Current Affairs EU In or Out

[abelard]

I know the media well, and they don't provide a representative picture of anything, so I'll trust my professional engagements with business more than what I read in the papers (if that's ok?)

lol a positively scalding take there, Bruce!

So, planes fall out of the sky because the company was too beholden to shareholders to install the proper safety mechanism.

Cars are deliberately and systematically designed to deceive emissions testing, because the firm was too beholden to shareholders not to poison the air we all breathe instead.

Pharmaceutical firms buy the exclusive rights to lifesaving medication, then increase prices by over 400% because they are more beholden to their shareholders than to their customers' lives.

Bank employees on pain of termination create millions of accounts in customers names without notifying them, then charge the ghost accounts with fraudulent mortgage and car insurance charges, because the corporation was more beholden to its shareholders than its customers.

The world's largest retailer stations ambulances in its warehouse parking lots, because it is too beholden to shareholders to pay for air-conditioning, and its employees routinely pass out from heat-stroke.

Banks around the world spend a decade pushing mortgages onto precisely those hapless Americans who don't understand them; then repacking the initial fraud in order to further defraud the world's pensioners and small-time investors; then, as if that wasn't enough, shorting the fraudulent sales of the fraudulent mortgages they've engineered, because they are more beholden to the short-term interests of shareholders than to the sustainability of literally the entire global financial system!

Temperatures are soaring, the ice caps are melting, basic food production is under threat, and hundreds of millions will drown or be driven from their homes because corporations are too beholden to shareholders to stop pumping carbon into the air we breathe.

Shall I continue?

But, none of this is any more than slander and conjecture by the "The Media", incontrovertibly proven by the fact that some of your best friends are likewise beholden to shareholders, and we have your personal guarantee that they're all smashing blokes.

Eerily reminiscent, you'd have to agree, of our mutual acquaintance, who knows Brexit is going to be swell regardless of what "The Media" claims because of his friends in horticulture 50 years ago.

You aren't the only one of us with friends in the corporate world, but you are the only one who can't distinguish between institutional structures, and the personal temperament of their individual members.

I mean... for someone who apparently disdains anecdotal evidence, we sure do learn a lot about how your family and friends reveal more truths than experts or "The Media".

 

[Bruce Wayne]

lol a positively scalding take there, Bruce!

So, planes fall out of the sky because the company was too beholden to shareholders to install the proper safety mechanism.

Cars are deliberately and systematically designed to deceive emissions testing, because the firm was too beholden to shareholders not to poison the air we all breathe instead.

Pharmaceutical firms buy the exclusive rights to lifesaving medication, then increase prices by over 400% because they are more beholden to their shareholders than to their customers' lives.

Bank employees on pain of termination create millions of accounts in customers names without notifying them, then charge the ghost accounts with fraudulent mortgage and car insurance charges, because the corporation was more beholden to its shareholders than its customers.

The world's largest retailer stations ambulances in its warehouse parking lots, because it is too beholden to shareholders to pay for air-conditioning, and its employees routinely pass out from heat-stroke.

Banks around the world spend a decade pushing mortgages onto precisely those hapless Americans who don't understand them; then repacking the initial fraud in order to further defraud the world's pensioners and small-time investors; then, as if that wasn't enough, shorting the fraudulent sales of the fraudulent mortgages they've engineered, because they are more beholden to the short-term interests of shareholders than to the sustainability of literally the entire global financial system!

Temperatures are soaring, the ice caps are melting, basic food production is under threat, and hundreds of millions will drown or be driven from their homes because corporations are too beholden to shareholders to stop pumping carbon into the air we breathe.

Shall I continue?

But, none of this is any more than slander and conjecture by the "The Media", incontrovertibly proven by the fact that some of your best friends are likewise beholden to shareholders, and we have your personal guarantee that they're all smashing blokes.

Eerily reminiscent, you'd have to agree, of our mutual acquaintance, who knows Brexit is going to be swell regardless of what "The Media" claims because of his friends in horticulture 50 years ago.

You aren't the only one of us with friends in the corporate world, but you are the only one who can't distinguish between institutional structures, and the personal temperament of their individual members.

I mean... for someone who apparently disdains anecdotal evidence, we sure do learn a lot about how your family and friends reveal more truths than experts or "The Media".

For an academic, you can be very unscientific at times. There are approximately 200 million companies registered around the world. I've no doubt at all that there are many of them that do bad things because there are many people that do bad things. What you're doing is akin to using Harold Shipman to say that all doctors are psychopathic murderers.

I get it, you think private bad, public good. That's nice. The reality is more that there are good people and bad people, so I find the whole capitalism sucks man schtick a bit pointless as it doesn't really mean anything. A bad company, a bad NHS trust, a bad university or charity you can do something with.

I'm doing some work at the moment with the circular economy, and the way you caricature the situation there are a bunch of evil swines actively wrapping a seal pup in a plastic bag and bashing a penguin with a Coke bottle. The reality is that it's slightly more complex than that. If it helps you rationalise things though, I regularly contribute to 'the media' so have a reasonable idea how they work.

