point is a good one. In years to come, with a bit of distance, the view might be that total mismanagement of the Whips is what did him in.
Have we got to a consensus on the difference between the “12-15 pt lead” and “20-25 pt lead” pollsters by the way? I think we had concluded it was mostly in the treatment of the don’t know’s?
Seems so
This must be a unique situation really. Govt elected with a huge majority gets rid of leader who wasn’t that unpopular with their voters… and replaces with two leaders who are unpopular with them
Shame he completely fouled his own bed by his involvement in the Paterson, Partygate and Pincher fiascos.
He’s still the most popular choice amongst 2019 Tories. I think he always was. The Tory MPs who forced him out should have remembered they owed their seats/jobs to him and just ridden the storm
Up to a couple of points, Lord Copper.
The electoral point is that, overall, he's not that much more popular among 2019 Conservatives than Rishi and he has significantly more negatives. This is from Mori in the last week or so;
Second is that, sure, Conservative MPs ought to have known what they were getting when they made Boris their leader, and that it wouldn't be cost-free. But even then, there's a limit. How would you feel if your ultimate boss knowingly put a sex pest in place as your line manager? And then lied about it?
That’s the one poll that doesn’t have him miles clear! Come on be fair, Jesus
When he was forced out, 2019Tories agreed, according to R&W. Three months later…
Do Britons believe Boris Johnson is capable of replicating his previous electoral successes in the future? (20-21 October)
A header that mentions the "neoliberal consensus" - good to see pieces recognising that states selling off civic assets may not be seen as a good deal by a majority of the public who like those assets and services and aren't profiting off of them being sold whole sale.
I think we're getting into a position similar to the 20th century - the paradoxes of capitalism are coming home to roost and the inaction of states to safeguard the material needs of the average person is leading towards grievance and a willingness to embrace the far right, even if you don't like them. Liberals are unpopular because they refuse to deal with the issues, left wingers are unpopular because the apparatus of capital control most media and would lose out under a more left wing world so scream bloody hell about anyone to the left of Atilla the Hun. And the right are unpopular because their wish casting politics just can't be done.
"embrace the far right"
As Corbyn and his acolytes show, the far left also has significant power for the disaffected.
But the entire force of capital, which includes the private media and the political establishment, go out of there way to make left wing policies solutions the equivalent of literal Stalinism whilst painting far right rhetoric as "common sense". The Overton window can only go one way for those people - it's the ratchet effect. So people seeing how impossible it is to get left wing solutions (and Corbyn is hardly far left, he proposed a social democratic policy platform that, when polled on issue by issue rather then as "Corbyn's policies", did have popular support) become disaffected and those who desire a far right solution get told it is always possible (because every party panders to them) and that when their policy preference is enacted and doesn't work that's because it wasn't done harshly enough and the answer is to go even more right wing.
"But the entire force of capital". You been at the Koolaid again? What is this 1875 and we are discussing the Communist Manifesto?
At heart most people like capitalism. What they want is for capitalism to be fair - so no unfair advantages of birth, of wealth etc. They want hard work rewarded.
What they don't want is bullshit economic theories about 'capital' and the 'politcal establishment' etc
Capitalism does not reward fairness or meritocracy - those things are not inherently capitalistic. The advantages of birth are backed into capitalism; inheritance whether in money or assets is the highest predictor of wealth later in life. People who work hard are not rewarded under capitalism. We recognised under Covid that their were such things as "essential workers" - who were they? Shop assistants, nurses, public servants and the like - are they the most well paid? Does a CEO or shareholder of a company work whatever ratio it has more than their lowest paid worker? Capitalism rewards those who help accumulate more capital for capitalists. To do otherwise is counter to capitalist mode of production.
So what is your solution then?
Hard work is rewarded - but yes every job comes with its own salary, and some of them are grossly unfair. And yet. Is it right for a CEO to earn millions? Maybe, if they can show that their input actual generates substantially more than that.
Should lower paid jobs be better paid? Yes - in an ideal world people would not need extra money from government if they are working a 37.5h week. But is it right that I earn more as a Uni lecturer than someone that works in retail? I bring a lifetime of experience of my subject to the role, you can be trained for a job on the tills and stacking shelves in days.
Capitalism cannot be left to run without check, for sure, but I have not seen a better arrangement suggested. What do you propose?
From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs - I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable. What that means practically? If you're in favour of a state that would mean, in part, state management of resources, workers councils who own the means of production, the seizing and redistribution of assets from the rich to the poor, etc. etc. If you're not in favour of a state (personally I'm not) you would do what the anarchists did in places like Spain at the outbreak of the civil war and what is happening in Rojava now; community and workers councils making democratic decisions about issues and deciding what to do and trade for themselves. Is this Utopian - yes, of course.
I would be happy in the mean time for more social democratic reform, wealth redistribution, empowerment of unions and individual workers and an increased social safety net. These are the things that would tackle the immediate problems that the "free market" are clearly making worse - inflation (to a degree, climate change will increase the scarcity of lots of essential resources), housing, poverty and malnourishment, etc.
"I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable."
Because HUMAN NATURE. Its how we are wired, I'm afraid. People want stuff. So you basically are an unapologetic communist. Are you Ash Sarkar? She of the luxury communism bent?
In feudal times there were lots of people, including many of those at the bottom of society, who believed it was the natural and right order of things, and they could not conceive of society being ordered in any different way.
There's nothing in human nature that makes capitalism the only, or optimal, way to organise society. We could do things differently if we wanted to. Albeit I would have hoped that the seven quarters of a century since the Communist Manifesto might have provided a few more appealing glimpses of what an alternative might look like than have been provided.
There is also no reason why an anarchist or communist model of managing the economy also couldn’t provide people with stuff - it would just mean that the people who have over accumulated stuff would have less stuff. I’m a champagne socialist - redistribute the access to champagne to the working classes. Bread and roses.
In a stateless economy, it's not champagne you'd be distributing but heroin and other narcotics, and de facto slavery would be commonplace.
See how the USSR provided people with stuff, compared with say the USA (or even the UK).
The USSR was not stateless - it was a union of Soviet States. But also, just after the revolution, the standard of living for the average Russian did greatly improve. Same in China after their revolution. That doesn't mean everything they did to achieve that was good, or the communist state that did it was good, but it was clearly better than what had come previously under the Tsar and Imperial China. Do people here really think the history of Romanov rule, for example, was better than communist Russia?
But in both cases, it then went very wrong very quickly.
In many ways, yes, in other ways progress was made. Again, I don’t defend state communism or what happened under it, but many people were pulled out of poverty by it, in the USSR education and rights for women (for example) was greatly expanded, and the economies essentially went straight from serfdom into industrialisation.
And what of capitalism? Since Reagan and Thatcher, the birth of neoliberalism and the unleashing of the markets, the world has gone from catastrophe to catastrophe. The capitalist organisation of the economy is literally making the planet uninhabitable. Boom and bust cycles were not destroyed, wages have stagnated whilst profits have soared, and the more the state is cut back from supporting people the more people fall into poverty and immiseration.
So apart from the murders, the famines, the closed borders (to stop people leaving), the rationing, the extreme poverty (for all but a very small social elite who lived like Henry VIII), Soviet Russia was awesome?
I didn't say that - at all.
And capitalism has presided over no state orchestrated murders nor ethnic cleansings, no famines or closed borders, no extreme poverty? I mean, we can just look at the history of United Fruit for one example of many of those things - all in the name of a company wanting to keep its profits going against the democratic wishes of a country that didn't want to be controlled by foreign, private capital. We could look at the history of Iran and ask the question "why is it like it is now?" and think about BP and the movement of oil. We could look at the history of Coca Cola, and state funded militias, and the destruction of whole ecosystems and indigenous societies.
And that's pre Reagan and Thatcher - before we get to how modern resource extraction works, how modern labour conditions are so terrible in factories across the world that child labour is commonplace and that anti-suicide netting is needed to prevent workers jumping out of the windows. How often states support capital in their fights against common people who just don't wish to be oppressed and dispossessed and destroyed - all for a few people to live high on massive profits.
If you want an economic model that allows for extreme poverty and a very small social elite who live in unimaginable wealth - you're living under one.
When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, in which direction was the human traffic?
Again, I do not like nor defend the USSR or its model for economic management - as I have said I am more on the anarchist left. More Bookchin than Bolshevik, more Kropotkin that Kremlin, more Machnovist than Maoist. Can you explain how capitalism is so much better, has no deaths or atrocities under its belt, and is a shining city on a hill? Or is it only I who has to defend my positions from purposeful strawman after strawman?
Straw man? You're the one defending an almost entirely theoretical model. Your position is essentially the same as the infamous YouGov poll last week that said "choose between what you have and something hypothetically wonderful". You have dreams and aspirations, fine, but there is no bodycount in your chosen philosophy because it has been tried only sporadically and on a tiny scale.
What countries have successfully implemented your preferred form of governance so we can compare?
I'm not sure anarchism qualifies as a form of "governance".
Although I've heard it said that at least it's better than no governance at all.
Anarchism is no governement at all though. Its a situation where those willing to be violent rule and everyone else obeys
You don't vote, though, do you? You think every party we've got, and every politician representing them, are a waste of space. Isn't that right?
Which is not the same as believing that there should be no laws or governments. I just disagree with out current political institution
You just said (in defending capitalism) that relative merit is what counts. In particular it's better than the left's alternative of communism. I think that's right btw.
Surely the same applies to this matter of voting. You think none of them are much cop. Fine. But how come you don't weigh them against each other and choose the least bad?
Because I think voting under our current system doesn't change anything, doesn't matter who gets in frankly. Why would I bother when I think it makes no difference. My belief is we need root and branch reform of out politics if we are going to move away from it. I already posted a header on a way I think would be better even if not all of the proposals were accepted and I don't believe it favoured left or right so wasn't politically biassed.
I know you have ideas on reforming the system. Me too - I'm a PR convert. But recognizing the drawbacks of the current system doesn't mean it makes no difference who is in government. Of course it does. Imagine if Labour had won rather than coming close in 2017 for example. Things would be just as they are today? C'mon. No way. For better or worse it'd be a bit different.
Every single academic conference I go to is doom laden. There is deep deep worry in the academic community about where current trends are taking us....
So I teach on the MBA programme at a leading London business school. We visited a leading european car manufacurer this year... they had electrified one of their brands and sold thousand of cars they could not deliver... they had taken the money, but the copper, lithium, rare minerals and quality steel was in such short supply that it led to a crisis for the company. Anyway they were open about this. After I spoke to one of the top top execs of this firm and said: look out on the streets at the fleet of vehicles driving around. What is the likelihood of those being replaced 1:1 with electric or hydrogen by 2040 or 2050..... he said: "Nil... it isn't happening... mobility as we have known it since ww2 is going to become a luxury." I asked him what should be done.... he said "we have to redesign cities so the car isn't needed like today" 🤷
The consumption opportunities and level of material prosperity people have become accustomed to over the last 80 years is an aberration historical terms and it is about to drop away.
I am no sort of leftist, but if we look back eg 25 years to 1999, we were not exactly living on gruel and sending our children to school shoeless in the snow.
What the world needs is not for the rich world to get disproportionately richer, it is for the poorer world to catch up with the middling/richer world. The is essential not only because it is right, but also because there is no other way to stem the increasing flow of economic and political migrants.
Something that has been entertaining to watch has been the legacy car companies taking the view that they will just order batteries and batteries will appear. The rest of a EV requires the same materials as an ICE - excepting the electric motors.
If you are buying the entire output of a factory, year in, year out, then you need to own a factory. They worked this out with engines. But I guess they forgot that lesson.
I attended one seminar on EVs, at a bank a few years back, where it was all “we will buy that in from China, of course”.
Wait until the Chinese battery factories, or their political bosses, decide that domestic EV production is more important than battery exports.
Like for like, how much more than an unfueled normal car does an EV weigh?
A corresponding BEV is about half a tonne heavier than our already bloated ICE vehicles.
These are Norway figures, which are probably a good example as the most developed BEV market:
Every single academic conference I go to is doom laden. There is deep deep worry in the academic community about where current trends are taking us....
So I teach on the MBA programme at a leading London business school. We visited a leading european car manufacurer this year... they had electrified one of their brands and sold thousand of cars they could not deliver... they had taken the money, but the copper, lithium, rare minerals and quality steel was in such short supply that it led to a crisis for the company. Anyway they were open about this. After I spoke to one of the top top execs of this firm and said: look out on the streets at the fleet of vehicles driving around. What is the likelihood of those being replaced 1:1 with electric or hydrogen by 2040 or 2050..... he said: "Nil... it isn't happening... mobility as we have known it since ww2 is going to become a luxury." I asked him what should be done.... he said "we have to redesign cities so the car isn't needed like today" 🤷
The consumption opportunities and level of material prosperity people have become accustomed to over the last 80 years is an aberration historical terms and it is about to drop away.
I am no sort of leftist, but if we look back eg 25 years to 1999, we were not exactly living on gruel and sending our children to school shoeless in the snow.
What the world needs is not for the rich world to get disproportionately richer, it is for the poorer world to catch up with the middling/richer world. The is essential not only because it is right, but also because there is no other way to stem the increasing flow of economic and political migrants.
Something that has been entertaining to watch has been the legacy car companies taking the view that they will just order batteries and batteries will appear. The rest of a EV requires the same materials as an ICE - excepting the electric motors.
If you are buying the entire output of a factory, year in, year out, then you need to own a factory. They worked this out with engines. But I guess they forgot that lesson.
I attended one seminar on EVs, at a bank a few years back, where it was all “we will buy that in from China, of course”.
Wait until the Chinese battery factories, or their political bosses, decide that domestic EV production is more important than battery exports.
Like for like, how much more than an unfueled normal car does an EV weigh?
(Thinking shipping costs).
Usually around 200kg or thereabouts, but it depends a lot on the platform and how it’s designed and manufactured.
Cars designed as EVs from the ground up, tend to be considerably lighter than cars that can accommodate both EV and ICE powertrains.
Thanks. Interesting. Hadn’t considered the saving on the rest of the mechanism. By 2035, we aren’t going to need to be forced to switch are we?
My only worry is that there will be enough left over petrol stations for me to still be driving my DB5 and my E Type well into the 2050s after I make my millions and buy them.
The very poor optimisation of some EVs is frankly pants.
As EVs get better, the weight difference should narrow.
Every single academic conference I go to is doom laden. There is deep deep worry in the academic community about where current trends are taking us....
So I teach on the MBA programme at a leading London business school. We visited a leading european car manufacurer this year... they had electrified one of their brands and sold thousand of cars they could not deliver... they had taken the money, but the copper, lithium, rare minerals and quality steel was in such short supply that it led to a crisis for the company. Anyway they were open about this. After I spoke to one of the top top execs of this firm and said: look out on the streets at the fleet of vehicles driving around. What is the likelihood of those being replaced 1:1 with electric or hydrogen by 2040 or 2050..... he said: "Nil... it isn't happening... mobility as we have known it since ww2 is going to become a luxury." I asked him what should be done.... he said "we have to redesign cities so the car isn't needed like today" 🤷
The consumption opportunities and level of material prosperity people have become accustomed to over the last 80 years is an aberration historical terms and it is about to drop away.
I am no sort of leftist, but if we look back eg 25 years to 1999, we were not exactly living on gruel and sending our children to school shoeless in the snow.
What the world needs is not for the rich world to get disproportionately richer, it is for the poorer world to catch up with the middling/richer world. The is essential not only because it is right, but also because there is no other way to stem the increasing flow of economic and political migrants.
Something that has been entertaining to watch has been the legacy car companies taking the view that they will just order batteries and batteries will appear. The rest of a EV requires the same materials as an ICE - excepting the electric motors.
If you are buying the entire output of a factory, year in, year out, then you need to own a factory. They worked this out with engines. But I guess they forgot that lesson.
I attended one seminar on EVs, at a bank a few years back, where it was all “we will buy that in from China, of course”.
Wait until the Chinese battery factories, or their political bosses, decide that domestic EV production is more important than battery exports.
Like for like, how much more than an unfueled normal car does an EV weigh?
(Thinking shipping costs).
Usually around 200kg or thereabouts, but it depends a lot on the platform and how it’s designed and manufactured.
Cars designed as EVs from the ground up, tend to be considerably lighter than cars that can accommodate both EV and ICE powertrains.
Cars are over-engineered, particularly EVs. Manufacturers promote vehicles that are way bigger, heavier, more powerful and more costly than they need to be because they get better margins on those vehicles.
Every single academic conference I go to is doom laden. There is deep deep worry in the academic community about where current trends are taking us....
So I teach on the MBA programme at a leading London business school. We visited a leading european car manufacurer this year... they had electrified one of their brands and sold thousand of cars they could not deliver... they had taken the money, but the copper, lithium, rare minerals and quality steel was in such short supply that it led to a crisis for the company. Anyway they were open about this. After I spoke to one of the top top execs of this firm and said: look out on the streets at the fleet of vehicles driving around. What is the likelihood of those being replaced 1:1 with electric or hydrogen by 2040 or 2050..... he said: "Nil... it isn't happening... mobility as we have known it since ww2 is going to become a luxury." I asked him what should be done.... he said "we have to redesign cities so the car isn't needed like today" 🤷
The consumption opportunities and level of material prosperity people have become accustomed to over the last 80 years is an aberration historical terms and it is about to drop away.
I am no sort of leftist, but if we look back eg 25 years to 1999, we were not exactly living on gruel and sending our children to school shoeless in the snow.
What the world needs is not for the rich world to get disproportionately richer, it is for the poorer world to catch up with the middling/richer world. The is essential not only because it is right, but also because there is no other way to stem the increasing flow of economic and political migrants.
