United Left Alliance will form party, says Higgins

doopa

SupaNova wrote: »

The argument why should a hard working carpenter not get the same wage as a hard working banker(if there is such a thing) i agree definitely has moral basis. If there were a thousand people wanting carpentry work done and only a handful of carpenters, carpentry would be a rich profession in a free market economy, and we have pretty close to that in effect for lots of professions in the current system. Now when it comes to banking and money, in a free market economy you would also be allowed to set up your own bank and your own currency and try your hand at banking. Banks that had good stable currencies and offered good sound lending and saving options would survive. Those that didn't would be allowed to fail.

I agree that the current system is pretty evil, but it is not free market capitalism. I have championed doing an Iceland in debates with friends out of anger more than anything else. But in truth i don't how that would pan out. But even if you are angry with the system, socialism or moving to a bigger welfare state is definitely the wrong way to go.

Going by their wages - there seems to be a massive shortage of bankers! I'm constantly bemused by this, it not like there is a shortage of people who could be doing this. Entry requirements to banking jobs seem to be pretty average for maths/science literature graduates and yet the wages suggest there is a massive shortage. It seems like there is some kind of invisible barrier that stops people pursuing this as a career. I know personally it probably would have little of interest to me in it - but if people were solely or mainly motivated by money why aren't more people doing it?

RE: Iceland, and I'm not just referring to the banking response by them. I think this is one country that seems to have instilled in its people a strong sense of individuality and libertarian ideals. So when asking the commies to f off to Russia why aren't all the libertarians f'ing off to Iceland. Look at their zoning laws for housing, incomes, a whole range of markers, even just chatting to them leads one to the conclusion that never has such a group of people so heavily invested in self-sufficiency and self-responsibility - which seem like libertarian ideas. The banking crisis is simply the biggest/most famous example we have of this characteristic of theirs. That may partly be to do with the fact that they don't generally speaking settle for long periods outside Iceland. Though they are usually quite well traveled.

Boskowski

Banks and financial markets are parasites on society. They provide no added benefit once they progress from being a supplement and facilitator of production processes to being a self serving money manipulation machine.

david337

The argument why should a hard working carpenter not get the same wage as a hard working banker(if there is such a thing) i agree definitely has moral basis. If there were a thousand people wanting carpentry work done and only a handful of carpenters, carpentry would be a rich profession in a free market economy, and we have pretty close to that in effect for lots of professions in the current system. Now when it comes to banking and money, in a free market economy you would also be allowed to set up your own bank and your own currency and try your hand at banking. Banks that had good stable currencies and offered good sound lending and saving options would survive. Those that didn't would be allowed to fail.

I agree that the current system is pretty evil, but it is not free market capitalism. I have championed doing an Iceland in debates with friends out of anger more than anything else. But in truth i don't how that would pan out. But even if you are angry with the system, socialism or moving to a bigger welfare state is definitely the wrong way to go.

Supanova, the capitalism you are describing is utopian. I was talking about actually existing capitalism:)

doopa

SupaNova wrote: »

Free market capitalism lets profitable businesses survive and losing ones fail. Government decided to bail out failed banks not free market capitalism.

I've no problem with the first statement. However...
I think idea that the government came up with the idea of bailing out the banks needs some clarification. I would posit that it was the government acting on the strongly worded advice of a small number of wealthy industrialists (who would probably self-identify as capitalists) that bailed out the banks. Unfortunately, they probably weren't working on sound capitalistic principles when advising hte government to do this - nevertheless the decision will be seen by many as being capitalist since all of the actors involved in the decision would be seen by many as capitalists.

SupaNova

The truth is, that they reason the governments of the world bailed out their banks is because they knew that capitalism had stopped working

Really when did they say this?

If you are a joke account well done on successfully wasting my time. But i actually suspect your not.

SupaNova

Supanova, the capitalism you are describing is utopian. I was talking about actually existing capitalism

It those sound utopian. That's the direction we should be moving. The industries that are most free and open to competition are the most prosperous and productive to society. The best example of this is the software industry, any kid in his room can enter into this market and compete, and look at how far the industry has come. Every other industry is a million miles away from this.

SupaNova

I know personally it probably would have little of interest to me in it - but if people were solely or mainly motivated by money why aren't more people doing it?

I'm with you here. I have little interest in doing it also. Who says people are solely motivated by profit?

