Senate College: Free Exchange of Ideas or Liberals Cancelling Chicken Sandwiches?

You have know idea how loudly I just laughed at that post lol

 

SO IT TURNS out this just came up in the Best Of All Newspapers:

http://www.economist.com/news/brita...orn-yet-marx-becomes-more-relevant-day-labour

Yet Mr McDonnell is right: there is an enormous amount to learn from Marx. Indeed, much of what Marx said seems to become more relevant by the day. The essence of his argument is that the capitalist class consists not of wealth creators but of rent seekers—people who are skilled at expropriating other people’s work and presenting it as their own. Marx was blind to the importance of entrepreneurs in creating something from nothing. He ignored the role of managers in improving productivity. But a glance at British business confirms that there is a lot of rent seeking going on. In 1980 the bosses of the 100 biggest listed firms earned 25 times more than a typical employee. In 2016 they earned 130 times more. Their swollen salaries come with fat pensions, private health-care and golden hellos and goodbyes.

...

Marx predicted that capitalism would become more concentrated as it advanced. The number of listed companies has declined at a time when profits are close to their highest levels ever. Concentration is particularly pronounced in the most advanced sectors of the economy. Google controls 85% of Britain’s search-engine traffic. Marx was also right that capitalism would be increasingly dominated by finance, which would become increasingly reckless and crisis-prone.

There's a reason I do what I do for a living.

What about his most famous prediction—that capitalism inevitably produces immiseration for the poor even as it produces super-profits for the rich? “Immiseration” is too strong a word to describe the condition of the poor in a country with a welfare state and a minimum wage. Yet many trends are worrying. Average wages are still below their level before the financial crisis in 2008 and are not expected to exceed it for several years. The rise of the Uber economy threatens to turn millions of people into casual workers who eat only what they can kill.

...

The best way to save yourself from being Marx’s next victim is to start taking him seriously.

Given Americna firms have gained competitive advantage by behaving like one sees jock bullies behave in film and television, flushing competitor heads down the toilet etc, one doesn't feel the cries for a level playing field have substance here.

But you haven't said convincingly why staying the US deserves special consideration or rewards?

But I addressed this in detail, and whilst I get those walking the catwalks of the Paris commune don't want to consider it because they only bought those copies of Kapital and No Logo for show, I figured you'd at least acknowledge it.

They're not creating hardship. This is just the most insipid, asinine reasoning - that wealth is zero sum. The existence of wealth is not the automatic trigger for poverty. It's not a limited pool of funds that someone cut up unfairly.

Are you legitimately of the view the government should subsidise this work? Should they bring back farriers and coopers and thatchers? The piano was a booming consumer good in the late 19th century, as a tool of social cohesion. The "wireless" radio changed that, as people now sat around the radio - not piano - to listen. Should we spare a thought, take off our hats and cast our eyes to our feet for their plight before restoring the piano to a front and centre role?

Why no! you cry, for that is silly Ender. I'm talking modern jobs like manufacturing. But that's where I raise my eyebrows and counter with an emphasised "modern?" These aren't modern roles. These are roles of 50 years ago. Blue collar jobs that you and the Orange matryoshka want to bring back are the piano makers and coopers and stagecoach builders of today. If you aren't going to insist on subsidies and protections for those who make these obsolete goods, you shouldn't be demanding jobs come back to the US. You should be demanding the US find new jobs in new roles for these workers, which is what I've been saying for years.

Also for a country that's waged war on worker rights and trades unions (and yes, I know I don't like unions in Aust/GB, but that's because their power is absurd and self-serving, often at the expense of workers. Unless someone wants to tell me holding a site to ransom because they want a year's worth of bread, milk, biscuits and newspapers delivered daily is a blow for equality) it's a bit rich to complain about US companies "taking advantage".

Firstly, I've invested a bit in a managed fund that invests in emerging companies in South East Asia, because the fund manager is a relative and why not. It's tax deductable if it goes belly up. Anyway, I've also done some freelance due diligence work for them because that's aligned to what I do now and at no point is the advantage of investing in a firm "because the OH&S culture is ****". That actually generally does cause me to upgrade my risk assessment because at the end of the day - and look, this might be because we're emerging markets funds - people dying on the job because there's no safety is bad for business.

Secondly, that these countries don't have these protections is more a stage of economic development. Risk, compliance, and OHS cost money. If you have none you're not going to smash your OpEx through the roof on these costs. You need to basically build up the wealth before you start to see those protections get in. There's an assumption by our friends in their Coco Engels finery that the inequality of the industrial revolution was not a universal thing; we went through it, we figured out a better way to treat workers on the other side, therefore nobody else needs to go through it.

Idiocy. Eye-watering stupidity. Towering ignorance.

