Occupy London! Here we go again!

Dolph said:
When you advocate the same positions they support, you suggest implicit support for their aims. You can't exactly share their positions and reject them, well unless you're going for a Judian people's front approach.
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I presume you've never had the misfortune of actually dealing with them then?
 
PermaBanned said:
No, you have just demonstrated a complete inability to accept that somebody might (shock horror) have a different opinion to yourself.
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I think Dolph accepted along time ago that people have different opinions to him. All people who hold strong opinions have to accept that fact. The challenge is to not be so blinkered in your own opinions that you can't see that other people may be right, that you may be wrong and that whilst you may be right with the information you have at hand now or at the time you formulated your opinion there may be some little fact that will completely blow your theory out of the water. BTW Marxism only works for insects.
 
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Is it any wonder the people at this protest don't have any money, instead of doing anything to earn money they are just sitting around waving signs all day.
 
PermaBanned said:
Frankly the state of the 'organized left' in Britain today is about as embarrassing as the state of politics in general.
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That's because ultimately the position is that of a fringe group, not a mainstream one, because the majority of the population do not want anything to do with left wing politics because they've seen what happens every time the left get their hands on a country.

Politics generally is defective, you won't find me disagreeing there, but the solution to broken politics can never ever be a bigger, more powerful state, nor a more over-reaching one.
 
maustin said:
I think Dolph accepted along time ago that people have different opinions to him. All people who hold strong opinions have to accept that fact. The challenge is to not be so blinkered in your own opinions that you can't see that other people may be right, that you may be wrong and that whilst you may be right with the information you have at hand now or at the time you formulated your opinion there may be some little fact that will completely blow your theory out of the water. BTW Marxism only works for insects.
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Exactly, a failure to change my mind doesn't mean it can't be changed, it means you've failed to change it.

Maustin, for example, has made me reconsider things and amend my view over some issues, by providing a decent argument, with supporting evidence. It doesn't mean he'll always convince me, just as I won't always convince him of my position, but it doesn't mean we can't change things, just that we haven't reached the ideal position between our two states yet.
 
Dolph said:
That's because ultimately the position is that of a fringe group, not a mainstream one, because the majority of the population do not want anything to do with left wing politics because they've seen what happens every time the left get their hands on a country.

Politics generally is defective, you won't find me disagreeing there, but the solution to broken politics can never ever be a bigger, more powerful state, nor a more over-reaching one.
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Neither of us could ever hope to speak for the majority since the majority of the population don't have a clue nor do they wish to when it comes to anything to do with politics. I guess the problem with the organised left today could boil down to the same problem that's plagued it for over a century. That being, a small individual or group takes a brilliant idea, teaches it to people to get them to follow and then they abuse and exploit them, cannibalising the philosophy for their own means - personal gain.
 
Jokester said:
But life would be a hell of a lot duller if all we could spend our income on was essentials like food. Everything else is luxuries, doesn't mean that the production of luxuries isn't making something of value, even if it's a "useless" app.
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Well wealth is the surplus of your production after your basic needs have been met. We don't have a surplus though, we have debt as a substitute for wealth. When the credit locks-up, which is on the verge of happening, we will barely be able to meet our basic needs let alone have a surplus to buy luxuries. That's my point.

I suppose it's not completely fair to call iphone apps useless because under productive capitalism those sort of things are big motivators to work. Let's say you want the latest iphone, you are going to work some overtime down the mine or in the factory to afford it. It has motivated you to produce more overall wealth than you would otherwise.

There are only really 2 human motivations for work; fear and greed.

That is why i believe capitalism is the best thing for Europe because it operates on the motivation of greed which is a healthy and natural instinct. There is a little bit of fear to get a roof over your head and food on the table, but everything else is greed. Cars, PCs, Sky TV, iphones and hollidays is all greed. It makes you work harder to be able to buy it.

Communism operates on the motivation of FEAR. Because the wealth is owned by the state you don't have any greed motivation because you can't buy anything nice, except for the piece of crap the government issues you (like a lada car after a 2 year wait). There is no incentive to work hard. The only incentive is the fact they will ship you off to the gulag prison camp if they think you are slacking.

BTW the people who do have a surplus at the moment are the chinese.
 
PermaBanned said:
You can call me many things but apathetic is not one of them.
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Sure, you seem to care.. but it doesn't translate into rationale or in many cases anything factual. I'd rather take someone who is apathetic than someone who has delusions, frankly.

