Has Capitalism Met the Marxist Utopia?

CLAPTON

padington wrote: »

He wouldn't if wasn't for the right wingers always arguing for a 'free' market and knocking the idea of pushing globally for things like a maximum wage.

Check your own hypocrisy Conrad.

he's a she
if only people wouldn't be so sexist

padington

CLAPTON wrote: »

he's a she

Apologies, she.

padington

Conrad wrote: »

The difference is I don't go around framing myself as a Saint unlike my 2 lefty mates that are every bit as hoarding and self interested as any Banker but mask this behind the usual Saintly diatribe.


I prefer an honest Banker, they don't hide their true selves unlike the army of wealthy lefties.

Really ? Why so many public displays of charity work from the super rich then ?

In my world, most normal people quietly give what they can, however those with very deep pockets seem to want a fricking press release every time they give.

Loughton_Monkey

Cornucopia wrote: »

I'm afraid I disagree. Not least because Bill Gates didn't invent squat, software wise. DOS was based on CP/M, and Windows was based on a development by Xerox. He, like a lot of successful entrepreneurs, happened to be in the right place at the right time, and realised the potential of something that others had overlooked. In the case of the PC, it is arguably something that would have been inevitable without Gates. I am not certain that extreme wealth is justified in those circumstances, and I am glad that Gates is committed to giving much of it away to worthy causes...........

Well the intricacies of who invented what its not my point. My point is that Bill Gates started as an 'ordinary bloke' and somehow built up a massive empire and became mega rich.

Now let's just examine some of the possibilities....

1. He could (I suspect) have sold his 'Intellectual Property' at some stage in the 80's for, say, £10 million. Enough to have a very comfortable life. Either to (a) another corporation/person who would have eventually made just as much cash, or (b) to someone like Xerox who would have just shredded everything because they bought him out just to get rid of a competitor.

2. Or, he could have been driven to strive for 'world domination' [like he did I suppose]. This could have been primarily for (a) money, (b) Kudos, or (c) just because he's a nurdish workaholic. Either way it doesn't matter.

3. He could equally have just got a bit lazy and just remained a bit of a nurd and ignore, or not understand, business principles and therefore might have (a) gone bust, got a job, and lived happily ever after on a £50K a year job, or (b) struggled along earning a small crust but never becoming 'rich'.

The point is, what would you prefer?

He followed route (2) and in the process has given 100,000 people a lucrative living, and created £billions of wealth for himself. The only thing that stops him being a 'pariah' to socialists worldwide is his very charitable attitude. Most other entrepeneurs are not that charitable, but why do socialists despise them so much? Even ones who pay their tax?

Why do we point to the top 10 wealthy people who earn more than the bottom 20% [or whatever - figures made up] and think this is wrong? Even if most of the bottom 20% are earning their own living directly or indirectly from the businesses created by those 10? [Again, tax evasion apart]

Would you prefer option 1(a)? That just makes another bloke become as wealthy. Option 1(b) probably means a lot of wealth was just not created. We would all be communicating by fax and businesses would still be on mainframes....

Option 3(b) seems the only one that makes Bill Gates a 'good bloke' to the socialists. They would even put him down under option 3(a) as a rich sod because he's on well above median wage.

The personal wealth of Bill Gates is probably a tiny, tiny fraction of the overall weath created over the years by Microsoft. Even if he had paid (say) 20% less tax by careful avoidance, it is an extremely small price to pay for wealth creation. This is why socialist 'tax the rich' strategies ultimately ruin the economy.

What would your attitude be to a different entrepreneur, let's call him Mr Bean. Born in a council house. Comprehensive education. Invents a better mousetrap. Works all day for years developing, manufacturing and selling said items. He owns 100% of the shares in his company. It grows like crazy. Employs 10,000 people. Turnover £2 billion. Profit £200 million but full corporation tax paid and the rest ploughed back into the business. Mr Bean pays himeslf £20K a year. Mainly because he works every day. Never has a holiday. Only needs basic food and his council house rent. Spurns luxuries.....

Through no fault of his own, the poor chap is "worth" 3 or 4 £billion perhaps on paper. But personally his tax bill is around £2,000 a year. I can only believe that Miliband would be tearing his hair out about how to get Mr Bean to "pay his dues".

I just don't 'get' socialism.