If anyone here who claimed to care about the poor, and I mean actually care and not because it accessorised well, would have at least - one hopes and assumes - tried to get across development economics. For a long time, we threw money as "development aid" or, if you're America, gave generous developement aid for the underprivileged military to be given a chance to stand up against communism. And we saw nothing for it. I don't mean ROI, more ROE - we never saw the countries for whom we tried to alleviate poverty turn out any less poor. So a new school of thought emerged and began to argue for sustained development of infrastructure. These are the guys who will tell you, rightly, that anyone who sponsors a child is a heartless POS who is only interested in their own feelings. They'll tell you instead to sponsor community infrastructure. Build up the village rather than look after one kid in it - the "teach them to fish" approach.

Economies, at least if there's any interest in a meaningful long term solution for developing states, need foundations which means the same teething process we went through is what they'll need to go through. Short term pain, long term gain, and before someone breathlessly mentions exploitation or any other buzzwords they got whilst shopping online for the best vintage Che t-shirt, it really depends whether you want them to be poor or not in 50 years time, kids.

And as China showed conclusively, if you do it properly, you will lift scores out of poverty and improve their wages substantially.

But behaviours are driven by cultures, and cultures come from the top. If you want American companies - and really, this should extent to American servicemen and women, and American tourists - to behave like normal human beings and not utter chumps, then you need to see cultural change at home.

Your country has no concept of society. It's not built to include the group, just 300m+ individuals. I mean, you have an actual lawmakers saying that it's not his obligation to pay for anyone else's healthcare! Whereas I just got a .5% hit on the levy I pay to subsidise medicare here, in the latest budget, which is like an extra $1000 a year in tax for a service I don't really use. You guys need to be a better people, better society, better country before you can challenge corporate culture in a meaningful way.

Because, J-Rod, the country that has defiled the meaning of capitalism most profoundly and notably is the US.

 

http://www.salon.com/2017/07/11/ame...rity-of-republicans-now-think-college-is-bad/

This is a huge reason why things suck.

 

That leaves state lotteries as the primary vehicle for providing economic opportunity to children from lower income families. I like those odds!

 

Unless it's either Bible College or Trump U. Then it's all good.

 

Yeah how the hell is a bible university a thing?

 

*Looks at title*

...

Jesus Christ

 

Are you taking the name of the founding father of Murica, the blond haired blue eyed Anglo-Saxon king of kings, in vain?

 

"Anti-intellectualism". I hate that phrase; the connotation being that unless you get a four-year liberal arts college degree, you're somehow less than civilized.

THANK YOU.

 

yeah so it's not just that I love irony but you guys struggle massively to define this term which just proves its point:

Anti-intellectualism is a hostility to and mistrust of intellect, intellectuals, and intellectualism commonly expressed as deprecation of education and philosophy or dismissal of art, literature, and science as impractical and even contemptible human pursuits

It is not just about people with degrees looking down upon those who don't; it's priding the blue collar homespun "wisdom" over the learned or wise.

Christopher Hitchens was speaking of George W Bush when he said this, but he might as well have been speaking of Americans as a whole:

"He is unusually incurious, abnormally unintelligent, amazingly inarticulate, fantastically uncultured, extraordinarily uneducated, and apparently quite proud of all these things."

Or, if you prefer, think upon Bill Hicks' "Well, looks like we got ourselves a reader" skit.

 

^ Anti-intellectualism

 

Anti-intellectualism is a mindset, not the lack of a formal education...and it is a mindset that is being actively fostered and encouraged by the right...because the truth and the seeking of truth is not conducive to their agenda.

 

Please.

The US politics thread shows the so-called left in America are not only not immune, but prolific offenders.

 

Worth mentioning in that regard that one of the American left's favorite sons, RFK Jr, is a rabid anti-vaxxer, was even on Fox News last night spreading his idiocy.

 

Er, it is actually encouraged by the system.

Rational debate and dialogue, in-depth and intelligent discussions, cannot take place if the system breeds "us vs them" mentality. The reason for the unintelligent and puerile rhetoric is because both sides are busy trying to depict the other as the Devil incarnate.

 

To be fair, though, anti-vaxxer idiocy is far worse, and more on the left, in Europe.

 

I've always defined anti-intellectualism as "the willful rejection of established scientific facts." You see it all the time with those who reject evolution, the Big Bang, climate change, vaccinations, and similar concepts.

 

I think this phenomenon is referred to as "willful ignorance." For the most ardent practitioners it's a source of pride.

That's ****ed up.

 

The Devil you say?

 

And you would be astonishingly incorrect.

 

My first reaction was because they're c-words. I won't lie.

But also because there's lots more blue collar imbeciles voting for Trump, and they have suspicion over any book that doesn't have quotes from Jaysus, pictures of guns, or "*******" in them.

Honestly, why are American conservatives so stupid? I mean, they are objectively stupid. Why though?

David Cameron. Former Conservative PM, identified as a one nation Tory. This means he was less hateful of the poor than the Republicans could stomach. Graduate of Eton and Oxford (on a scholarship known as an Exhibition), where he earned a Master of Arts in Politics, Philosophy and Economy, with first class honours.

Republicans would call him an effete communist.