Something that has been entertaining to watch has been the legacy car companies taking the view that they will just order batteries and batteries will appear. The rest of a EV requires the same materials as an ICE - excepting the electric motors.
If you are buying the entire output of a factory, year in, year out, then you need to own a factory. They worked this out with engines. But I guess they forgot that lesson.
I attended one seminar on EVs, at a bank a few years back, where it was all “we will buy that in from China, of course”.
Wait until the Chinese battery factories, or their political bosses, decide that domestic EV production is more important than battery exports.
As I understand it, that is already happening.
There is enough domestic demand (at the moment) to absorb pretty much any increase in Chinese EV battery manufacture.
This is because EV adoption is high and increasing faster than battery production, in China.
Exports are rising in price because of scarcity.
Western manufacturers are facing the terrifying prospect of having to invest in their own battery production.
Every single academic conference I go to is doom laden. There is deep deep worry in the academic community about where current trends are taking us....
So I teach on the MBA programme at a leading London business school. We visited a leading european car manufacurer this year... they had electrified one of their brands and sold thousand of cars they could not deliver... they had taken the money, but the copper, lithium, rare minerals and quality steel was in such short supply that it led to a crisis for the company. Anyway they were open about this. After I spoke to one of the top top execs of this firm and said: look out on the streets at the fleet of vehicles driving around. What is the likelihood of those being replaced 1:1 with electric or hydrogen by 2040 or 2050..... he said: "Nil... it isn't happening... mobility as we have known it since ww2 is going to become a luxury." I asked him what should be done.... he said "we have to redesign cities so the car isn't needed like today" 🤷
The consumption opportunities and level of material prosperity people have become accustomed to over the last 80 years is an aberration historical terms and it is about to drop away.
I am no sort of leftist, but if we look back eg 25 years to 1999, we were not exactly living on gruel and sending our children to school shoeless in the snow.
What the world needs is not for the rich world to get disproportionately richer, it is for the poorer world to catch up with the middling/richer world. The is essential not only because it is right, but also because there is no other way to stem the increasing flow of economic and political migrants.
Something that has been entertaining to watch has been the legacy car companies taking the view that they will just order batteries and batteries will appear. The rest of a EV requires the same materials as an ICE - excepting the electric motors.
If you are buying the entire output of a factory, year in, year out, then you need to own a factory. They worked this out with engines. But I guess they forgot that lesson.
I attended one seminar on EVs, at a bank a few years back, where it was all “we will buy that in from China, of course”.
Wait until the Chinese battery factories, or their political bosses, decide that domestic EV production is more important than battery exports.
Like for like, how much more than an unfueled normal car does an EV weigh?
(Thinking shipping costs).
Usually around 200kg or thereabouts, but it depends a lot on the platform and how it’s designed and manufactured.
Cars designed as EVs from the ground up, tend to be considerably lighter than cars that can accommodate both EV and ICE powertrains.
Cars are over-engineered, particularly EVs. Manufacturers promote vehicles that are way bigger, heavier, more powerful and more costly than they need to be because they get better margins on those vehicles.
That may be correct; but I reckon (with little evidence) that the reason the new-style Minis are so much bigger than Issigonis's original is safety. Safety standards have increased massively, and so much of that requires mass to absorb impacts.
According to Wiki, the original Mini was 580–686kg. The new Mini is around 1150-1710kg.
A header that mentions the "neoliberal consensus" - good to see pieces recognising that states selling off civic assets may not be seen as a good deal by a majority of the public who like those assets and services and aren't profiting off of them being sold whole sale.
I think we're getting into a position similar to the 20th century - the paradoxes of capitalism are coming home to roost and the inaction of states to safeguard the material needs of the average person is leading towards grievance and a willingness to embrace the far right, even if you don't like them. Liberals are unpopular because they refuse to deal with the issues, left wingers are unpopular because the apparatus of capital control most media and would lose out under a more left wing world so scream bloody hell about anyone to the left of Atilla the Hun. And the right are unpopular because their wish casting politics just can't be done.
"embrace the far right"
As Corbyn and his acolytes show, the far left also has significant power for the disaffected.
But the entire force of capital, which includes the private media and the political establishment, go out of there way to make left wing policies solutions the equivalent of literal Stalinism whilst painting far right rhetoric as "common sense". The Overton window can only go one way for those people - it's the ratchet effect. So people seeing how impossible it is to get left wing solutions (and Corbyn is hardly far left, he proposed a social democratic policy platform that, when polled on issue by issue rather then as "Corbyn's policies", did have popular support) become disaffected and those who desire a far right solution get told it is always possible (because every party panders to them) and that when their policy preference is enacted and doesn't work that's because it wasn't done harshly enough and the answer is to go even more right wing.
"But the entire force of capital". You been at the Koolaid again? What is this 1875 and we are discussing the Communist Manifesto?
At heart most people like capitalism. What they want is for capitalism to be fair - so no unfair advantages of birth, of wealth etc. They want hard work rewarded.
What they don't want is bullshit economic theories about 'capital' and the 'politcal establishment' etc
Capitalism does not reward fairness or meritocracy - those things are not inherently capitalistic. The advantages of birth are backed into capitalism; inheritance whether in money or assets is the highest predictor of wealth later in life. People who work hard are not rewarded under capitalism. We recognised under Covid that their were such things as "essential workers" - who were they? Shop assistants, nurses, public servants and the like - are they the most well paid? Does a CEO or shareholder of a company work whatever ratio it has more than their lowest paid worker? Capitalism rewards those who help accumulate more capital for capitalists. To do otherwise is counter to capitalist mode of production.
So what is your solution then?
Hard work is rewarded - but yes every job comes with its own salary, and some of them are grossly unfair. And yet. Is it right for a CEO to earn millions? Maybe, if they can show that their input actual generates substantially more than that.
Should lower paid jobs be better paid? Yes - in an ideal world people would not need extra money from government if they are working a 37.5h week. But is it right that I earn more as a Uni lecturer than someone that works in retail? I bring a lifetime of experience of my subject to the role, you can be trained for a job on the tills and stacking shelves in days.
Capitalism cannot be left to run without check, for sure, but I have not seen a better arrangement suggested. What do you propose?
From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs - I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable. What that means practically? If you're in favour of a state that would mean, in part, state management of resources, workers councils who own the means of production, the seizing and redistribution of assets from the rich to the poor, etc. etc. If you're not in favour of a state (personally I'm not) you would do what the anarchists did in places like Spain at the outbreak of the civil war and what is happening in Rojava now; community and workers councils making democratic decisions about issues and deciding what to do and trade for themselves. Is this Utopian - yes, of course.
I would be happy in the mean time for more social democratic reform, wealth redistribution, empowerment of unions and individual workers and an increased social safety net. These are the things that would tackle the immediate problems that the "free market" are clearly making worse - inflation (to a degree, climate change will increase the scarcity of lots of essential resources), housing, poverty and malnourishment, etc.
"I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable."
Because HUMAN NATURE. Its how we are wired, I'm afraid. People want stuff. So you basically are an unapologetic communist. Are you Ash Sarkar? She of the luxury communism bent?
In feudal times there were lots of people, including many of those at the bottom of society, who believed it was the natural and right order of things, and they could not conceive of society being ordered in any different way.
There's nothing in human nature that makes capitalism the only, or optimal, way to organise society. We could do things differently if we wanted to. Albeit I would have hoped that the seven quarters of a century since the Communist Manifesto might have provided a few more appealing glimpses of what an alternative might look like than have been provided.
There is also no reason why an anarchist or communist model of managing the economy also couldn’t provide people with stuff - it would just mean that the people who have over accumulated stuff would have less stuff. I’m a champagne socialist - redistribute the access to champagne to the working classes. Bread and roses.
In a stateless economy, it's not champagne you'd be distributing but heroin and other narcotics, and de facto slavery would be commonplace.
See how the USSR provided people with stuff, compared with say the USA (or even the UK).
The USSR was not stateless - it was a union of Soviet States. But also, just after the revolution, the standard of living for the average Russian did greatly improve. Same in China after their revolution. That doesn't mean everything they did to achieve that was good, or the communist state that did it was good, but it was clearly better than what had come previously under the Tsar and Imperial China. Do people here really think the history of Romanov rule, for example, was better than communist Russia?
That depends what period you're looking at. From the time of Catherine II, till the end of the Romanovs, capital punishment was used less frequently than between 1917 - 1953, in favour of internal exile. Of course, there was serfdom until 1861, but then the Communists also made extensive use of slave labour, up till 1953. Soviet industrialisation was impressive (with US manufacturers providing a huge level of technology), along with the performance of the Red Army. But life in the countryside, where most citizens lived, was dire, with famine, forcible collectivsation, dekulakisation, all taking their toll on the population.
It was impressive because it came at the cost of 6 million lives.
All Communist states have failed (I'd no longer call China 'communist'). Why is an interesting question.
A few years back I read a very good, but very odd, book called 'Red Plenty', I think by Francis Spufford. It highlights how the Soviet Union looked as though it might economically eclipse the west in the 1950s and 1960s, but utterly failed in the 1970s and 1980s. My takehome from it is that the failure was largely because the entire thing was built on a pyramid of lies.
The top would tell factories what to produce, and how much, regardless of capability. If a factory failed to meet quotas, it meant the manager would get sacked. So they would report that they'd met the quotas. And as the market economy was rudimentary at best, they could get away with it. Then people above the managers would lie to their superiors, who would lie to their superiors.
I reckon the same is going on in China at the moment. Their entire internal market is based on lies.
I can't remember where the anecdote was from, but there was one about a Russian laundrette. It was given the order to produce a certain number of tonnes of scrap. So they had to scrap perfectly good machines to meet the quota, and then put in orders to buy new machines. Because obviously, laundrettes are in the scrap business.
(Hopefully I've remembered that correctly...)
I think you’ve got that story from the Adam Curtis documentary on Russia - TraumaZone. As I recall it they didn’t end up scraping good machines, but instead had to buy up scrap from all over town to meet the quota.
Or at least I think that’s what happened - the documentary had an interview with the manager of the Laundrette in question. The scrap quota arose because one year they had scrapped their older machines (to replace with new), and the bureaucracy determined that therefore every subsequent year it should produce the same amount of scrap metal. Absolutely bananas.
At least he will have a greater understanding of how his working class constituents, agricultural workers, fruit pickers and retail assistants are also having a real struggle to manage on their £118,000 a year and why they are always on the lookout for that extra £50-£80K that makes all the difference.
A header that mentions the "neoliberal consensus" - good to see pieces recognising that states selling off civic assets may not be seen as a good deal by a majority of the public who like those assets and services and aren't profiting off of them being sold whole sale.
I think we're getting into a position similar to the 20th century - the paradoxes of capitalism are coming home to roost and the inaction of states to safeguard the material needs of the average person is leading towards grievance and a willingness to embrace the far right, even if you don't like them. Liberals are unpopular because they refuse to deal with the issues, left wingers are unpopular because the apparatus of capital control most media and would lose out under a more left wing world so scream bloody hell about anyone to the left of Atilla the Hun. And the right are unpopular because their wish casting politics just can't be done.
"embrace the far right"
As Corbyn and his acolytes show, the far left also has significant power for the disaffected.
But the entire force of capital, which includes the private media and the political establishment, go out of there way to make left wing policies solutions the equivalent of literal Stalinism whilst painting far right rhetoric as "common sense". The Overton window can only go one way for those people - it's the ratchet effect. So people seeing how impossible it is to get left wing solutions (and Corbyn is hardly far left, he proposed a social democratic policy platform that, when polled on issue by issue rather then as "Corbyn's policies", did have popular support) become disaffected and those who desire a far right solution get told it is always possible (because every party panders to them) and that when their policy preference is enacted and doesn't work that's because it wasn't done harshly enough and the answer is to go even more right wing.
"But the entire force of capital". You been at the Koolaid again? What is this 1875 and we are discussing the Communist Manifesto?
At heart most people like capitalism. What they want is for capitalism to be fair - so no unfair advantages of birth, of wealth etc. They want hard work rewarded.
What they don't want is bullshit economic theories about 'capital' and the 'politcal establishment' etc
Capitalism does not reward fairness or meritocracy - those things are not inherently capitalistic. The advantages of birth are backed into capitalism; inheritance whether in money or assets is the highest predictor of wealth later in life. People who work hard are not rewarded under capitalism. We recognised under Covid that their were such things as "essential workers" - who were they? Shop assistants, nurses, public servants and the like - are they the most well paid? Does a CEO or shareholder of a company work whatever ratio it has more than their lowest paid worker? Capitalism rewards those who help accumulate more capital for capitalists. To do otherwise is counter to capitalist mode of production.
So what is your solution then?
Hard work is rewarded - but yes every job comes with its own salary, and some of them are grossly unfair. And yet. Is it right for a CEO to earn millions? Maybe, if they can show that their input actual generates substantially more than that.
Should lower paid jobs be better paid? Yes - in an ideal world people would not need extra money from government if they are working a 37.5h week. But is it right that I earn more as a Uni lecturer than someone that works in retail? I bring a lifetime of experience of my subject to the role, you can be trained for a job on the tills and stacking shelves in days.
Capitalism cannot be left to run without check, for sure, but I have not seen a better arrangement suggested. What do you propose?
From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs - I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable. What that means practically? If you're in favour of a state that would mean, in part, state management of resources, workers councils who own the means of production, the seizing and redistribution of assets from the rich to the poor, etc. etc. If you're not in favour of a state (personally I'm not) you would do what the anarchists did in places like Spain at the outbreak of the civil war and what is happening in Rojava now; community and workers councils making democratic decisions about issues and deciding what to do and trade for themselves. Is this Utopian - yes, of course.
I would be happy in the mean time for more social democratic reform, wealth redistribution, empowerment of unions and individual workers and an increased social safety net. These are the things that would tackle the immediate problems that the "free market" are clearly making worse - inflation (to a degree, climate change will increase the scarcity of lots of essential resources), housing, poverty and malnourishment, etc.
"I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable."
Because HUMAN NATURE. Its how we are wired, I'm afraid. People want stuff. So you basically are an unapologetic communist. Are you Ash Sarkar? She of the luxury communism bent?
In feudal times there were lots of people, including many of those at the bottom of society, who believed it was the natural and right order of things, and they could not conceive of society being ordered in any different way.
There's nothing in human nature that makes capitalism the only, or optimal, way to organise society. We could do things differently if we wanted to. Albeit I would have hoped that the seven quarters of a century since the Communist Manifesto might have provided a few more appealing glimpses of what an alternative might look like than have been provided.
There is also no reason why an anarchist or communist model of managing the economy also couldn’t provide people with stuff - it would just mean that the people who have over accumulated stuff would have less stuff. I’m a champagne socialist - redistribute the access to champagne to the working classes. Bread and roses.
In a stateless economy, it's not champagne you'd be distributing but heroin and other narcotics, and de facto slavery would be commonplace.
See how the USSR provided people with stuff, compared with say the USA (or even the UK).
The USSR was not stateless - it was a union of Soviet States. But also, just after the revolution, the standard of living for the average Russian did greatly improve. Same in China after their revolution. That doesn't mean everything they did to achieve that was good, or the communist state that did it was good, but it was clearly better than what had come previously under the Tsar and Imperial China. Do people here really think the history of Romanov rule, for example, was better than communist Russia?
But in both cases, it then went very wrong very quickly.
In many ways, yes, in other ways progress was made. Again, I don’t defend state communism or what happened under it, but many people were pulled out of poverty by it, in the USSR education and rights for women (for example) was greatly expanded, and the economies essentially went straight from serfdom into industrialisation.
And what of capitalism? Since Reagan and Thatcher, the birth of neoliberalism and the unleashing of the markets, the world has gone from catastrophe to catastrophe. The capitalist organisation of the economy is literally making the planet uninhabitable. Boom and bust cycles were not destroyed, wages have stagnated whilst profits have soared, and the more the state is cut back from supporting people the more people fall into poverty and immiseration.
So apart from the murders, the famines, the closed borders (to stop people leaving), the rationing, the extreme poverty (for all but a very small social elite who lived like Henry VIII), Soviet Russia was awesome?
I didn't say that - at all.
And capitalism has presided over no state orchestrated murders nor ethnic cleansings, no famines or closed borders, no extreme poverty? I mean, we can just look at the history of United Fruit for one example of many of those things - all in the name of a company wanting to keep its profits going against the democratic wishes of a country that didn't want to be controlled by foreign, private capital. We could look at the history of Iran and ask the question "why is it like it is now?" and think about BP and the movement of oil. We could look at the history of Coca Cola, and state funded militias, and the destruction of whole ecosystems and indigenous societies.
And that's pre Reagan and Thatcher - before we get to how modern resource extraction works, how modern labour conditions are so terrible in factories across the world that child labour is commonplace and that anti-suicide netting is needed to prevent workers jumping out of the windows. How often states support capital in their fights against common people who just don't wish to be oppressed and dispossessed and destroyed - all for a few people to live high on massive profits.
If you want an economic model that allows for extreme poverty and a very small social elite who live in unimaginable wealth - you're living under one.
When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, in which direction was the human traffic?
Again, I do not like nor defend the USSR or its model for economic management - as I have said I am more on the anarchist left. More Bookchin than Bolshevik, more Kropotkin that Kremlin, more Machnovist than Maoist. Can you explain how capitalism is so much better, has no deaths or atrocities under its belt, and is a shining city on a hill? Or is it only I who has to defend my positions from purposeful strawman after strawman?
Straw man? You're the one defending an almost entirely theoretical model. Your position is essentially the same as the infamous YouGov poll last week that said "choose between what you have and something hypothetically wonderful". You have dreams and aspirations, fine, but there is no bodycount in your chosen philosophy because it has been tried only sporadically and on a tiny scale.
What countries have successfully implemented your preferred form of governance so we can compare?
