Stop voting for fucking Tories

[Biffer]

That guy is also the inventor of the "stop buying avocado toast if you want to buy a house" meme/opinion.

And, well, consequences:



https://www.afr.com/companies/media-and ... 914-p5e4l6

Of course, he doesn't say his comments are incorrect.

[Hal Jordan]

What do you expect from the Mekon?

[sockwithaticket]

I saw the clip. From what he said to the slicked back hair, his entire being lives down to the stereotype of a sociopathic C-suite exec for whom profit is more important than people.

The sort of scumbag who shouldn't be allowed to manage a local call centre team, let alone an entire company.

[I like neeps]

I saw the clip. From what he said to the slicked back hair, his entire being lives down to the stereotype of a sociopathic C-suite exec for whom profit is more important than people.

The sort of scumbag who shouldn't be allowed to manage a local call centre team, let alone an entire company.

Considering central bankers have been quite open about the fact workers need to not take pay rises and surpress vacancies it's say it's an extreme view but not one that's hugely unusual amongst policy makers/corporate titans.

[sockwithaticket]

I saw the clip. From what he said to the slicked back hair, his entire being lives down to the stereotype of a sociopathic C-suite exec for whom profit is more important than people.

The sort of scumbag who shouldn't be allowed to manage a local call centre team, let alone an entire company.

Considering central bankers have been quite open about the fact workers need to not take pay rises and surpress vacancies it's say it's an extreme view but not one that's hugely unusual amongst policy makers/corporate titans.

I don't think those types would even consider it extreme. They're scum who don't really care about people and their standard of living. Them saying shit like that is because they want to keep funneling ever more money to the top so they and their friends can fulfil Scrooge McDuck-esque fantasies with their vaults.

The message consistently put out by non-governmental sources was that corporate greed was a huge driving force of inflation, not worker remuneration. Prices were racing ahead of salary. Telling workers not to accept pay rises was really just saying 'We want you to just accept being poorer and gross income inequality because we don't actually want to do anything to fetter the avaricious arseholes in the top 5%'. In fairness, central banks are generally quite limited in what they can actually do in response to inflation and most of their mechanisms are designed to allay it when it's consumer spending power pushing things up rather.

At least that's what my Soros funded Antifa sources told me.

[Tichtheid]

These people are actually very stupid, they've got the whole thing arse about tit - if you have unemployment running at 40 to 50% and wages being driven through the floor - who is going to buy their goods or services?

[sockwithaticket]

These people are actually very stupid, they've got the whole thing arse about tit - if you have unemployment running at 40 to 50% and wages being driven through the floor - who is going to buy their goods or services?

Exactly! Self-confessed economic ignoramus, but I always wonder what is the point in driving down the purchasing power of the overwhelming majority of people? It means that all they purchase are the absolute necessities - shelter, sustenance and utilities. The 'real' economy is the masses exchanging goods and services.

[dpedin]

The system works well without it, and we're not a society that requires ID, nor one that provides it by default. If we were, there would be a strong argument in favour of it. However, we're not, so instead the minor benefits are massively outweighed by disenfranchising swathes of the most vulnerable parts of the population.

ID makes it far easier to have a central database, since everyone will have an identifier number etc. Suddenly doctors may be able to get your medical history, without having to run around to each and every hospital/surgery you've ever visited, paramedics could get a relevant medical history swiftly etc. Having lived in a country with national id, and a good central database, it's amazing how much smoother things can be.

The NHS in Scotland already has a central database for medical issues using a system based on a unique identifier called the CHI number. I am sure NHS England is implementing something similar. This means that no matter where you are in the country a medic can call up your medical history, it also links in GP services via SCI Gateway. This can be accessed from anywhere across the country and works perfectly well. When I was ill a few years ago my GP used it to see my history etc from 2 different hospital sites involving the medical records systems, imaging systems, pharmacy systems, etc. There is absolutely no need for medical records to be confused with how the patient voted, in fact the tying up of the two databases would scare the shit out of me given the data mining etc undertaken by very dodgy actors ie Plantir, on behalf of the current Gov.

In 2022 (local elections, mayoral elections and by elections etc) there were 193 cases of electoral fraud of which 155 were about campaigning or nomination of candidates fraud, only 38 or 20% were actually about voter fraud! These figures from the Electoral Commission would suggest that far from needing voter fraud legislation including voter ID, which would seem a sledgehammer to crack an imaginary nut, we need stronger legislation to stop our political parties breaking the law during elections!

If we were a country and had an existing ID system then fine show it at the voting booth, however we are not and are very unlikely to have a national ID system so demanding voter ID can only be seen as a way of preventing the poor, the elderly and the disabled the ability to vote. To suggest it is a cost effect way of avoiding a non existent problem is just right wing childish nonsense!

[SaintK]

I saw the clip. From what he said to the slicked back hair, his entire being lives down to the stereotype of a sociopathic C-suite exec for whom profit is more important than people.

The sort of scumbag who shouldn't be allowed to manage a local call centre team, let alone an entire company.

Grovel, grovel, grovel

One of Australia's richest men has apologised after he said that unemployment should jump to remind arrogant workers of their place.
"We need to see pain in the economy," Tim Gurner had said.
But Mr Gurner said later that he "deeply" regretted the comments, which sparked a global backlash.
He has previously made headlines by suggesting young people cannot afford homes because they spend too much on avocado toast.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66803279

[Biffer]

These people are actually very stupid, they've got the whole thing arse about tit - if you have unemployment running at 40 to 50% and wages being driven through the floor - who is going to buy their goods or services?

