The 2015 Popularity Contest (aka UK General Election )

[magicjuan]

Why is communism the only system that is allowed to be talked about in ideal terms? History has shown the only thing communism has ever been in the real world is a method of controlling the masses by those who are exempt from it.

As I have said, it has never been allowed to exist and perform as it is intended, so it remains, an ideal. Place that against the shock and awe theory of global capitalism which has been encouraged, funded and supported since the early 70s, because those with the means stood to make an absolute fortune from it as it became a self serving beast. Big big difference for two ideals

 

[Toffeelover]

As I have said, it has never been allowed to exist and perform as it is intended, so it remains, an ideal. Place that against the shock and awe theory of global capitalism which has been encouraged, funded and supported since the early 70s, because those with the means stood to make an absolute fortune from it as it became a self serving beast. Big big difference for two ideals

Juan, communism as you put cannot be tested. There would have to be some one in charge. Or a committee therefore there are those giving orders and those taking them. There is again some one at the top and most are at the bottom! On an extreme example, are you advocating that a doctor should get the same reward as a street cleaner?

 

[sd_1992]

As I have said, it has never been allowed to exist and perform as it is intended, so it remains, an ideal. Place that against the shock and awe theory of global capitalism which has been encouraged, funded and supported since the early 70s, because those with the means stood to make an absolute fortune from it as it became a self serving beast. Big big difference for two ideals

Neither to an extent, has capitalism. If there was pure competition for everything, all companies were socially responsible etc, then capitalism would provide an excellent society, and provide far greater advances in areas such as health, industry and technology than communism does.

However, like pure communism, pure capitalism has not and cannot ever exist due to government and government interference, so the debate between the two is purely academic and someone who believes in pure communism is no better or worse than someone who believes in pure capitalism as people want their society to represent different things.

 

[magicjuan]

Juan, communism as you put cannot be tested. There would have to be some one in charge. Or a committee therefore there are those giving orders and those taking them. There is again some one at the top and most are at the bottom! On an extreme example, are you advocating that a doctor should get the same reward as a street cleaner?

Quite interesting that the impression of communism is still represented as a soviet style system. The problem herein lies at scale, a small localised democratic system of involvement in decision making, where individuals have representation and decisions made with consideration, lends itself to full communism, however, when commerce becomes an overiding factor through trade decisions tend to be taken with avarice, bigger communities demand greater resources and infrastructure and usury begins tipping the scales.

As for the doctor and street cleaner scenario, that is usually followed by a 'well everyone would choose to be a cleaner' if the pay is the same. But the standing within society of doctors is upheld because of the mystery of medicine, it will always attract interest from people, no matter what the pay. If each puts in the same contribution to the benefit of everyone else, the answer, simply, is yes. But funny that the option is usually doctor v cleaner, never doctor v nurse, I was in Broadgreen yesterday and a doctor failed 4 times to take a blood sample, nurse came in and first time, no problem.

What I am advocating to paraphrase Blackadder is ' a few less fat b*stards eating all the pie..', at least let us head towards a fairer system, set an example for the next generation, what we are setting our grandchildren up for is cruel, very cruel

 

[magicjuan]

Neither to an extent, has capitalism. If there was pure competition for everything, all companies were socially responsible etc, then capitalism would provide an excellent society, and provide far greater advances in areas such as health, industry and technology than communism does.

However, like pure communism, pure capitalism has not and cannot ever exist due to government and government interference, so the debate between the two is purely academic and someone who believes in pure communism is no better or worse than someone who believes in pure capitalism as people want their society to represent different things.

That isn't necessarily the case. Capitalism, we are told, won out in the war of ideologies against communism. Emerging victorious it was unfettered and test grounds took place in Chile, Argentina (look them up and the types of governments backed by the US), etc

The public 'support' for capitalism was sold on the mantra of trickle down economics, yet the Chicago school theory doesn't consider trickle down, it only considers expansionism, so the victory was sold on a lie.

This pure form of laissez faire capitalism was backed through globalism and had the explicit support of WTO, World bank and evrty other global and regional NGO and trade alliance from NAFTSBto the EU, so the platform has been there for decades, yet capitalism has continued to provice disparity and neglect, the only time social responsibility has come into play is wnen corporations are caught out or it id part of a marketing campaign. The amount of government interference is diminishing hourly to the point of non existence as the lobbies are funded and representatives, knowing the gravy train is coming off the rails, become more easily 'influenced', as we have seen recently with Straw and Rifkind.

I suppose it is down to where on the scales you put the present, I consider the balance tipped way in favour of capital to the point of no return, it has a greater influence on events and livex than can be influenced upon it by people and 'accountability', but to say capitalism hasn't been allowed the opportunity I don't believe history shows to be correct

 

[Bruce Wayne]

Quite interesting that the impression of communism is still represented as a soviet style system. The problem herein lies at scale, a small localised democratic system of involvement in decision making, where individuals have representation and decisions made with consideration, lends itself to full communism, however, when commerce becomes an overiding factor through trade decisions tend to be taken with avarice, bigger communities demand greater resources and infrastructure and usury begins tipping the scales.