I'm not sure anarchism qualifies as a form of "governance".
Although I've heard it said that at least it's better than no governance at all.
Anarchism is no governement at all though. Its a situation where those willing to be violent rule and everyone else obeys
You don't vote, though, do you? You think every party we've got, and every politician representing them, are a waste of space. Isn't that right?
Which is not the same as believing that there should be no laws or governments. I just disagree with out current political institution
You just said (in defending capitalism) that relative merit is what counts. In particular it's better than the left's alternative of communism. I think that's right btw.
Surely the same applies to this matter of voting. You think none of them are much cop. Fine. But how come you don't weigh them against each other and choose the least bad?
Because I think voting under our current system doesn't change anything, doesn't matter who gets in frankly. Why would I bother when I think it makes no difference. My belief is we need root and branch reform of out politics if we are going to move away from it. I already posted a header on a way I think would be better even if not all of the proposals were accepted and I don't believe it favoured left or right so wasn't politically biassed.
I know you have ideas on reforming the system. Me too - I'm a PR convert. But recognizing the drawbacks of the current system doesn't mean it makes no difference who is in government. Of course it does. Imagine if Labour had won rather than coming close in 2017 for example. Things would be just as they are today? C'mon. No way. For better or worse it'd be a bit different.
You misunderstand I think, you mistake different for better. I have no doubt things under corbyn would have been different. I don't want different I want better. All our current parties offer is slight different with life continuing to get worse for most. Doesn't matter if is sunak, starmer, davey etc.....we need to rip up what we have and start again to make things work for the majority is my view.....therefore why would I bother in a system which I don't think is going to turn anything round for the majority.
The make an analogy its like you saying its different if the population is whipped or caned and thats the choice vote for one or the other....personally I want to change the system so most people get puppies instead.
A header that mentions the "neoliberal consensus" - good to see pieces recognising that states selling off civic assets may not be seen as a good deal by a majority of the public who like those assets and services and aren't profiting off of them being sold whole sale.
I think we're getting into a position similar to the 20th century - the paradoxes of capitalism are coming home to roost and the inaction of states to safeguard the material needs of the average person is leading towards grievance and a willingness to embrace the far right, even if you don't like them. Liberals are unpopular because they refuse to deal with the issues, left wingers are unpopular because the apparatus of capital control most media and would lose out under a more left wing world so scream bloody hell about anyone to the left of Atilla the Hun. And the right are unpopular because their wish casting politics just can't be done.
"embrace the far right"
As Corbyn and his acolytes show, the far left also has significant power for the disaffected.
But the entire force of capital, which includes the private media and the political establishment, go out of there way to make left wing policies solutions the equivalent of literal Stalinism whilst painting far right rhetoric as "common sense". The Overton window can only go one way for those people - it's the ratchet effect. So people seeing how impossible it is to get left wing solutions (and Corbyn is hardly far left, he proposed a social democratic policy platform that, when polled on issue by issue rather then as "Corbyn's policies", did have popular support) become disaffected and those who desire a far right solution get told it is always possible (because every party panders to them) and that when their policy preference is enacted and doesn't work that's because it wasn't done harshly enough and the answer is to go even more right wing.
"But the entire force of capital". You been at the Koolaid again? What is this 1875 and we are discussing the Communist Manifesto?
At heart most people like capitalism. What they want is for capitalism to be fair - so no unfair advantages of birth, of wealth etc. They want hard work rewarded.
What they don't want is bullshit economic theories about 'capital' and the 'politcal establishment' etc
Capitalism does not reward fairness or meritocracy - those things are not inherently capitalistic. The advantages of birth are backed into capitalism; inheritance whether in money or assets is the highest predictor of wealth later in life. People who work hard are not rewarded under capitalism. We recognised under Covid that their were such things as "essential workers" - who were they? Shop assistants, nurses, public servants and the like - are they the most well paid? Does a CEO or shareholder of a company work whatever ratio it has more than their lowest paid worker? Capitalism rewards those who help accumulate more capital for capitalists. To do otherwise is counter to capitalist mode of production.
So what is your solution then?
Hard work is rewarded - but yes every job comes with its own salary, and some of them are grossly unfair. And yet. Is it right for a CEO to earn millions? Maybe, if they can show that their input actual generates substantially more than that.
Should lower paid jobs be better paid? Yes - in an ideal world people would not need extra money from government if they are working a 37.5h week. But is it right that I earn more as a Uni lecturer than someone that works in retail? I bring a lifetime of experience of my subject to the role, you can be trained for a job on the tills and stacking shelves in days.
Capitalism cannot be left to run without check, for sure, but I have not seen a better arrangement suggested. What do you propose?
From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs - I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable. What that means practically? If you're in favour of a state that would mean, in part, state management of resources, workers councils who own the means of production, the seizing and redistribution of assets from the rich to the poor, etc. etc. If you're not in favour of a state (personally I'm not) you would do what the anarchists did in places like Spain at the outbreak of the civil war and what is happening in Rojava now; community and workers councils making democratic decisions about issues and deciding what to do and trade for themselves. Is this Utopian - yes, of course.
I would be happy in the mean time for more social democratic reform, wealth redistribution, empowerment of unions and individual workers and an increased social safety net. These are the things that would tackle the immediate problems that the "free market" are clearly making worse - inflation (to a degree, climate change will increase the scarcity of lots of essential resources), housing, poverty and malnourishment, etc.
"I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable."
Because HUMAN NATURE. Its how we are wired, I'm afraid. People want stuff. So you basically are an unapologetic communist. Are you Ash Sarkar? She of the luxury communism bent?
In feudal times there were lots of people, including many of those at the bottom of society, who believed it was the natural and right order of things, and they could not conceive of society being ordered in any different way.
There's nothing in human nature that makes capitalism the only, or optimal, way to organise society. We could do things differently if we wanted to. Albeit I would have hoped that the seven quarters of a century since the Communist Manifesto might have provided a few more appealing glimpses of what an alternative might look like than have been provided.
There is also no reason why an anarchist or communist model of managing the economy also couldn’t provide people with stuff - it would just mean that the people who have over accumulated stuff would have less stuff. I’m a champagne socialist - redistribute the access to champagne to the working classes. Bread and roses.
In a stateless economy, it's not champagne you'd be distributing but heroin and other narcotics, and de facto slavery would be commonplace.
See how the USSR provided people with stuff, compared with say the USA (or even the UK).
The USSR was not stateless - it was a union of Soviet States. But also, just after the revolution, the standard of living for the average Russian did greatly improve. Same in China after their revolution. That doesn't mean everything they did to achieve that was good, or the communist state that did it was good, but it was clearly better than what had come previously under the Tsar and Imperial China. Do people here really think the history of Romanov rule, for example, was better than communist Russia?
That depends what period you're looking at. From the time of Catherine II, till the end of the Romanovs, capital punishment was used less frequently than between 1917 - 1953, in favour of internal exile. Of course, there was serfdom until 1861, but then the Communists also made extensive use of slave labour, up till 1953. Soviet industrialisation was impressive (with US manufacturers providing a huge level of technology), along with the performance of the Red Army. But life in the countryside, where most citizens lived, was dire, with famine, forcible collectivsation, dekulakisation, all taking their toll on the population.
It was impressive because it came at the cost of 6 million lives.
All Communist states have failed (I'd no longer call China 'communist'). Why is an interesting question.
A few years back I read a very good, but very odd, book called 'Red Plenty', I think by Francis Spufford. It highlights how the Soviet Union looked as though it might economically eclipse the west in the 1950s and 1960s, but utterly failed in the 1970s and 1980s. My takehome from it is that the failure was largely because the entire thing was built on a pyramid of lies.
The top would tell factories what to produce, and how much, regardless of capability. If a factory failed to meet quotas, it meant the manager would get sacked. So they would report that they'd met the quotas. And as the market economy was rudimentary at best, they could get away with it. Then people above the managers would lie to their superiors, who would lie to their superiors.
I reckon the same is going on in China at the moment. Their entire internal market is based on lies.
I can't remember where the anecdote was from, but there was one about a Russian laundrette. It was given the order to produce a certain number of tonnes of scrap. So they had to scrap perfectly good machines to meet the quota, and then put in orders to buy new machines. Because obviously, laundrettes are in the scrap business.
(Hopefully I've remembered that correctly...)
I think you’ve got that story from the Adam Curtis documentary on Russia - TraumaZone. As I recall it they didn’t end up scraping good machines, but instead had to buy up scrap from all over town to meet the quota.
Or at least I think that’s what happened - the documentary had an interview with the manager of the Laundrette in question. The scrap quota arose because one year they had scrapped their older machines (to replace with new), and the bureaucracy determined that therefore every subsequent year it should produce the same amount of scrap metal. Absolutely bananas.
Love the Adam Curtis stuff.
That was it. And you were correct in the details. Your memory is much better than mine.
Have we got to a consensus on the difference between the “12-15 pt lead” and “20-25 pt lead” pollsters by the way? I think we had concluded it was mostly in the treatment of the don’t know’s?
Seems so
This must be a unique situation really. Govt elected with a huge majority gets rid of leader who wasn’t that unpopular with their voters… and replaces with two leaders who are unpopular with them
Shame he completely fouled his own bed by his involvement in the Paterson, Partygate and Pincher fiascos.
He’s still the most popular choice amongst 2019 Tories. I think he always was. The Tory MPs who forced him out should have remembered they owed their seats/jobs to him and just ridden the storm
But how could they? He was disgraced and ejected from parliament.
Won’t speak for @isam but I think that, with a party closing ranks, he could have won the by-election.
In a way, his party is to be applauded for sticking to its principles on Boris, in the end, and just deciding his face didn’t fit.
"Parliament says he's a disgrace but we the Tory Party are sticking with him purely for votes in the red wall."
No, I can't see that working. Just too openly tawdry. They had no choice by the end - but yes, better late than never, so if not applause they get a grudging little nod of the head.
We are having a very productive day at work, and as the resident Grammar Nazi I have been dragged into this debate.
You’re at a bar and you want to order 3 Grey Goose drinks, do you tell the bar staff
1) I want three shots of Grey Goose
2) I want three shots of Grey Geese
3) I want a flock of Vodka
Number one would be correct. 'Grey Goose' is a mass term (as opposed to a count noun) so shouldn't really be pluralized. In the same way you shouldn't say 'I want three glasses of wines' but 'I want three glasses of wine'.
We are having a very productive day at work, and as the resident Grammar Nazi I have been dragged into this debate.
You’re at a bar and you want to order 3 Grey Goose drinks, do you tell the bar staff
1) I want three shots of Grey Goose
2) I want three shots of Grey Geese
3) I want a flock of Vodka
Number one would be correct. 'Grey Goose' is a mass term (as opposed to a count noun) so shouldn't really be pluralized. In the same way you shouldn't say 'I want three glasses of wines' but 'I want three glasses of wine'.
If we remove "shots of" I think it becomes less clear. "I want 3 Grey Geese" or "I want 3 Grey Goose"? Normal usage probably makes it plural - analogous to "I want 3 Stellas" or "2 Chardonnays please".
But Grey Goose is a brand name and so it would be 3 Grey Gooses just as it is 20 Rothmans not 20 Rothmen.
I was thinking that ‘Gooses’ might be acceptable here.
Can you imagine the stick someone would get if heard ordering ‘3 Grey Geese’?!?!
We are having a very productive day at work, and as the resident Grammar Nazi I have been dragged into this debate.
You’re at a bar and you want to order 3 Grey Goose drinks, do you tell the bar staff
1) I want three shots of Grey Goose
2) I want three shots of Grey Geese
3) I want a flock of Vodka
Number one would be correct. 'Grey Goose' is a mass term (as opposed to a count noun) so shouldn't really be pluralized. In the same way you shouldn't say 'I want three glasses of wines' but 'I want three glasses of wine'.
If we remove "shots of" I think it becomes less clear. "I want 3 Grey Geese" or "I want 3 Grey Goose"? Normal usage probably makes it plural - analogous to "I want 3 Stellas" or "2 Chardonnays please".
But Grey Goose is a brand name and so it would be 3 Grey Gooses just as it is 20 Rothmans not 20 Rothmen.
I was thinking that ‘Gooses’ might be acceptable here.
Can you imagine the stick someone would get if heard ordering ‘3 Grey Geese’?!?!
That’s a Fast Show sketch
"Nice!"
Can someone get Rishi his coat?
Labour leads by 23%.
Joint-lowest Conservative % since Rishi Sunak became PM.
Westminster VI (28 Jan):
Labour 45% (–) Conservative 22% (–) Reform UK 12% (–) Liberal Democrat 11% (–) Green 6% (–) SNP 3% (+1) Other 1% (-1)
Every single academic conference I go to is doom laden. There is deep deep worry in the academic community about where current trends are taking us....
So I teach on the MBA programme at a leading London business school. We visited a leading european car manufacurer this year... they had electrified one of their brands and sold thousand of cars they could not deliver... they had taken the money, but the copper, lithium, rare minerals and quality steel was in such short supply that it led to a crisis for the company. Anyway they were open about this. After I spoke to one of the top top execs of this firm and said: look out on the streets at the fleet of vehicles driving around. What is the likelihood of those being replaced 1:1 with electric or hydrogen by 2040 or 2050..... he said: "Nil... it isn't happening... mobility as we have known it since ww2 is going to become a luxury." I asked him what should be done.... he said "we have to redesign cities so the car isn't needed like today" 🤷
The consumption opportunities and level of material prosperity people have become accustomed to over the last 80 years is an aberration historical terms and it is about to drop away.
I am no sort of leftist, but if we look back eg 25 years to 1999, we were not exactly living on gruel and sending our children to school shoeless in the snow.
What the world needs is not for the rich world to get disproportionately richer, it is for the poorer world to catch up with the middling/richer world. The is essential not only because it is right, but also because there is no other way to stem the increasing flow of economic and political migrants.
Something that has been entertaining to watch has been the legacy car companies taking the view that they will just order batteries and batteries will appear. The rest of a EV requires the same materials as an ICE - excepting the electric motors.
If you are buying the entire output of a factory, year in, year out, then you need to own a factory. They worked this out with engines. But I guess they forgot that lesson.
I attended one seminar on EVs, at a bank a few years back, where it was all “we will buy that in from China, of course”.
Wait until the Chinese battery factories, or their political bosses, decide that domestic EV production is more important than battery exports.
Like for like, how much more than an unfueled normal car does an EV weigh?
(Thinking shipping costs).
Usually around 200kg or thereabouts, but it depends a lot on the platform and how it’s designed and manufactured.
Cars designed as EVs from the ground up, tend to be considerably lighter than cars that can accommodate both EV and ICE powertrains.
Cars are over-engineered, particularly EVs. Manufacturers promote vehicles that are way bigger, heavier, more powerful and more costly than they need to be because they get better margins on those vehicles.
That may be correct; but I reckon (with little evidence) that the reason the new-style Minis are so much bigger than Issigonis's original is safety. Safety standards have increased massively, and so much of that requires mass to absorb impacts.
According to Wiki, the original Mini was 580–686kg. The new Mini is around 1150-1710kg.
Perception of safety in bigger cars probably. But if you are designing a car for higher safety you wouldn't add mass for the sake of it. You would think about structure, materials etc. The trade offs are likely to be mainly cost to manufacture and looks - box structures are the strongest but make ugly cars. Weight will be a smaller factor I think.
A header that mentions the "neoliberal consensus" - good to see pieces recognising that states selling off civic assets may not be seen as a good deal by a majority of the public who like those assets and services and aren't profiting off of them being sold whole sale.
I think we're getting into a position similar to the 20th century - the paradoxes of capitalism are coming home to roost and the inaction of states to safeguard the material needs of the average person is leading towards grievance and a willingness to embrace the far right, even if you don't like them. Liberals are unpopular because they refuse to deal with the issues, left wingers are unpopular because the apparatus of capital control most media and would lose out under a more left wing world so scream bloody hell about anyone to the left of Atilla the Hun. And the right are unpopular because their wish casting politics just can't be done.
"embrace the far right"
As Corbyn and his acolytes show, the far left also has significant power for the disaffected.
But the entire force of capital, which includes the private media and the political establishment, go out of there way to make left wing policies solutions the equivalent of literal Stalinism whilst painting far right rhetoric as "common sense". The Overton window can only go one way for those people - it's the ratchet effect. So people seeing how impossible it is to get left wing solutions (and Corbyn is hardly far left, he proposed a social democratic policy platform that, when polled on issue by issue rather then as "Corbyn's policies", did have popular support) become disaffected and those who desire a far right solution get told it is always possible (because every party panders to them) and that when their policy preference is enacted and doesn't work that's because it wasn't done harshly enough and the answer is to go even more right wing.
"But the entire force of capital". You been at the Koolaid again? What is this 1875 and we are discussing the Communist Manifesto?
At heart most people like capitalism. What they want is for capitalism to be fair - so no unfair advantages of birth, of wealth etc. They want hard work rewarded.
What they don't want is bullshit economic theories about 'capital' and the 'politcal establishment' etc
Capitalism does not reward fairness or meritocracy - those things are not inherently capitalistic. The advantages of birth are backed into capitalism; inheritance whether in money or assets is the highest predictor of wealth later in life. People who work hard are not rewarded under capitalism. We recognised under Covid that their were such things as "essential workers" - who were they? Shop assistants, nurses, public servants and the like - are they the most well paid? Does a CEO or shareholder of a company work whatever ratio it has more than their lowest paid worker? Capitalism rewards those who help accumulate more capital for capitalists. To do otherwise is counter to capitalist mode of production.
So what is your solution then?
Hard work is rewarded - but yes every job comes with its own salary, and some of them are grossly unfair. And yet. Is it right for a CEO to earn millions? Maybe, if they can show that their input actual generates substantially more than that.