For clarity about the arsehole, he didn't want unployment to go up to 40 or 50%. He wanted it to go up by 40 or 50%. So from about 4/5% now to around 7%.

From an economists point of view, full employment is when unemployment is below 5%

[sockwithaticket]

I saw the clip. From what he said to the slicked back hair, his entire being lives down to the stereotype of a sociopathic C-suite exec for whom profit is more important than people.

The sort of scumbag who shouldn't be allowed to manage a local call centre team, let alone an entire company.

Grovel, grovel, grovel

One of Australia's richest men has apologised after he said that unemployment should jump to remind arrogant workers of their place.
"We need to see pain in the economy," Tim Gurner had said.
But Mr Gurner said later that he "deeply" regretted the comments, which sparked a global backlash.
He has previously made headlines by suggesting young people cannot afford homes because they spend too much on avocado toast.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66803279

What an absolute wankstain, doesn't even have the courage to stand behind his sadistic rhetoric. What's the point in apologising? We've heard what he thinks. There's no good rowing back on it.

These fucking people. They've spent a long time actively widening inequality and eroding workers rights every opportunity they get, then have the audacity to publicly castigate workers for their attitudes towards being employed not being meek, obsequeous obedience.

They spend too long talking to each other about how great they are relative to the peasants and then are surprised when wishing further economic pain on them in the midst of a cost of living crisis doesn't go down well.

[sockwithaticket]

These people are actually very stupid, they've got the whole thing arse about tit - if you have unemployment running at 40 to 50% and wages being driven through the floor - who is going to buy their goods or services?

For clarity about the arsehole, he didn't want unployment to go up to 40 or 50%. He wanted it to go up by 40 or 50%. So from about 4/5% now to around 7%.

From an economists point of view, full employment is when unemployment is below 5%

I think wishing economic pain on people and calling employees arrogant was the more objectionable bit.

[Tichtheid]

These people are actually very stupid, they've got the whole thing arse about tit - if you have unemployment running at 40 to 50% and wages being driven through the floor - who is going to buy their goods or services?

For clarity about the arsehole, he didn't want unployment to go up to 40 or 50%. He wanted it to go up by 40 or 50%. So from about 4/5% now to around 7%.

Fair comment, but he is still espousing the myth that driving down wages and raising unemployment is good for the economy, and that he and his ilk are "wealth creators" - it's neoliberal nonsense.

The reality is one of a far more nuanced interdependency between public and private sectors and employers and employees, with cash, debt and credit circulating in a complex system between sectors, institutions and individuals.

[Biffer]

These people are actually very stupid, they've got the whole thing arse about tit - if you have unemployment running at 40 to 50% and wages being driven through the floor - who is going to buy their goods or services?

For clarity about the arsehole, he didn't want unployment to go up to 40 or 50%. He wanted it to go up by 40 or 50%. So from about 4/5% now to around 7%.

From an economists point of view, full employment is when unemployment is below 5%

I think wishing economic pain on people and calling employees arrogant was the more objectionable bit.

No argument from me.

Just want to call him a cunt for accurate reason.

[Biffer]

These people are actually very stupid, they've got the whole thing arse about tit - if you have unemployment running at 40 to 50% and wages being driven through the floor - who is going to buy their goods or services?

For clarity about the arsehole, he didn't want unployment to go up to 40 or 50%. He wanted it to go up by 40 or 50%. So from about 4/5% now to around 7%.

Fair comment, but he is still espousing the myth that driving down wages and raising unemployment is good for the economy, and that he and his ilk are "wealth creators" - it's neoliberal nonsense.

The reality is one of a far more nuanced interdependency between public and private sectors and employers and employees, with cash, debt and credit circulating in a complex system between sectors, institutions and individuals.

I know, I'm not agreeing with him in any way. But if you criticise people with blatantly wrong info they can just dismiss you and your arguments. Need to be accurate in calling someone out.

[Tichtheid]

For clarity about the arsehole, he didn't want unployment to go up to 40 or 50%. He wanted it to go up by 40 or 50%. So from about 4/5% now to around 7%.

Fair comment, but he is still espousing the myth that driving down wages and raising unemployment is good for the economy, and that he and his ilk are "wealth creators" - it's neoliberal nonsense.

The reality is one of a far more nuanced interdependency between public and private sectors and employers and employees, with cash, debt and credit circulating in a complex system between sectors, institutions and individuals.

I know, I'm not agreeing with him in any way. But if you criticise people with blatantly wrong info they can just dismiss you and your arguments. Need to be accurate in calling someone out.

There is blatantly wrong info and there are mistakes.

An example of the former would be the type of nonsense that the subject of this discussion promotes, ie a neoliberal agenda. An example of a mistake would be me writing, without really thinking, about 40 to 50% unemployment rates - last year the highest unemployment rates around the world were between 25 and 30%

Anyone who would dismiss a whole argument because of an obvious mistake probably isn't worth debating with in the first place.

[Rhubarb & Custard]

Fair comment, but he is still espousing the myth that driving down wages and raising unemployment is good for the economy, and that he and his ilk are "wealth creators" - it's neoliberal nonsense.