As for the doctor and street cleaner scenario, that is usually followed by a 'well everyone would choose to be a cleaner' if the pay is the same. But the standing within society of doctors is upheld because of the mystery of medicine, it will always attract interest from people, no matter what the pay. If each puts in the same contribution to the benefit of everyone else, the answer, simply, is yes. But funny that the option is usually doctor v cleaner, never doctor v nurse, I was in Broadgreen yesterday and a doctor failed 4 times to take a blood sample, nurse came in and first time, no problem.

What I am advocating to paraphrase Blackadder is ' a few less fat b*stards eating all the pie..', at least let us head towards a fairer system, set an example for the next generation, what we are setting our grandchildren up for is cruel, very cruel

Whenever I hear about socialism on here though, it's usually hand in hand with having a huge state controlling things from the centre. Indeed, we've had discussions on here where people, who regard themselves as socialist, have bemoaned things like the sharing economy as exploitative and a 'race to the bottom'.

Is the confusion as much within those who regard themselves as supporters of socialism as it is the wider public?

For what it's worth, I'm a huge fan of the ground up efforts, such as the plethora of citizen science projects emerging around the world, or the various maker movement communities, or the crowdfunding ventures that let people avoid mainstream financing.

There are a whole load of people using their cognitive surplus to do worthwhile things, often with no payment exchanging hands.

In one way, that is probably quite socialist, but I don't get the impression many of the socialists on here would approve. I may have got the wrong end of the stick though.

 

[magicjuan]

Whenever I hear about socialism on here though, it's usually hand in hand with having a huge state controlling things from the centre. Indeed, we've had discussions on here where people, who regard themselves as socialist, have bemoaned things like the sharing economy as exploitative and a 'race to the bottom'.

Is the confusion as much within those who regard themselves as supporters of socialism as it is the wider public?

For what it's worth, I'm a huge fan of the ground up efforts, such as the plethora of citizen science projects emerging around the world, or the various maker movement communities, or the crowdfunding ventures that let people avoid mainstream financing.

There are a whole load of people using their cognitive surplus to do worthwhile things, often with no payment exchanging hands.

In one way, that is probably quite socialist, but I don't get the impression many of the socialists on here would approve. I may have got the wrong end of the stick though.

It is a difficult thing to pinpoint, there are degrees of support for degrees of socialism, as on the other side, all under the influence of the percieved reality of society.

There has never been so much ability to change and influence as a collective of likeminded individuals as consumers, the threat of spending elsewhere terrifies corporations, this means and does, by passing government, as much a response to unrepresentative governance as to necessity.

We use the NHS as an example of socialism, but in its original terms, the affecting of market forces changes everything.

I always answer a question with 'I used to be a socialist, I am a socialist, but I am not sure what others think socialism is anymore'.

I think the same applies to conservatism too

 

[Bruce Wayne]

It is a difficult thing to pinpoint, there are degrees of support for degrees of socialism, as on the other side, all under the influence of the percieved reality of society.

There has never been so much ability to change and influence as a collective of likeminded individuals as consumers, the threat of spending elsewhere terrifies corporations, this means and does, by passing government, as much a response to unrepresentative governance as to necessity.

We use the NHS as an example of socialism, but in its original terms, the affecting of market forces changes everything.

I always answer a question with 'I used to be a socialist, I am a socialist, but I am not sure what others think socialism is anymore'.

I think the same applies to conservatism too

Even with the NHS though, in its current form as a major nationalised system, it's impossible for it to be socialist as by the very scale of it, you won't get everyone in the country agreeing.

Contrast that to the co-operative based systems in the mining communities of Wales upon which the NHS was modeled, and I'd regard those as much better examples of true socialist means of healthcare than the NHS.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tredegar_Medical_Aid_Society

You'll note that in the above, contributions were all voluntary rather than mandatory. If you're going to run something as a community collective, then I don't see how you can mandate people to do anything.

That's where most applications of socialism have failed because they have taken a desirable outcome (in their eyes) and forced it on society via a massively centralised state so that those who objected ended up being massively oppressed.

I suspect we can both agree that decentralising power to people is a good thing, and in that sense socialism and libertarianism are not that far apart from one another. Both argue (in essence) for returning power to people and communities rather than centralising it in a central body.