Should lower paid jobs be better paid? Yes - in an ideal world people would not need extra money from government if they are working a 37.5h week. But is it right that I earn more as a Uni lecturer than someone that works in retail? I bring a lifetime of experience of my subject to the role, you can be trained for a job on the tills and stacking shelves in days.
Capitalism cannot be left to run without check, for sure, but I have not seen a better arrangement suggested. What do you propose?
From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs - I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable. What that means practically? If you're in favour of a state that would mean, in part, state management of resources, workers councils who own the means of production, the seizing and redistribution of assets from the rich to the poor, etc. etc. If you're not in favour of a state (personally I'm not) you would do what the anarchists did in places like Spain at the outbreak of the civil war and what is happening in Rojava now; community and workers councils making democratic decisions about issues and deciding what to do and trade for themselves. Is this Utopian - yes, of course.
I would be happy in the mean time for more social democratic reform, wealth redistribution, empowerment of unions and individual workers and an increased social safety net. These are the things that would tackle the immediate problems that the "free market" are clearly making worse - inflation (to a degree, climate change will increase the scarcity of lots of essential resources), housing, poverty and malnourishment, etc.
"I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable."
Because HUMAN NATURE. Its how we are wired, I'm afraid. People want stuff. So you basically are an unapologetic communist. Are you Ash Sarkar? She of the luxury communism bent?
In feudal times there were lots of people, including many of those at the bottom of society, who believed it was the natural and right order of things, and they could not conceive of society being ordered in any different way.
There's nothing in human nature that makes capitalism the only, or optimal, way to organise society. We could do things differently if we wanted to. Albeit I would have hoped that the seven quarters of a century since the Communist Manifesto might have provided a few more appealing glimpses of what an alternative might look like than have been provided.
There is also no reason why an anarchist or communist model of managing the economy also couldn’t provide people with stuff - it would just mean that the people who have over accumulated stuff would have less stuff. I’m a champagne socialist - redistribute the access to champagne to the working classes. Bread and roses.
In a stateless economy, it's not champagne you'd be distributing but heroin and other narcotics, and de facto slavery would be commonplace.
See how the USSR provided people with stuff, compared with say the USA (or even the UK).
The USSR was not stateless - it was a union of Soviet States. But also, just after the revolution, the standard of living for the average Russian did greatly improve. Same in China after their revolution. That doesn't mean everything they did to achieve that was good, or the communist state that did it was good, but it was clearly better than what had come previously under the Tsar and Imperial China. Do people here really think the history of Romanov rule, for example, was better than communist Russia?
That depends what period you're looking at. From the time of Catherine II, till the end of the Romanovs, capital punishment was used less frequently than between 1917 - 1953, in favour of internal exile. Of course, there was serfdom until 1861, but then the Communists also made extensive use of slave labour, up till 1953. Soviet industrialisation was impressive (with US manufacturers providing a huge level of technology), along with the performance of the Red Army. But life in the countryside, where most citizens lived, was dire, with famine, forcible collectivsation, dekulakisation, all taking their toll on the population.
It was impressive because it came at the cost of 6 million lives.
All Communist states have failed (I'd no longer call China 'communist'). Why is an interesting question.
A few years back I read a very good, but very odd, book called 'Red Plenty', I think by Francis Spufford. It highlights how the Soviet Union looked as though it might economically eclipse the west in the 1950s and 1960s, but utterly failed in the 1970s and 1980s. My takehome from it is that the failure was largely because the entire thing was built on a pyramid of lies.
The top would tell factories what to produce, and how much, regardless of capability. If a factory failed to meet quotas, it meant the manager would get sacked. So they would report that they'd met the quotas. And as the market economy was rudimentary at best, they could get away with it. Then people above the managers would lie to their superiors, who would lie to their superiors.
I reckon the same is going on in China at the moment. Their entire internal market is based on lies.
I can't remember where the anecdote was from, but there was one about a Russian laundrette. It was given the order to produce a certain number of tonnes of scrap. So they had to scrap perfectly good machines to meet the quota, and then put in orders to buy new machines. Because obviously, laundrettes are in the scrap business.
(Hopefully I've remembered that correctly...)
I think you’ve got that story from the Adam Curtis documentary on Russia - TraumaZone. As I recall it they didn’t end up scraping good machines, but instead had to buy up scrap from all over town to meet the quota.
Or at least I think that’s what happened - the documentary had an interview with the manager of the Laundrette in question. The scrap quota arose because one year they had scrapped their older machines (to replace with new), and the bureaucracy determined that therefore every subsequent year it should produce the same amount of scrap metal. Absolutely bananas.
Love the Adam Curtis stuff.
That was it. And you were correct in the details. Your memory is much better than mine.
Thanks.
No problems - I think that particular bit really stuck in my mind. Something about it just summed up what was wrong with the whole Russian state at that time in such an amusing / satirical way. The inflexible central target driven nonsense that can’t be challenged no matter how mad.
It felt like a story that Orwell would consider a bit much. Mind I could well imagine Pratchett using an anecdote like that in one of the Discworld series.
A header that mentions the "neoliberal consensus" - good to see pieces recognising that states selling off civic assets may not be seen as a good deal by a majority of the public who like those assets and services and aren't profiting off of them being sold whole sale.
I think we're getting into a position similar to the 20th century - the paradoxes of capitalism are coming home to roost and the inaction of states to safeguard the material needs of the average person is leading towards grievance and a willingness to embrace the far right, even if you don't like them. Liberals are unpopular because they refuse to deal with the issues, left wingers are unpopular because the apparatus of capital control most media and would lose out under a more left wing world so scream bloody hell about anyone to the left of Atilla the Hun. And the right are unpopular because their wish casting politics just can't be done.
"embrace the far right"
As Corbyn and his acolytes show, the far left also has significant power for the disaffected.
But the entire force of capital, which includes the private media and the political establishment, go out of there way to make left wing policies solutions the equivalent of literal Stalinism whilst painting far right rhetoric as "common sense". The Overton window can only go one way for those people - it's the ratchet effect. So people seeing how impossible it is to get left wing solutions (and Corbyn is hardly far left, he proposed a social democratic policy platform that, when polled on issue by issue rather then as "Corbyn's policies", did have popular support) become disaffected and those who desire a far right solution get told it is always possible (because every party panders to them) and that when their policy preference is enacted and doesn't work that's because it wasn't done harshly enough and the answer is to go even more right wing.
"But the entire force of capital". You been at the Koolaid again? What is this 1875 and we are discussing the Communist Manifesto?
At heart most people like capitalism. What they want is for capitalism to be fair - so no unfair advantages of birth, of wealth etc. They want hard work rewarded.
What they don't want is bullshit economic theories about 'capital' and the 'politcal establishment' etc
Capitalism does not reward fairness or meritocracy - those things are not inherently capitalistic. The advantages of birth are backed into capitalism; inheritance whether in money or assets is the highest predictor of wealth later in life. People who work hard are not rewarded under capitalism. We recognised under Covid that their were such things as "essential workers" - who were they? Shop assistants, nurses, public servants and the like - are they the most well paid? Does a CEO or shareholder of a company work whatever ratio it has more than their lowest paid worker? Capitalism rewards those who help accumulate more capital for capitalists. To do otherwise is counter to capitalist mode of production.
So what is your solution then?
Hard work is rewarded - but yes every job comes with its own salary, and some of them are grossly unfair. And yet. Is it right for a CEO to earn millions? Maybe, if they can show that their input actual generates substantially more than that.
Should lower paid jobs be better paid? Yes - in an ideal world people would not need extra money from government if they are working a 37.5h week. But is it right that I earn more as a Uni lecturer than someone that works in retail? I bring a lifetime of experience of my subject to the role, you can be trained for a job on the tills and stacking shelves in days.
Capitalism cannot be left to run without check, for sure, but I have not seen a better arrangement suggested. What do you propose?
From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs - I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable. What that means practically? If you're in favour of a state that would mean, in part, state management of resources, workers councils who own the means of production, the seizing and redistribution of assets from the rich to the poor, etc. etc. If you're not in favour of a state (personally I'm not) you would do what the anarchists did in places like Spain at the outbreak of the civil war and what is happening in Rojava now; community and workers councils making democratic decisions about issues and deciding what to do and trade for themselves. Is this Utopian - yes, of course.
I would be happy in the mean time for more social democratic reform, wealth redistribution, empowerment of unions and individual workers and an increased social safety net. These are the things that would tackle the immediate problems that the "free market" are clearly making worse - inflation (to a degree, climate change will increase the scarcity of lots of essential resources), housing, poverty and malnourishment, etc.
"I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable."
Because HUMAN NATURE. Its how we are wired, I'm afraid. People want stuff. So you basically are an unapologetic communist. Are you Ash Sarkar? She of the luxury communism bent?
In feudal times there were lots of people, including many of those at the bottom of society, who believed it was the natural and right order of things, and they could not conceive of society being ordered in any different way.
There's nothing in human nature that makes capitalism the only, or optimal, way to organise society. We could do things differently if we wanted to. Albeit I would have hoped that the seven quarters of a century since the Communist Manifesto might have provided a few more appealing glimpses of what an alternative might look like than have been provided.
There is also no reason why an anarchist or communist model of managing the economy also couldn’t provide people with stuff - it would just mean that the people who have over accumulated stuff would have less stuff. I’m a champagne socialist - redistribute the access to champagne to the working classes. Bread and roses.
In a stateless economy, it's not champagne you'd be distributing but heroin and other narcotics, and de facto slavery would be commonplace.
See how the USSR provided people with stuff, compared with say the USA (or even the UK).
The USSR was not stateless - it was a union of Soviet States. But also, just after the revolution, the standard of living for the average Russian did greatly improve. Same in China after their revolution. That doesn't mean everything they did to achieve that was good, or the communist state that did it was good, but it was clearly better than what had come previously under the Tsar and Imperial China. Do people here really think the history of Romanov rule, for example, was better than communist Russia?
But in both cases, it then went very wrong very quickly.
In many ways, yes, in other ways progress was made. Again, I don’t defend state communism or what happened under it, but many people were pulled out of poverty by it, in the USSR education and rights for women (for example) was greatly expanded, and the economies essentially went straight from serfdom into industrialisation.
And what of capitalism? Since Reagan and Thatcher, the birth of neoliberalism and the unleashing of the markets, the world has gone from catastrophe to catastrophe. The capitalist organisation of the economy is literally making the planet uninhabitable. Boom and bust cycles were not destroyed, wages have stagnated whilst profits have soared, and the more the state is cut back from supporting people the more people fall into poverty and immiseration.
So apart from the murders, the famines, the closed borders (to stop people leaving), the rationing, the extreme poverty (for all but a very small social elite who lived like Henry VIII), Soviet Russia was awesome?
I didn't say that - at all.
And capitalism has presided over no state orchestrated murders nor ethnic cleansings, no famines or closed borders, no extreme poverty? I mean, we can just look at the history of United Fruit for one example of many of those things - all in the name of a company wanting to keep its profits going against the democratic wishes of a country that didn't want to be controlled by foreign, private capital. We could look at the history of Iran and ask the question "why is it like it is now?" and think about BP and the movement of oil. We could look at the history of Coca Cola, and state funded militias, and the destruction of whole ecosystems and indigenous societies.
And that's pre Reagan and Thatcher - before we get to how modern resource extraction works, how modern labour conditions are so terrible in factories across the world that child labour is commonplace and that anti-suicide netting is needed to prevent workers jumping out of the windows. How often states support capital in their fights against common people who just don't wish to be oppressed and dispossessed and destroyed - all for a few people to live high on massive profits.
If you want an economic model that allows for extreme poverty and a very small social elite who live in unimaginable wealth - you're living under one.
When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, in which direction was the human traffic?
Again, I do not like nor defend the USSR or its model for economic management - as I have said I am more on the anarchist left. More Bookchin than Bolshevik, more Kropotkin that Kremlin, more Machnovist than Maoist. Can you explain how capitalism is so much better, has no deaths or atrocities under its belt, and is a shining city on a hill? Or is it only I who has to defend my positions from purposeful strawman after strawman?
Straw man? You're the one defending an almost entirely theoretical model. Your position is essentially the same as the infamous YouGov poll last week that said "choose between what you have and something hypothetically wonderful". You have dreams and aspirations, fine, but there is no bodycount in your chosen philosophy because it has been tried only sporadically and on a tiny scale.
What countries have successfully implemented your preferred form of governance so we can compare?
I'm not sure anarchism qualifies as a form of "governance".
Although I've heard it said that at least it's better than no governance at all.
Anarchism is no governement at all though. Its a situation where those willing to be violent rule and everyone else obeys
You don't vote, though, do you? You think every party we've got, and every politician representing them, are a waste of space. Isn't that right?
Which is not the same as believing that there should be no laws or governments. I just disagree with out current political institution
You just said (in defending capitalism) that relative merit is what counts. In particular it's better than the left's alternative of communism. I think that's right btw.
Surely the same applies to this matter of voting. You think none of them are much cop. Fine. But how come you don't weigh them against each other and choose the least bad?
Because I think voting under our current system doesn't change anything, doesn't matter who gets in frankly. Why would I bother when I think it makes no difference. My belief is we need root and branch reform of out politics if we are going to move away from it. I already posted a header on a way I think would be better even if not all of the proposals were accepted and I don't believe it favoured left or right so wasn't politically biassed.
I know you have ideas on reforming the system. Me too - I'm a PR convert. But recognizing the drawbacks of the current system doesn't mean it makes no difference who is in government. Of course it does. Imagine if Labour had won rather than coming close in 2017 for example. Things would be just as they are today? C'mon. No way. For better or worse it'd be a bit different.
That would be an interesting question for a poll. I now believe that had Corbyn won we would have a more compassionate government than we now have and for that alone it would have been a good move for the country. Just listen to some of the Rwanda arguments in the Lords to see how far we have fallen from the decent place we once were.
Many moons ago, I knew a nice guy who was an anarchist, and was very much into the history of anarchism in the UK. He drew up a map of the different anarchist groups that had existed over the years, and their splits (with few mergers...). I think it was meant to show how anarchism was wonderful.
A header that mentions the "neoliberal consensus" - good to see pieces recognising that states selling off civic assets may not be seen as a good deal by a majority of the public who like those assets and services and aren't profiting off of them being sold whole sale.
I think we're getting into a position similar to the 20th century - the paradoxes of capitalism are coming home to roost and the inaction of states to safeguard the material needs of the average person is leading towards grievance and a willingness to embrace the far right, even if you don't like them. Liberals are unpopular because they refuse to deal with the issues, left wingers are unpopular because the apparatus of capital control most media and would lose out under a more left wing world so scream bloody hell about anyone to the left of Atilla the Hun. And the right are unpopular because their wish casting politics just can't be done.
"embrace the far right"
As Corbyn and his acolytes show, the far left also has significant power for the disaffected.
But the entire force of capital, which includes the private media and the political establishment, go out of there way to make left wing policies solutions the equivalent of literal Stalinism whilst painting far right rhetoric as "common sense". The Overton window can only go one way for those people - it's the ratchet effect. So people seeing how impossible it is to get left wing solutions (and Corbyn is hardly far left, he proposed a social democratic policy platform that, when polled on issue by issue rather then as "Corbyn's policies", did have popular support) become disaffected and those who desire a far right solution get told it is always possible (because every party panders to them) and that when their policy preference is enacted and doesn't work that's because it wasn't done harshly enough and the answer is to go even more right wing.
"But the entire force of capital". You been at the Koolaid again? What is this 1875 and we are discussing the Communist Manifesto?
At heart most people like capitalism. What they want is for capitalism to be fair - so no unfair advantages of birth, of wealth etc. They want hard work rewarded.
What they don't want is bullshit economic theories about 'capital' and the 'politcal establishment' etc
Capitalism does not reward fairness or meritocracy - those things are not inherently capitalistic. The advantages of birth are backed into capitalism; inheritance whether in money or assets is the highest predictor of wealth later in life. People who work hard are not rewarded under capitalism. We recognised under Covid that their were such things as "essential workers" - who were they? Shop assistants, nurses, public servants and the like - are they the most well paid? Does a CEO or shareholder of a company work whatever ratio it has more than their lowest paid worker? Capitalism rewards those who help accumulate more capital for capitalists. To do otherwise is counter to capitalist mode of production.
So what is your solution then?
Hard work is rewarded - but yes every job comes with its own salary, and some of them are grossly unfair. And yet. Is it right for a CEO to earn millions? Maybe, if they can show that their input actual generates substantially more than that.
Should lower paid jobs be better paid? Yes - in an ideal world people would not need extra money from government if they are working a 37.5h week. But is it right that I earn more as a Uni lecturer than someone that works in retail? I bring a lifetime of experience of my subject to the role, you can be trained for a job on the tills and stacking shelves in days.
Capitalism cannot be left to run without check, for sure, but I have not seen a better arrangement suggested. What do you propose?
From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs - I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable. What that means practically? If you're in favour of a state that would mean, in part, state management of resources, workers councils who own the means of production, the seizing and redistribution of assets from the rich to the poor, etc. etc. If you're not in favour of a state (personally I'm not) you would do what the anarchists did in places like Spain at the outbreak of the civil war and what is happening in Rojava now; community and workers councils making democratic decisions about issues and deciding what to do and trade for themselves. Is this Utopian - yes, of course.
I would be happy in the mean time for more social democratic reform, wealth redistribution, empowerment of unions and individual workers and an increased social safety net. These are the things that would tackle the immediate problems that the "free market" are clearly making worse - inflation (to a degree, climate change will increase the scarcity of lots of essential resources), housing, poverty and malnourishment, etc.
"I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable."
Because HUMAN NATURE. Its how we are wired, I'm afraid. People want stuff. So you basically are an unapologetic communist. Are you Ash Sarkar? She of the luxury communism bent?