Being fair to liberalism (or indeed capitalism) it/they wouldn't take such stance. Really it's a feature of greed, and that's more human nature than nonsense

[Tichtheid]

Fair comment, but he is still espousing the myth that driving down wages and raising unemployment is good for the economy, and that he and his ilk are "wealth creators" - it's neoliberal nonsense.

Being fair to liberalism (or indeed capitalism) it/they wouldn't take such stance. Really it's a feature of greed, and that's more human nature than nonsense

The OED Definition of Capitalism is "An economic system in which the factors of production are privately owned and individual owners of capital are free to make use of it as they see fit; in particular, for their own profit."

It's in the very nature of the system to maximise profit for the owners of businesses. Advancement in wages and working conditions have been fought tooth and nail for a long time and not once have they been given up willingly by business owners or their representatives in parliament - this is an extreme example but it was argued that abolishing slavery in the UK would be economic folly and as such a very large compensation scheme was worked out, but it was worked out for the slave owners, not for the slaves.

The UK has only very recently paid off the loans they took out to finance the compensation schemes.

[dpedin]

Fair comment, but he is still espousing the myth that driving down wages and raising unemployment is good for the economy, and that he and his ilk are "wealth creators" - it's neoliberal nonsense.

Being fair to liberalism (or indeed capitalism) it/they wouldn't take such stance. Really it's a feature of greed, and that's more human nature than nonsense

The OED Definition of Capitalism is "An economic system in which the factors of production are privately owned and individual owners of capital are free to make use of it as they see fit; in particular, for their own profit."

It's in the very nature of the system to maximise profit for the owners of businesses. Advancement in wages and working conditions have been fought tooth and nail for a long time and not once have they been given up willingly by business owners or their representatives in parliament - this is an extreme example but it was argued that abolishing slavery in the UK would be economic folly and as such a very large compensation scheme was worked out, but it was worked out for the slave owners, not for the slaves.

The UK has only very recently paid off the loans they took out to finance the compensation schemes.

This ... and that is why we have Governments who are supposed to control the worst excesses of capitalism. Unfortunately although we got rid of the Britannia Unchained Gang for whom this was their mantra, we still have a notable number of right wing, Tufton Street funded MPs who still believe in the unbridled advantages of capitalism and the 'sovereign individual'. These folk, as shown in this clip, accept that to reach their capitalist nirvana there will be casualties, mostly in the poor, infirm and disadvantaged. They suggest this is unfortunate but acceptable collateral damage in order to reach their nirvana where Gov control is minimised, regulations dispensed with, taxes reduced to next to zero and large corporations will run society - this is still the driving force behind Free Ports and Charter Cities. Sunak is a strong believer of this warped philosophy and got in just because he is seen as a more acceptable face of this rampant capitalism, problem is he is just as shit at it as Truss was. Ignore at your peril!

[Line6 HXFX]

:They are litterally calling for the destruction of lives. You lot are pretending that Thatcherism (when this stuff was actually rolled out) didn't happen and that what he is saying is an anomaly. Just some mental CEO with mental ideas.


Unfortunately this was 1979 - 1997.


Even Gorden Brown was all about low inflation and the iron fist control of money in circulation ala Milton Friedman/Thatcherism.

Fact is the UK is poverty dependent and requires lots and lots of well behaved (or beaten down) poverty for the pound to be worth a shit. Hence all the unemployment blackspots that no one gives two shits about.

[Rhubarb & Custard]

Fair comment, but he is still espousing the myth that driving down wages and raising unemployment is good for the economy, and that he and his ilk are "wealth creators" - it's neoliberal nonsense.

Being fair to liberalism (or indeed capitalism) it/they wouldn't take such stance. Really it's a feature of greed, and that's more human nature than nonsense

The OED Definition of Capitalism is "An economic system in which the factors of production are privately owned and individual owners of capital are free to make use of it as they see fit; in particular, for their own profit."

It's in the very nature of the system to maximise profit for the owners of businesses. Advancement in wages and working conditions have been fought tooth and nail for a long time and not once have they been given up willingly by business owners or their representatives in parliament - this is an extreme example but it was argued that abolishing slavery in the UK would be economic folly and as such a very large compensation scheme was worked out, but it was worked out for the slave owners, not for the slaves.

The UK has only very recently paid off the loans they took out to finance the compensation schemes.

In this pooling of wealth we're talking of a desire to aquire, and the issue there is that's not unique to capitalism, that's something of a norm. If anything capitalism would stand more opposed because it's about profit, and you get more profit by reinvesting money not by allowing a tiny% to further their greed. In this this there's a distinction between those few who control the strings in the now and what profit means for them in the now Vs profit within the system.

And actually you may raise concerns about wages needing to be dragged ahead kicking and screaming, but (a) nothing else has come close to matching the achievements of capitalism and (b) where it's not happening that's capitalism distorted by greed, which is to say irrational rather than rational capitalistic endeavours as 'capitalism' would have it. Capitalism is too very much rooted in the idea of free labour

It's not perfect, I'm far from a free market type myself, but the complaints about capitalism tend to be complaints about things being palmed off onto or conflated in error onto capitalism in error. Whether in practice one could ever actually get to a state of capitalism I doubt, because so many actors in the agency would not act rationally, and for any number of reasons, it's probably about as attainable as socialism in practice.

[Tichtheid]

Being fair to liberalism (or indeed capitalism) it/they wouldn't take such stance. Really it's a feature of greed, and that's more human nature than nonsense

The OED Definition of Capitalism is "An economic system in which the factors of production are privately owned and individual owners of capital are free to make use of it as they see fit; in particular, for their own profit."

