Hey Guv can you lend us a fiver?

[teamsaint]

Take away pressure, and people behave much better. (including myself).
Take away fear, and another step change in behaviour will follow.
Take away the destructive aspects of our utterly nonsensical consumer society, and we will really be getting somewhere.

People who want power should be banned from having it.

90% taxes on incomes over £150k PA and government by an assembly picked by ballot would be a start.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

we are social primates, no human was or will be born without entering a group in which there is a structure of authority with powerful individuals and coalitions of interest .... [try this] ... the question is what kind of structure and behaviour ....


i guess my first thesis in starting this thread was that there is an optimum level of inequality in society and that we are presently far from this optimum .... too much inequality [in straightforward wealth and life chances terms] and disease, disorder and crime swell, too little and incentives are removed and too onerous a regulatory control is needed to maintain equality [as Kolakowski puts it, sustained equality require a tyranny to enforce it]

my second thesis is similar to Charles Moore, but i would go further and discredit the whole Reagan Thatcherite neo con agenda in so far as trickle down and economics are concerned, and without wishing to rerun either the whole of political philosophy or economic theory, it seems to me hard to escape the view that we have since 1979 been operating under a crook's charter ...

i follow Dewey in aspiring to a pragmatic meliorism, and thus find ideas of both 'left' and 'right' pragmatically useful in a given context ....and in the present context we both need to rediscover mutuality in our economics and simultaneously reform the workings of the state since the Blair Brown years have convinced me that our government machinery is both overweening and ineffective .... and i would add, alas given the phoney referendum on AV, that we need to think through just what might be meant by the concept of representation in our polis ....

my final thesis is that we are stuck, the coalition exemplifies how political leadership and authority is failing us, none were sufficiently persuasive, we still play nasty gang games and gossip in the media about personality .... we are deeply superficial in our public discussion at at time of the most serious threats to our well being ... small ideas that spring from ill developed ideology are trumpeted as Ministers strive for impact .... [shove your academies Mr Gove try thinking harder about education]


in a word, we're broke, can somebody lend us a fiver?

[eighthobstruction]

>>>> 'we are stuck' <<<< -CadaJa

what you are saying is that .....we are stucked

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

yep er well and truly

[eighthobstruction]

Just this moment finished listening to The ReUnion....which was dealing today with the people who made The Boys from the Blackstuff....excellent; in that a time was evoked , and placed easily as a picture before me....

[vinteuil]

er well and truly

Calum - I like your #77, like it a lot.

Are there currently any countries that you think are on a better path? The Scandinavians? - or is their social harmony so predicated on a largely homogenous population that the model might not be necessarily be transferable to a mongrel UK??

Costa Rica? Seems to win on lots of the equality measures...

I don't know. But any hints wd help...

[amateur51]

Here you are folks ....a little tipple for £75k....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14296263

Have you seen the size of that man's ....watch??

[eighthobstruction]

Dirty old men in Asia....http://www.guardian.co.uk/environmen...rous-pollution

Dirty old men of the Irish sea .... http://www.robedwards.com/2011/02/br...ope-again.html

[eighthobstruction]

Not the jolly green giant of Europe, but the dirty old man....Charles Moore....http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/c...of-Europe.html

[amateur51]

Just wanted to say what an enlivening & enlightening thread this is - I've learned loads. Many thanks to all (yes, even you scotty ).

One question ...

Danny Finkelstein ..... why?

I wouldn't let that man shake my sauce bottle, for fear that the lid would fly off ... and we all know what chaos that can cause.

[Serial_Apologist]

Not the jolly green giant of Europe, but the dirty old man....Charles Moore....http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/c...of-Europe.html

If ONLY they'd paint those wind generators another colour... but white!!! !!! Why not blue, or green, or camouflage colours - which might appeal to retired colonels! I suppose it's to stop the darned things being hit by aircraft! Or birds with bad eyesight?

Half agreeing (as always!) with Calum, the orthodox left position on inequality has often been misrepresented as "everyone should be paid exactly the same". Marx said that differentials should be based according to the amount of time necessary for a person charged with being in charge to acquire the necessary skills. Thus calculated, those at the "top", who ideally would be elected by those "below", with allowances inbuilt for a learning curve, but ultimately recallable, would not be on anything like the current pay levels given to ceo's, let alone the perks.

My own view of whether or not incentives are based on ambition to earn more than one's fellow humans, are based on what I know of myself, and on what ostensibly motivates the people who are my friends being similar to my own aspirations. The system we live under only takes account of the rewards of giving more to society than taking out, in terms, yes sure, of personal kudos, but above all in terms of offering role models quite different to those we now operate under. Can only religion motivate the wonderful people who work in the charities sector? I have to disagree with Scottycelt's implicit view of that being the case. One shouldn't be all self-effacing and prepared to self-sacrifice to some greater good when the existing system undermines the realisation of any kind of greater good - encourages inefficiency, couldn't give a damn, jobsworths, back-handers etc etc. Posed that way, that part of "human nature" which couples us to the other higher primates, being based on reciprocity, meets the "peer group pressure" argument from another perspective altogether, and it is one I would be quite happy with.

S-A

[eighthobstruction]

Here's Noreena Hertz'z article from 2009....http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/com...cle5798645.ece

Cwor....see you in the COOP Noreena....mines a Key Lime Cheesecake [essential weekend sustinence for a sustainable 8thO]

[handsomefortune]

....... "i came across an interesting example of the great wind debate".

no change there then!

[Serial_Apologist]

....... "i came across an interesting example of the great wind debate".

no change there then!

Like a workmate's of mine's wife told him: "I can just about put up with your farting in bed, but for gawd's sake stick your **** out of the duvet when you do!"

[vinteuil]

Danny Finkelstein .....

wiki tells us:

"Between 1981 and 1990 Daniel Finkelstein was a member of the SDP, becoming Chair of the Young Social Democrats on the defection of his predecessor Keith Toussaint to the Conservative Party during the 1983 general election campaign.[1] Subsequently he was elected youth representative on its National Committee, a Parliamentary candidate (Brent East 1987) and a close ally and adviser to David Owen, the SDP leader."

and as Amateur might point out -

... and we all know what chaos that can cause.