In feudal times there were lots of people, including many of those at the bottom of society, who believed it was the natural and right order of things, and they could not conceive of society being ordered in any different way.
There's nothing in human nature that makes capitalism the only, or optimal, way to organise society. We could do things differently if we wanted to. Albeit I would have hoped that the seven quarters of a century since the Communist Manifesto might have provided a few more appealing glimpses of what an alternative might look like than have been provided.
There is also no reason why an anarchist or communist model of managing the economy also couldn’t provide people with stuff - it would just mean that the people who have over accumulated stuff would have less stuff. I’m a champagne socialist - redistribute the access to champagne to the working classes. Bread and roses.
In a stateless economy, it's not champagne you'd be distributing but heroin and other narcotics, and de facto slavery would be commonplace.
See how the USSR provided people with stuff, compared with say the USA (or even the UK).
The USSR was not stateless - it was a union of Soviet States. But also, just after the revolution, the standard of living for the average Russian did greatly improve. Same in China after their revolution. That doesn't mean everything they did to achieve that was good, or the communist state that did it was good, but it was clearly better than what had come previously under the Tsar and Imperial China. Do people here really think the history of Romanov rule, for example, was better than communist Russia?
But in both cases, it then went very wrong very quickly.
In many ways, yes, in other ways progress was made. Again, I don’t defend state communism or what happened under it, but many people were pulled out of poverty by it, in the USSR education and rights for women (for example) was greatly expanded, and the economies essentially went straight from serfdom into industrialisation.
And what of capitalism? Since Reagan and Thatcher, the birth of neoliberalism and the unleashing of the markets, the world has gone from catastrophe to catastrophe. The capitalist organisation of the economy is literally making the planet uninhabitable. Boom and bust cycles were not destroyed, wages have stagnated whilst profits have soared, and the more the state is cut back from supporting people the more people fall into poverty and immiseration.
So apart from the murders, the famines, the closed borders (to stop people leaving), the rationing, the extreme poverty (for all but a very small social elite who lived like Henry VIII), Soviet Russia was awesome?
I didn't say that - at all.
And capitalism has presided over no state orchestrated murders nor ethnic cleansings, no famines or closed borders, no extreme poverty? I mean, we can just look at the history of United Fruit for one example of many of those things - all in the name of a company wanting to keep its profits going against the democratic wishes of a country that didn't want to be controlled by foreign, private capital. We could look at the history of Iran and ask the question "why is it like it is now?" and think about BP and the movement of oil. We could look at the history of Coca Cola, and state funded militias, and the destruction of whole ecosystems and indigenous societies.
And that's pre Reagan and Thatcher - before we get to how modern resource extraction works, how modern labour conditions are so terrible in factories across the world that child labour is commonplace and that anti-suicide netting is needed to prevent workers jumping out of the windows. How often states support capital in their fights against common people who just don't wish to be oppressed and dispossessed and destroyed - all for a few people to live high on massive profits.
If you want an economic model that allows for extreme poverty and a very small social elite who live in unimaginable wealth - you're living under one.
When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, in which direction was the human traffic?
Again, I do not like nor defend the USSR or its model for economic management - as I have said I am more on the anarchist left. More Bookchin than Bolshevik, more Kropotkin that Kremlin, more Machnovist than Maoist. Can you explain how capitalism is so much better, has no deaths or atrocities under its belt, and is a shining city on a hill? Or is it only I who has to defend my positions from purposeful strawman after strawman?
Straw man? You're the one defending an almost entirely theoretical model. Your position is essentially the same as the infamous YouGov poll last week that said "choose between what you have and something hypothetically wonderful". You have dreams and aspirations, fine, but there is no bodycount in your chosen philosophy because it has been tried only sporadically and on a tiny scale.
What countries have successfully implemented your preferred form of governance so we can compare?
I'm not sure anarchism qualifies as a form of "governance".
Although I've heard it said that at least it's better than no governance at all.
Anarchism is no governement at all though. Its a situation where those willing to be violent rule and everyone else obeys
You don't vote, though, do you? You think every party we've got, and every politician representing them, are a waste of space. Isn't that right?
Which is not the same as believing that there should be no laws or governments. I just disagree with out current political institution
You just said (in defending capitalism) that relative merit is what counts. In particular it's better than the left's alternative of communism. I think that's right btw.
Surely the same applies to this matter of voting. You think none of them are much cop. Fine. But how come you don't weigh them against each other and choose the least bad?
Because I think voting under our current system doesn't change anything, doesn't matter who gets in frankly. Why would I bother when I think it makes no difference. My belief is we need root and branch reform of out politics if we are going to move away from it. I already posted a header on a way I think would be better even if not all of the proposals were accepted and I don't believe it favoured left or right so wasn't politically biassed.
I know you have ideas on reforming the system. Me too - I'm a PR convert. But recognizing the drawbacks of the current system doesn't mean it makes no difference who is in government. Of course it does. Imagine if Labour had won rather than coming close in 2017 for example. Things would be just as they are today? C'mon. No way. For better or worse it'd be a bit different.
That would be an interesting question for a poll. I now believe that had Corbyn won we would have a more compassionate government than we now have and for that alone it would have been a good move for the country. Just listen to some of the Rwanda arguments in the Lords to see how far we have fallen from the decent place we once were.
Unless you happened to be jewish or were unhappy about being ruled from the kremlin as a puppet state
Just realised I haven't been out on my balcony since the morning
I'm going to go and "stand on the balcony" to "take in the air". That should use up 7 minutes
This may be my new hobby. "Taking in the air"
I'll keep you posted
"Take the air" is the correct expression if you want to be the English expat on the Riviera at Mentone or wherever you are.
"Take in the air" is as in "how long does my Findus crispy pancake take in the air fryer?".
You’re quite right. Of course
It is “take the air” - what was I thinking
And I am now in fact Taking the air. My new hobby
Not a bad view from the balcony
Each to their own. I prefer the view from my place.
I doubt your view looks like that right now, tho? In late January?
I do love a nice rural view, however; just as much as I love good urban views
There is something particular about tropical cities at night, nonetheless. They are intrinsically intoxicating in a way other cities are not (at night)
When I lived up in Upper Holloway (to the Royal Mail), Lower Highgate (to the Estate Agents), Archway (to everyone else) I had the most amazing view of London from my bedroom. The shared house I was in with University friends in has now been split into several flats, none of which I can afford.
We are having a very productive day at work, and as the resident Grammar Nazi I have been dragged into this debate.
You’re at a bar and you want to order 3 Grey Goose drinks, do you tell the bar staff
1) I want three shots of Grey Goose
2) I want three shots of Grey Geese
3) I want a flock of Vodka
Number one would be correct. 'Grey Goose' is a mass term (as opposed to a count noun) so shouldn't really be pluralized. In the same way you shouldn't say 'I want three glasses of wines' but 'I want three glasses of wine'.
If we remove "shots of" I think it becomes less clear. "I want 3 Grey Geese" or "I want 3 Grey Goose"? Normal usage probably makes it plural - analogous to "I want 3 Stellas" or "2 Chardonnays please".
But Grey Goose is a brand name and so it would be 3 Grey Gooses just as it is 20 Rothmans not 20 Rothmen.
I was thinking that ‘Gooses’ might be acceptable here.
Can you imagine the stick someone would get if heard ordering ‘3 Grey Geese’?!?!
That’s a Fast Show sketch
"Nice!"
Can someone get Rishi his coat?
Labour leads by 23%.
Joint-lowest Conservative % since Rishi Sunak became PM.
Westminster VI (28 Jan):
Labour 45% (–) Conservative 22% (–) Reform UK 12% (–) Liberal Democrat 11% (–) Green 6% (–) SNP 3% (+1) Other 1% (-1)
I'm quite torn on this. Big picture, £118k/pa is a lot of money. It's more than most people would earn in three or four years. I think that anyone with sensible lifestyle aspirations could live a very nice, very comfortable, life on that kind of money. On the other hand, there are a lot of jobs in the private sector, and even a few in the public sector, most of which are rather less demanding than being a minister, which pay more, sometimes a lot more. There must be a point where the kind of high calibre, smart, people you might want to go into politics will decide that it's not worth getting paid so much less to do such a demanding and at times thankless job. In other words, I do have some sympathy for Mr Freeman, although not a huge amount. Perhaps his two marriages is part of the story here. Divorce seems to really fuck with people's finances.
A header that mentions the "neoliberal consensus" - good to see pieces recognising that states selling off civic assets may not be seen as a good deal by a majority of the public who like those assets and services and aren't profiting off of them being sold whole sale.
I think we're getting into a position similar to the 20th century - the paradoxes of capitalism are coming home to roost and the inaction of states to safeguard the material needs of the average person is leading towards grievance and a willingness to embrace the far right, even if you don't like them. Liberals are unpopular because they refuse to deal with the issues, left wingers are unpopular because the apparatus of capital control most media and would lose out under a more left wing world so scream bloody hell about anyone to the left of Atilla the Hun. And the right are unpopular because their wish casting politics just can't be done.
"embrace the far right"
As Corbyn and his acolytes show, the far left also has significant power for the disaffected.
But the entire force of capital, which includes the private media and the political establishment, go out of there way to make left wing policies solutions the equivalent of literal Stalinism whilst painting far right rhetoric as "common sense". The Overton window can only go one way for those people - it's the ratchet effect. So people seeing how impossible it is to get left wing solutions (and Corbyn is hardly far left, he proposed a social democratic policy platform that, when polled on issue by issue rather then as "Corbyn's policies", did have popular support) become disaffected and those who desire a far right solution get told it is always possible (because every party panders to them) and that when their policy preference is enacted and doesn't work that's because it wasn't done harshly enough and the answer is to go even more right wing.
"But the entire force of capital". You been at the Koolaid again? What is this 1875 and we are discussing the Communist Manifesto?
At heart most people like capitalism. What they want is for capitalism to be fair - so no unfair advantages of birth, of wealth etc. They want hard work rewarded.
What they don't want is bullshit economic theories about 'capital' and the 'politcal establishment' etc
Capitalism does not reward fairness or meritocracy - those things are not inherently capitalistic. The advantages of birth are backed into capitalism; inheritance whether in money or assets is the highest predictor of wealth later in life. People who work hard are not rewarded under capitalism. We recognised under Covid that their were such things as "essential workers" - who were they? Shop assistants, nurses, public servants and the like - are they the most well paid? Does a CEO or shareholder of a company work whatever ratio it has more than their lowest paid worker? Capitalism rewards those who help accumulate more capital for capitalists. To do otherwise is counter to capitalist mode of production.
So what is your solution then?
Hard work is rewarded - but yes every job comes with its own salary, and some of them are grossly unfair. And yet. Is it right for a CEO to earn millions? Maybe, if they can show that their input actual generates substantially more than that.
Should lower paid jobs be better paid? Yes - in an ideal world people would not need extra money from government if they are working a 37.5h week. But is it right that I earn more as a Uni lecturer than someone that works in retail? I bring a lifetime of experience of my subject to the role, you can be trained for a job on the tills and stacking shelves in days.
Capitalism cannot be left to run without check, for sure, but I have not seen a better arrangement suggested. What do you propose?
From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs - I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable. What that means practically? If you're in favour of a state that would mean, in part, state management of resources, workers councils who own the means of production, the seizing and redistribution of assets from the rich to the poor, etc. etc. If you're not in favour of a state (personally I'm not) you would do what the anarchists did in places like Spain at the outbreak of the civil war and what is happening in Rojava now; community and workers councils making democratic decisions about issues and deciding what to do and trade for themselves. Is this Utopian - yes, of course.
I would be happy in the mean time for more social democratic reform, wealth redistribution, empowerment of unions and individual workers and an increased social safety net. These are the things that would tackle the immediate problems that the "free market" are clearly making worse - inflation (to a degree, climate change will increase the scarcity of lots of essential resources), housing, poverty and malnourishment, etc.
"I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable."
Because HUMAN NATURE. Its how we are wired, I'm afraid. People want stuff. So you basically are an unapologetic communist. Are you Ash Sarkar? She of the luxury communism bent?
In feudal times there were lots of people, including many of those at the bottom of society, who believed it was the natural and right order of things, and they could not conceive of society being ordered in any different way.
There's nothing in human nature that makes capitalism the only, or optimal, way to organise society. We could do things differently if we wanted to. Albeit I would have hoped that the seven quarters of a century since the Communist Manifesto might have provided a few more appealing glimpses of what an alternative might look like than have been provided.
There is also no reason why an anarchist or communist model of managing the economy also couldn’t provide people with stuff - it would just mean that the people who have over accumulated stuff would have less stuff. I’m a champagne socialist - redistribute the access to champagne to the working classes. Bread and roses.
In a stateless economy, it's not champagne you'd be distributing but heroin and other narcotics, and de facto slavery would be commonplace.
See how the USSR provided people with stuff, compared with say the USA (or even the UK).
The USSR was not stateless - it was a union of Soviet States. But also, just after the revolution, the standard of living for the average Russian did greatly improve. Same in China after their revolution. That doesn't mean everything they did to achieve that was good, or the communist state that did it was good, but it was clearly better than what had come previously under the Tsar and Imperial China. Do people here really think the history of Romanov rule, for example, was better than communist Russia?
That is utter bullshit. Standards of living declined dramatically in Russia immediately after the revolution. In fact, they didn't seriously improve and go past Tsarism until the 1950s. People didn't resort to cannibalism under the Tsars. They did under Lenin and Stalin. Meanwhile, consumer goods became even scarcer and rationing of necessaries was ruthless.
China was just as bad. Again, significant improvements in living standards weren't really a thing until Deng in the 1980s.
I'm quite torn on this. Big picture, £118k/pa is a lot of money. It's more than most people would earn in three or four years. I think that anyone with sensible lifestyle aspirations could live a very nice, very comfortable, life on that kind of money. On the other hand, there are a lot of jobs in the private sector, and even a few in the public sector, most of which are rather less demanding than being a minister, which pay more, sometimes a lot more. There must be a point where the kind of high calibre, smart, people you might want to go into politics will decide that it's not worth getting paid so much less to do such a demanding and at times thankless job. In other words, I do have some sympathy for Mr Freeman, although not a huge amount. Perhaps his two marriages is part of the story here. Divorce seems to really fuck with people's finances.
Do the rules on MPs' outside earnings change if one is no longer a minister?
Every single academic conference I go to is doom laden. There is deep deep worry in the academic community about where current trends are taking us....
So I teach on the MBA programme at a leading London business school. We visited a leading european car manufacurer this year... they had electrified one of their brands and sold thousand of cars they could not deliver... they had taken the money, but the copper, lithium, rare minerals and quality steel was in such short supply that it led to a crisis for the company. Anyway they were open about this. After I spoke to one of the top top execs of this firm and said: look out on the streets at the fleet of vehicles driving around. What is the likelihood of those being replaced 1:1 with electric or hydrogen by 2040 or 2050..... he said: "Nil... it isn't happening... mobility as we have known it since ww2 is going to become a luxury." I asked him what should be done.... he said "we have to redesign cities so the car isn't needed like today" 🤷
The consumption opportunities and level of material prosperity people have become accustomed to over the last 80 years is an aberration historical terms and it is about to drop away.
I am no sort of leftist, but if we look back eg 25 years to 1999, we were not exactly living on gruel and sending our children to school shoeless in the snow.
What the world needs is not for the rich world to get disproportionately richer, it is for the poorer world to catch up with the middling/richer world. The is essential not only because it is right, but also because there is no other way to stem the increasing flow of economic and political migrants.
Something that has been entertaining to watch has been the legacy car companies taking the view that they will just order batteries and batteries will appear. The rest of a EV requires the same materials as an ICE - excepting the electric motors.
If you are buying the entire output of a factory, year in, year out, then you need to own a factory. They worked this out with engines. But I guess they forgot that lesson.
I attended one seminar on EVs, at a bank a few years back, where it was all “we will buy that in from China, of course”.
Wait until the Chinese battery factories, or their political bosses, decide that domestic EV production is more important than battery exports.
Like for like, how much more than an unfueled normal car does an EV weigh?
A corresponding BEV is about half a tonne heavier than our already bloated ICE vehicles.
These are Norway figures, which are probably a good example as the most developed BEV market:
Every single academic conference I go to is doom laden. There is deep deep worry in the academic community about where current trends are taking us....
So I teach on the MBA programme at a leading London business school. We visited a leading european car manufacurer this year... they had electrified one of their brands and sold thousand of cars they could not deliver... they had taken the money, but the copper, lithium, rare minerals and quality steel was in such short supply that it led to a crisis for the company. Anyway they were open about this. After I spoke to one of the top top execs of this firm and said: look out on the streets at the fleet of vehicles driving around. What is the likelihood of those being replaced 1:1 with electric or hydrogen by 2040 or 2050..... he said: "Nil... it isn't happening... mobility as we have known it since ww2 is going to become a luxury." I asked him what should be done.... he said "we have to redesign cities so the car isn't needed like today" 🤷
The consumption opportunities and level of material prosperity people have become accustomed to over the last 80 years is an aberration historical terms and it is about to drop away.
I am no sort of leftist, but if we look back eg 25 years to 1999, we were not exactly living on gruel and sending our children to school shoeless in the snow.
What the world needs is not for the rich world to get disproportionately richer, it is for the poorer world to catch up with the middling/richer world. The is essential not only because it is right, but also because there is no other way to stem the increasing flow of economic and political migrants.
Something that has been entertaining to watch has been the legacy car companies taking the view that they will just order batteries and batteries will appear. The rest of a EV requires the same materials as an ICE - excepting the electric motors.
If you are buying the entire output of a factory, year in, year out, then you need to own a factory. They worked this out with engines. But I guess they forgot that lesson.
I attended one seminar on EVs, at a bank a few years back, where it was all “we will buy that in from China, of course”.
