Yellow jacket freedom fighters spreading to London

antrobus

Italy's Five Star together with Lega Norda run the darned country.

kabayiri

antrobus wrote: »

Well the 'system' here in the UK pretty much works for everybody compared to say, for example, how the 'system' works for people in Venezuela.
...

Is it a system which is flexible enough to respond to rising challenges though?

It all feels a bit hollowed out nowadays; when your energy supplier could be German owned; the car company Japanese; the books and consumables and streamed telly provided by that nice Mr Jeff Bezos. These are foreign interests who don't really need to put back into UK society.

Soon, Uber will have ambition to replace minicab drivers with JonnyCab equivalents. We will all applaud the amazing tech in the Guardian circles, and pretend the human costs don't count.

antrobus

kabayiri wrote: »

Is it a system which is flexible enough to respond to rising challenges though?
.

So far the system seems to have coped reasonably well with a lot of 'challenges' ; the world was a very different place in say, 1819 and on the whole things are a lot better in 2019.

I'm not sure what 'alternative systems' are available that would be better at responding to whatever rising challenges you have in mind. The one thing I do know, is that the state capitalist system commonly known as 'socialism' was very, very, very bad at responding to any challenges at all. Which is why it was abandoned by most nations.

I'm not sure what else is available. 100% laissez faire capitalism? A return to feudalism?

Nasqueron

Enterprise_1701C wrote: »

I can't believe it is happening again, the amount of people on here that believe we should build on every last bit of green land in this country.

We need green land and woods/forests to collect water, to farm, to provide oxygen for the populace. We need it for the mental wellbeing of the populace. How would it feel to wake up each morning and look out on a concrete jungle?

I bet the ones advocating building on all land are also the ones that want to protect wildlife? What do you think wildlife would do if we had no green land left?

Now, we could build on brownfield land, that is not a problem, but do not build on green land, land that is required to at least go some way towards stopping flooding, capturing carbon etc.

It could be argued that we need more green land as the population increases, after all we need more water when we have more people on this island, we need more plants to capture the carbon, we need more farming land.

One thing I would advocate would be building blocks of flats where football stadiums are. After all, they have less value than the wooded lands near them.

The UK is less than 0.1% densely built on (called continuous urban fabric where 80% of the area is built on).

91.6% is not built on, consisting of farmland (56.7%) or natural (34.9%). Even including the less densely built on land (5.9%) around 78.6% of that land is not actual built on - parks, allotments, sports pitches, gardens, lakes/rivers etc. The total built land in 2012 was estimated at just 2.27% of England, going to the UK overall, it's under 1%



The UK could quite literally clone London and we'd still have around 97% of England, or over 99% of the UK not concrete



https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-42554635
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18623096

Nasqueron

wunferall wrote: »

You've got to laugh when certain remainers refer to the antics of Tommy Robinson and a few EDL supporters to try and decry Brexit somehow but then refuse to acknowledge that their equivalents in many EU countries hold seats in their parliaments, which here in the UK none do.

Wait until the end of May when they hold seats as MEP's too - yet these remainers want to be part of this whilst at the same time calling the very few UK extremists "dorks"! :huh:

Germany's AfD have 94 Bundestag seats.
The Netherlands Geert Wilders Party For Freedom has 20 seats.
Italy's Five Star have hundreds.
Austria's OVP have 62 seats.
I could go on and on but when these extremists gain seats in the European Parliament (as they certainly will) there is a very clear possibility of their changing the EU's course.
So far the EU as usual have no answer.
Just like those remainers who - for some reason - want to be associated with such extremism.

The sooner the UK can distance itself from what will inevitably be a far greater mess than these remainers think Brexit has been the better IMHO.

The EU has plenty of power blocs, the temporary rise of the far right isn't going to get into power, any more than Farage and his cronies could ever manage to change things while they were at it. Right wing populism is a fad, Trump is already showing he cannot deliver on his promises and his approval rating is the lowest average recorded for presidents since at least WW2. The generation of my peers and the ones younger than me are pro-EU, pro-globalism and against petty flag waving nationalism.



I don't even particularly like the EU but I do like the benefits we have from being in it, particularly the trade deals. Japan, South Korea, Canada etc have recently finished trade deals with the EU taking 7 years or so to negotiate, we have 70 free trade deals at the moment, as and when we leave, particularly a hard Brexit, we'll see our export industry collapse into WTO tariffs making them uncompetitive in the world (particularly for examples like farming where most of their exports go to the EU) and Britain is simply not big enough to replace our exports with selling internally

zagubov

antrobus wrote: »

I'm not sure what else is available. 100% laissez faire capitalism? A return to feudalism?

On a wider note, I'm baffled about two things:
1. how people think there's an -ism that'll solve everything. I doubt that there is, can be, could be such a thing within the wit of mankind.

2. Why the opposite of capitalism is allegedly communism. What - only two ownership models, the state and the private individual/company?

Well if businesses won't work in state or private hands there's other alternative ownership models such as
Crown Corporations
The Labour Movement
Co-ops such as Mondragon or John Lewis Partnership or the Building Societies
Communes such the Kibbutz movement
or no-real-ownership models such as the Airdrie Savings bank (the UK's last "real" TSB), sadly now wound down due to the economic system we think will save us all. Incidentally the TSB ownership system resembles the social ownership system Yugoslavia adopted when they decided the state should withdraw from ownership from economic enterprises.

