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Off Topic / Re: The Political Thread
« on: 18 September, 2015, 11:39:39 AM »What's more galling is that moderate socialist ideas are rapidly falling by the wayside, and even moderate centrist ideas are under threat. If this Conservative government continues the way it is, the NHS will at best become a service of last resort (i.e. a literal emergency service alone) in areas where no private companies want to work, or where they cannot profit enough. It will elsewhere be a shield brand. Naturally, these private companies will expect the 'actual' NHS to take over when they quit in a hissy fit, and will also be subsidised by taxation, much like the current train system.
What worries me at least equally is when you see Conservatives talking about offloading other services and infrastructure from government. There've already been rumblings about privatising not just new but also existing roads and motorways. Beyond that, lots of talk around education is pretty scary, putting the building blocks in place to free all schools from government, and enabling privatisation there. Conservative education policy is, at best, extremely troubling and hugely misunderstands the world we exist in, but the notion of offloading schools (under the guise of local control, but in reality corporate control) seems like something from a hideous dystopian novel rather than a reality that could conceivably happen.
And ultimately, it all comes down to money—what people believe we have, and what politicians can convince people we should do with it. The Greens are laughed at for their idea of a citizen's income. The idea there is to essentially eradicate the benefits system alongside radically overhauling taxation, and just pay everyone a 'living wage'. Those who earn would obviously enjoy a better quality of life, and once you're some way up the ladder, your living wage would be taxed back out of you.
This is the kind of thing that sends Daily Mail readers into apoplectic fury, because SCROUNGERS and WORKSHY LAYABOUTS. But it's just a simplification of what we have combined with a safety net, and with an eye on the future where it's pretty damn clear there will be far fewer jobs available. Most importantly, it's also a system that has been tried, albeit only on city scales. Under such circumstances, it was usually a success, but also bulldozed out of existence by people on the right. (See also: just building houses for the homeless rather than trying to deal with people without housing in other ways.)
I think my hope with Corbyn is that he makes more people think about the wider situations. He's clearly not nearly as radical as the Greens, but he has a sense of social justice, and his policies on the whole look to be beneficial for the country as a whole. If that means I take a personal hit myself, in order to assist a few people who have far less, so be it. I'd sooner that than end up with an extra few hundred quid at the end of the year, knowing that many millions of people are now worse off and facing even tougher struggles to survive.
I don't think its correct to say Corbyn is less radical than the Greens. He's just a different type of radical.
The difference between Bennites (which is what Corbyn and McDonnell really are deep down) and the Greens is that the former still believes in economic growth. In the best case scenario, they believe their policies will cause the economy to grow, and in the worst case scenario, they'll still ensure that working people get a fairer share. The greens on the otherhand don't believe in economic growth, believing that mankind's obsession with getting more and more stuff has damaged the planet, and that if we don't learn to live within our means we'll eventually kill the planet.
This philosophical difference has interesting consequences for how they approach the unpopularity of their ideas. The Greens can argue that its people putting their selfish desires above the needs of the planet, but Bennites can't say that because they seek to meet the material needs of the working classes. So instead they fall back on 'false consciousness', the idea that people have been tricked to vote against their own interests.
