h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4265357.stm

Now that is what I call capitalism in action

'The tourist board has asked a local tour operator to work on potential packages which could offer protesters transport, accommodation and a variety of excursions, including walking tours, distillery visits, or rounds of golf.'

Umm, and any protesters that take up the offer won't feel a *teensy* bit hypocritical?

I love the idea of trashing the Royal Mile on the Saturday, and then going for 18 holes at the Royal and Ancient on the Sunday. That is having your cake and eating it!

Having said that, the Countryside Alliance have always treated their London marches this way - march through the city in your wellies in the morning to complain about not having any cash, and then straight out to Chelsea to go round the shops in the afternoon.

sprout

I guess that is one of those situations where 'If you can't fight them, exploit them' rings true.

Don't it just make you so proud.

TUESDAY

I reckon it's great. If you can't beat 'em, rob 'em blind without them even noticing.

Its the Ankh-Morpork Principle.

Incidentally, I have no idea where the word 'Tuesday' came from in my post .

probably slipped in during a moment of weekness.

All these anarchist ruffian types better stay away from Morningside. *sniff*

Let's look at this another way. Who runs the Tourist Board? Is it perhaps local government? Would you rather have your government encouraging and embracing people who protest against the G8, or squirting water at them and having the police tap them gently over the head with trucncheons?

Interesting... how long have we had G pages at Hootoo?

looking at the contents of said page, I'd say the answer was 'never'

"Umm, and any protesters that take up the offer won't feel a *teensy* bit hypocritical?"

No more hypocritical than usual. How many of them will travel via airline/ferry/bus/train company, or in a car made by a private company using petrol bought from a petrol company? Who makes their clothes? Their food? What do they do for entertainment, play video games? Who makes their drinks, alcoholic or not?

It's fair enough to criticise the policies and actions of private corporations but a great deal of these protestors claim to be "anti-Capitalist". Truth is, they can't get enough of capitalism and it can't get enough of them.

It's quite possible these days to avoid the products and services of big corporations to an astonishingly large degree. Some products and services however are almost impossible to avoid unless you want no internet, no petrol-powered transport, etc. It's a matter of where you (and your conscience) decide to draw the line

"No more hypocritical than usual. How many of them will travel via airline/ferry/bus/train company, or in a car made by a private company using petrol bought from a petrol company? [etc.]"



I thought you were better than that Zagreb. This is cheap rhetoric and you must know it. What do you think you prove with this sort of argument? That everyone who doesn't choose to starve to death or go and live in a self-sufficient commune in some hitherto uninhabited part of the planet must ipso facto support capitalism? This is the sort of nonsense you'd come up with if you wanted to write a pastiche of establishment stooges.

"I thought you were better than that Zagreb. This is cheap rhetoric and you must know it. What do you think you prove with this sort of argument? That everyone who doesn't choose to starve to death or go and live in a self-sufficient commune in some hitherto uninhabited part of the planet must ipso facto support capitalism? This is the sort of nonsense you'd come up with if you wanted to write a pastiche of establishment stooges"

Read the first post. The claim was that, in buying services, the anti-capitalist protesters would be hypocrites. My point was that they do this every day of their lives and are therefore always hypocrites if this is the case.

And why the "establishment stooge" nonsense? If we're going to dig deeper the point of my arguement is that there is nothing wrong with a provider of services being paid for those services. This is capitalism. A great many things the corporate-capitalists do is wrong (child labour, poor wages, environmental vandalism) but to argue against it with the abolishment of capitalism is retrogressive nonsense. What I think the G8 protesters should be saying is "capitalism is fine, we just don't like (see above)". You can have wealth-creation *and* common decency, it's one of the things modern Western liberal democracy is based on. The old marxist myth is that capitalism is *necessarily* indecent and so it must be replaced with statist socialism (which, in practice, proved thoroughly inhumane). Personally, I want to see the corporatist-capitalists brought to book for their indecencies (which, despite what they argue, help no one). The problem is that the people who shout against them loudest also want to "smash capitalism" and replace it with a system that has been tried in several ways over 70 years and *does not work* and is more exploitive, corrupt and inhuman than the system it purported to repair.

"You can have wealth-creation *and* common decency, it's one of the things modern Western liberal democracy is based on. The old marxist myth is that capitalism is *necessarily* indecent and so it must be replaced with statist socialism (which, in practice, proved thoroughly inhumane). "

Hear Hear.

First off Zagreb, I'm sorry for the tone of my post. I think I must have been in a bad mood, not that that's really any excuse.

"My point was that they do this every day of their lives and are therefore always hypocrites if this is the case."

Well, OK, if this was the limit of your intended argument then fine. I have to say I have difficulty reading your post as saying just this even now you've told me this is what you meant. Maybe it's just me, but I read it the first time as a supercilious dig at the protestors, and rereading it it still seems like that.

"If we're going to dig deeper..."

How about we agree not to? It's a big and complicated subject and this would be an inauspicious start to such a discussion, as well as being on an inappropriate thread.

The people I know who go to demonstrations to protest against capitalism, are the same people who eat a lot of McDonald's food, drink Coca Cola and wear expensive brand clothes. They have never been anything but hypocritical in my eyes. And I think most of them would love an opportunity like the one mentioned above of combining an anti-capitalism demonstration with a shopping trip.