The Political Thread

[The Legendary Shark]

I, for one, would like to read your post on law, Dr X. Don't worry about coming off as pompous - it never worried me, as anyone here can confirm!

[The Legendary Shark]

No, Recrewt, I'm not suggesting that. I'm suggesting that government has no authority over anyone at all due to its inherantly illegitimate nature.

[Jim_Campbell]

Aye, but the way the UK managed to expand the economy and pay off our debts in the wake of the second world war wouldn't win you many votes today.

I wasn't suggesting that the two were comparable; the fact that they aren't is rather my point.

Cheers

Jim

[JamesC]

No, Recrewt, I'm not suggesting that. I'm suggesting that government has no authority over anyone at all due to its inherantly illegitimate nature.

But don't you think that people want rules and laws and structure? And if so doesn't that have to come from somewhere? And then everyone has to have some understanding of what's going on and everyone has to have accountability.
For me it's just the last area where the problem lies at the moment and I think that arguing about the first two points, in the current climate, is a needless distraction.

To make a clumsy analogy, take a game of Monopoly. It has rules and a structure which is what makes it work as a game using it's various components. It works best if everyone understands the rules and everyone is accountable to them.
You can play as the banker, with a group of other players who do not understand the rules. This puts you in a powerful position and if the rules are withheld from the other players and they just rely on what you tell them you can win every time. This is what I think is happening under our current political system.

The way to improve things is to encourage political thinking and sensible debate. For many people, the only political debates they see are highly sensationalised television debates in which, for the sake of entertainment, they'll take a subject like immigration and pit a hard line Muslim extremist preacher against a member of the BNP as if that's going to reach a sensible conclusion.

[Theblazeuk]

But what about crimes like murder? Virtually everybody knows that murder is wrong so even if authority passes legislation outlawing murder it wouldn't make any difference at all to the crime itself. Just because some legislation happens to forbid murder, rape or theft doesn't make those crimes unlawful any more than absence of such legislation makes them lawful. The overwhelming majority of legislation has one of only two purposes: to raise revenue for the state (by imposing fines, license fees and charges etc.) and to keep those in authority in authority.

Virtually everybody knows that murder is wrong but it would still happen way more frequently if there was no law against it - no agreement that if you did it, a more powerful group of people would intercede and stop you or punish you. Otherwise for some people the only obstacle would be the difficulty and risk posed by the potential victims themselves.

And I'm afraid that murder, rape and theft are definitely unlawful because some legislation happens to forbid murder, rape or theft. There are plenty of people who get away with these crimes and are only ever stopped from further perpetrating them because of the laws and authority of society - and the fact that those laws and that authority can be backed up by force.

On a lesser level just look at the bloody roads. If it wasn't for the law people would treat red lights worse than they treat the speed limit at the moment.

[Recrewt]

Whilst it's true that UK debt has continued to rise if there hadn't been austerity surely it would have risen even more?

Well, no -- that's the crux of the debate. The deficit arises because of the shortfall between Govt income and expenditure. The counter argument against austerity is that it causes the economy to contract by making hundreds of thousands of public sector employees unemployed. These people stop putting money into their local economies causing the private sector to contract as well. Additionally, these people then increase the strain on the state coffers because they're taking more out in unemployment benefits than they're putting in in taxes.

Quite, "Spend in a recession, cut in a boom," said Keynes.  The real problem is that both Mr Osborne and Mr Brown failed to follow this.  I agree that some of the austerity measures have been too severe but given what they started with, the govt had to be cautious with their borrowing. 

[Jim_Campbell]

I agree that some of the austerity measures have been too severe but given what they started with, the govt had to be cautious with their borrowing.

Except that I don't accept the basic premise that this government's concern is prudent borrowing or well-managed public finances. If those were their concerns, they wouldn't be throwing money down the black hole that is Ian Duncan Smith's Universal Credit disaster; they wouldn't be giving away hundreds of millions of pounds' worth of publicly-owned property to privately-owned consortia and companies in the form of academy schools; they wouldn't have changed the university tuition system to the point where it's so expensive that the increased defaults will mean it costs the state more than the system it replaced. And, as previously mentioned, they wouldn't be paying a private company hundreds of millions of pounds to expend ten times the resources chasing £1.7bn of benefit fraud than HMRC is allowed to expend chasing £70bn of tax. They wouldn't have pushed through NHS reforms that suck money out of the state healthcare system without delivering a single pound in extra care or services.

