As you know I am left of centre, but feel that a certain amount of Capitalism isn’t a problem. The problem, currently, is that some governments see it as the only way to go and are willing to make poor people suffer in order to get what they want. Equally a certain amount of Socialism is acceptable. The greatest and most decent things in the UK are built on Socialist principles - NHS, Social Care, Welfare State, Education, Social Housing etc - yet the capitalists seem to be trying to eradicate them. There needs to be a line drawn in the sand that makes certain parts of our society untouchable. Capitalists will argue that we can’t afford it, but the reality is that if Capitalists stopped hiding their wealth and the world’s governments got together to wipeout tax avoidance, then there would be plenty of money available. If the Capitalists don’t like losing money to taxes, they can always take the advice that they give to the workforces. Work harder to make more money.
Capitalism is an inevitability. But it also isn't a binary choice between full capitalism and full communism, both of which are functionally impossible, it's a matter of to what degree capital will be regulated, and how consistently those regulations will be enforced. Even Lenin had to reintroduce some capitalism (via the New Economic Policy in 1922) in the Soviet Union, because the removal of the profit motive in agricultural production was threatening a massive famine. Humans are wired for a certain degree of selfishness and drive for accumulation, and any form of government reliant on removing that completely as a motivator is likely to fail. But there also hasn't been a system of truly unfettered capitalism, and for good reason: it would be horrific, predatory, and extremely short-lived, because it would be to the benefit of almost no one, and the more time passed, the greater the consolidation into oligarchy and feudalism. So then the question becomes: how regulated should capitalism be? And there's considerable evidence that the best system is one where capitalism exists but is constrained within a framework that places a heavy emphasis on protecting workers' rights, maintaining a strong social safety net, and redistributing a large chunk of profit . Germany is unquestionably a capitalist country; it also has mandatory union representation on the boards of corporations, and one of the strongest social safety nets in the western world. None of that has prevented it from having some of the largest companies on the planet, so we know that regulation does not snuff out the profit motive. So perhaps we should do that, rather than engaging in a race to the bottom on behalf of a moneyed few, where a shocking number of people believe that they will end up as one of the kulaks and not one of the serfs (spoiler: we'd almost all end up as serfs).
I agree with nearly all of this. Capitalism isn't bad per se, but in moderation and in the right areas. As you say the best bits of this country are built on socialist ideals and I agree that some areas have to be protected from the free market and profiteering - it just doesn't work. Likewise, I don't agree with carte blanche nationalising of industries, but some IMO have to be state controlled - utilities, rail, pubic transport and even to a certain extent telecoms. QUOTE="San Tejón, post: 16262590, member: 1027607"] Capitalists will argue that we can’t afford it, but the reality is that if Capitalists stopped hiding their wealth and the world’s governments got together to wipeout tax avoidance, then there would be plenty of money available.[/QUOTE] The balancing quote to this is that we hear about the worst examples. We also hear about a few examples of where anti capitalism doesn't work as some will exploit loopholes and fraudulently take welfare and benefits. I am not saying that nothing has to be done, but it does cut both ways and we only hear about the worst examples on both sides of the spectrum. I do remember reading a few years ago and I don't know how true it is, but if there was no black market and everyone paid the tax they should on every bit of income, we could drop the rate of tax to 7.5% for everyone with no tiers and still get the same amount of money in that we do now. I think the balance has to be that we have a governing party in (this could be Labour or Tory believe it or not) that has members/leaders that don't take the extremes of capitalism and instead protect what is needed to be provided for by the state. This can happen with a right of centre party, just not the tories in their current incarnation. A healthy public, that is educated, housed and can take risks with innovation (with a welfare state to fall back on if it goes wrong) is a stronger country and society. I think most right of centre people believe that.
