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

<<<And Maria - <> - can we cut that nonsense out? It's childish and amounts to you saying other viewpoints should not be allowed.

I should have omitted that because I was wasting virtual ink. I had made that idea clear.

On the other hand, who can deny that it´s the far-right or conservative or whatever the name we give to that minority who is making big money at the expenses of the general public?

Is it not true that this is a parody of Capitalism?
Instead of a social state we have a sort of state capitalism. An economic situation where ordinary citizens take and bear all the risks and the financial sectors takes all the profits.

We have a nanny state nursing the riches and taking tough decisions against the rest of population.


<<<I suppose a question is could this be a threat to democracy?

Indeed. There can be a great collapse if things do not change.
This cycle of economy is new for many reasons, one of them is that besides seeking resources in "new lands and climes" , the monster-Market is devouring countries, that´s: the Mediterranean countries are calming, by now, the appetite. The ECB and the IMF are cooking the meal.
So instead of a war we are being attacked by the markets. And I don´t know for how long we are going to be putting up with all this.

I blame the lack of a European constitution: c.f the American Articles of Confederation http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/charters_of_freedom_4.html

The US survived for just 8 years with just a treaty to join the states together. But without a taxation and enforcement powers to back up the US congress the confederacy found itself bankrupt, powerless and then just fell into a bunch of squabbling states.

The big difference between the US in the 1780s and Europe was that the US was a non-entity on the end of month long trading routes. Europe is a power-house economy of 300million people in the middle of 10 hour trading routes.

I agree with Maria that the solution is political. However, I do think that some European ecconomies had a property bubble (including the UK) where completely non-productive land was given hugely inflated values. When everybody agreed that it wasn't worth as much, it left a lot of people with a lot less money than they thought - their assets were air but their debts were real enough.

Why isn't Greece exporting those wonderful solar fire starters
they use to light the Olympic flame? There'd be a global market
for such tings, especially with the US BBQ crowd.

~jwf~

Not such a bad idea. Given the rarity of priestesses needed to complete the fire starting configuration, they would command a huge premium.

I believe that the US has trade barriers against importing Greek Priestess labour though. This could pose a problem.

FT:
<<I blame the lack of a European constitution<<<

There´s one, a voluminous one that was voted without nobody really explaining what was about. Then we have the Lisbon Treaty, nobody voted it and it was tailored to please the financial sector.

As many say , we live in a Post- Democratic period. The same happens in US, the lovely " We, the people decide" in their Constitution has also been changed to "We, the corporations decide"

::
The Austrian Trade Union Federation has recently published a report on the lobbies that control most of the policies that Brussels approves.

In this site, Alter EU, there´s information about the lack of transparency in Brussels:

"...the EU has a close relationship with corporate interests and many EU officials go through the 'revolving door' meaning that they leave their EU job and soon start working for industry or lobby firms, often in the same policy area. Other times, lobbyists go through the revolving door and start to work for the EU institutions...."

http://www.alter-eu.org/revolving-doors/

::
To be fair with SWL, it´s not only conservative politicians, there are some from the left that support those lobbies. But that only means that they are disguised as left people. Genuine left seeks the common welfare, neoliberals only seed their own, at any expense.

Well I live and work in the Caribbean and i can tell you that you can get fed up with a constant 30 degree plus temperature every day. True the locals have a different work ethic to us Brits and have a much lower productivity level than we would be used to.

However we factor that into our estimates so it is not a problem. the biggest problem here is convincing other people who come to work here with no previous experience that they will be working nearly twice as hard as they would back home and we don't spend all day on the beach sipping Pina Coladas. I have even seen one new recruit turn up with a surf board strapped to his back. Didn't last long here.

Thank you for that unbiased, enlightening definition of "the left" Maria.

To be honest, I think my definition is too simple and superficial.

I´d like to hear yours.

*waits for that*

didn't quite cut it

I would say the terms themselves are too simplistic. I certainly don't think it helps to decide that if a person on the left does something bad, they were only "pretend left". I take it this means if a person on the right does something good, they're "secretly left"?

<<I take it this means if a person on the right does something good, they're "secretly left"?

No.
First, if they do something good , it is good for them. As a side-effect it can be good for others, for the collective.

Since the French Revolution, the term right and left refers to those who defend the autoritarian power and those who defend the democratic one. Many things have happened since then and there are many exceptions in both sides, in relation to individuals, but in essence, the core ideology is still the same.

::
Have you check that link on the lobbies at Brussels? quite telling.

If there´s someone interested in the Brussels issue I´ve mentioned, there´s a film documentary.

This is a trailer:

http://youtu.be/4YjtB5Ux5qQ

aside/
It would be great that there would be people here to debate these issues.

People with more political knowledge and elegant prose than me. ( I tend to write too noisely)

tbh, I think this would be better covered in the religion threads.