It's in the very nature of the system to maximise profit for the owners of businesses. Advancement in wages and working conditions have been fought tooth and nail for a long time and not once have they been given up willingly by business owners or their representatives in parliament - this is an extreme example but it was argued that abolishing slavery in the UK would be economic folly and as such a very large compensation scheme was worked out, but it was worked out for the slave owners, not for the slaves.

The UK has only very recently paid off the loans they took out to finance the compensation schemes.

In this pooling of wealth we're talking of a desire to aquire, and the issue there is that's not unique to capitalism, that's something of a norm. If anything capitalism would stand more opposed because it's about profit, and you get more profit by reinvesting money not by allowing a tiny% to further their greed. In this this there's a distinction between those few who control the strings in the now and what profit means for them in the now Vs profit within the system.

And actually you may raise concerns about wages needing to be dragged ahead kicking and screaming, but (a) nothing else has come close to matching the achievements of capitalism and (b) where it's not happening that's capitalism distorted by greed, which is to say irrational rather than rational capitalistic endeavours as 'capitalism' would have it. Capitalism is too very much rooted in the idea of free labour

It's not perfect, I'm far from a free market type myself, but the complaints about capitalism tend to be complaints about things being palmed off onto or conflated in error onto capitalism in error. Whether in practice one could ever actually get to a state of capitalism I doubt, because so many actors in the agency would not act rationally, and for any number of reasons, it's probably about as attainable as socialism in practice.

In my OP on this I put the emphasis on neoliberalism, ie 'market-oriented reform policies such as "eliminating price controls, deregulating capital markets, lowering trade barriers" and reducing, especially through privatisation and austerity, state influence in the economy.'

This ideology led to the repeal of Glass-Steagall and a world-wide economic crash, it was the driver for taking the UK out of the EU, it led to an increase in UK debt as a percentage of GDP since 2010 whilst hugely cutting services at the point of delivery - that money went somewhere.
Neoliberalism is the ideological rump on which Tufton Street and Liz Truss/Kwartang stood, which had disastrous consequences, even the markets wouldn't tolerate them.

A mixed economy in which the private and public sector mutually support each other is the healthy option, but it's not one that capitalists particularly want, except when it comes to public subsidy for risk and privatisation of profit.

[weegie01]

Re Tichtheids post above, compensation paid to slave owners is one of the most widely misunderstood facets of the abolish of slavery.

That the bonds issued to compensate owners have only recently been paid off is not evidence that the payments were incredibly generous as many claim, but rather of clever financial engineering on the part of the Govt. I can't be bothered checking all the numbers, but essentially the bonds were issued with very long redemption dates so that they could not be redeemed until the 1950s. Interest was paid over the intervening period. The bonds had a face value of £20m when issued, and still had a face value of £20m in the 1950s by when the purchasing power of that amount, and real cost to the Govt to redeem, was greatly less. A lot were not redeemed by the owners post the 50s because they paid a decent rate of interest, so they continued to be traded. In the last 10 years the Treasury did a tidy up in which a host of bonds issued over the previous 100 plus years were redeemed by them and new bonds re-issued so they were not adminstering hundreds of bits and pieces of low value bonds.

There are a lot of statements made about the value of the original £20m in todays terms being many billions. These are true, and would be relevant if the slave owners had received that value at that time, but miss the point that the those who received the bonds could not actually get their hands on the cash until the 1950s.

[Rhubarb & Custard]

In my OP on this I put the emphasis on neoliberalism, ie 'market-oriented reform policies such as "eliminating price controls, deregulating capital markets, lowering trade barriers" and reducing, especially through privatisation and austerity, state influence in the economy.'

This ideology led to the repeal of Glass-Steagall and a world-wide economic crash, it was the driver for taking the UK out of the EU, it led to an increase in UK debt as a percentage of GDP since 2010 whilst hugely cutting services at the point of delivery - that money went somewhere.
Neoliberalism is the ideological rump on which Tufton Street and Liz Truss/Kwartang stood, which had disastrous consequences, even the markets wouldn't tolerate them.

A mixed economy in which the private and public sector mutually support each other is the healthy option, but it's not one that capitalists particularly want, except when it comes to public subsidy for risk and privatisation of profit.

There's probably a large amount in there I'd have sympathy for and even agree with at times. I still think people tend to use terms like capitalism, and even the now popular Neo-liberal in manners which make about as much sense as Tucker Carlson talking about 'socialism'

[Biffer]

Nice wee piece on some definition on neoliberalism vs neoclassicism.

[Line6 HXFX]

Capitalism is fine if controlled..but capitalism these days is a religion. The opportunity for its nastiness seems to encouraged by the Catholic religion.

You have people from other countries screaming at people in poorer areas calling them lazy and punishing them.
You have perfect world conservatives who have just decided that the world is perfect, that poverty doesn't exist, that the sick can all work (and would actually be employed by benevolent employers), that austerity grows an economy, that 330 thousand people deserved to die of that austerity..and millions more need foodbanks to motivate them, and that Brexit would make all the people in jobless enclaves so fucking desperate, that they would all walk to London and get jobs (and londoners would employ them, instead of telling them all to fuck off and die).

"The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate, God made them highl and lowly and ordered their estate."