We're at the start of finding out how we should organise our economic systems, whereas our government wants us to think we're at the end.

Arklight

zagubov wrote: »

On a wider note, I'm baffled about two things:
1. how people think there's an -ism that'll solve everything. I doubt that there is, can be, could be such a thing within the wit of mankind.

2. Why the opposite of capitalism is allegedly communism. What - only two ownership models, the state and the private individual/company?

Well if businesses won't work in state or private hands there's other alternatives ownership models such as
Crown Corporations
The Labour Movement
Co-ops such as Mondragon or John Lewis Partnership or the Building Societies
Communes such the Kibbutz movement
or no-real-ownership models such as the Airdrie Savings bank (the UK's last "real" TSB), sadly now wound down due to the economic system we think will save us all. Incidentally the TSB ownership system resembles the social ownership system Yugoslavia adopted when they decided the state should withdraw from ownership from economic enterprises.

We're at the start of finding out how we should organise our economic systems, whereas our government wants us to think we're at the end.

Because people believe on the whole, what the Establishment wants them to believe. Which is why there is so much squealing about Venezuela and Communism if anyone mentions renationalising the railways.

Personally I don't want the government to own supermarkets, but nor do I want the private sector to own schools and hospitals. It's a shame some people see no middle ground.

zagfles

zagubov wrote: »

On a wider note, I'm baffled about two things:
1. how people think there's an -ism that'll solve everything. I doubt that there is, can be, could be such a thing within the wit of mankind.

2. Why the opposite of capitalism is allegedly communism. What - only two ownership models, the state and the private individual/company?

Good questions - those who want the "overthrow" of capitalism generally seem to be communist types who want compulsory state ownership of everything rather than allowing any other models. But they can co-exist, together with lots of other models. We don't just have one system - as you point out...

Well if businesses won't work in state or private hands there's other alternatives ownership models such as
Crown Corporations

Bit like the BBC? We have that.

The Labour Movement

Not far removed from a co-op !!! trade union. We have both those.

Co-ops such as Mondragon or John Lewis Partnership or the Building Societies

We have those as well. Clearly. As well as credit unions

Communes such the Kibbutz movement
or no-real-ownership models such as the Airdrie Savings bank (the UK's last "real" TSB), sadly now wound down due to the economic system we think will save us all.

Most large corporate pension schemes operate on a similar basis. So we have those too.

We're at the start of finding out how we should organise our economic systems, whereas our government wants us to think we're at the end.

We already have a combination of state ownership, private ownership, co-ops, mutuals, and trustee based ownership. We have the freedom to choose which we use. No need to overthrow anything, is there?

zagubov

zagfles wrote: »

Good questions - those who want the "overthrow" of capitalism generally seem to be communist types who want compulsory state ownership of everything rather than allowing any other models. But they can co-exist, together with lots of other models. We don't just have one system - as you point out... Bit like the BBC? We have that.Not far removed from a co-op !!! trade union. We have both those. We have those as well. Clearly. As well as credit unionsMost large corporate pension schemes operate on a similar basis. So we have those too. We already have a combination of state ownership, private ownership, co-ops, mutuals, and trustee based ownership. We have the freedom to choose which we use. No need to overthrow anything, is there?

Don't know about overthrow, but we might well benefit from plenty of changes.

Most of the alternatives I mentioned don't involve an increase of wealth in private hands.

Or in the state's hands for that matter.

I don't understand why utilities need to be private oligopolies/ monopolies.

I'n not sure I'd want to buy a telly from a government manufacturer.

Or why we believe that foreign governments are naturally better owners of our services. Other countries would send their citizens abroad for training in their management techniques. We could do the same instead of handing ownerships to foreign buyers.

zagfles

zagubov wrote: »

Don't know about overthrow, but we might well benefit from plenty of changes.

Then people can choose to make those changes. Shop at John Lewis. Bank with Nationwide. Use a credit union. Watch the BBC.

Most of the alternatives I mentioned don't involve an increase of wealth in private hands.

Or in the state's hands for that matter.

Or in the hands of trustee controlled pension schemes...

I don't understand why utilities need to be private oligopolies/ monopolies.

They don't "need" to be. Maybe encourage more pension schemes to buy their shares? Or perhaps all the ordinary members of the public who bought shares in the privatisations should have kept hold of them and retained ownership rather than immediately flogging them to make a quick buck? Or perhaps they shouldn't have been privatised in the first place?

I'n not sure I'd want to buy a telly from a government manufacturer.

Or why we believe that foreign governments are naturally better owners of our services. Other countries would send their citizens abroad for training in their management techniques. We could do the same instead of handing ownerships to foreign buyers.

Handing? Did they get them free Naturally? The British own quite a lot of stuff abroad too.

Xenophobia aside, I can see arguments why some organisations would be better state run, railways, utilities etc, but that's just tinkering around the edges. It's not the fundamental change, the mandating of economic organisation that those who want to overthrow capitalism generally want, and which I and others have been taking the p out of in this thread.