Off Topic Political Debate

Not the only other ones........

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(Another good ol' Private Eye scoop!)

 

W_Y you are making some very great assumptions there as to what I 'crave' for. You are also lumping a great many systems together eg. France, Greece etc. under the banner of state socialism. Once again I think you are using the expression to describe anything which you do not personally like. Did Greece go off the rails economically because of 'socialism' ? They turned to Syriza because their neo liberalist experiment had already failed them. You also do not understand what 'socialism' and 'communism' are - they are not systems which automatically describe state control of the means of production, and the latter, predates Marx by many centuries and describes something very close to the bible. Communism describes not 'state' but rather 'collective' ownership of the means of production ie. belonging to the workers themselves. In such a state the 'state' withers away - which is the end goal of Marxism. The other question is how you understand democracy - I see it as a system in which ideas come from below, in which people are active in politics, and in which governments have the resources to turn the wishes of their electorate into reality - which is only possible if the state has resources at its disposal.

 

The problem with your wishy washy theories is that you cannot point to a reasonable sized country where they have worked. Thankfully apart from Corbyn and his noisy activists not many in the UK agree with your views.

 

I am no apologist for creative accountancy but this company may have had losses in previous years which were set against profits in subsequent years. To quote turnover of £200m means nothing, it is all down to profit and loss.

My company uses one of larger accountancy firm and we pay substantial corporation tax, so no loopholes for most companies I suspect.

 

Criticisms of 'communism' based on the idea that there is no state in the World where it currently works is like standing in the middle of the 19th Century swearing that flight is not possible because it had not happened yet. The other point is that by the same logic I could say that capitalism has been proven to not work because there is no state anywhere in the World where 100% of the means of production are in private hands - there is a bit of 'socialism' everywhere. You say that I cannot 'name' a land where my ideal works - neither can you for yours ! Also, my ideal, involves the breakup of the nation state into far smaller, decentralized, units so it's not surprising that I can't name a large country.

 

A mobile app. measuring performances of workers ? Are we talking about performing seals here ? This is one development which you can keep in bandit country w_y, and if the mere opposing of such a thing is labelled 'socialism' then I honestly don't know where to begin !

 

This is too heavy for me on a Saturday, I'm just gearing up for a visit to the Vic after my old fart's flu jab this morning. I'm a bit of a baby with injections!!

 

COYH!

 

Have a good weekend everybody - hope we can get a good result against the hammers.

 

No, the Mobile App is the tool that the engineers to manage their service calls - they update the status, add notes, order parts etc. Of course with the data that sits behind this, you can report of the ways engineers work and how productive they are - so if engineer A is taking twice as long to repair a particular product type that his colleagues do, then that engineer may benefit from more training time. Or if engineer B is clearly driving poorly i.e. speeding, braking heavily etc. again, a resposible company should be highlighting this. Not quite as sinister as you make out.
State Socialism or the type of local commune Socialism that I think you desire, it really does not matter. They all start with great ideals, but end up as disasters - that is why you cannot give an example of where it has worked. JC used to point to Venezula as the Socialist ideal, but has gone very quiet on thay over the past few years.
If you really desire the trickle down of power from the centre, then you would support a Brexit then - me too!

 

The problem is that we would have a different measuring system when judging whether a country 'works' or not. When I first visited East Germany, immediately after the fall of the wall I saw no homelessness, no soup kitchens, no great problems of addiction, nobody living in cardboard boxes - everybody there had access to a free health care system, there was no unemployment - all of these you would routinely see on the streets of New York - which beggers the question 'works for who'. The difference is that I judge a nation according to its poorest members.

 

I remember the inhabitants of East Germany being shot in the back if they dared to reject your preferred state and tried to leave.

 

I was not refering to the old East Germany as 'my ideal state' by any means - however maybe you should count up those thousands shot each year in the USA by means of comparison.

 

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When things get like this austerity is the only right way...... No system can keep spending what it doesn't have and at all levels society should live within its means.

 

They are not shot by order of the US government for rejecting the system.

Your preferred system involves locking people and finance into a secure area. I'm surprised you have not quoted North Korea as a good example.

Your posts are becoming increasingly strange.

 

My posts are not getting strange Superhorns, and I am not claiming either the former GDR or N. Korea as being part of my preferred system. What I am doing is defending against the constant insinuation that I cannot find a 'Socialist' state that works with the argument that there is no state in the World which works for all of its inhabitants. If you look at the USA. and balance this against the GDR then we see 2 rotten systems at opposite ends of the political spectrum - the East German Volkspolizei shot around 138 people over a period of about 30 years - the US. police shot 97 in March 2015 alone (just as much by government orders) - the total amount of firearm related deaths in 2013 there was 11,208. How many other thousands in the USA. die because they have no access to adequate medical cover ? Yet this country is the most capitalist on Earth - but no one points the finger at them and says that this is a sign of 'capitalist' mismanagement in the same way that you do with socialist nations - why ?

 

I'm sure there is a lot wrong with the USA which is why I'm quite happy living in the UK. If you prefer some obscure state which is a figment of your imagination that's fine. We agree to disagree.

 

I think the notion of USA as land of the free.... etc etc is false.
Ditto the supposed democracy that is advocated.

I lived and worked in Bhutan for one year.... one of the poorest countries in the world..... (remember happiness considered the most important thing). It was a theocracy ruled by the King through local committees... very typical of traditional cultures... in a way light years away from the sort of democracy advocated by Britain and the USA.

Yet people were very close to the means of production, lived traditional lifestyles and were kind and courteous to all

I saw no hunger, no beggars, no crime ( although there were issues with Nepali settlers who were roused by notions of a communist greater gurkhaland)

I would swop the way of life there for so called western society again if I had the chance.

 

Exactly what needs to be clamped down on, I don't care if its Osborne, The Russos, Ashcroft or indeed Tony Bens descendents wherever this avoidance takes place it is wrong...