It's abundantly clear that this government is philosophically opposed to a vast raft of public services and that 'austerity' is merely a smokescreen to enable the most comprehensive dismantling of our social infrastructure in sixty years, and the attendant transfer of that government spending to private institutions.

Cheers

Jim

[Recrewt]

It's abundantly clear that this government is philosophically opposed to a vast raft of public services and that 'austerity' is merely a smokescreen to enable the most comprehensive dismantling of our social infrastructure in sixty years, and the attendant transfer of that government spending to private institutions.

You are aware that both Academy schools and University Tuition Fees were introduced by the Labour party?

[Jim_Campbell]

You are aware that both Academy schools and University Tuition Fees were introduced by the Labour party?

Of course I am. One of the most common misconceptions on this thread is that opposition to the current government automatically equates with uncritical support for the previous New Labour government. Academy schools seemed to be primarily a stealth means of funding faith schools under New Labour, and were a stupid idea, and now seem to be a mechanism to give away of vast tracts of publicly owned property under the coalition, which is also a bad idea.

Note that it was the coalition, however, who removed schools' legal requirement to provide outdoor exercise for pupils, so a newly-converted academy school is now able to sell its playing fields to property developers, placing vast tracts of publicly-owned land in the hands of private developers at zero cash benefit to the taxpayer.

Cheers

Jim

[Recrewt]

Jim, I wasn't trying to suggest you were a New Labour fan but rather point out that some of the methods you describe as being used to dismantle the social infrastructure by the current government were actually introduced by the previous government. 

Presumably then, you mean that the current government has altered them to suit their own plans rather than a cross-party conspiracy?

[Jim_Campbell]

Presumably then, you mean that the current government has altered them to suit their own plans rather than a cross-party conspiracy?

Pretty much. As a product of a "bog standard" comprehensive, I'm a huge believer in universal state education — I disagreed with academies when New Labour introduced them and they were largely taken up by faith schools, I disagree with the process now it's been hugely accelerated under Gove as means of transferring state education to the private sector.

I've been struck recently by just how far the entire political spectrum has moved to the right in the time that I've been a voting adult. Back in 1987, I'd have characterised myself as the wet end of Tory to the dry end of Liberal. Three years of university probably shifted me a few degrees to the left but I remain pretty much where I was all those years ago...

The difference now is that suggesting that the relentless march to hand public services over to the private sector might not be such a great idea, that there are conceivably elements of the national and social infrastructure that are not best served by the principle of maximising shareholder value, gets you looked at like some kind of Marxist throwback from the 70s, despite the fact that it is demonstrably a terrible idea. One has only to look at the mess we are in with the railways and the public utilities to see what a fantastically bad idea privatisation was (unless you're a shareholder, obviously) and yet the mantra remains unchanged in mainstream politics.

And just wait until the PFI timebomb starts to go off under all the hospitals and other capital projects that utilised the scheme... arguably the worst imaginable method to fund a project requiring government capital investment, apart from the fact that it doesn't add to the government borrowing figures and so was embraced by the Tories and New Labour alike.

Cheers

Jim

[Recrewt]

I've been struck recently by just how far the entire political spectrum has moved to the right in the time that I've been a voting adult. Back in 1987, I'd have characterised myself as the wet end of Tory to the dry end of Liberal. Three years of university probably shifted me a few degrees to the left but I remain pretty much where I was all those years ago...

The difference now is that suggesting that the relentless march to hand public services over to the private sector might not be such a great idea, that there are conceivably elements of the national and social infrastructure that are not best served by the principle of maximising shareholder value, gets you looked at like some kind of Marxist throwback from the 70s, despite the fact that it is demonstrably a terrible idea.

Ha! I know what you mean there.  The main three all look like strangers to me and can I recall that Labour introduced the University Fees as it stood out as such an anti-Labour move!

PFI and privatisation are OK in some circumstances (I mean, does anyone really mind that British Airways is privatised?) but they have both been over-used.  I particular liked it following the financial crisis where credit was hard to come by so the government stumped up some cash to lend to private industry so they had money for the PFI contracts.  You really could not make this up.

I have not followed the Academy schools so closely but I cannot see what the benefit is or why schools need to specialise.  Plus, who really wants their kids to go to the MacDonalds Academy?

[The Legendary Shark]

JamesC, I agree that people want rules and structure but - why do they want them? In my experience, most people believe themselves to be perfectly capable of acting lawfully - even though they might occasionally steal a pen from work or sneak over the speed limit from time to time. People want laws and structure to apply to others, to stop other people from acting against humanity and not themselves. You know that you will never murder anybody in cold blood and so demand laws to prevent other people from killing You in cold blood. The problem with this is that the simple phrase "breaking the law" covers everything from spitting in the street to mass murder and we've all been brainwashed to believe that breaking the law ALWAYS deserves punishment.