I'll have to be honest and admit that I find your posts to be the most well-argued and thought out on this board. This applies both to football and to the other threads. In this instane, however, I think you are totally wrong. As has been pointed out, the British have never accepted the bumptious Farago and I just feel that whilst I can see a faction of the Conservatives sticking with the Right, this will not be how they return to power. I made the point last week that I could see the Conservatives splitting in two yet I just feel that the more Right Wing element will utimately be the smaller of the two and ultimately inconsequential. I concur that Labour will be in power for a lomg while once we have had an election yet I do not feel there will be an appetite for taking politics in a more Right Wing direction. Wherever populatism had taken hold, it has now lost ground to more normal politics. We have seen this with Farago who has been sidelined to an none-entity as well as more recently in the US and Brazil. None of these developments will have the kind of consequences that will happen in Russia when Putin falls. I just see Russia ultmately being very contrite. A better model for the future of heads of state is almost certainly is Jacinda Ahern in New Zealand. I can really see her being a role model and we have already seen just how she influenced Nicola Sturgeon during the pandemic. The next Conservative PM will be of this ilk. I cannot see the Nationalism issue carrying much weight on the 2030's. It is noticeable how Farago has been post-Brexit as the supposed benefits have proved to be anything but and issues such as immigration getting worse now we are outside the EU. A future Conservative leader will probably not have to contend with a vocitferous ERG faction and a more "liberal" candidate will be necessary if a Labour government presses the PR button. I do not feel we will fall behind the footsteps of the US and could even envisage a loosening of the ties with out "friends" across the Atlantic.
Capitalism is incredible. It is fundamentally what has given us everything in our society that is good. It allows co-operation between individuals and groups. It allows creative destruction which keeps pushing society forward into new discoveries. It protects property rights and gives us something to strive toward. And most importantly it allows information (prices) to form organically to create incredible outcomes. It takes the decisions of hundreds of thousands of people and somehow combines those decisions into an ordered free market. Unfortunately central banks have destroyed capitalism which has led to a lot of the negative effects we see today. Many of the things that are bad about “capitalism” which people think are caused by capitalism aren’t actually the fault of capitalism IMO. They are the result of government/central bank interventions into capitalism. When you centrally control interest rates & print money to spend on whatever you want, you send huge distortions across the whole system. Then you reinforce those distortions and prevent creative destruction by bailing out companies/banks which should have failed. Nowadays these interventions have created a huge cantillion effect that is causing massive amounts of societal inequality. I agree that the tax laws and off shore wealth hiding is disgusting and a huge problem.
That’s actually a very good answer, as is No7’s. My main issue with capitalism isn’t that it exists, or what an idealised form of it would be like. It’s the fact that history has shown that creating a hierarchical form of society by having worker classes and entrepreneur classes ends up with all the wealth going one way. That’s what’s happened, so saying it’s because of central banks is a cop out. If I had said that communism failed because of the capitalist world stopping it working, you would justifiably have called that a cop out too.
Exactly. It's also worth noting that there was no wonderful capitalist utopia prior to central banks, and people who point to the 19th century US (as that's generally the example used, because all of this goldbuggery and anti-reserve sentiment is deeply rooted in American pseudo-libertarianism) ignore that: - The economy was incredibly boom/bust. Seriously, type "The Panic of" into Wikipedia and watch all of the economic crises caused by speculative bubbles and bank runs appear. - It was driven in the US by the fact that they had half a freaking continent to expand into. That doesn't really exist today. - It was also driven by mass immigration, on a scale relative to the settled population that would make the likes of Os turn white as a sheet. - That period featured extremes of poverty and privation that would be absolutely unimaginable today, because almost all of the benefits of expansion were reaped by a very small portion of the population. So what we're left with is a tautology that pure capitalism works perfectly and anything that doesn't work perfectly is because it isn't pure capitalism. Which is just as meaningless as arguing that pure communism would work perfectly; neither thing is possible given that the constituent parts of the political and economic systems are people, and people have different drives, abilities, neuroses, etc. If your preferred system only works in its purest distillate, and that is only possible in a vacuum, it isn't a system of government, it's a fable.
So, following that excellent logic through, you are left with the question: what on earth would work then? The answer surely has to be a regulated form of capitalism, or social democracy if you prefer. Capitalists are free to take money out of the system, but only up to a point, beyond which the taxes payable become punitive. That doesn’t discourage entrepreneurship, quite the reverse, because it creates competition which drives innovation. This creates employment, so more taxes going back into public services.
My opinion on this is that the wealth heading up the chain will happen in whichever system we choose. Socialist, capitalist, communist, whichever. I believe the wealth flowing upward is a natural law of all hierarchies and not a consequence of capitalism. The benefits that capitalism has is that it protects those at the bottom’s property rights. So, whilst there is still a wealth gap, those at the bottom can still actually forge a good life for themselves. In the other types of systems, those at the top get too much power. As the wealth flows up, there is no protection or way for those at the bottom to make it at all. For these reasons I believe that capitalism is the lesser of two evils by far. My personal preference is capitalism, with a much smaller government which takes from the rich and gives to the poor. Separate the money from the state entirely so that interest rates are set organically. And stop money printing altogether. Unfortunately we are massively far from this. Currently governments aren’t even asking or answering the right questions. We are still printing money and fixing interest rates. The problems are all going to get worse.