At the risk of proving swl correct, I'd say that the single issue that separates left from right is attitude to inequality.

I don't think the distinction between authoritarian and democratic maps onto right and left. While it's true to say that many on the right are authoritarian in the sense of defending existing power relations, on the left there's an unfortunate tendency not to hold democracy or ordinary people in particularly high esteem. The idea of "false consciousness" has some merit, but all too often has been used by elites to ride roughshod over what ordinary people inconveniently happen to think.

What I had a problem with, was Maria's idea that corruption is natural for the right, whereas if a leftist politician is corrupt he is no longer a "true leftist". It seems like a lazy get-out clause, similar to that thing about true scotsmen.
Or just the idea about being on the right means you're a selfish bastard. I'd rather say it's about self-determination and self-reliance, rather than wanting to have the government dictate your life.

There's an interesting book on my reading list at the moment - "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided By Politics and Religion" by Jonathan Haidt, which looks like it has something interesting to say about politics and religion.

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=419860&c=1

Self determination and self reliance are both good things, and there's no obvious reason why the left can't espouse them too. And certainly no reason why the left has to have government "dictate" anyone's life. That's just a straw target.

What they intend and what they get might be rather different things.
However let's get back to seeing why southern Europe did rather badly in the financial crisis. Was it due to higher levels of corruption?

<<Was it due to higher levels of corruption?


There have been corruption in Spain: politicians, from right and left, along with bankers who have been gambling and have created the housing bubble. ( Nothing exclusive of Spain, as you know) However, and despite being that bubble a considerable mess, it could be tackled if the ECB and the IMF changed their policies in relation with the debt and in relation with measures that allow growth ( Now, France and other europeans countries are in favour of that, and US too)

In that moment we could start to breath, to grow . We need to boost our economy. We need that no more young people, highly qualified, leave the country, we need them to create new industrial tissue,( its funny to see how engineers,doctors... go to Germany, which asked for them last year)

There´s a war against the Med countries. The rating agencies (corrupted and/or incompetent as you can easily check ) set the target and speculators attack. The ECB instead of defending the attacked countries provide the weapons: banks borrow money at 1% and lend it to Med countries at the interest those agencies determine with their “perceptions of risk”

Last Thursday, Germany borrowed money ( its debt higher than the Spanish one). It cost almost nothing, however for Spain, Italy and also others no Med countries it meant lots of millions.

The problem is not the excesive government spending, as conservative media insist on saying, but the housing bubble around the world what caused the problem.
It´s needed a deep financial reform to stop this.
Those who caused the problem receive public money, instead of investing it in something productive, they go on speculating, this time with countries, with citizens lifes. As a bonus, they also are getting their neoliberal dream:to gut Social Health, Education and privatize as much as possible.

All that with the help of politicians and mass media.

Someone explains "Economics in sunny countries" with a deep understanding of this situation:


http://www.zcommunications.org/europeans-economic-future-has-been-hijacked-by-dangerous-ideologues-by-mark-weisbrot

It´s a short article to read ... if anyone is genuinely interested... at least in their own economies, since this madness affects globally.

a bit of it:

...the ECB could easily intervene in the Spanish bond market and drive these rates down, as it did last November and at other times last year. This would come at no cost to European taxpayers and would require relatively little intervention, since private investors and speculators would immediately respond by buying Spanish bonds as their price began to rise and yields fell. The ECB won't do this because they are using the crisis to force rightwing "reforms" throughout the eurozone – not only in Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain and Italy – but even in the richer countries, who in December committed themselves to budget balancing that would be politically impossible in the United States.

Another battle won by the the Mafia.

The money that Spain has received from ECB at 3% of interest, and that it´s presented like "a favour" to the country,or "an intelligent move of Rajoy" only means more debt that must by payed by Spaniards.

From the casting in this war, I´d like to present you Mr De Guindos, Minister of Economy, a suggestion of Merkel. He was the man of Lehman Brothers for Spain and Portugal. No more to add.You can get the idea.

Last summer,the conservative party and the socialist one modified the Constitution without telling anything to the rest of the Parliament, in order to accomplish with what Merkel was demanding: the devolution of the debt must be a priority. That means that no matter people become poor, my money back first pronto!

When is Spain to recover? The money isn´t to create employment, regenerate the industrial tissue, invest in science and technology, education, health... the money is to pay the bill of the banks. They were having a great party gambling and now , ordinary citizens must pay it, and our children and grandchildren...

Meanwhile, the stock market down because of the speculative attacks that noone wants to put a stop to. Unbriddled financial markets.

This is absolutely crazy.

I perceive all this as a clear attack to the mediterranean countries. This is a war.

Who are those phychopaths at Brussels, at the ECB, the IMF, the WB...

Or are they just stupid dogmatics that won´t hear what lots of economists, even conservative ones, are saying and warning??

No wonder that young Spaniards are leaving. This is depressing.