Off Topic Politics Thread

Why do you invariably put a tilde over the n in one?

 

My keypad is set for writing in Spanish, That is why!! You like the tilde?

 

Not in English, no. I love the Spanish language but we don’t really have accents in written English.

 

Unless we write in regional English. That said, the tilde comes up when I press the n on my keypad.

 

You love the Spanish language? Did You study it at uni or studied it in your own free time? I did see a comment from you a few months algo, written.in Spanish, and the level.was good. I use translator!!

 

I’ve forgotten most of what I knew! I did a course about 30 years ago for holiday purposes, but the last few times I’ve been to Spain it’s been to visit my stepdaughter who lived in Barça for 5 years and is fluent, so she did all the talking for us. She’s pretty good at Catalan too!

 

Agreed, but America is an example of a centrally controlled monetary system with warped incentives, exactly how I was describing.

Corporations in America are basically benefiting from what is essentially facism. The lobbyists in Wall street ensure that the general public are pigs to the slaughter. Bloated and failing corporations are propped up by printed money instead of being allowed to fail.

I don’t have a problem with some government regulation in health matters. My problem is that the entire financial system is centrally controlled.

Capitalism is supposed to let a free market discover true price information, but this is no longer happening. This means that those closest to the money printer benefit disproportionately, and then use that money to ensure they stay in power. This has effects right through society, including the impacts you mentioned. For example, the corporations can charge whatever they like for drugs, there is no real supply/demand curve for them thanks to insane insurance policies etc.

Capitalism gets blamed for a lot of the worlds problems, but I’m of the opinion that a lot of the problems are actually as a result of the corruption of capitalism, not capitalism failing.

In my opinion, if you fix the money, you fix the world. Governments both here and in America have created a system that is so detached from reality it’s almost unbelievable. Turbulent times ahead

 

I wish I could speak Spanish to a decent level.
My biggest issue is understanding what is said to me, whenever I do chance my arm.
I can read it and understand it to a decentish level.
Any tips on improving my listening skills?

 

A good excuse to see Español play. They have a better stadium too. I speak a little Spanish, zilch Catalán, y a few phrases.in Germán. My friend here is Germán. Mallorca is home to a big ex-pat population of Germans.

 

Radio Tres!! It is a músic station that plays a certain style of música for an hour then changes to.another genre. Also Radio Classical. The speakers speak much slower than you hear on the street. I tend to read and slowly recognise the word or phrase in spoken language.

 

The one major problem with talking to native Spanish speakers is that even when they know you don’t understand them, they NEVER slow down!

 

I listen for a key word when someone speaks and go from there.

 

I believe that this is exceedingly utopian.

Truly free market capitalism very rarely results in the sort of information symmetry and free competition you are describing. There is no benefit to corporations in assisting consumers in that regard; in fact, there's a massive disincentive to do so. Absent regulation, their best option is to form de facto cartels that ensure that the members of the cartel survive and thrive, while crushing anyone who does not participate.

But sure, you say, then all you need is an upstart that offers better pricing, better service, or a better product, which will outcompete their rivals. Except...no. That's rarely how it works, and it's especially not how it works in circumstances where the cartel can control either the purchase or sale of a good, either as monopsony buyer or monopoly seller.

Take health care again. Much of the market, in the US, is controlled by a smallish group of insurance companies, and an increasingly small number of actual conglomerates that own hospitals, clinics, etc. They are positioned such that they are effectively a monopsony purchaser of patented drugs -- they control enough of the market that they can dictate the terms on which the drugs are sold, and to who -- and also so that they are a monopoly provider of some services. Your plucky little HMO startup is useless unless it can provide all the services that the large insurers do, which means that you have to have access to all the pharmaceuticals, you have to have all of the facilities in a large enough market to be viable, you need to have enough primary care physicians and oncologists and radiologists and specialists, because if you lack in any one area? Consumers will not choose you, because then they will need to pay out of pocket for many services, because that's how out-of-network services work. And if you don't have agreements in place with other providers across the country? Well, your clients better not get ill more than 20 kms from one of your facilities, or your insurance is useless. Even with a few billion in VC money burning a hole in your pocket, that's a nearly impossible barrier to entry.