I certainly prefer your vision of the future Ian, but I look around and see all of the traditional centre-right parties either becoming reactionary, or becoming irrelevant as the reactionaries elbow them out. The Republicans in France are non-entities in presidential races, and are a dwindling force in the National Assembly, with the National Front having taken their position of prominence. The People's Party in Spain has lost a substantial share of its support to the far-right Vox. The Italian centre-right is completely dead, and they now have an outright fascist helming the country. Canada's Conservatives had featured a bunch of bland technocrats playing at being reactionary populists until recently, but overwhelmingly supported the real thing in their recent leadership contest in Pierre Poilievre. Germany is the one real holdout, with AfD remaining a non-factor. Perhaps the UK will resist the trend, but I see British politicians testing out the same applause lines, and I suspect that they'll follow the same, easy path. Just look at our friend from another board here, who claims to be very left-wing, but then recites a litany of culture war talking points and utter falsehoods straight from the fever swamps of right-wing online media. He's probably just lying about being left wing, but there are an awful lot of traditional voters for left-of-center parties who buy that stuff, hence the breakdown of the Red Wall thanks to Brexit. Fear and disinformation work, and they are so much easier and more malleable than putting together a platform based on delivering services to constituents.
Also, one's property rights are somewhat immaterial of one has no property, and one of the things that people with vast sums of money like to do is purchase more and more property to rent and generate passive income, thus ensuring that property values rise and remain well out of reach of the poor (and increasingly, the middle class). And in those circumstances, who is protected by property rights? It sure as hell isn't the renter.
The so-called “affordable” housing allocation in planning applications demonstrates this myth very nicely. Every planning application for residential developments of greater than 12 dwellings has to have a 30% quota of either social rent or affordable housing under UK law. Ideally, this would be social rent, where a housing association or the local authority acts as landlord. In practice, almost always the quota is marketed as affordable housing, where the asking price is 20% below the equivalent price in the local area. Almost always these houses are actually bought by private landlords, who rent them out at the full market rent.
Unfortunately there will be winners and losers in any system. I was talking more in general. For example, a working class family here is much better off than a working class family in most other countries. And the statistics show that more people are rising from poverty globally in the last few decades than at any other time in human history. In regards to your point about property. I agree that the housing market is totally ****ed. But I actually see this as a problem caused by the broken monetary system instead of capitalism itself. Let me explain; the fact that governments can create money from thin air means that the market incentives are totally wrong. Houses are now seen as one of the only places for the wealthy to store their wealth. If the money wasn’t being constantly debased due to inflationary money printing, those wealthy people could store their wealth in a bank account instead. Because the money is losing it’s value over time, other assets become financialised and used as ‘money’. The same thing happens with all assets. It also exacerbates the wealth gap. Gov/banks print Money -> the amount of real goods/services in the economy hasn’t changed -> prices of goods/services/assets go up. -> those that understand this and buy assets benefit disproportionately. Those that do what we are taught at school and save money in the bank lose.
You always manage to find a reason to excuse the rather large holes in your theory Os, it’s quite endearing. Anyway, I can’t be arsed an6 more, I think I’ll enjoy the rest of my birthday plotting the downfall of tyranny.
I don’t at all. They are just complex ideas and it’s difficult to get all my points across on this medium. Oh **** - happy birthday!! Hope you’ve had a good one mate
And even that, obviously, isn't True Capitalism, where there would be no pretense of even trying to make affordable housing. It would be up to the market to decide, and the market has considerable incentive to exploit people, because housing is an inelastic good: insofar as they can, people will pay an extremely large portion of their paycheques to remain housed.
We can tell you love drugs, from your previous post. You might consider exchanging the recreational ones for something a doctor might prescribe.
So much for Boris not having the numbers. Boris would have been back in No.10 had he decided to stand. Boris Johnson had backing to challenge Rishi Sunak, Sir Graham Brady confirms - BBC News
What a ****ing horror story it would have been if that had happened. I'm hoping the investigation into his lying to parliament will finally scupper him politically at least.