 

[abelard]

For an academic, you can be very unscientific at times. There are approximately 200 million companies registered around the world. I've no doubt at all that there are many of them that do bad things because there are many people that do bad things. What you're doing is akin to using Harold Shipman to say that all doctors are psychopathic murderers.

I get it, you think private bad, public good. That's nice. The reality is more that there are good people and bad people, so I find the whole capitalism sucks man schtick a bit pointless as it doesn't really mean anything. A bad company, a bad NHS trust, a bad university or charity you can do something with.

I'm doing some work at the moment with the circular economy, and the way you caricature the situation there are a bunch of evil swines actively wrapping a seal pup in a plastic bag and bashing a penguin with a Coke bottle. The reality is that it's slightly more complex than that. If it helps you rationalise things though, I regularly contribute to 'the media' so have a reasonable idea how they work.

And yet at the same time, Chris Grayling alone proves for you that no government, past present or future, can ever be trusted to do anything properly.

The examples I posted are not examples of 'bad people' doing 'bad things'.

They are the result of institutional structures that incentivise people who are 'good' on an individual basis to nonetheless prioritise the short-term interest of shareholders above any other consideration, to devastating effect - in other words, the Friedman doctrine, which is as relevant today as it ever has been.

It was not 'a few bad apples' who melted the entire global financial system, nor is it 'a few bad apples' who are literally destroying the basic ecosystem of the entire planet.

It's you who seems to see the world like a medieval peasant, in crude moral terms. Some people are good, other people are bad, and that alone explains everything.

The reality is that it's slightly more complex than that.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

And yet at the same time, Chris Grayling alone proves for you that no government, past present or future, can ever be trusted to do anything properly.

The examples I posted are not examples of 'bad people' doing 'bad things'.

They are the result of institutional structures that incentivise people who are 'good' on an individual basis to nonetheless prioritise the short-term interest of shareholders above any other consideration, to devastating effect - in other words, the Friedman doctrine, which is as relevant today as it ever has been.

It was not 'a few bad apples' who melted the entire global financial system, nor is it 'a few bad apples' who are literally destroying the basic ecosystem of the entire planet.

It's you who seems to see the world like a medieval peasant, in crude moral terms. Some people are good, other people are bad, and that alone explains everything.

The reality is that it's slightly more complex than that.

Of course morality doesn't explain everything, and there are countless examples of people who are ordinarily good people doing bad things. These kind of systemic problems are the hardest to solve. You no doubt have a better recollection of my comments than me, but I suspect with regards to Grayling I was saying that the there is no guarantee that a state will do things better than a private company (or vice versa). Competence is usually a much more important factor than whether one works for a government agency or a private company.

Just as with your simplistic argument about all companies following 'greed is good', it would be equally simplistic to suggest that all government agencies succumb to laziness and rent seeking as monopoly providers of a service. You're quite right, it wasn't a few bad apples that ballsed the financial system up. It was banks lending recklessly, borrowers borrowing beyond their means, regulators failing to regulate effectively, governments looking the other way. Maybe you think if a few bankers had been thrown in jail that all would be right again, I don't know.

Certainly with problems like these, or climate change, plastics, refugees and so on, the emphasis has to be on the planet working together. All governments, all companies, all of us. Sadly, the last few years have seen a reduction in our willingness to engage in that kind of cooperation as Trump and Brexit have underpinned a more dog eat dog, looking out for 'my' country outlook rather than working together, which is why it saddens me that you so often seem more interested in accepting the march in that direction than countering it.

 

[abelard]

which is why it saddens me that you so often seem more interested in accepting the march in that direction than countering it.

Pardon me?

 

[Bruce Wayne]

Pardon me?

That's been my impression over the past few weeks, as you seem to be far more interested in battling with me than those who really are striving to break down global society. I don't believe Corbyn's medicine is the right one, not that no medicine is needed.

 

[Frang]

That's been my impression over the past few weeks, as you seem to be far more interested in battling with me than those who really are striving to break down global society. I don't believe Corbyn's medicine is the right one, not that no medicine is needed.

bruce don't like it up him ….. so to speak !

great this

 

[Bruce Wayne]

bruce don't like it up him ….. so to speak !

great this

This isn't wrestling.

 

[Frang]

This isn't wrestling.

I know this is better !

*grabs popcorn , swings handbag

 

[JammyP]

Voted Green. Done

Get out there and vote ladies and gentlemen, for whatever floats your boat - it's now or never, or we cannot moan about what democracy delivers

 

[zzr45]

If you told me 10 years ago that I would vote for the Liberals in any election, I'd think you were mad.

How times change.

 

[Eggs]

....if there’s a 2nd referendum that results in ‘remain’, we could win Eurovision.

 

[Groucho]

Go and vote now.

Stop fascism.

 

[summerisle]

....if there’s a 2nd referendum that results in ‘remain’, we could win Eurovision.

Doubtful.

Eurovision 2019: UK's last-placed entry has score lowered

Contest organisers revise the final scores after admitting they miscalculated the jury voting.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[edge]

Brexit vote cast.
Worth it for the anarchy to follow.
May gone
Tories in tatters
Two fingers to parliament and the EU for thinking they could brow beat leavers and thinking they would go away quietly.
As a leaver nothing else on offer and I always vote.