UK Politics Thread XI: Boris' Big Bombastic Brexit Bash

[Purgatio]

The overwhelming majority of people under capitalism don't live under the extreme conditions that Ostro painted tbh

A very western-centric viewpoint. Still, the system forces you to work for fear of death, and what you earn for your labour is determined by people who have a vested interest in paying you as little as possible. Would you make up such a system if it didn't exist already?

I would, this is the system of autonomous private ordering which best allows you to achieve a degree of individual self-determination and a self-directed life, philosophically I hold pretty closely to what was espoused in the now-defunct SCOTUS decisions of Allgeyer v. Louisiana and Lochner v. New York on the central importance of private bargains and private ordering to one's ability to construct and constitute one's life, future, and destiny, how one sees fit.

[Purgatio]

Dude, the point of building up wealth is to have some financial security and safety net for you and the family you care about, if all you can own are depreciating things like toothbrushes or handbags you can't build up anything secure or long-lasting for yourself and your future. Private autonomy and private ordering and individual self-determination is impossible in this world, hence why I call it an authoritarian dystopia.

Try and follow because this is a moment where you're almost on point.

Right?

Right.

The point of a socialist society is to build up a security for you and your family that is more sustainable than a privatized version of that security because it prevents a run of bad luck fucking your descendants over entirely, including if you're rich.

Workers cooperatives are a form of ownership of means of production i'm okay with.

Thats not individual security, you are totally dependent on an external actor, the State, deciding in its discretion to keep you fed and well-clothed, you are entitled to nothing, own nothing by right, your very existence from one day to the next is at the State's grace and mercy, deciding in its magnanimity to allow you to have this so-called 'security' at its discretion. I will have no part in this.

[Makdon]

The overwhelming majority of people under capitalism don't live under the extreme conditions that Ostro painted tbh

The still doesn't change my point, you even admitted some do. And even if most don't, others are still disenfranchised in lesser ways for no fair reason. Not that I hate capitalism, but it's bs to act like it's fair at all, and for it to be a good system by my metrics, it needs to be heavily regulated

[Purgatio]

The overwhelming majority of people under capitalism don't live under the extreme conditions that Ostro painted tbh

The still doesn't change my point, you even admitted some do. And even if most don't, others are still disenfranchised in lesser ways for no fair reason. Not that I hate capitalism, but it's bs to act like it's fair at all, and for it to be a good system by my metrics, it needs to be heavily regulated

No one is disenfranchised under a capitalist system, everyone has a right to freedom of contract and everyone has a right to acquire and purchase property and dispose of property as they wish. Its up to you as an individual to out there and make the most of those rights the best you can, to bargain the best you can and strike deals the best you can. You make your own life, your own scheme of private ordering, your own future and destiny. Thats a very fair system, regardless of where people end up in the end.

[Great Confederacy of Commonwealth States]

Yes, it is society's business, since in a vacuum, no-one would have such extraordinary amounts of wealth. In order to even garner a moderate amount of wealth, you need:

1. Enforceable property rights
2. A monetary system enforced by the State
3. Contract law enforced by State courts
4. A system of transferable rights allowed for by some sort of civil code or system
5. A banking system and banking laws
6. A concept of legal personality seperate from natural personality
7. Tort law
8. Infrastructure built and cared for by a State.

No-one who earns money does that entirely on their own. And if the system mentioned above creates a result that is detrimental to vast amounts of people while only benefiting a select few, then the system we have built has failed. That system is not natural, it was created and is maintained by us, and we can change it if necessary. When making a balance between rights, something human rights lawyers must do all the time, the right to property is far less important than the right to life of others.

The law sometimes steps in to enforce and vindicate a person's fundamental rights, but that does not mean those rights don't exist in the moral plane absenting the State's involvement. I believe all people have a right to life and bodily integrity, but in the absence of the State and laws against murder, assault, and battery, coupled with torts like wrongful death lawsuits and trespass to the person, those rights would be pretty useless and unenforceable. That does not mean those rights aren't inalienable and central to human dignity and personhood, nor does it support an overbroad conclusion that therefore society can amend the terms of one's 'right to life' or 'right to bodily integrity' however it likes just because those rights would be hard to enforce in its absence.

Yes, that is true. But that does not fly for property rights, which are abstract by nature. A right to life and a life to bodily integrity are pretty fundamental things, but the owning and transfer of property, especially property you have not worked for... that is on a different level. It is reasonable for me to have a sole right to the clothes on my back and the food and shelter I need to survive, as well as things that make me happy and secure. However, when there are people out sleeping on the street in the bitter cold, and I technically have property rights over some apartment complex which I keep empty for tax reasons, while I don't even live in it myself (and I might not even know that complex is my property), those property rights become abstract to a point to be unrecognisable.