EDIT: Ignore the question actually, really starting to go off topic.

hoorsmelt

SupaNova wrote: »

I'm with you here. I have little interest in doing it also. Who says people are solely motivated by profit?

Eh? The bedrock of libertarian philosophy is that people are generally motivated most by self-interest. I'm aware of the criticisms libertarians have of the current system but as I see it capitalism inevitably leads to monopolisation- the example of software you gave is actually a good example of this, social networking sites have been largely monopolised by Facebook while search engines have been monopolised by Google and Yahoo

SupaNova

social networking sites have been largely monopolised by Facebook while search engines have been monopolised by Google and Yahoo

lol ffs, facebook didn't monopolise(buy up the competition), they became dominant because the users chose them because they were the best, likewise google and yahoo.

Self interest is different to profit. People are motivated to improve their situation in life. For some that may going from a poor situation to an average one. For others average to very well off.

BluePlanet

SupaNova wrote: »

lol ffs, facebook didn't monopolise(buy up the competition),.

What's this?
Since when is buying up the competition, the only way to become a monopoly?

CiaranC

SupaNova wrote: »

It those sound utopian. That's the direction we should be moving.

If we are to decide between non-existent imaginary utopian capitalism and non-existent imaginary utopian socialism, Ill have the Star Trek fantasy please. :P

Time for our right-wing friends to admit that unfettered free market capitalism doesnt work any more than utopian socialism does.

The reds have a revolution, centralise all the power in the hands of sneaky bolsheviks, then conveniently forget to take the next step in the revolutionary process and create an authoritarian nightmare. Then they cry that this is fascism, it wouldnt happen with a real socialist revolution! We werent socialist enough.

The right deregulate all the markets, watch the greedy swine eat themselves alive, destroy entire economies with no regard to the consequences and then collapse in on themselves requiring socialist bailouts. Then they cry that this is socialist interventionism, it wouldnt happen with real libertarianism! We werent libertarian enough.

Our most successful societies turn their backs on extremism and try to walk a line somewhere down the middle, allowing capital to drive economies without abandoning the weakest in society. This is of course, not always successful, but its the best we've got.

Chinasea

CiaranC wrote: »

I
Our most successful societies turn their backs on extremism and try to walk a line somewhere down the middle, allowing capital to drive economies without abandoning the weakest in society. This is of course, not always successful, but its the best we've got.

Square this one so for me though? I work, have always worked (although was made redundant but worked hard to find new job) - I pay a big mortgage and my 34 year old spliff smokin, beer swilling neighbour that is living off 'disability benefit' due to his depression, lives in the exact same accommodation as myself BUT gets EVERYTHING paid for by me the tax payer. He will never work, his family, his relations don't work and he is one of the ones that you refer to as the "weakest" in our society. His number one vote went for Richie Boy Barrett and I don’t think it was cause Richie supports the Palestinian conflict.

jimmycrackcorm

That's why the electorate will stick mainly to centre-right parties because too many of us know people who are doing quite all-right on social welfare.

SupaNova

Square this one so for me though? I work, have always worked (although was made redundant but worked hard to find new job) - I pay a big mortgage and my 34 year old spliff smokin, beer swilling neighbour that is living off 'disability benefit' due to his depression, lives in the exact same accommodation as myself BUT gets EVERYTHING paid for by me the tax payer. He will never work, his family, his relations don't work and he is one of the ones that you refer to as the "weakest" in our society. His number one vote went for Richie Boy Barrett and I don’t think it was cause Richie supports the Palestinian conflict.

In libertarian utopia, when you become unemployed you would have significantly more savings as a safety net when made redundant, because you would not be paying for welfare leeches that are supposedly vulnerable. What would happen to lazy ****ers like this in libertarian utopia. People who believe in social welfare state will tell you without social welfare this person will die of starvation. In libertarian utopia this person will likely have a family(that work), and the family will take care of him along with telling him to get his effen act together.

I want a slow adoption of libertarian principles. A slow move right. A move left will do nothing for us, let alone a revolution and a socialist state.

SupaNova

What's this?
Since when is buying up the competition, the only way to become a monopoly?

Yes your right there are other ways to become a monopoly. By offering a product or service so much better than your competitors that they go out of business would be one. And in a free market its fine, as any business can decide to re-enter if they think they can offer the product or service better.

The one most people fear is collusion within an industry. However collusion creates great incentive for one business to drop price, having all the customers flood to that business.

Banking and money creation is a good example of a monopoly. Monopolies exist with the backing of governments and laws.