BobQ

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

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The things that irks me the most, however, is the way we tolerate these 'funds' [the NHS, Defense, Education, Town Halls etc.] to be so badly mis-managed and riddled with waste and petty 'politics'. What I simply don't understand is that we tolerate all this waste, and make it worse by meddling and fiddling with the management of these [should be] 'fine' institutions. This is unnecessary politics. Why do we interfere with whether nurses should be trained here or India, or how much they should be paid or even how many of them there should be? We don't tell Bill Gates how many cleaners to employ or how much to pay them. He presumably does the optimum thing, which is why he is as efficient as he is.

I think you have made some good points. I have never understood why we have such poorly managed public services.

In the past, I think it was the culture of promote from within which lead to the top managers not being equipped with the same skills as someone managing a large firm. Usually those top managers in the public sector are paid well in public service terms but still lack these skills.

So then we recruit managers from the private sector and they also fail to do in the public sector what is regularly done in the private sector. Is the problem that they do not believe in the public sector so they do not care?

Fundamentally, staff in the NHS work very hard to deliver services yet the management fails to deliver whether you appoint senior managers from within or from outside. Why is this?

padington

Personally I think whoever polluted the world with 'Microsoft word' and whoever keeps changing it every time anyone gets their head around it, deserves a big slap.

However of course we need to ensure that clever and frugal people succeed and we need to ensure when they change the world for the better they are truly rewarded.

The problem at the moment is that most clever and frugal people can't easily succeed much anymore because they are slaves to hefty mortgages or rents.

In London it now feels a little like the end game in Monopoly where half the players know they don't have a chance of winning and have given up trying but are still caught in a nasty rent trap they just can't get out of.

I had young Welsh lass come around my yard with friends to listen to a little music and hang around the fire. She couldn't stop going on about how lucky I've got it and how much I'm 'winning' in life.

We were sitting in a small garden, in a two up two down in Wood Green ?

Young people these days seem so removed from what we all believed to be possible one day, it really does feel that in regards to social mobility, we are going backwards.

Maybe she's daft trying to make it in London and no young people in their right mind should ever head to the capital and instead live somewhere cheap up north and should concentrate on paying down a mortgage somewhere with less job opportunities.

... Or maybe global capital and nation states are making it impossible to level inequalities and we are going to see some extremes of wealth which we can't do much about which will kill off the idea of equal opportunities for good ...

... Or both.

CLAPTON

padington wrote: »

Really ? Why so many public displays of charity work from the super rich then ?

In my world, most normal people quietly give what they can, however those with very deep pockets seem to want a fricking press release every time they give.

do tell us about the rich donation that you don't know about

Loughton_Monkey

BobQ wrote: »

......Fundamentally, staff in the NHS work very hard to deliver services yet the management fails to deliver whether you appoint senior managers from within or from outside. Why is this?

To answer this, you couldn't do better than read "Parkinson's Law".

I'm not specifically talking about the one-liner called by that name. But the 'law' as commonly quoted does, in fact, come from a 120-odd page tome by C.Northcote Parkinson [foreword HRH Duke of Edinburgh] first published in 1957.

It remains ultra-true to this day. He talks, as an example, about Admirals.

I understand that today we have about 41 Admirals in UK. Hell, we don't even have 41 warships any more! Let alone fleets. The cost of each admiral's 'entourage' and 'office' remain huge. We could sack 35 of them tomorrow and save £millions, with no threat whatsoever to the nation's defense.

I recommend you read the whole book. It's good.

CLAPTON

padington wrote: »

Personally I think whoever polluted the world with 'Microsoft word' and whoever keeps changing it every time anyone gets their head around it, deserves a big slap.

However of course we need to ensure that clever and frugal people succeed and we need to ensure when they change the world for the better they are truly rewarded.

The problem at the moment is that most clever and frugal people can't easily succeed much anymore because they are slaves to hefty mortgages or rents.

In London it now feels a little like the end game in Monopoly where half the players know they don't have a chance of winning and have given up trying but are still caught in a nasty rent trap they just can't get out of.

I had young Welsh lass come around my yard with friends to listen to a little music and hang around the fire. She couldn't stop going on about how lucky I've got it how much I'm 'winning' in life.

We were sitting in a small garden, in a two up two down in Wood Green ?

Young people these days seem so removed from what we all believed to be possible one day, it really does feel that in regards to social mobility, we are going backwards.

'

has the young welsh lass travelled round the world yet ?
or been to Uni?

but we do need to build more properties and limit the number of people in the UK in a reasonable way

not sure what social mobility has to do with it though

padington

CLAPTON wrote: »

not sure what social mobility has to do with it though

Wouldn't have though so.

Not sure about her previous form.