See, this is the separation you need to make, in my opinion. There are reasonable property rights, for example the things you yourself created, the shelter you inhabit, the food you need to survive, that sort of thing. Even the things you have worked hard for to afford. But when property becomes so abstracted as to include things you don't need and only technically own for its profits, that goes beyond the natural right to property, especially if there are people in need of aid.

[The New California Republic]

The sheer amount of doublethink required to be able to hold onto and believe these two statements and for one's brain not to melt down is absolutely monstrous.

Like I said, he'll be a human rights lawyer for human rights abusers

I have no idea, all I know is that the very idea of it really turns my stomach.

[Great Confederacy of Commonwealth States]

The still doesn't change my point, you even admitted some do. And even if most don't, others are still disenfranchised in lesser ways for no fair reason. Not that I hate capitalism, but it's bs to act like it's fair at all, and for it to be a good system by my metrics, it needs to be heavily regulated

No one is disenfranchised under a capitalist system, everyone has a right to freedom of contract and everyone has a right to acquire and purchase property and dispose of property as they wish. Its up to you as an individual to out there and make the most of those rights the best you can, to bargain the best you can and strike deals the best you can. You make your own life, your own scheme of private ordering, your own future and destiny. Thats a very fair system, regardless of where people end up in the end.

In theory? Yes. In practice, you need an army of lawyers and significant funds to actually enforce those rights. People who cannot afford legal fees are kept out of this fairness. People who do not know the ins and outs of contract law. People who cannot read the language of the contract, either because it is too complex or because it is in a language they don't understand. Hidden fees and grounds for termination make a company way more powerful than a private individual, and the power disparity between landlords and tenants make this even worse.

I think we agree on the basic point, but we diverge on what is fair. You actually need a lot of government intervention to create the system which you think already exists, but doesn't.

[Makdon]

No one is disenfranchised under a capitalist system, everyone has a right to freedom of contract and everyone has a right to acquire and purchase property and dispose of property as they wish. Its up to you as an individual to out there and make the most of those rights the best you can, to bargain the best you can and strike deals the best you can. You make your own life, your own scheme of private ordering, your own future and destiny. Thats a very fair system, regardless of where people end up in the end.

Let's go through this bit by bit. "No one is disenfranchised under a capitalist system" remember miners in the twenties? "everyone has a right to freedom of contract and everyone has a right to acquire and purchase property and dispose of property as they wish" In theory, sure, but once you're screwed over in capitalism, there's almost no coming back, and people are screwed over for no reason all the time. "Its up to you as an individual to out there and make the most of those rights the best you can, to bargain the best you can and strike deals the best you can" It's hardly fair to treat people based only on these things, and it certainly isn't true that there's an even playing field. "You make your own life, your own scheme of private ordering, your own future and destiny." Not if you're born into debt. Not if you can't get a job because of your race. Not if you die from a disease you don't have the money to treat

[Bears Armed]

The point of a socialist society is to build up a security for you and your family that is more sustainable than a privatized version of that security because it prevents a run of bad luck fucking your descendants over entirely, including if you're rich.

That's the theory.
In practice, so far, trying to implement in 'modern' societies at anything above the village or kibbutz level has inevitably resulted in lower total wealth and thus to lower amounts available for most of the people involved (although the governing politicians, and their leading propagandists or enforcers, tend to do okay out of it...).

_____________________________________________________

Me, I'm still laughing at the irony of the Blyth Valley result: All of those claims from Corbyn & Labour that the NHS would only be safe in their hands (despite history, and the nature of the policies in their manifesto, suggesting strongly that they would soon run out of enough money to run it even as well as is currently the case...), and who is the first Conservative MP elected? It's a man who's spent the last thirty years working in the NHS...

[Celritannia]

This election means one thing.

We can all have a nice hard Brexit that will make us richer, bring us together, and make us happier. We will be the envy of the world, with world-class trade links, the perfect political system and hopefully next to no public services.

Do you know how long new trade deals will take?
Do you know how much trade we will lose when we leave the EU?

[Vassenor]

The point of a socialist society is to build up a security for you and your family that is more sustainable than a privatized version of that security because it prevents a run of bad luck fucking your descendants over entirely, including if you're rich.

That's the theory.
In practice, so far, trying to implement in 'modern' societies at anything above the village or kibbutz level has inevitably resulted in lower total wealth and thus to lower amounts available for most of the people involved (although the governing politicians, and their leading propagandists or enforcers, tend to do okay out of it...).