The problems you are suggesting are caused by monetary policy are largely just what happens over an extended period of capitalist consolidation. Regulatory capture is absolutely a problem. Worse of a problem? No need to even bother with regulatory capture because there is no regulation!

 

Head of the Partygate investigating team Cressida Dick said -
“My arse is on the line and I don’t want a cock-up.”

 

In all fairness I don’t know enough about the American pharmaceutical industry to give an informed opinion.

But I can speak more broadly and focus on this country and say that, in general, huge numbers of us all feel like something in society is really ****ed up right now.

And I think that the answer to that gnawing feeling of societal decline is that the currency is being debased at an alarming rate.

This is the biggest reason why we see house prices soaring, gas & food bills soaring etc. and everyone feels worse off. This is the real reason why hospitals are run down, police are understaffed and roads are filled with potholes.

And not one politician, from either party, is doing a damn thing about any of it. All they do is blame each other, and when that doesn’t work blame immigrants.

www.wtfhappenedin1971.com is a fascinating website showing the decline.

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-60177028
Downing Street parties: Sue Gray won't wait for police inquiry

 

Not seen that website before. That's incredibly interesting. Thank you for pointing it out.

 

I'm going to pick on one part of this, because I think that it again lays bare the issue here. The reason that house prices are soaring? Capitalism! Speculation in the housing market -- people and corporations buying property with the expectation that it will appreciate further in value rather than because they actually need housing -- is the single largest driver of housing costs. It creates artificial demand while also artificially lowering supply, as speculators often leave units empty, because they do not want to be landlords: they merely want to flip the house after its value has increased. It isn't a lack of units; Canada is experiencing a major housing bubble, at a time when the construction of new dwellings is at a record high. And the reason is that there's an inordinate amount of very wealthy people who don't actually create a damned thing, but have a lot of money sloshing around that needs to go somewhere. And increasingly, that somewhere is in accumulating property, thus driving up housing costs for everyone else.

Speculation in the modern era is simply the most efficient means of turning money into more money. The argument in favour of unfettered markets is that it will lead to, like, making **** and providing jobs. But that tends to be slow, risky, and just generally less desirable than finding a means to park a bunch of wealth in an investment vehicle that provides long-term passive income (while also doing little to nothing to benefit the economic fortunes of anyone else, when it isn't outright harming them).

As for what happened in 1972? There's a big one that I can think of: those numbers appear to be from the US, and that happens to coincide rather well with the beginning of the decline in union membership in the US. Collective bargaining is and has pretty well always been the best tool available to boost the standard of living of lower and middle-income people, and decades of union-busting and campaigns to convince workers that they're better off going it alone have had a profound impact on decoupling productivity and wages. Thus, there's a significant amount of irony to responding to issues caused by the excesses of capital by suggesting that it be given even freer rein in the hopes that, if removed from any oversight, it will somehow miraculously self-correct.

And a final thing, because you previously suggested putting all of your money into Bitcoin. The crypto market as currently constituted is a confidence game, with extremely wealthy individuals packaging crypto and its derivative markets as the democratization of finance, when in actuality it's just a vehicle for them to further enrich themselves because, again, the best way to make money in this era involves creating precisely zero value for others, and instead treating the economy as a casino game where you happen to hold loaded dice. Dan Olson did a (incredibly long, absolutely exhaustive, and truly excellent) video on the extent to which it trades the bare consumer protections of actual trading markets for the basest instincts of predatory capitalism:

 

https://fb.watch/aQLit4pLUX/ LBD

 

Bloody hell, Schad. I come on here for quick sound bites. This is information overload for a Saturday hangover.
Once the day clears I'll schedule this for 5.00 viewing - before the first drink of the evening.

Seriously fascinating debate and posting the video is genius. My non-football fans assume I have to hang out with neanderthals as the price of going to the match. This board generally demonstrates the lie to this assumption. Nice one.