 

[toffee matt]

Farage now saying he wants to axe all the racial discrimination laws

 

[Blue 1]

Farage now saying he wants to axe all the racial discrimination laws

Apart from the obvious flaws with this idea, he obviously has no idea how laws work. There's not just one tidy law he could revoke. Anti-discrimination is embedded in so many different laws now that you would have to pretty much rewrite most modern British law. Not justifiable or cost effective just in order to allow Jeremy Clarkson to legally make racist jokes. Add to that that the European courts would rightly pull rank and stop such a move, although I suppose he'd argue we'd pull out of the EU, so that wouldn't apply. I'm getting really tired of UKIP's soundbite politics and promises that are just complete fantasy, made to appeal to idiots who actually think they 'know how it really is' when their belief in this crap proves quite the opposite.

Farage is nothing more than a demagogue and one would hope this would make him unelectable.

 

[magicjuan]

Even with the NHS though, in its current form as a major nationalised system, it's impossible for it to be socialist as by the very scale of it, you won't get everyone in the country agreeing.

Contrast that to the co-operative based systems in the mining communities of Wales upon which the NHS was modeled, and I'd regard those as much better examples of true socialist means of healthcare than the NHS.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tredegar_Medical_Aid_Society

You'll note that in the above, contributions were all voluntary rather than mandatory. If you're going to run something as a community collective, then I don't see how you can mandate people to do anything.

That's where most applications of socialism have failed because they have taken a desirable outcome (in their eyes) and forced it on society via a massively centralised state so that those who objected ended up being massively oppressed.

I suspect we can both agree that decentralising power to people is a good thing, and in that sense socialism and libertarianism are not that far apart from one another. Both argue (in essence) for returning power to people and communities rather than centralising it in a central body.

I would go with Chomsky's personal epithet of a libertarian anarchist

 

[magicjuan]

Apart from the obvious flaws with this idea, he obviously has no idea how laws work. There's not just one tidy law he could revoke. Anti-discrimination is embedded in so many different laws now that you would have to pretty much rewrite most modern British law. Not justifiable or cost effective just in order to allow Jeremy Clarkson to legally make racist jokes. Add to that that the European courts would rightly pull rank and stop such a move, although I suppose he'd argue we'd pull out of the EU, so that wouldn't apply. I'm getting really tired of UKIP's soundbite politics and promises that are just complete fantasy, made to appeal to idiots who actually think they 'know how it really is' when their belief in this crap proves quite the opposite.

Farage is nothing more than a demagogue and one would hope this would make him unelectable.

But he has populism on his side, a lot seem to think they can let him go so far and then reel him in. Once momentum is gathered his influence becomes extremely dangerous. He appeals, as you say, to those who are happy to accept the facts as put forward by vested interests and not to search out the agenda. He should wear a brown shirt as a badge of honour the daft melt.

 

[Joey66]

Apart from the obvious flaws with this idea, he obviously has no idea how laws work. There's not just one tidy law he could revoke. Anti-discrimination is embedded in so many different laws now that you would have to pretty much rewrite most modern British law. Not justifiable or cost effective just in order to allow Jeremy Clarkson to legally make racist jokes. Add to that that the European courts would rightly pull rank and stop such a move, although I suppose he'd argue we'd pull out of the EU, so that wouldn't apply. I'm getting really tired of UKIP's soundbite politics and promises that are just complete fantasy, made to appeal to idiots who actually think they 'know how it really is' when their belief in this crap proves quite the opposite.

Farage is nothing more than a demagogue and one would hope this would make him unelectable.

You have heard only what you wanted to hear from his statement - when Gordon Brown sated Brith jobs for British workers there is nothing different in what he stated this morning yet the establishment on on to it in a racist way
It is alright for firms to advertise jobs straight over to the EU without the jobs being advertised here first that's racist against the British worker is it not - I have heard the fruit picking farms I.

Apart from the obvious flaws with this idea, he obviously has no idea how laws work. There's not just one tidy law he could revoke. Anti-discrimination is embedded in so many different laws now that you would have to pretty much rewrite most modern British law. Not justifiable or cost effective just in order to allow Jeremy Clarkson to legally make racist jokes. Add to that that the European courts would rightly pull rank and stop such a move, although I suppose he'd argue we'd pull out of the EU, so that wouldn't apply. I'm getting really tired of UKIP's soundbite politics and promises that are just complete fantasy, made to appeal to idiots who actually think they 'know how it really is' when their belief in this crap proves quite the op

 

[Blue 1]

You have heard only what you wanted to hear from his statement - when Gordon Brown sated Brith jobs for British workers there is nothing different in what he stated this morning yet the establishment on on to it in a racist way
It is alright for firms to advertise jobs straight over to the EU without the jobs being advertised here first that's racist against the British worker is it not - I have heard the fruit picking farms I.

He was asked whether there would be a law against discrimination on the grounds of race or colour and he replied "No, because we take the view, we are colour-blind. We as a party are colour-blind.". It's like claiming discrimination on these grounds doesn't exist.

 

[Eggs]

...Sol Campbell apparently considering a career in politics as a Tory MP. Oh dear.