Lots of the country are using and relying on foodbanks. There will always now be foodbanks.

[Biffer]

Markets are a great tool when used as tools. But when the establishment and deregulation of them becomes an ideology they're a bit dangerous.

[sockwithaticket]

I'm reading Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein at the moment, it's illuminating to learn about Milton Friedman* and the Chicago School of absolutist free-marketerism.

The version of capitalism we have at the moment certainly seems like one that's running to that credo and is slowly but surely kicking 'impediments' like regulations and rights out of its way in the pursuit of 'pure' capitalism. It's acolytes would certainly reject any idea that the version they're aiming for is polluted by greed.


* He comes across as a frankly evil and immoral man.

[inactionman]

This is very tangentially related to the current discussion and is more of an aside, but please bear with me.

I watched the original James Caan Rollerball last night, which is one of a set of 70s flicks that amazon seem to have dug out of the archives.

I hadn't realised that its central theme is about the ceding of power to corporations, the control these corporations exert on people and everyday society, and the way lives and liberty are secondary to the success of the corporation. Interesting that it was made in 1975 - it's an old and ongoing concern.

I feel a bit of a dumbarse, I'm watching rollerball and socks is reading Naomi Klein.

[Tichtheid]

Re Tichtheids post above, compensation paid to slave owners is one of the most widely misunderstood facets of the abolish of slavery.

That the bonds issued to compensate owners have only recently been paid off is not evidence that the payments were incredibly generous as many claim, but rather of clever financial engineering on the part of the Govt. I can't be bothered checking all the numbers, but essentially the bonds were issued with very long redemption dates so that they could not be redeemed until the 1950s. Interest was paid over the intervening period. The bonds had a face value of £20m when issued, and still had a face value of £20m in the 1950s by when the purchasing power of that amount, and real cost to the Govt to redeem, was greatly less. A lot were not redeemed by the owners post the 50s because they paid a decent rate of interest, so they continued to be traded. In the last 10 years the Treasury did a tidy up in which a host of bonds issued over the previous 100 plus years were redeemed by them and new bonds re-issued so they were not adminstering hundreds of bits and pieces of low value bonds.

There are a lot of statements made about the value of the original £20m in todays terms being many billions. These are true, and would be relevant if the slave owners had received that value at that time, but miss the point that the those who received the bonds could not actually get their hands on the cash until the 1950s.

From the Bank of England

On 28 August 1833 Parliament passed legislation that abolished slavery within the British Empire, emancipating more than 800,000 enslaved Africans. As part of the compromise that helped to secure abolition, the British government agreed a generous compensation package of £20 million to slave-owners for the loss of their ‘property’. The Bank of England administered the payment of slavery compensation on behalf of the British government. Using records held in the Bank’s Archive, a data set of 13,500 unique transactions has been produced which details the collection of £3.4 million of compensation awarded in the form of government stock (3.5% Reduced Annuities). We shed new light on the compensation process by deploying this data set to analyse who actually held the Reduced Annuities in the books of the Bank of England, and for how long the stock was kept. While slave-owners were the main beneficiaries of the compensation process, our analysis shows that there were also other groups who gained through their roles as intermediaries. These agents sought to profit from the business opportunity presented by the moment of compensation in the mid-1830s by facilitating the collection of compensation awards on behalf of slave-owners and charging commission fees for their services. The results show that just 10 individual account names had over 8,000 transactions totalling £2.2 million. The largest agents were partners in London banks and merchant firms that had pre-existing commercial ties to the colonies that received compensation in Reduced Annuities (Cape of Good Hope, Mauritius, and the Virgin Islands). Our analysis also shows that this stock was quickly sold, meaning that compensation awards made in Reduced Annuities were converted into cash. By 1844, almost none of the £3.4 million in compensation was still held as Reduced Annuities by those to whom it had been awarded, or by those who had collected it. All of this provides further evidence for the strong links between financial institutions in the City of London, the capital generated through the transatlantic slavery economy, and the compensation process during the 1830s.

https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/working ... on-1835-43


I haven't read thought he links on that page yet.


How-so-ever, surely the point here is the forced sale of goods and chattel, in this case human beings, and the owners of such being compensated - this as a demonstration of the power of property owners.

[sockwithaticket]

This is very tangentially related to the current discussion and is more of an aside, but please bear with me.

I watched the original James Caan Rollerball last night, which is one of a set of 70s flicks that amazon seem to have dug out of the archives.

I hadn't realised that its central theme is about the ceding of power to corporations, the control these corporations exert on people and everyday society, and the way lives and liberty are secondary to the success of the corporation. Interesting that it was made in 1975 - it's an old and ongoing concern.

I feel a bit of a dumbarse, I'm watching rollerball and socks is reading Naomi Klein.

Funnily enough the 70s is where Klein suggests Friedman and his followers first started to get their hooks into policy makers and start the process of eroding the supposed market interference of the New Deal.

Also, you're fine. In addition to Klein I'm also going back through the Hellboy comics. We can all be high and low brow.

[C T]

The OED Definition of Capitalism is "An economic system in which the factors of production are privately owned and individual owners of capital are free to make use of it as they see fit; in particular, for their own profit."

It's in the very nature of the system to maximise profit for the owners of businesses. Advancement in wages and working conditions have been fought tooth and nail for a long time and not once have they been given up willingly by business owners or their representatives in parliament - this is an extreme example but it was argued that abolishing slavery in the UK would be economic folly and as such a very large compensation scheme was worked out, but it was worked out for the slave owners, not for the slaves.