_____________________________________________________

Me, I'm still laughing at the irony of the Blyth Valley result: All of those claims from Corbyn & Labour that the NHS would only be safe in their hands (despite history, and the nature of the policies in their manifesto, suggesting strongly that they would soon run out of enough money to run it even as well as is currently the case...), and who is the first Conservative MP elected? It's a man who's spent the last thirty years working in the NHS...

And yet not even two days after the election there's already calls to move to US style insurance. Funny that.

[Celritannia]

You should actually talk to a psychologist about this... or just continue predating.

Using political beliefs to question mental health, how nice.

As someone who has mental health issues, I will not survive under a privatised health service.
Like the majority of the UK.

But it's alright for you tax avoiding people with loads of money. Not for 99% of the country.

[Celritannia]

That literally just makes it worse.

Person being refused a product: I can't afford it wah wah wah wah!

Person who has the product: You don't get it then.

This is why I oppose state schools, housing, health services on principal. It's not a poor persons money, they're stealing off people who earned that wealth to gain a quality of life they wouldn't be able to afford off their own backs. They have no right to those products.

In a civilised community, although it may be composed of self-reliant individuals, there will be some persons who will be unable at some period of their lives to look after themselves, and the question of what is to happen to them may be solved in three ways – they may be neglected, they may be cared for by the organised community as of right, or they may be left to the goodwill of individuals in the community.

- The Social Worker, Clement Attlee, page 30.

Charity is only possible without loss of dignity between equals. A right established by law, such as that to an old age pension, is less galling than an allowance made by a rich man to a poor one, dependent on his view of the recipient's character, and terminable at his caprice.

- The Social Worker, Clement Attlee, page 75.

[SD_Film Artists]

'Humanity' and 'Society' can completely collapse for all I care. What do they matter lol

But I'm doing a human rights degree and hope to become a human rights lawyer.

The sheer amount of doublethink required to be able to hold onto and believe these two statements and for one's brain not to melt down is absolutely monstrous.

The key to victory is knowing your enemy. How can you defeat human rights if you don't know how they work?

[Celritannia]

The army and police are also a bunch of poors. Poors with access to tanks and machine guns I wouldn't be counting on them in your dystopian future if I were you.

Which is why the Roman elite knew how important it was to keep the army happy and rich.

The Roman society also had one of the earliest social programmes.

[Celritannia]

Yikes, looks like its time to withdraw from a treaty.

We have a great thing in our system, you'll love this. Our courts don't have to give a shit about treaties unless they've actually been passed into UK law by an act of parliament, it's why we required the human rights act.

And the human right's act is necessary.
If we didn't have it, employers could do what they want, like refusing to hire blind people.

In order to have human rights, you need society.

[Fartsniffage]

https://twitter.com/Lord_Sugar/status/1 ... 3200106496

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

Which is why the Roman elite knew how important it was to keep the army happy and rich.

The Roman society also had one of the earliest social programmes.

Implemented after the Patricians almost destroyed the Republic a century before they actually did it one might add. <.>

[Bears Armed]

Do you know how long new trade deals will take?

Probably a lot less time that the naysayers would have it: After all, if they were right then Boris wouldn't even be anywhere near getting EU approval for his 'Withdrawal Agreement' yet...

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

Do you know how long new trade deals will take?

Probably a lot less time that the naysayers would have it: After all, if they were right then Boris wouldn't even be anywhere near getting EU approval for his 'Withdrawal Agreement' yet...

That's because it's the same Withdrawal Agreement they bitched about for 2 years straight.

[Souseiseki]

Do you know how long new trade deals will take?

Probably a lot less time that the naysayers would have it: After all, if they were right then Boris wouldn't even be anywhere near getting EU approval for his 'Withdrawal Agreement' yet...

i mean you're right in that we didn't think the WA was even possible, but that was because of stuff like northern ireland and boris approach to nothern ireland seems to be just "fuck 'em" so that obstacle is out of the way. still going to take anywhere between 3-7 years optimistically.

[Fenhamstan]

Bye bye Europe, aaaahhhh ha ha ha ha ha ha!

[Iwassoclose]

I guess my thread about old people being banned from voting has some merit now

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

Bye bye Europe, aaaahhhh ha ha ha ha ha ha!

How's life in Airstrip One, USA?

[Gormwood]

https://twitter.com/Lord_Sugar/status/1205568923200106496

It's like the election heralded a sociopath pride movement.