I love that you care, but your record on topics of politics and society is shaky at best. Turn your enthusiasm to rationale and the search of truths, and you'll go far with it :D
 
Hatter The Mad said:
Sure, you seem to care.. but it doesn't translate into rationale or in many cases anything factual. I'd rather take someone who is apathetic than someone who has delusions, frankly.

I love that you care, but your record on topics of politics and society is shaky at best. Turn your enthusiasm to rationale and the search of truths, and you'll go far with it :D
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Actually good advice.

[TW]Fox;20333907 said:
Ever voted? :p
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Would it matter? All you're voting for is which shade of turd brown you want :p
 
PermaBanned said:
Neither of us could ever hope to speak for the majority since the majority of the population don't have a clue nor do they wish to when it comes to anything to do with politics. I guess the problem with the organised left today could boil down to the same problem that's plagued it for over a century. That being, a small individual or group takes a brilliant idea, teaches it to people to get them to follow and then they abuse and exploit them, cannibalising the philosophy for their own means - personal gain.
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All systems are subject to human nature, that's why the most successful ones are those that work with human nature, rather than demanding it change to fit the system. Our current system is most certainly not perfect, for a whole variety of reasons, but the better system still needs to work with human nature, that means embracing the motivations of humans and channelling them to the benefit of the majority, rather than working against it and hoping humans change the way they have thought for thousands of years.
 
I lol'd

An exercise in equally distributed wealth:

There is an estimated $100 trillion of wealth in the world and an estimated population of around 7 billion. Divvy that up equally and each person will get around $14,000.

So we’ve reset humanity and each individual has a personal wealth of $14,000. Keeping the international birth rate at 360 births per day, that means that every day, everyone’s share of the pot decreases by approx $1, meaning that by 2050, everyone’s share of current global wealth will be zero.

Next, we have to sort out the wage issue. Global GNP is estimated to be around $71trillion per year and let’s say 75% of the global population are of working age. That gives everyone an annual salary of around $13,500.

Next, we take away what governments will need to spend to keep us all alive. The average Government tax revenue is around 20% globally, so that will reduce everyone’s income by approx $2,700 per year, giving everyone a take-home salary of $10,819 per year, or $902 per month.

Next, we have to equally distribute housing, which means knocking down all existing homes and rebuilding equally sized homes for everyone. Let’s take an average household of 4 individuals, the means we’ll need to build approx 1.75billion new homes globally.

If we say the global average size of a dwelling is 80 square metres and average cost of building a home is $200 per meter squared, that brings the cost of building a new home for everyone to around $28trillion. So let’s remove that from the government tax revenue and what we get is a one-off tax bill per working individual of approx $5,300, remove that from the annual global take-home for the first year (the government can’t borrow as the capital markets have been disbanded by the way) and we have a miserly $457 per month.

But hang on, we forgot the cost of energy. In 2008, between $5.5 & $7.75 Trillion was paid for fuel and electricity worldwide, so we’ll take a conservative estimate of $6trillion. Let’s divvy that up between our new, equally sized households and you get a cost of $3,400 per year, per household. If we assume that our average household of four consists of two working individuals then that takes another $142 from the monthly take-home, leaving approx $314.

Now let’s look at cost of living, a survey of 1000 cities globally puts the total consumer price of items at approx $164 per person, per month. Don’t forget 360,000 new mouths to feed every day.

So there are two things here, first, we have our working population who are taking home $314 per month, given that we’ve assumed each household has two working individuals and that the average household contains 4 people, that gives each working individual a bill of $328, giving them a deficit of $14 per month.

Next we have the first elephant in the room, our birth rate. The global population increases (at current levels) by around 2% per year, that means that every year, take home pay will reduce by 2%, don’t forget the extra tax revenue the government will need to spend on the expanding population. Let’s say a conservative estimate of a total 3% cost increase per year, add that to the take-home and you get a perpetually reducing income.

Given that capitalism has now ceased to exist and there is no new wealth generation, we can estimate that within 60 years (conservatively keeping birth-rate at 360k per day), households will not have enough income to pay for energy and food unless there is some kind of population control put in place.

Given that there is no new wealth generation, then the global population must be maintained at equilibrium for eternity. This will mean that for every birth there must be a death. In 2011 there are projected to be around 130 million births and 55 million deaths, that gives us a short fall of 75 million. This means that on average, for every new person born, 2 people will have to be executed. Or, we limit the number of new births, but given our shortfall, this means that within 2 years we would have to cease new births altogether (we haven’t factored-in the cost of all these controls by the way).

So in a nutshell, what the #occupy movement are demanding is poverty and famine for all, necessary execution for some, or an eventual ban on reproduction.

THINK IT THROUGH!!!
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