The UK has only very recently paid off the loans they took out to finance the compensation schemes.

In this pooling of wealth we're talking of a desire to aquire, and the issue there is that's not unique to capitalism, that's something of a norm. If anything capitalism would stand more opposed because it's about profit, and you get more profit by reinvesting money not by allowing a tiny% to further their greed. In this this there's a distinction between those few who control the strings in the now and what profit means for them in the now Vs profit within the system.

And actually you may raise concerns about wages needing to be dragged ahead kicking and screaming, but (a) nothing else has come close to matching the achievements of capitalism and (b) where it's not happening that's capitalism distorted by greed, which is to say irrational rather than rational capitalistic endeavours as 'capitalism' would have it. Capitalism is too very much rooted in the idea of free labour

It's not perfect, I'm far from a free market type myself, but the complaints about capitalism tend to be complaints about things being palmed off onto or conflated in error onto capitalism in error. Whether in practice one could ever actually get to a state of capitalism I doubt, because so many actors in the agency would not act rationally, and for any number of reasons, it's probably about as attainable as socialism in practice.

In my OP on this I put the emphasis on neoliberalism, ie 'market-oriented reform policies such as "eliminating price controls, deregulating capital markets, lowering trade barriers" and reducing, especially through privatisation and austerity, state influence in the economy.'

This ideology led to the repeal of Glass-Steagall and a world-wide economic crash, it was the driver for taking the UK out of the EU, it led to an increase in UK debt as a percentage of GDP since 2010 whilst hugely cutting services at the point of delivery - that money went somewhere.
Neoliberalism is the ideological rump on which Tufton Street and Liz Truss/Kwartang stood, which had disastrous consequences, even the markets wouldn't tolerate them.

A mixed economy in which the private and public sector mutually support each other is the healthy option, but it's not one that capitalists particularly want, except when it comes to public subsidy for risk and privatisation of profit.

In fairness I'm not so sure that the markets spewed at Truss' ideology (although it is pretty spew worthy).

It was worse than that really. Truss was so obsessed with her legacy, and only having a small amount of time to leave her mark on history that she rushed through her crazy ideas with no thought. Left a massive hole in the books and I always thought that is what spooked the markets.

Utter neglect and completely ego driven. Should carry some sort of prison sentence.

[Hal Jordan]

I'm pretty sure no one gets punched into a coma in Klein's books.

I remember watching Rollerball as an 11 year old, we fast forwarded the "boring bits" and just watched the matches.

[C69]

I'm reading Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein at the moment, it's illuminating to learn about Milton Friedman* and the Chicago School of absolutist free-marketerism.

The version of capitalism we have at the moment certainly seems like one that's running to that credo and is slowly but surely kicking 'impediments' like regulations and rights out of its way in the pursuit of 'pure' capitalism. It's acolytes would certainly reject any idea that the version they're aiming for is polluted by greed.


* He comes across as a frankly evil and immoral man.

It's interesting to read bout Friedman, Pinochet and the Chicago Boys.
The man was indeed an immoral piece of shit in later life he reflected upon the Chile experience and was slightly apologetic about the human cost of his enacted theories

[inactionman]

In this pooling of wealth we're talking of a desire to aquire, and the issue there is that's not unique to capitalism, that's something of a norm. If anything capitalism would stand more opposed because it's about profit, and you get more profit by reinvesting money not by allowing a tiny% to further their greed. In this this there's a distinction between those few who control the strings in the now and what profit means for them in the now Vs profit within the system.

And actually you may raise concerns about wages needing to be dragged ahead kicking and screaming, but (a) nothing else has come close to matching the achievements of capitalism and (b) where it's not happening that's capitalism distorted by greed, which is to say irrational rather than rational capitalistic endeavours as 'capitalism' would have it. Capitalism is too very much rooted in the idea of free labour

It's not perfect, I'm far from a free market type myself, but the complaints about capitalism tend to be complaints about things being palmed off onto or conflated in error onto capitalism in error. Whether in practice one could ever actually get to a state of capitalism I doubt, because so many actors in the agency would not act rationally, and for any number of reasons, it's probably about as attainable as socialism in practice.

In my OP on this I put the emphasis on neoliberalism, ie 'market-oriented reform policies such as "eliminating price controls, deregulating capital markets, lowering trade barriers" and reducing, especially through privatisation and austerity, state influence in the economy.'

This ideology led to the repeal of Glass-Steagall and a world-wide economic crash, it was the driver for taking the UK out of the EU, it led to an increase in UK debt as a percentage of GDP since 2010 whilst hugely cutting services at the point of delivery - that money went somewhere.
Neoliberalism is the ideological rump on which Tufton Street and Liz Truss/Kwartang stood, which had disastrous consequences, even the markets wouldn't tolerate them.

A mixed economy in which the private and public sector mutually support each other is the healthy option, but it's not one that capitalists particularly want, except when it comes to public subsidy for risk and privatisation of profit.

In fairness I'm not so sure that the markets spewed at Truss' ideology (although it is pretty spew worthy).

It was worse than that really. Truss was so obsessed with her legacy, and only having a small amount of time to leave her mark on history that she rushed through her crazy ideas with no thought. Left a massive hole in the books and I always thought that is what spooked the markets.