I like your Monopoly analogy, I often use it myself to describe "the system," but what if I don't want to play Monopoly? What if I want to play Ker-Plunk instead, or just sit and read my 2000AD quietly in the corner? If one is forced to play Monopoly against one's will, is one still obligated to play by the rules?


I think that the way to improve things is to encourage free thinking and personal responsibility.


Theblaze, I'm not sure I've made myself clear. Whether or not the "government" passes legislation outlawing murder or not makes no difference as murder is Always against the Common Law. If a person, for whatever reason, coldly and meticulously plans and carries out a murder then the existence of anti-murder legislation would not (and indeed does not) dissuade the murderer or impact upon the right of society to apprehend, try and punish the offender. Likewise, a murder committed as a "crime of passion" would not be affected by the existence, or otherwise, of anti-murder legislation. It is only our brainwashing that convinces us that legislation prevents crime. If that was the case, there would be no crime.


I'm glad that you mentioned the application of force because that is the only thing backing legislation of any kind. To explain, let's look at your other point, safety on the roads. There is nothing wrong with having traffic lights, speed limits and a highway code in order to facilitate road safety. But if we were to take these things away it wouldn't automatically mean that it suddenly becomes okay to drive on the wrong side of the road or plough through pedestrian filled pavements. Most of us recognise that the Rules of the Road are there for an extremely good reason and stick to them as best we can. We also have a low opinion of those who do not and use things like driving lessons, t.v. advertising campaigns and peer pressure to make sure these rules are adhered to. Once again, absence of legislation would not change this - in fact, I think it would actually increase the peer pressure to drive safely.


Of course, there will always be buffoons whose driving is mental and even without legislation a society would be entirely justified in preventing a maniac getting behind the wheel of a car if that maniac's driving constituted a clear hazard to the life and limb of others. If, on the other hand, that same maniac wanted to go screaming around a specially designated racetrack with a bunch of other maniacs then there's nothing to prevent that.


Just like most legislation, road traffic legislation is nothing more than a moneyspinner and does nothing to keep the roads safe. For example, imagine you're driving through the countryside on a deserted road at 3 a.m. and you come to a red traffic light at a junction with clear visibility all around. You know the road and you can see that there are no other vehicles coming from any direction and so, instead of stopping for the red light you sneak through in what you believe to be a safe manner. You don't hit anybody, nobody hits you and nobody is hurt, inconvenienced or even irritated by this. No actual crime has been committed.


Now let's say that a police officer has been parked in his patrol car behind some trees and chases you down for running the red light. You are issued with a ticket for £100 fine even though nobody and nothing has been harmed. Most people have been brainwashed into thinking that you got what you deserved but, in reality, you've just had £100 stolen from you by a "government" mercenary.


The money stolen from you, less fees and charges, ends up in the coffers of "government" to do with as it chooses. Some of it might go towards new bulbs for other traffic lights, which most people would think is fair. What a logical disconnect! People want laws to keep themselves and their property safe but have no qualms about using money extorted, sometimes using violence or deceit, from people who have harmed nobody to pay for public services. To believe in government legislation is to believe in violence, extortion and theft but we have all been brainwashed into not seeing this.


Any vote for any government, then, is a vote for slavery.

[M.I.K.]

Just like most legislation, road traffic legislation is nothing more than a moneyspinner and does nothing to keep the roads safe. For example, imagine you're driving through the countryside on a deserted road at 3 a.m. and you come to a red traffic light at a junction with clear visibility all around. You know the road and you can see that there are no other vehicles coming from any direction and so, instead of stopping for the red light you sneak through in what you believe to be a safe manner. You don't hit anybody, nobody hits you and nobody is hurt, inconvenienced or even irritated by this. No actual crime has been committed.


Now let's say that a police officer has been parked in his patrol car behind some trees and chases you down for running the red light. You are issued with a ticket for £100 fine even though nobody and nothing has been harmed. Most people have been brainwashed into thinking that you got what you deserved but, in reality, you've just had £100 stolen from you by a "government" mercenary.

There aren't any traffic lights in the proper countryside unless there's very good reason for them being there and policemen don't venture into it unless they really, really have to. It frightens them.

[The Legendary Shark]

Heh, the countryside only frightens them because I live there...