Wait until the Chinese battery factories, or their political bosses, decide that domestic EV production is more important than battery exports.
Like for like, how much more than an unfueled normal car does an EV weigh?
(Thinking shipping costs).
Usually around 200kg or thereabouts, but it depends a lot on the platform and how it’s designed and manufactured.
Cars designed as EVs from the ground up, tend to be considerably lighter than cars that can accommodate both EV and ICE powertrains.
Thanks. Interesting. Hadn’t considered the saving on the rest of the mechanism. By 2035, we aren’t going to need to be forced to switch are we?
My only worry is that there will be enough left over petrol stations for me to still be driving my DB5 and my E Type well into the 2050s after I make my millions and buy them.
Don’t worry, there will still be petrol stations around in 2050. And if you have a DB5 and an E Type, you won’t care too much if you have to drive a few miles more than you’re used to, in order to fill up, because every mile in one of those is worth savouring.
Porsche and others are spending millions on synthetic fuels, because they want to keep the 911 and motorsport programme alive. F1 will be run on fully synthetic fuels in a couple of years’ time.
It better not contain ethanol. E10 eats your rubber fuel lines. E5 isn't as compatible with older cars as one is led to believe either.
I'm quite torn on this. Big picture, £118k/pa is a lot of money. It's more than most people would earn in three or four years. I think that anyone with sensible lifestyle aspirations could live a very nice, very comfortable, life on that kind of money. On the other hand, there are a lot of jobs in the private sector, and even a few in the public sector, most of which are rather less demanding than being a minister, which pay more, sometimes a lot more. There must be a point where the kind of high calibre, smart, people you might want to go into politics will decide that it's not worth getting paid so much less to do such a demanding and at times thankless job. In other words, I do have some sympathy for Mr Freeman, although not a huge amount. Perhaps his two marriages is part of the story here. Divorce seems to really fuck with people's finances.
Even then, it's a big jump in your bills- £1200 a month, getting on for £15000 a year, which needs about £25000ish pre-tax income.
Mr Freeman is fortunate to have contacts and options available to him that others don't have, of course. But whilst lots of people haven't and won't experience a big jump in mortgage payments, it's horrible for those who do. And that swamps any fiddling about with taxes that Jeremy Hunt can pull out of his hat.
A header that mentions the "neoliberal consensus" - good to see pieces recognising that states selling off civic assets may not be seen as a good deal by a majority of the public who like those assets and services and aren't profiting off of them being sold whole sale.
I think we're getting into a position similar to the 20th century - the paradoxes of capitalism are coming home to roost and the inaction of states to safeguard the material needs of the average person is leading towards grievance and a willingness to embrace the far right, even if you don't like them. Liberals are unpopular because they refuse to deal with the issues, left wingers are unpopular because the apparatus of capital control most media and would lose out under a more left wing world so scream bloody hell about anyone to the left of Atilla the Hun. And the right are unpopular because their wish casting politics just can't be done.
"embrace the far right"
As Corbyn and his acolytes show, the far left also has significant power for the disaffected.
But the entire force of capital, which includes the private media and the political establishment, go out of there way to make left wing policies solutions the equivalent of literal Stalinism whilst painting far right rhetoric as "common sense". The Overton window can only go one way for those people - it's the ratchet effect. So people seeing how impossible it is to get left wing solutions (and Corbyn is hardly far left, he proposed a social democratic policy platform that, when polled on issue by issue rather then as "Corbyn's policies", did have popular support) become disaffected and those who desire a far right solution get told it is always possible (because every party panders to them) and that when their policy preference is enacted and doesn't work that's because it wasn't done harshly enough and the answer is to go even more right wing.
"But the entire force of capital". You been at the Koolaid again? What is this 1875 and we are discussing the Communist Manifesto?
At heart most people like capitalism. What they want is for capitalism to be fair - so no unfair advantages of birth, of wealth etc. They want hard work rewarded.
What they don't want is bullshit economic theories about 'capital' and the 'politcal establishment' etc
Capitalism does not reward fairness or meritocracy - those things are not inherently capitalistic. The advantages of birth are backed into capitalism; inheritance whether in money or assets is the highest predictor of wealth later in life. People who work hard are not rewarded under capitalism. We recognised under Covid that their were such things as "essential workers" - who were they? Shop assistants, nurses, public servants and the like - are they the most well paid? Does a CEO or shareholder of a company work whatever ratio it has more than their lowest paid worker? Capitalism rewards those who help accumulate more capital for capitalists. To do otherwise is counter to capitalist mode of production.
So what is your solution then?
Hard work is rewarded - but yes every job comes with its own salary, and some of them are grossly unfair. And yet. Is it right for a CEO to earn millions? Maybe, if they can show that their input actual generates substantially more than that.
Should lower paid jobs be better paid? Yes - in an ideal world people would not need extra money from government if they are working a 37.5h week. But is it right that I earn more as a Uni lecturer than someone that works in retail? I bring a lifetime of experience of my subject to the role, you can be trained for a job on the tills and stacking shelves in days.
Capitalism cannot be left to run without check, for sure, but I have not seen a better arrangement suggested. What do you propose?
From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs - I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable. What that means practically? If you're in favour of a state that would mean, in part, state management of resources, workers councils who own the means of production, the seizing and redistribution of assets from the rich to the poor, etc. etc. If you're not in favour of a state (personally I'm not) you would do what the anarchists did in places like Spain at the outbreak of the civil war and what is happening in Rojava now; community and workers councils making democratic decisions about issues and deciding what to do and trade for themselves. Is this Utopian - yes, of course.
I would be happy in the mean time for more social democratic reform, wealth redistribution, empowerment of unions and individual workers and an increased social safety net. These are the things that would tackle the immediate problems that the "free market" are clearly making worse - inflation (to a degree, climate change will increase the scarcity of lots of essential resources), housing, poverty and malnourishment, etc.
"I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable."
Because HUMAN NATURE. Its how we are wired, I'm afraid. People want stuff. So you basically are an unapologetic communist. Are you Ash Sarkar? She of the luxury communism bent?
In feudal times there were lots of people, including many of those at the bottom of society, who believed it was the natural and right order of things, and they could not conceive of society being ordered in any different way.
There's nothing in human nature that makes capitalism the only, or optimal, way to organise society. We could do things differently if we wanted to. Albeit I would have hoped that the seven quarters of a century since the Communist Manifesto might have provided a few more appealing glimpses of what an alternative might look like than have been provided.
There is also no reason why an anarchist or communist model of managing the economy also couldn’t provide people with stuff - it would just mean that the people who have over accumulated stuff would have less stuff. I’m a champagne socialist - redistribute the access to champagne to the working classes. Bread and roses.
In a stateless economy, it's not champagne you'd be distributing but heroin and other narcotics, and de facto slavery would be commonplace.
See how the USSR provided people with stuff, compared with say the USA (or even the UK).
The USSR was not stateless - it was a union of Soviet States. But also, just after the revolution, the standard of living for the average Russian did greatly improve. Same in China after their revolution. That doesn't mean everything they did to achieve that was good, or the communist state that did it was good, but it was clearly better than what had come previously under the Tsar and Imperial China. Do people here really think the history of Romanov rule, for example, was better than communist Russia?
But in both cases, it then went very wrong very quickly.
In many ways, yes, in other ways progress was made. Again, I don’t defend state communism or what happened under it, but many people were pulled out of poverty by it, in the USSR education and rights for women (for example) was greatly expanded, and the economies essentially went straight from serfdom into industrialisation.
And what of capitalism? Since Reagan and Thatcher, the birth of neoliberalism and the unleashing of the markets, the world has gone from catastrophe to catastrophe. The capitalist organisation of the economy is literally making the planet uninhabitable. Boom and bust cycles were not destroyed, wages have stagnated whilst profits have soared, and the more the state is cut back from supporting people the more people fall into poverty and immiseration.
So apart from the murders, the famines, the closed borders (to stop people leaving), the rationing, the extreme poverty (for all but a very small social elite who lived like Henry VIII), Soviet Russia was awesome?
I didn't say that - at all.
And capitalism has presided over no state orchestrated murders nor ethnic cleansings, no famines or closed borders, no extreme poverty? I mean, we can just look at the history of United Fruit for one example of many of those things - all in the name of a company wanting to keep its profits going against the democratic wishes of a country that didn't want to be controlled by foreign, private capital. We could look at the history of Iran and ask the question "why is it like it is now?" and think about BP and the movement of oil. We could look at the history of Coca Cola, and state funded militias, and the destruction of whole ecosystems and indigenous societies.
And that's pre Reagan and Thatcher - before we get to how modern resource extraction works, how modern labour conditions are so terrible in factories across the world that child labour is commonplace and that anti-suicide netting is needed to prevent workers jumping out of the windows. How often states support capital in their fights against common people who just don't wish to be oppressed and dispossessed and destroyed - all for a few people to live high on massive profits.
If you want an economic model that allows for extreme poverty and a very small social elite who live in unimaginable wealth - you're living under one.
When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, in which direction was the human traffic?
Again, I do not like nor defend the USSR or its model for economic management - as I have said I am more on the anarchist left. More Bookchin than Bolshevik, more Kropotkin that Kremlin, more Machnovist than Maoist. Can you explain how capitalism is so much better, has no deaths or atrocities under its belt, and is a shining city on a hill? Or is it only I who has to defend my positions from purposeful strawman after strawman?
Straw man? You're the one defending an almost entirely theoretical model. Your position is essentially the same as the infamous YouGov poll last week that said "choose between what you have and something hypothetically wonderful". You have dreams and aspirations, fine, but there is no bodycount in your chosen philosophy because it has been tried only sporadically and on a tiny scale.
What countries have successfully implemented your preferred form of governance so we can compare?
I'm not sure anarchism qualifies as a form of "governance".
Although I've heard it said that at least it's better than no governance at all.
Anarchism is no governement at all though. Its a situation where those willing to be violent rule and everyone else obeys
You don't vote, though, do you? You think every party we've got, and every politician representing them, are a waste of space. Isn't that right?
Which is not the same as believing that there should be no laws or governments. I just disagree with out current political institution
You just said (in defending capitalism) that relative merit is what counts. In particular it's better than the left's alternative of communism. I think that's right btw.
Surely the same applies to this matter of voting. You think none of them are much cop. Fine. But how come you don't weigh them against each other and choose the least bad?
Because I think voting under our current system doesn't change anything, doesn't matter who gets in frankly. Why would I bother when I think it makes no difference. My belief is we need root and branch reform of out politics if we are going to move away from it. I already posted a header on a way I think would be better even if not all of the proposals were accepted and I don't believe it favoured left or right so wasn't politically biassed.
I know you have ideas on reforming the system. Me too - I'm a PR convert. But recognizing the drawbacks of the current system doesn't mean it makes no difference who is in government. Of course it does. Imagine if Labour had won rather than coming close in 2017 for example. Things would be just as they are today? C'mon. No way. For better or worse it'd be a bit different.
You misunderstand I think, you mistake different for better. I have no doubt things under corbyn would have been different. I don't want different I want better. All our current parties offer is slight different with life continuing to get worse for most. Doesn't matter if is sunak, starmer, davey etc.....we need to rip up what we have and start again to make things work for the majority is my view.....therefore why would I bother in a system which I don't think is going to turn anything round for the majority.
The make an analogy its like you saying its different if the population is whipped or caned and thats the choice vote for one or the other....personally I want to change the system so most people get puppies instead.
All is relative and different implies better or worse. A change for the better means it was worse before the change. A change for the worse means things used to be better. Or if you like, getting a puppy is better than being caned, being caned is better than (insert gory detail here). Of course personal opinion is relevant. Eg for me the upcoming Starmer government will be like getting a puppy, whereas you'll probably think you're being caned.
Just realised I haven't been out on my balcony since the morning
I'm going to go and "stand on the balcony" to "take in the air". That should use up 7 minutes
This may be my new hobby. "Taking in the air"
I'll keep you posted
"Take the air" is the correct expression if you want to be the English expat on the Riviera at Mentone or wherever you are.
"Take in the air" is as in "how long does my Findus crispy pancake take in the air fryer?".
You’re quite right. Of course
It is “take the air” - what was I thinking
And I am now in fact Taking the air. My new hobby
Not a bad view from the balcony
Each to their own. I prefer the view from my place.
Leon clearly likes looking out at blocks of flats, which must remind him of his Camden bedsit.
Each to his own.
Much as I love Camden, in January-February I do prefer Indochina, despite the blocks of flats
I can see how that has appeal, but it still makes me shudder. I'd never stay somewhere like that out of choice.
I just don't like being hemmed in. Spent three days in Birmingham late last year (ok, so not the best of cities) but I couldn't wait to get out. Just felt so oppressive with the tall buildings and not seeing (that much of) the sky. I can function fine on visits to cities - I enjoy London for a visit and frequently go to Leeds etc - but if I'm missing a big open sky for more than a few days I really start to feel it.
Still, life would be boring if we were all the same, wouldn't it? Many, you probably included, would go stir crazy pretty quickly in the middle of nowhere. I would not.
Just realised I haven't been out on my balcony since the morning
I'm going to go and "stand on the balcony" to "take in the air". That should use up 7 minutes
This may be my new hobby. "Taking in the air"
I'll keep you posted
"Take the air" is the correct expression if you want to be the English expat on the Riviera at Mentone or wherever you are.
"Take in the air" is as in "how long does my Findus crispy pancake take in the air fryer?".
You’re quite right. Of course
It is “take the air” - what was I thinking
And I am now in fact Taking the air. My new hobby
Not a bad view from the balcony
Each to their own. I prefer the view from my place.
I doubt your view looks like that right now, tho? In late January?
I do love a nice rural view, however; just as much as I love good urban views
There is something particular about tropical cities at night, nonetheless. They are intrinsically intoxicating in a way other cities are not (at night)
When I lived up in Upper Holloway (to the Royal Mail), Lower Highgate (to the Estate Agents), Archway (to everyone else) I had the most amazing view of London from my bedroom. The shared house I was in with University friends in has now been split into several flats, none of which I can afford.
You can get some unexpectedly amazing views up in hilly north london. There’s a great view of the City from the Marks and Sparks in Muswell Hill
And I love the view of the Shard as you come down Haverstock Hill
A header that mentions the "neoliberal consensus" - good to see pieces recognising that states selling off civic assets may not be seen as a good deal by a majority of the public who like those assets and services and aren't profiting off of them being sold whole sale.
I think we're getting into a position similar to the 20th century - the paradoxes of capitalism are coming home to roost and the inaction of states to safeguard the material needs of the average person is leading towards grievance and a willingness to embrace the far right, even if you don't like them. Liberals are unpopular because they refuse to deal with the issues, left wingers are unpopular because the apparatus of capital control most media and would lose out under a more left wing world so scream bloody hell about anyone to the left of Atilla the Hun. And the right are unpopular because their wish casting politics just can't be done.
"embrace the far right"
As Corbyn and his acolytes show, the far left also has significant power for the disaffected.
But the entire force of capital, which includes the private media and the political establishment, go out of there way to make left wing policies solutions the equivalent of literal Stalinism whilst painting far right rhetoric as "common sense". The Overton window can only go one way for those people - it's the ratchet effect. So people seeing how impossible it is to get left wing solutions (and Corbyn is hardly far left, he proposed a social democratic policy platform that, when polled on issue by issue rather then as "Corbyn's policies", did have popular support) become disaffected and those who desire a far right solution get told it is always possible (because every party panders to them) and that when their policy preference is enacted and doesn't work that's because it wasn't done harshly enough and the answer is to go even more right wing.
"But the entire force of capital". You been at the Koolaid again? What is this 1875 and we are discussing the Communist Manifesto?
At heart most people like capitalism. What they want is for capitalism to be fair - so no unfair advantages of birth, of wealth etc. They want hard work rewarded.
What they don't want is bullshit economic theories about 'capital' and the 'politcal establishment' etc
Capitalism does not reward fairness or meritocracy - those things are not inherently capitalistic. The advantages of birth are backed into capitalism; inheritance whether in money or assets is the highest predictor of wealth later in life. People who work hard are not rewarded under capitalism. We recognised under Covid that their were such things as "essential workers" - who were they? Shop assistants, nurses, public servants and the like - are they the most well paid? Does a CEO or shareholder of a company work whatever ratio it has more than their lowest paid worker? Capitalism rewards those who help accumulate more capital for capitalists. To do otherwise is counter to capitalist mode of production.
So what is your solution then?
Hard work is rewarded - but yes every job comes with its own salary, and some of them are grossly unfair. And yet. Is it right for a CEO to earn millions? Maybe, if they can show that their input actual generates substantially more than that.
Should lower paid jobs be better paid? Yes - in an ideal world people would not need extra money from government if they are working a 37.5h week. But is it right that I earn more as a Uni lecturer than someone that works in retail? I bring a lifetime of experience of my subject to the role, you can be trained for a job on the tills and stacking shelves in days.
Capitalism cannot be left to run without check, for sure, but I have not seen a better arrangement suggested. What do you propose?
From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs - I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable. What that means practically? If you're in favour of a state that would mean, in part, state management of resources, workers councils who own the means of production, the seizing and redistribution of assets from the rich to the poor, etc. etc. If you're not in favour of a state (personally I'm not) you would do what the anarchists did in places like Spain at the outbreak of the civil war and what is happening in Rojava now; community and workers councils making democratic decisions about issues and deciding what to do and trade for themselves. Is this Utopian - yes, of course.
I would be happy in the mean time for more social democratic reform, wealth redistribution, empowerment of unions and individual workers and an increased social safety net. These are the things that would tackle the immediate problems that the "free market" are clearly making worse - inflation (to a degree, climate change will increase the scarcity of lots of essential resources), housing, poverty and malnourishment, etc.