Utter neglect and completely ego driven. Should carry some sort of prison sentence.

They did some dastardliness and weasel wordiness to avoid the scrutiny of the office of budget responsibility, and so they really don't have a leg to stand on - they deliberately short-circuited safeguards. It's such wanton reckless irresponsibility that they should be in prison.

[inactionman]

I'm pretty sure no one gets punched into a coma in Klein's books.

I remember watching Rollerball as an 11 year old, we fast forwarded the "boring bits" and just watched the matches.

It's not exactly a masterpiece but it's a lot more thoughtful than I remembered.

The matches are hilarious - James Caan dropkicking someone on rollerskates.

[Tichtheid]

This is very tangentially related to the current discussion and is more of an aside, but please bear with me.

I watched the original James Caan Rollerball last night, which is one of a set of 70s flicks that amazon seem to have dug out of the archives.

I hadn't realised that its central theme is about the ceding of power to corporations, the control these corporations exert on people and everyday society, and the way lives and liberty are secondary to the success of the corporation. Interesting that it was made in 1975 - it's an old and ongoing concern.

I feel a bit of a dumbarse, I'm watching rollerball and socks is reading Naomi Klein.

Funnily enough the 70s is where Klein suggests Friedman and his followers first started to get their hooks into policy makers and start the process of eroding the supposed market interference of the New Deal.

Also, you're fine. In addition to Klein I'm also going back through the Hellboy comics. We can all be high and low brow.

Agree on the high and low brow - it's all good.


Regarding your first point, there is an interesting conversation between Jon Stewart and Ian Hislop on YouTube, at one point Stewart talks about the action taken by the conservatives after Nixon was found out, they set up structures in academia, in think tanks and in the media to drive their own narrative, a guy called Roger Ailes who had worked with Reagan and Bush Snr eventually became CEO of Fox News

The part should come up on a time stamp here

[weegie01]

From the Bank of England

On 28 August 1833 Parliament passed legislation that abolished slavery within the British Empire, emancipating more than 800,000 enslaved Africans. As part of the compromise that helped to secure abolition, the British government agreed a generous compensation package of £20 million to slave-owners for the loss of their ‘property’. The Bank of England administered the payment of slavery compensation on behalf of the British government. Using records held in the Bank’s Archive, a data set of 13,500 unique transactions has been produced which details the collection of £3.4 million of compensation awarded in the form of government stock (3.5% Reduced Annuities). We shed new light on the compensation process by deploying this data set to analyse who actually held the Reduced Annuities in the books of the Bank of England, and for how long the stock was kept. While slave-owners were the main beneficiaries of the compensation process, our analysis shows that there were also other groups who gained through their roles as intermediaries. These agents sought to profit from the business opportunity presented by the moment of compensation in the mid-1830s by facilitating the collection of compensation awards on behalf of slave-owners and charging commission fees for their services. The results show that just 10 individual account names had over 8,000 transactions totalling £2.2 million. The largest agents were partners in London banks and merchant firms that had pre-existing commercial ties to the colonies that received compensation in Reduced Annuities (Cape of Good Hope, Mauritius, and the Virgin Islands). Our analysis also shows that this stock was quickly sold, meaning that compensation awards made in Reduced Annuities were converted into cash. By 1844, almost none of the £3.4 million in compensation was still held as Reduced Annuities by those to whom it had been awarded, or by those who had collected it. All of this provides further evidence for the strong links between financial institutions in the City of London, the capital generated through the transatlantic slavery economy, and the compensation process during the 1830s.

https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/working ... on-1835-43

I haven't read thought he links on that page yet.

How-so-ever, surely the point here is the forced sale of goods and chattel, in this case human beings, and the owners of such being compensated - this as a demonstration of the power of property owners.

The bonds were tradeable assets which the above suggest were sold on immediately. The point I was making is that the Govt did not disburse the funds at that point in time, but only paid the face value of the bonds in the 1950s, by which time their purchasing power, and real cost to the Govt, was dramatically lower.

I am not sure what your point about the power of property owners is. Respect for the laws of property is fundamental to the effective functioning of an economy. We may not like the fact that people legally owned slaves, but in legal terms depriving people of their slaves without compensation would be no different from depriving them of any other legally acquired asset without compensation.

[dpedin]

In this pooling of wealth we're talking of a desire to aquire, and the issue there is that's not unique to capitalism, that's something of a norm. If anything capitalism would stand more opposed because it's about profit, and you get more profit by reinvesting money not by allowing a tiny% to further their greed. In this this there's a distinction between those few who control the strings in the now and what profit means for them in the now Vs profit within the system.

And actually you may raise concerns about wages needing to be dragged ahead kicking and screaming, but (a) nothing else has come close to matching the achievements of capitalism and (b) where it's not happening that's capitalism distorted by greed, which is to say irrational rather than rational capitalistic endeavours as 'capitalism' would have it. Capitalism is too very much rooted in the idea of free labour

It's not perfect, I'm far from a free market type myself, but the complaints about capitalism tend to be complaints about things being palmed off onto or conflated in error onto capitalism in error. Whether in practice one could ever actually get to a state of capitalism I doubt, because so many actors in the agency would not act rationally, and for any number of reasons, it's probably about as attainable as socialism in practice.

In my OP on this I put the emphasis on neoliberalism, ie 'market-oriented reform policies such as "eliminating price controls, deregulating capital markets, lowering trade barriers" and reducing, especially through privatisation and austerity, state influence in the economy.'