I don't know any examples of monopolies without government backing and laws.

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

SupaNova

A lot of socialist experiments have failed because capitalism has thrown every single roadblock possible in their way e.g. tie up vast ressources in stupid arms race which of course suits capitalism just fine since arms are a great way of making huge profits at the expense of society.

Piling vast resources into a stupid arms race had nothing to do with free market capitalism and everything to do with certain governments foreign policy. There would be no war in Afghanistan or Iraq if we had free market approach to paying taxes. If about 75% of the American people are against the war, and they had the chance to not pay for it the remaining 25% that are for the war would have to foot the bill and then they would re think if they are for the war or not. And if half of them changed their mind and so on. That would be a true democracy. Alas its only a pipe dream.

SupaNova

If we are to decide between non-existent imaginary utopian capitalism and non-existent imaginary utopian socialism, Ill have the Star Trek fantasy please.

This is bad reasoning. Just because a desired state doesn't currently exist, does not mean you should not go after it. A world without slavery was a desirable state and people made it happen. Both the far left and far right thinkers actually want to make changes for the good(they disagree what it would like and how to get there, and no economy can function without a market prices and profit). The far left thinkers falsely think the current state of affairs is the fault of capitalism.

Time for our right-wing friends to admit that unfettered free market capitalism doesnt work any more than utopian socialism does.

You are using the same reasoning as the socialists. You are attributing everything that's wrong with the world to free market capitalism.

Our most successful societies turn their backs on extremism and try to walk a line somewhere down the middle, allowing capital to drive economies without abandoning the weakest in society. This is of course, not always successful, but its the best we've got.

I assure you there is nothing extreme about Libertarianism. Capital is what drives economies you got that right. The system we have got is the best we have so far and there is massive room for improvement.

To blame this mess on some greedy speculators and capitalism is lazy thinking. Reckless lending by banks encouraged by government, along with increasing everyone's entitlements across the board to win elections. Increases in public sector pay and benefits. Everyone in the country wanted to cash in on a false boom. We had politicians taking credit for a booming economy which was nothing more than a bubble. People thought they were getting rich by becoming property developers, what was going to happen when we all had second houses and nobody to rent them to? would they still appreciate every year because house prices always rise. But sure the people taking out loans didn't know any better. Well what does it say about the education system, that after 14 years of schooling people can't critical assess the financial decision to take out a loan. There is no critical thinking taught at our schools, taking the governments(who are mostly concerned with staying in power) word for things without any critical thinking is what got us in to this mess. And some people are going to swallow the socialist party line, that this mess was the fault of some greedy speculators and free market capitalism.

david337

This is bad reasoning. Just because a desired state doesn't currently exist, does not mean you should not go after it. A world without slavery was a desirable state and people made it happen.

I agree with this. I'm sure people said during slavery, hey can you show me a country where slavery isn't practiced? The answer would probably be no. Same with a womans right to vote. This however didn't mean that these things were impossible to achieve.

To blame this mess on some greedy speculators and capitalism is lazy thinking. Reckless lending by banks encouraged by government, along with increasing everyone's entitlements across the board to win elections. Increases in public sector pay and benefits. Everyone in the country wanted to cash in on a false boom. We had politicians taking credit for a booming economy which was nothing more than a bubble. People thought they were getting rich by becoming property developers, what was going to happen when we all had second houses and nobody to rent them to? would they still appreciate every year because house prices always rise. But sure the people taking out loans didn't know any better. Well what does it say about the education system, that after 14 years of schooling people can't critical assess the financial decision to take out a loan. There is no critical thinking thought at our schools, taking the governments(who are mostly concerned with staying in power) word for things without any critical thinking is what got us in to this mess. And some people are going to swallow the socialist party line, that this mess was the fault of some greedy speculators and free market capitalism.

I disagree with this. This mess has to be firmly blamed on capitalism. There are a number of trends that can be observed in capitalism. The first is its instability. Adam Smith uses the metaphor of the invisible hand to describe the operation of the free market, but I think Marx's term, the anarchy of production, is a better description. Smith's assumes that there will be over all equilibrium; Marx assumes no such thing. Firstly, capitalism goes into regular crises, boom and slump and secondly there is also a tendency towards concentration of capital i.e. capitalism functions like a tennis tournament, it may start out with lots of competitors but has the tournament continues more and more get eliminated, leaving fewer and fewer bigger players.