"I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable."
Because HUMAN NATURE. Its how we are wired, I'm afraid. People want stuff. So you basically are an unapologetic communist. Are you Ash Sarkar? She of the luxury communism bent?
In feudal times there were lots of people, including many of those at the bottom of society, who believed it was the natural and right order of things, and they could not conceive of society being ordered in any different way.
There's nothing in human nature that makes capitalism the only, or optimal, way to organise society. We could do things differently if we wanted to. Albeit I would have hoped that the seven quarters of a century since the Communist Manifesto might have provided a few more appealing glimpses of what an alternative might look like than have been provided.
There is also no reason why an anarchist or communist model of managing the economy also couldn’t provide people with stuff - it would just mean that the people who have over accumulated stuff would have less stuff. I’m a champagne socialist - redistribute the access to champagne to the working classes. Bread and roses.
In a stateless economy, it's not champagne you'd be distributing but heroin and other narcotics, and de facto slavery would be commonplace.
See how the USSR provided people with stuff, compared with say the USA (or even the UK).
The USSR was not stateless - it was a union of Soviet States. But also, just after the revolution, the standard of living for the average Russian did greatly improve. Same in China after their revolution. That doesn't mean everything they did to achieve that was good, or the communist state that did it was good, but it was clearly better than what had come previously under the Tsar and Imperial China. Do people here really think the history of Romanov rule, for example, was better than communist Russia?
But in both cases, it then went very wrong very quickly.
In many ways, yes, in other ways progress was made. Again, I don’t defend state communism or what happened under it, but many people were pulled out of poverty by it, in the USSR education and rights for women (for example) was greatly expanded, and the economies essentially went straight from serfdom into industrialisation.
And what of capitalism? Since Reagan and Thatcher, the birth of neoliberalism and the unleashing of the markets, the world has gone from catastrophe to catastrophe. The capitalist organisation of the economy is literally making the planet uninhabitable. Boom and bust cycles were not destroyed, wages have stagnated whilst profits have soared, and the more the state is cut back from supporting people the more people fall into poverty and immiseration.
So apart from the murders, the famines, the closed borders (to stop people leaving), the rationing, the extreme poverty (for all but a very small social elite who lived like Henry VIII), Soviet Russia was awesome?
I didn't say that - at all.
And capitalism has presided over no state orchestrated murders nor ethnic cleansings, no famines or closed borders, no extreme poverty? I mean, we can just look at the history of United Fruit for one example of many of those things - all in the name of a company wanting to keep its profits going against the democratic wishes of a country that didn't want to be controlled by foreign, private capital. We could look at the history of Iran and ask the question "why is it like it is now?" and think about BP and the movement of oil. We could look at the history of Coca Cola, and state funded militias, and the destruction of whole ecosystems and indigenous societies.
And that's pre Reagan and Thatcher - before we get to how modern resource extraction works, how modern labour conditions are so terrible in factories across the world that child labour is commonplace and that anti-suicide netting is needed to prevent workers jumping out of the windows. How often states support capital in their fights against common people who just don't wish to be oppressed and dispossessed and destroyed - all for a few people to live high on massive profits.
If you want an economic model that allows for extreme poverty and a very small social elite who live in unimaginable wealth - you're living under one.
When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, in which direction was the human traffic?
Again, I do not like nor defend the USSR or its model for economic management - as I have said I am more on the anarchist left. More Bookchin than Bolshevik, more Kropotkin that Kremlin, more Machnovist than Maoist. Can you explain how capitalism is so much better, has no deaths or atrocities under its belt, and is a shining city on a hill? Or is it only I who has to defend my positions from purposeful strawman after strawman?
Straw man? You're the one defending an almost entirely theoretical model. Your position is essentially the same as the infamous YouGov poll last week that said "choose between what you have and something hypothetically wonderful". You have dreams and aspirations, fine, but there is no bodycount in your chosen philosophy because it has been tried only sporadically and on a tiny scale.
What countries have successfully implemented your preferred form of governance so we can compare?
I'm not sure anarchism qualifies as a form of "governance".
Although I've heard it said that at least it's better than no governance at all.
Anarchism is no governement at all though. Its a situation where those willing to be violent rule and everyone else obeys
You don't vote, though, do you? You think every party we've got, and every politician representing them, are a waste of space. Isn't that right?
Which is not the same as believing that there should be no laws or governments. I just disagree with out current political institution
You just said (in defending capitalism) that relative merit is what counts. In particular it's better than the left's alternative of communism. I think that's right btw.
Surely the same applies to this matter of voting. You think none of them are much cop. Fine. But how come you don't weigh them against each other and choose the least bad?
Because I think voting under our current system doesn't change anything, doesn't matter who gets in frankly. Why would I bother when I think it makes no difference. My belief is we need root and branch reform of out politics if we are going to move away from it. I already posted a header on a way I think would be better even if not all of the proposals were accepted and I don't believe it favoured left or right so wasn't politically biassed.
I know you have ideas on reforming the system. Me too - I'm a PR convert. But recognizing the drawbacks of the current system doesn't mean it makes no difference who is in government. Of course it does. Imagine if Labour had won rather than coming close in 2017 for example. Things would be just as they are today? C'mon. No way. For better or worse it'd be a bit different.
You misunderstand I think, you mistake different for better. I have no doubt things under corbyn would have been different. I don't want different I want better. All our current parties offer is slight different with life continuing to get worse for most. Doesn't matter if is sunak, starmer, davey etc.....we need to rip up what we have and start again to make things work for the majority is my view.....therefore why would I bother in a system which I don't think is going to turn anything round for the majority.
The make an analogy its like you saying its different if the population is whipped or caned and thats the choice vote for one or the other....personally I want to change the system so most people get puppies instead.
All is relative and different implies better or worse. A change for the better means it was worse before the change. A change for the worse means things used to be better. Or if you like, getting a puppy is better than being caned, being caned is better than (insert gory detail here). Of course personal opinion is relevant. Eg for me the upcoming Starmer government will be like getting a puppy, whereas you'll probably think you're being caned.
Starmer will do absolutely nothing to make the lives of most people in this country better
Just realised I haven't been out on my balcony since the morning
I'm going to go and "stand on the balcony" to "take in the air". That should use up 7 minutes
This may be my new hobby. "Taking in the air"
I'll keep you posted
"Take the air" is the correct expression if you want to be the English expat on the Riviera at Mentone or wherever you are.
"Take in the air" is as in "how long does my Findus crispy pancake take in the air fryer?".
You’re quite right. Of course
It is “take the air” - what was I thinking
And I am now in fact Taking the air. My new hobby
Not a bad view from the balcony
Each to their own. I prefer the view from my place.
Leon clearly likes looking out at blocks of flats, which must remind him of his Camden bedsit.
Each to his own.
Much as I love Camden, in January-February I do prefer Indochina, despite the blocks of flats
I can see how that has appeal, but it still makes me shudder. I'd never stay somewhere like that out of choice.
I just don't like being hemmed in. Spent three days in Birmingham late last year (ok, so not the best of cities) but I couldn't wait to get out. Just felt so oppressive with the tall buildings and not seeing (that much of) the sky. I can function fine on visits to cities - I enjoy London for a visit and frequently go to Leeds etc - but if I'm missing a big open sky for more than a few days I really start to feel it.
Still, life would be boring if we were all the same, wouldn't it? Many, you probably included, would go stir crazy pretty quickly in the middle of nowhere. I would not.
Ah, but I love all kinds of places
I love the crazy intensity of the new Asian cities. The energy and crackle and optimism and, yes, the skyscrapers - especially, for some reason, in the tropics. They buzz like nowhere else
But I also love deserts - the endless desolation and the whirring silence. I love icecaps - the total blankness. I love the salt flats of Bolivia and the little villages of the South Downs
Its a good job I travel for a living so I can vary things
I am fairly sure @148grss is an educated troll, winding up PBers
No one can be THAT wilfully stupid
Don't be ridiculous. 148 is a great addition to the site (could do with a bit of editing and some paragraphs here and there but otherwise just fine).
They are evidently smart, committed, idealistic, a touch naive and kumbaya but so what that's just my cynical old view, and also somewhat aware of the unattainability of their flavour of political goals.
Fine by me. I mean the paragraphs thing probably does need work but that's all.
A header that mentions the "neoliberal consensus" - good to see pieces recognising that states selling off civic assets may not be seen as a good deal by a majority of the public who like those assets and services and aren't profiting off of them being sold whole sale.
I think we're getting into a position similar to the 20th century - the paradoxes of capitalism are coming home to roost and the inaction of states to safeguard the material needs of the average person is leading towards grievance and a willingness to embrace the far right, even if you don't like them. Liberals are unpopular because they refuse to deal with the issues, left wingers are unpopular because the apparatus of capital control most media and would lose out under a more left wing world so scream bloody hell about anyone to the left of Atilla the Hun. And the right are unpopular because their wish casting politics just can't be done.
"embrace the far right"
As Corbyn and his acolytes show, the far left also has significant power for the disaffected.
But the entire force of capital, which includes the private media and the political establishment, go out of there way to make left wing policies solutions the equivalent of literal Stalinism whilst painting far right rhetoric as "common sense". The Overton window can only go one way for those people - it's the ratchet effect. So people seeing how impossible it is to get left wing solutions (and Corbyn is hardly far left, he proposed a social democratic policy platform that, when polled on issue by issue rather then as "Corbyn's policies", did have popular support) become disaffected and those who desire a far right solution get told it is always possible (because every party panders to them) and that when their policy preference is enacted and doesn't work that's because it wasn't done harshly enough and the answer is to go even more right wing.
"But the entire force of capital". You been at the Koolaid again? What is this 1875 and we are discussing the Communist Manifesto?
At heart most people like capitalism. What they want is for capitalism to be fair - so no unfair advantages of birth, of wealth etc. They want hard work rewarded.
What they don't want is bullshit economic theories about 'capital' and the 'politcal establishment' etc
Capitalism does not reward fairness or meritocracy - those things are not inherently capitalistic. The advantages of birth are backed into capitalism; inheritance whether in money or assets is the highest predictor of wealth later in life. People who work hard are not rewarded under capitalism. We recognised under Covid that their were such things as "essential workers" - who were they? Shop assistants, nurses, public servants and the like - are they the most well paid? Does a CEO or shareholder of a company work whatever ratio it has more than their lowest paid worker? Capitalism rewards those who help accumulate more capital for capitalists. To do otherwise is counter to capitalist mode of production.
So what is your solution then?
Hard work is rewarded - but yes every job comes with its own salary, and some of them are grossly unfair. And yet. Is it right for a CEO to earn millions? Maybe, if they can show that their input actual generates substantially more than that.
Should lower paid jobs be better paid? Yes - in an ideal world people would not need extra money from government if they are working a 37.5h week. But is it right that I earn more as a Uni lecturer than someone that works in retail? I bring a lifetime of experience of my subject to the role, you can be trained for a job on the tills and stacking shelves in days.
Capitalism cannot be left to run without check, for sure, but I have not seen a better arrangement suggested. What do you propose?
From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs - I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable. What that means practically? If you're in favour of a state that would mean, in part, state management of resources, workers councils who own the means of production, the seizing and redistribution of assets from the rich to the poor, etc. etc. If you're not in favour of a state (personally I'm not) you would do what the anarchists did in places like Spain at the outbreak of the civil war and what is happening in Rojava now; community and workers councils making democratic decisions about issues and deciding what to do and trade for themselves. Is this Utopian - yes, of course.
I would be happy in the mean time for more social democratic reform, wealth redistribution, empowerment of unions and individual workers and an increased social safety net. These are the things that would tackle the immediate problems that the "free market" are clearly making worse - inflation (to a degree, climate change will increase the scarcity of lots of essential resources), housing, poverty and malnourishment, etc.
"I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable."
Because HUMAN NATURE. Its how we are wired, I'm afraid. People want stuff. So you basically are an unapologetic communist. Are you Ash Sarkar? She of the luxury communism bent?
In feudal times there were lots of people, including many of those at the bottom of society, who believed it was the natural and right order of things, and they could not conceive of society being ordered in any different way.
There's nothing in human nature that makes capitalism the only, or optimal, way to organise society. We could do things differently if we wanted to. Albeit I would have hoped that the seven quarters of a century since the Communist Manifesto might have provided a few more appealing glimpses of what an alternative might look like than have been provided.
There is also no reason why an anarchist or communist model of managing the economy also couldn’t provide people with stuff - it would just mean that the people who have over accumulated stuff would have less stuff. I’m a champagne socialist - redistribute the access to champagne to the working classes. Bread and roses.
In a stateless economy, it's not champagne you'd be distributing but heroin and other narcotics, and de facto slavery would be commonplace.
See how the USSR provided people with stuff, compared with say the USA (or even the UK).
The USSR was not stateless - it was a union of Soviet States. But also, just after the revolution, the standard of living for the average Russian did greatly improve. Same in China after their revolution. That doesn't mean everything they did to achieve that was good, or the communist state that did it was good, but it was clearly better than what had come previously under the Tsar and Imperial China. Do people here really think the history of Romanov rule, for example, was better than communist Russia?
Yes, life was far better for most people under Romanov rule. Because most people didn't have to worry about being sent to labour camps, etc.
I am fairly sure @148grss is an educated troll, winding up PBers
No one can be THAT wilfully stupid
Don't be ridiculous. 148 is a great addition to the site (could do with a bit of editing and some paragraphs here and there but otherwise just fine).
They are evidently smart, committed, idealistic, a touch naive and kumbaya but so what that's just my cynical old view, and also somewhat aware of the unattainability of their flavour of political goals.
Fine by me. I mean the paragraphs thing probably does need work but that's all.
I’m not disagreeing. @148grss is most welcome and a refreshing new voice
I’m just fairly sure he/she is either faking these opinions, or really “spicing them up” to get a rise out of the old geezers of PB
Every single academic conference I go to is doom laden. There is deep deep worry in the academic community about where current trends are taking us....
So I teach on the MBA programme at a leading London business school. We visited a leading european car manufacurer this year... they had electrified one of their brands and sold thousand of cars they could not deliver... they had taken the money, but the copper, lithium, rare minerals and quality steel was in such short supply that it led to a crisis for the company. Anyway they were open about this. After I spoke to one of the top top execs of this firm and said: look out on the streets at the fleet of vehicles driving around. What is the likelihood of those being replaced 1:1 with electric or hydrogen by 2040 or 2050..... he said: "Nil... it isn't happening... mobility as we have known it since ww2 is going to become a luxury." I asked him what should be done.... he said "we have to redesign cities so the car isn't needed like today" 🤷
The consumption opportunities and level of material prosperity people have become accustomed to over the last 80 years is an aberration historical terms and it is about to drop away.
I am no sort of leftist, but if we look back eg 25 years to 1999, we were not exactly living on gruel and sending our children to school shoeless in the snow.
What the world needs is not for the rich world to get disproportionately richer, it is for the poorer world to catch up with the middling/richer world. The is essential not only because it is right, but also because there is no other way to stem the increasing flow of economic and political migrants.
Something that has been entertaining to watch has been the legacy car companies taking the view that they will just order batteries and batteries will appear. The rest of a EV requires the same materials as an ICE - excepting the electric motors.
If you are buying the entire output of a factory, year in, year out, then you need to own a factory. They worked this out with engines. But I guess they forgot that lesson.
I attended one seminar on EVs, at a bank a few years back, where it was all “we will buy that in from China, of course”.
Wait until the Chinese battery factories, or their political bosses, decide that domestic EV production is more important than battery exports.
Like for like, how much more than an unfueled normal car does an EV weigh?
(Thinking shipping costs).
Usually around 200kg or thereabouts, but it depends a lot on the platform and how it’s designed and manufactured.
Cars designed as EVs from the ground up, tend to be considerably lighter than cars that can accommodate both EV and ICE powertrains.
Cars are over-engineered, particularly EVs. Manufacturers promote vehicles that are way bigger, heavier, more powerful and more costly than they need to be because they get better margins on those vehicles.
That may be correct; but I reckon (with little evidence) that the reason the new-style Minis are so much bigger than Issigonis's original is safety. Safety standards have increased massively, and so much of that requires mass to absorb impacts.
According to Wiki, the original Mini was 580–686kg. The new Mini is around 1150-1710kg.
Perception of safety in bigger cars probably. But if you are designing a car for higher safety you wouldn't add mass for the sake of it. You would think about structure, materials etc. The trade offs are likely to be mainly cost to manufacture and looks - box structures are the strongest but make ugly cars. Weight will be a smaller factor I think.
Crumple zones require mass and space. And space itself requires more mass. If you want the box the occupants to remain as intact as possible to form a survival space, the energy of the impact needs to be absorbed outside that space. There's no way of doing that without adding a load more mass, even with good design.
A header that mentions the "neoliberal consensus" - good to see pieces recognising that states selling off civic assets may not be seen as a good deal by a majority of the public who like those assets and services and aren't profiting off of them being sold whole sale.
I think we're getting into a position similar to the 20th century - the paradoxes of capitalism are coming home to roost and the inaction of states to safeguard the material needs of the average person is leading towards grievance and a willingness to embrace the far right, even if you don't like them. Liberals are unpopular because they refuse to deal with the issues, left wingers are unpopular because the apparatus of capital control most media and would lose out under a more left wing world so scream bloody hell about anyone to the left of Atilla the Hun. And the right are unpopular because their wish casting politics just can't be done.
"embrace the far right"
As Corbyn and his acolytes show, the far left also has significant power for the disaffected.