This ideology led to the repeal of Glass-Steagall and a world-wide economic crash, it was the driver for taking the UK out of the EU, it led to an increase in UK debt as a percentage of GDP since 2010 whilst hugely cutting services at the point of delivery - that money went somewhere.
Neoliberalism is the ideological rump on which Tufton Street and Liz Truss/Kwartang stood, which had disastrous consequences, even the markets wouldn't tolerate them.

A mixed economy in which the private and public sector mutually support each other is the healthy option, but it's not one that capitalists particularly want, except when it comes to public subsidy for risk and privatisation of profit.

In fairness I'm not so sure that the markets spewed at Truss' ideology (although it is pretty spew worthy).

It was worse than that really. Truss was so obsessed with her legacy, and only having a small amount of time to leave her mark on history that she rushed through her crazy ideas with no thought. Left a massive hole in the books and I always thought that is what spooked the markets.

Utter neglect and completely ego driven. Should carry some sort of prison sentence.

In any 'normal' country it is the existence of the checks and balances - laws, rules, regulations, norms, etc - that enable it to exist. Once these begin to get eroded then we see the extreme left or right wings begin to take over and ultimately begin their own road to destruction. It might not happen overnight but eventually right and left wing extremes are unsustainable and begin to fall apart or else modify to move back into a more mixed economy model. We can see the kick back against the neoliberal policies of the Tories in the UK and the resistance against the super profits being made by oil and gas, power, water, banks, companies etc and the corresponding deterioration in quality of services. Not being able to get a dental or GP appointment, waiting for routine operation, shit in rivers and beaches, water supply running dry, power bills through the roof, going cold during winter, no access to a bank branch, unaffordable housing, etc is what pisses folk off. It will be this that brings them down and no amount of culture war issues ie small boats, war on woke, lefty lawyers, etc will save them.

It is interesting to watch Biden try and bring capitalism back into check - the attack on Pharma by introducing price controls to stop price gouging over most commonly used drugs and medical care in general. The resistance is significant but it is recognition that capitalism got out of control and began to kill people by pricing them out of drugs and healthcare. The moves against Purdue and the Sackler family who literally killed thousands of people by pushing harmful Oxycontin pain killers and creating an army of middle class junkies is perhaps the best example of where capitalism will stop at nothing in order to maximise profits. Biden is also pushing controls over price gouging with food and petrol and getting rid of all the hidden junk fees. The Republicans, funded by big industry, will stop at nothing to prevent the push back by the state against big industry.

[inactionman]

From the Bank of England

On 28 August 1833 Parliament passed legislation that abolished slavery within the British Empire, emancipating more than 800,000 enslaved Africans. As part of the compromise that helped to secure abolition, the British government agreed a generous compensation package of £20 million to slave-owners for the loss of their ‘property’. The Bank of England administered the payment of slavery compensation on behalf of the British government. Using records held in the Bank’s Archive, a data set of 13,500 unique transactions has been produced which details the collection of £3.4 million of compensation awarded in the form of government stock (3.5% Reduced Annuities). We shed new light on the compensation process by deploying this data set to analyse who actually held the Reduced Annuities in the books of the Bank of England, and for how long the stock was kept. While slave-owners were the main beneficiaries of the compensation process, our analysis shows that there were also other groups who gained through their roles as intermediaries. These agents sought to profit from the business opportunity presented by the moment of compensation in the mid-1830s by facilitating the collection of compensation awards on behalf of slave-owners and charging commission fees for their services. The results show that just 10 individual account names had over 8,000 transactions totalling £2.2 million. The largest agents were partners in London banks and merchant firms that had pre-existing commercial ties to the colonies that received compensation in Reduced Annuities (Cape of Good Hope, Mauritius, and the Virgin Islands). Our analysis also shows that this stock was quickly sold, meaning that compensation awards made in Reduced Annuities were converted into cash. By 1844, almost none of the £3.4 million in compensation was still held as Reduced Annuities by those to whom it had been awarded, or by those who had collected it. All of this provides further evidence for the strong links between financial institutions in the City of London, the capital generated through the transatlantic slavery economy, and the compensation process during the 1830s.

https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/working ... on-1835-43

I haven't read thought he links on that page yet.

How-so-ever, surely the point here is the forced sale of goods and chattel, in this case human beings, and the owners of such being compensated - this as a demonstration of the power of property owners.

The bonds were tradeable assets which the above suggest were sold on immediately. The point I was making is that the Govt did not disburse the funds at that point in time, but only paid the face value of the bonds in the 1950s, by which time their purchasing power, and real cost to the Govt, was dramatically lower.

I am not sure what your point about the power of property owners is. Respect for the laws of property is fundamental to the effective functioning of an economy. We may not like the fact that people legally owned slaves, but in legal terms depriving people of their slaves without compensation would be no different from depriving them of any other legally acquired asset without compensation.

The bolded bit gave me pause; is that always true?

If we make a certain new drug illegal, for example, do we recompense anyone in possession of the drug who presumably lawfully acquired it before the prohibition? On the other hand, I seem to recall there was a compensation scheme for gunowners after Dunblane.

I always assumed that the compensation paid to slave owners was more about making the legislation palatable to slaveowners - who were most likely the key voters (noting it included MPs) and influencers in the early 1800s - than for any reason of propriety. More a tactical necessity. I stress that's my assumption.