Thirdly, because the pressure to compete leads to a downwards pressure on workers’ wages, this damages the ability of workers to buy the goods that are being manufactured and produced. This leads to a greater tendency towards financialisation, basically selling money to workers in order to buy the goods that are being produced. But because the firms doing this are also competing with other firms, there is also a pressure to produce better and better (in their view) financial packages, leading to packages like sub-prime mortgages. In short the low profits to be made in manufacturing made things like CDO's, futures, derivatives and all sorts of exotic trading practices very very attractive.

So what does it say about the field of economics that the vast majority of them didn't see this coming. I put it down to them being cheer leaders for the system, rather than critical thinkers. Essentially the last 30 years of economics orthodoxy has been wrong.

SupaNova

Reckless lending by banks encouraged by government, along with increasing everyone's entitlements across the board to win elections. Increases in public sector pay and benefits. Everyone in the country wanted to cash in on a false boom. We had politicians taking credit for a booming economy which was nothing more than a bubble. People thought they were getting rich by becoming property developers, what was going to happen when we all had second houses and nobody to rent them to? would they still appreciate every year because house prices always rise. But sure the people taking out loans didn't know any better. Well what does it say about the education system, that after 14 years of schooling people can't critical assess the financial decision to take out a loan. There is no critical thinking thought at our schools, taking the governments(who are mostly concerned with staying in power) word for things without any critical thinking is what got us in to this mess. And some people are going to swallow the socialist party line, that this mess was the fault of some greedy speculators and free market capitalism.

So you disagree that the above is the reason for the mess we are in right now.

CiaranC

SupaNova wrote: »

this mess was the fault of some greedy speculators and free market capitalism.

It is.

SupaNova

I put it down to them being cheer leaders for the system, rather than critical thinkers. Essentially the last 30 years of economics orthodoxy has been wrong.

In economics there are two schools of thought. One is Keynesian economics the other is Austrian economics. Austrian economics is conservative and disagrees with deficit spending. Keynesian economics allows for speculation by borrowing to spend on capital investment. Keynesian economics is the one in practice. Governments love Keynesian economics as it allows for lavish spending, which allows them to a spend more now and flood an economy with credit. The problem with Keynesian economics is that if you make bad capital investments or even worse use deficit spending to spoil the electorate with social welfare or to fund wars(something that wont increase productivity), you will end up with economy that can't pay its debt. And i agree with you about some economists being cheerleaders for the system. Usually ones hired by governments to paint a rosy picture. A lot of economists did see this coming. And the same ones that saw it coming are predicting a lot worse ahead.

Het-Field

CiaranC wrote: »

It is.

Wrong.

It is the product of state intervention which gave rise to inflation of markets, rather then currency values. Was the property bubble the product of free-marketeering ? Was the banking crisis due to the absence of regulation ? No it was not. The property market was anything but unregulated, or subject to a laissez-faire economic outlook. The banks were subject to a regulator, who was answerable to the state.

It is comedic that you would consider this "free market"

CiaranC

Het-Field wrote: »

Wrong.

It is the product of state intervention which gave rise to inflation of markets, rather then currency values. Was the property bubble the product of free-marketeering ? Was the banking crisis due to the absence of regulation ? No it was not. The property market was anything but unregulated, or subject to a laissez-faire economic outlook. The banks were subject to a regulator, who was answerable to the state.

It is comedic that you would consider this "free market"

Like I said, We werent libertarian enough.

SupaNova

CiaranC wrote: »

It is.

Do you have reasons for your belief that free market capitalism is at fault for this mess? Or did someone tell you and you just took their word for it.

Het-Field

CiaranC wrote: »

Like I said, We werent libertarian enough.

What are you on about ?

We are not talking "libertarian" here. You are just trying to de-rail the point in order to shirk answering my question

ei.sdraob

Somehow "libertarian" has become synonymous with right wing

someone needs to go back to politics 101 here

SupaNova

I assumed it would be classed as right because it embraces free market capitalism and seems like an opposite to socialism. Thanks for turning me to politics 101 though, now i have a massive amount of labels to try and see which one i fit under.

Ok so Libertarianism is left almost Anarchism and embraces a free market.

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

Spudmonkey

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

I'm more libertarian than I thought . Anyway I have to say I dislike these classifications. People become blind to a certain ideology and defend it tooth and nail thinking that because they have a certain opinion on one thing, they should have a given opinion on another. Just go with what makes sense to you.