But the entire force of capital, which includes the private media and the political establishment, go out of there way to make left wing policies solutions the equivalent of literal Stalinism whilst painting far right rhetoric as "common sense". The Overton window can only go one way for those people - it's the ratchet effect. So people seeing how impossible it is to get left wing solutions (and Corbyn is hardly far left, he proposed a social democratic policy platform that, when polled on issue by issue rather then as "Corbyn's policies", did have popular support) become disaffected and those who desire a far right solution get told it is always possible (because every party panders to them) and that when their policy preference is enacted and doesn't work that's because it wasn't done harshly enough and the answer is to go even more right wing.
"But the entire force of capital". You been at the Koolaid again? What is this 1875 and we are discussing the Communist Manifesto?
At heart most people like capitalism. What they want is for capitalism to be fair - so no unfair advantages of birth, of wealth etc. They want hard work rewarded.
What they don't want is bullshit economic theories about 'capital' and the 'politcal establishment' etc
Capitalism does not reward fairness or meritocracy - those things are not inherently capitalistic. The advantages of birth are backed into capitalism; inheritance whether in money or assets is the highest predictor of wealth later in life. People who work hard are not rewarded under capitalism. We recognised under Covid that their were such things as "essential workers" - who were they? Shop assistants, nurses, public servants and the like - are they the most well paid? Does a CEO or shareholder of a company work whatever ratio it has more than their lowest paid worker? Capitalism rewards those who help accumulate more capital for capitalists. To do otherwise is counter to capitalist mode of production.
So what is your solution then?
Hard work is rewarded - but yes every job comes with its own salary, and some of them are grossly unfair. And yet. Is it right for a CEO to earn millions? Maybe, if they can show that their input actual generates substantially more than that.
Should lower paid jobs be better paid? Yes - in an ideal world people would not need extra money from government if they are working a 37.5h week. But is it right that I earn more as a Uni lecturer than someone that works in retail? I bring a lifetime of experience of my subject to the role, you can be trained for a job on the tills and stacking shelves in days.
Capitalism cannot be left to run without check, for sure, but I have not seen a better arrangement suggested. What do you propose?
From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs - I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable. What that means practically? If you're in favour of a state that would mean, in part, state management of resources, workers councils who own the means of production, the seizing and redistribution of assets from the rich to the poor, etc. etc. If you're not in favour of a state (personally I'm not) you would do what the anarchists did in places like Spain at the outbreak of the civil war and what is happening in Rojava now; community and workers councils making democratic decisions about issues and deciding what to do and trade for themselves. Is this Utopian - yes, of course.
I would be happy in the mean time for more social democratic reform, wealth redistribution, empowerment of unions and individual workers and an increased social safety net. These are the things that would tackle the immediate problems that the "free market" are clearly making worse - inflation (to a degree, climate change will increase the scarcity of lots of essential resources), housing, poverty and malnourishment, etc.
"I do not see why profit motive is necessary or why the private mass accumulation of capital is acceptable."
Because HUMAN NATURE. Its how we are wired, I'm afraid. People want stuff. So you basically are an unapologetic communist. Are you Ash Sarkar? She of the luxury communism bent?
In feudal times there were lots of people, including many of those at the bottom of society, who believed it was the natural and right order of things, and they could not conceive of society being ordered in any different way.
There's nothing in human nature that makes capitalism the only, or optimal, way to organise society. We could do things differently if we wanted to. Albeit I would have hoped that the seven quarters of a century since the Communist Manifesto might have provided a few more appealing glimpses of what an alternative might look like than have been provided.
There is also no reason why an anarchist or communist model of managing the economy also couldn’t provide people with stuff - it would just mean that the people who have over accumulated stuff would have less stuff. I’m a champagne socialist - redistribute the access to champagne to the working classes. Bread and roses.
In a stateless economy, it's not champagne you'd be distributing but heroin and other narcotics, and de facto slavery would be commonplace.
See how the USSR provided people with stuff, compared with say the USA (or even the UK).
The USSR was not stateless - it was a union of Soviet States. But also, just after the revolution, the standard of living for the average Russian did greatly improve. Same in China after their revolution. That doesn't mean everything they did to achieve that was good, or the communist state that did it was good, but it was clearly better than what had come previously under the Tsar and Imperial China. Do people here really think the history of Romanov rule, for example, was better than communist Russia?
But in both cases, it then went very wrong very quickly.
In many ways, yes, in other ways progress was made. Again, I don’t defend state communism or what happened under it, but many people were pulled out of poverty by it, in the USSR education and rights for women (for example) was greatly expanded, and the economies essentially went straight from serfdom into industrialisation.
And what of capitalism? Since Reagan and Thatcher, the birth of neoliberalism and the unleashing of the markets, the world has gone from catastrophe to catastrophe. The capitalist organisation of the economy is literally making the planet uninhabitable. Boom and bust cycles were not destroyed, wages have stagnated whilst profits have soared, and the more the state is cut back from supporting people the more people fall into poverty and immiseration.
So apart from the murders, the famines, the closed borders (to stop people leaving), the rationing, the extreme poverty (for all but a very small social elite who lived like Henry VIII), Soviet Russia was awesome?
I didn't say that - at all.
And capitalism has presided over no state orchestrated murders nor ethnic cleansings, no famines or closed borders, no extreme poverty? I mean, we can just look at the history of United Fruit for one example of many of those things - all in the name of a company wanting to keep its profits going against the democratic wishes of a country that didn't want to be controlled by foreign, private capital. We could look at the history of Iran and ask the question "why is it like it is now?" and think about BP and the movement of oil. We could look at the history of Coca Cola, and state funded militias, and the destruction of whole ecosystems and indigenous societies.
And that's pre Reagan and Thatcher - before we get to how modern resource extraction works, how modern labour conditions are so terrible in factories across the world that child labour is commonplace and that anti-suicide netting is needed to prevent workers jumping out of the windows. How often states support capital in their fights against common people who just don't wish to be oppressed and dispossessed and destroyed - all for a few people to live high on massive profits.
If you want an economic model that allows for extreme poverty and a very small social elite who live in unimaginable wealth - you're living under one.
When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, in which direction was the human traffic?
Again, I do not like nor defend the USSR or its model for economic management - as I have said I am more on the anarchist left. More Bookchin than Bolshevik, more Kropotkin that Kremlin, more Machnovist than Maoist. Can you explain how capitalism is so much better, has no deaths or atrocities under its belt, and is a shining city on a hill? Or is it only I who has to defend my positions from purposeful strawman after strawman?
Straw man? You're the one defending an almost entirely theoretical model. Your position is essentially the same as the infamous YouGov poll last week that said "choose between what you have and something hypothetically wonderful". You have dreams and aspirations, fine, but there is no bodycount in your chosen philosophy because it has been tried only sporadically and on a tiny scale.
What countries have successfully implemented your preferred form of governance so we can compare?
I'm not sure anarchism qualifies as a form of "governance".
Although I've heard it said that at least it's better than no governance at all.
Anarchism is no governement at all though. Its a situation where those willing to be violent rule and everyone else obeys
You don't vote, though, do you? You think every party we've got, and every politician representing them, are a waste of space. Isn't that right?
Which is not the same as believing that there should be no laws or governments. I just disagree with out current political institution
You just said (in defending capitalism) that relative merit is what counts. In particular it's better than the left's alternative of communism. I think that's right btw.
Surely the same applies to this matter of voting. You think none of them are much cop. Fine. But how come you don't weigh them against each other and choose the least bad?
Because I think voting under our current system doesn't change anything, doesn't matter who gets in frankly. Why would I bother when I think it makes no difference. My belief is we need root and branch reform of out politics if we are going to move away from it. I already posted a header on a way I think would be better even if not all of the proposals were accepted and I don't believe it favoured left or right so wasn't politically biassed.
I know you have ideas on reforming the system. Me too - I'm a PR convert. But recognizing the drawbacks of the current system doesn't mean it makes no difference who is in government. Of course it does. Imagine if Labour had won rather than coming close in 2017 for example. Things would be just as they are today? C'mon. No way. For better or worse it'd be a bit different.
You misunderstand I think, you mistake different for better. I have no doubt things under corbyn would have been different. I don't want different I want better. All our current parties offer is slight different with life continuing to get worse for most. Doesn't matter if is sunak, starmer, davey etc.....we need to rip up what we have and start again to make things work for the majority is my view.....therefore why would I bother in a system which I don't think is going to turn anything round for the majority.
The make an analogy its like you saying its different if the population is whipped or caned and thats the choice vote for one or the other....personally I want to change the system so most people get puppies instead.
All is relative and different implies better or worse. A change for the better means it was worse before the change. A change for the worse means things used to be better. Or if you like, getting a puppy is better than being caned, being caned is better than (insert gory detail here). Of course personal opinion is relevant. Eg for me the upcoming Starmer government will be like getting a puppy, whereas you'll probably think you're being caned.
Starmer will do absolutely nothing to make the lives of most people in this country better
Gosh you're a tough gig. The future's not ours to see. At least give the man a chance to disappoint you.
Comments
And the Chinese Great Leap forward killed more people in 3 years than capitalism in a century. A number equivalent to the population of the UK at the time.
I would offer to field test phrases in a sample of hostelries, but it's a work night...
What countries have successfully implemented your preferred form of governance so we can compare?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hK7Wh18Mi_A
Although I've heard it said that at least it's better than no governance at all.
It didn't work, on me at least.
Here's something like it, but as I remember it, his map was much more complex.
https://freedomnews.org.uk/2017/05/25/towards-a-timeline-of-anarchism-in-britain/#
Half a Cider with half sparkling water in the summer
Sparkling water with wine or Prosecco is my other tip. After a while it’s hard to believe you actually like the taste of full strength alcohol. Well that’s my opinion anyway
Often in pubs though they serve you a whole glass of wine with added water… that’s better than only wine, but doesn’t really stop you drinking less
If you are buying the entire output of a factory, year in, year out, then you need to own a factory. They worked this out with engines. But I guess they forgot that lesson.
I attended one seminar on EVs, at a bank a few years back, where it was all “we will buy that in from China, of course”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Cross_Route
This must be a unique situation really. Govt elected with a huge majority gets rid of leader who wasn’t that unpopular with their voters… and replaces with two leaders who are unpopular with them
JapaneseKoreansChinese who actually make the stuff realise that they could sell their goods to your customers. Any business that falls into such a trap deserves to be destroyed.Getting rid of Rishi Sunak won’t save the Tories, poll says
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/a3fd7a75-be1d-4e44-ae2c-54696e317c38?shareToken=a7c3e9ae984d1a37491a68c4d3b7fa5e
They reveal that Kemi Badenoch is a net drag on the Conservative vote, even amongst 2019 Tory voters (12-20), but only let on the positive number, (35), for Boris
https://www.itv.com/news/anglia/2024-01-29/tory-minister-quit-as-he-simply-couldnt-afford-mortgage-on-118000
Surely the same applies to this matter of voting. You think none of them are much cop. Fine. But how come you don't weigh them against each other and choose the least bad?
I miss “precedented” times. I worry that chasing Boris out will be the moment we all look back on as the beginning of the rise of an actual Trump like populist.
(Thinking shipping costs).
The £118k includes the MP salary, the ministerial salary is around £30k.
A few years back I read a very good, but very odd, book called 'Red Plenty', I think by Francis Spufford. It highlights how the Soviet Union looked as though it might economically eclipse the west in the 1950s and 1960s, but utterly failed in the 1970s and 1980s. My takehome from it is that the failure was largely because the entire thing was built on a pyramid of lies.
The top would tell factories what to produce, and how much, regardless of capability. If a factory failed to meet quotas, it meant the manager would get sacked. So they would report that they'd met the quotas. And as the market economy was rudimentary at best, they could get away with it. Then people above the managers would lie to their superiors, who would lie to their superiors.
I reckon the same is going on in China at the moment. Their entire internal market is based on lies.
I can't remember where the anecdote was from, but there was one about a Russian laundrette. It was given the order to produce a certain number of tonnes of scrap. So they had to scrap perfectly good machines to meet the quota, and then put in orders to buy new machines. Because obviously, laundrettes are in the scrap business.
(Hopefully I've remembered that correctly...)
One can argue it was morally right he be chucked out, but politically it was always bonkers.
These are Norway figures, which are probably a good example as the most developed BEV market:
...the average petrol or diesel car weighs around 1600 kilograms. The average electric car is around 2000 kilograms.
https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/weighty-issue-of-electric-cars#:~:text=What you'll notice – which,have been getting heavier, faster.
Cars designed as EVs from the ground up, tend to be considerably lighter than cars that can accommodate both EV and ICE powertrains.
https://x.com/mikejpretzel/status/1751961004345356612?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
Each to his own.
Where I would use that formulation is for something like egg and chips.
A battery seems to be around 450kg, but an EV car saves some weight elsewhere.
My only worry is that there will be enough left over petrol stations for me to still be driving my DB5 and my E Type well into the 2050s after I make my millions and buy them.
https://x.com/bigmannick_/status/1751688009290780695?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
In a way, his party is to be applauded for sticking to its principles on Boris, in the end, and just deciding his face didn’t fit.
That sounds like a lot, but it's nothing compared to HGVs.
Porsche and others are spending millions on synthetic fuels, because they want to keep the 911 and motorsport programme alive. F1 will be run on fully synthetic fuels in a couple of years’ time.
The electoral point is that, overall, he's not that much more popular among 2019 Conservatives than Rishi and he has significantly more negatives. This is from Mori in the last week or so;
https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/majority-britons-continue-be-unfavourable-towards-rishi-sunak
Second is that, sure, Conservative MPs ought to have known what they were getting when they made Boris their leader, and that it wouldn't be cost-free. But even then, there's a limit. How would you feel if your ultimate boss knowingly put a sex pest in place as your line manager? And then lied about it?
He needed a Willy.
When he was forced out, 2019Tories agreed, according to R&W. Three months later…
Do Britons believe Boris Johnson is capable of replicating his previous electoral successes in the future? (20-21 October)
All Respondents
Yes 43% (+26)
No 40% (-26)
Don't Know 17% (–)
2019 Conservative Voters
Yes 65% (+43)
No 21% (-41)
Don't Know 14% (-2)
Changes +/- 8 July
https://x.com/redfieldwilton/status/1584122563050938368?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
As EVs get better, the weight difference should narrow.
There is enough domestic demand (at the moment) to absorb pretty much any increase in Chinese EV battery manufacture.
This is because EV adoption is high and increasing faster than battery production, in China.
Exports are rising in price because of scarcity.
Western manufacturers are facing the terrifying prospect of having to invest in their own battery production.
According to Wiki, the original Mini was 580–686kg. The new Mini is around 1150-1710kg.
Or at least I think that’s what happened - the documentary had an interview with the manager of the Laundrette in question. The scrap quota arose because one year they had scrapped their older machines (to replace with new), and the bureaucracy determined that therefore every subsequent year it should produce the same amount of scrap metal. Absolutely bananas.
Love the Adam Curtis stuff.
The make an analogy its like you saying its different if the population is whipped or caned and thats the choice vote for one or the other....personally I want to change the system so most people get puppies instead.
Thanks.
No, I can't see that working. Just too openly tawdry. They had no choice by the end - but yes, better late than never, so if not applause they get a grudging little nod of the head.
Labour leads by 23%.
Joint-lowest Conservative % since Rishi Sunak became PM.
Westminster VI (28 Jan):
Labour 45% (–)
Conservative 22% (–)
Reform UK 12% (–)
Liberal Democrat 11% (–)
Green 6% (–)
SNP 3% (+1)
Other 1% (-1)
Changes +/- 21 Jan
https://x.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1752013740848058810?s=20
But they weren’t!
It felt like a story that Orwell would consider a bit much. Mind I could well imagine Pratchett using an anecdote like that in one of the Discworld series.
We've now had more consecutive polls with the Tories below 30% than at any previous point since regular UK polling began.
On the other hand, there are a lot of jobs in the private sector, and even a few in the public sector, most of which are rather less demanding than being a minister, which pay more, sometimes a lot more. There must be a point where the kind of high calibre, smart, people you might want to go into politics will decide that it's not worth getting paid so much less to do such a demanding and at times thankless job.
In other words, I do have some sympathy for Mr Freeman, although not a huge amount.
Perhaps his two marriages is part of the story here. Divorce seems to really fuck with people's finances.
China was just as bad. Again, significant improvements in living standards weren't really a thing until Deng in the 1980s.
No one can be THAT wilfully stupid
Mr Freeman is fortunate to have contacts and options available to him that others don't have, of course. But whilst lots of people haven't and won't experience a big jump in mortgage payments, it's horrible for those who do. And that swamps any fiddling about with taxes that Jeremy Hunt can pull out of his hat.
I just don't like being hemmed in. Spent three days in Birmingham late last year (ok, so not the best of cities) but I couldn't wait to get out. Just felt so oppressive with the tall buildings and not seeing (that much of) the sky. I can function fine on visits to cities - I enjoy London for a visit and frequently go to Leeds etc - but if I'm missing a big open sky for more than a few days I really start to feel it.
Still, life would be boring if we were all the same, wouldn't it? Many, you probably included, would go stir crazy pretty quickly in the middle of nowhere. I would not.
And I love the view of the Shard as you come down Haverstock Hill
https://x.com/elliottengage/status/1752018360450023461?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
I reckon I can get 15
I love the crazy intensity of the new Asian cities. The energy and crackle and optimism and, yes, the skyscrapers - especially, for some reason, in the tropics. They buzz like nowhere else
But I also love deserts - the endless desolation and the whirring silence. I love icecaps - the total blankness. I love the salt flats of Bolivia and the little villages of the South Downs
Its a good job I travel for a living so I can vary things
They are evidently smart, committed, idealistic, a touch naive and kumbaya but so what that's just my cynical old view, and also somewhat aware of the unattainability of their flavour of political goals.
Fine by me. I mean the paragraphs thing probably does need work but that's all.
I’m just fairly sure he/she is either faking these opinions, or really “spicing them up” to get a rise out of the old geezers of PB