I did post on General and predicted the UK would suffer economically some years back (Cameron's or Mauy's time). Anyhow, I was generally ridiculed and the positive economic benefits of being out of Europe with no law coming at you were stressed. I could see a negative side to leaving Europe.

Johnson was going to do as well and last as long as any premier. I posted on that as well. I could see through Johnson. I posted on that one too.

Things haven't quite worked out that way. But politics is only a spectator sport for me. Better than cricket & horse racing, but not as good as soccer or Rugby Union.

I've realised what the big myth of socialism is.

The Big Myth Of Socialism is that you can be prosperous with only a token amount of effort. Socialists believe that only a slight amount of effort is required to become well-off, and that the reason this is not true in contemporary society is because the greedy business owners are stealing the wealth.

Yet when Russia and China became socialist, they had big famines rather than prosperity. Venezuela and North Korea have severe shortages of food even in 2023. Socialist Russia attempted to solve the problem by becoming a huge state mono-business, and China seems to have become capitalist but without democracy or human-rights.

People may believe in socialism because of the way that the world is depicted in fiction. In Karl Marx's time it was novels and serial fiction in magazines and newspapers, more recently soap-operas on tv. If you watch a soap opera you see that there is non-stop conflict, people only do a token amount of work, there is never any repair or maintenance done yet things are magically in excellent condition all the time, and outcomes are due to willpower character and stereotype rather than the designing of procedures and methods.

In reality, for prosperity sustained physical and mental effort are required. Of these mental effort is more valuable, because just digging a hole and then filling it in again produces nothing, you need to have carefully thought out how best to apply your effort and keep updating and adapting.

A lot of this is true but it's also oversimplified. Socialism isn't a single thing. It's a collection of ideas, some of which are better than others. Big State socialism is certainly something that has been tried and found wanting. It didn't work in the USSR and it isn't working today in Venezuela or Cuba either. But the basic idea of people clubbing together in trade unions or cooperative ventures to achieve or fight for things that they can't achieve alone is an excellent one. "Divide and Rule" really works, so it makes sense to do the opposite: unite and fight for collective rights. Certainly we would never have had decent working conditions or fair wages in any industrial society if workers had not joined together to fight for them.

There is also the idea that society should be run more like a family than like a battlefield. In a family, the children do not have to compete with their parents for every mouthful of food; if they did, they would all starve because the parents are stronger. But good parents feed their children. The problem is that we are genetically programmed to feed our children (we'd never have any grandchildren otherwise) but we are not genetically programmed to feed weaker members of our society who are not related to us. That's why it often doesn't work out as well as we should like. But that's no reason not to try to do the decent thing by those weaker than ourselves.

All human governments rely in the end on the judgements (and therefore integrity) of imperfect people. So they are bound to fail. Even the Bible says as much (Jer 10:23). There's a lot of history on the subject. There's an embarassment of entertaining quotes explaining as much.

Rule #1 in a Democracy is: "You have to get yourself elected first before you can do anything."

I wrote above -

"and outcomes are due to willpower character and stereotype rather than the designing of procedures and methods."

But what I meant was -

"and outcomes are due to wilfulness character and stereotype rather than the designing of procedures and methods."

Wilfulness, dominance, power over others.

I've read two memoirs written by people fleeing from socialist take-overs in European countries, and although they occurred in different decades and in different countries they both mention the same thing - that experienced trained bosses are replaced with inexperienced uneducated petty politicians. Organizations are run like political parties with people and things evaluated according to political loyalty rather than the merit of what they can produce.

In socialist magazines I have more than once seen the phrase "capitalism has failed". This is clearly nonsense, as you only have to glance around the room you are in to see that it is filled with the fruits of capitalism. Even the poorest members of western society can afford to make themselves overweight or obese if they wish.

If it is easy to create wealth and run a factory (etc), then why have have not workers-cooperatives been popping up in the UK like mushrooms? Nobody is stopping them. In socialist theory they ought to displace capitalist factories (etc.) by being better run and more productive.

I recall that some coops were started in the UK in 1970s. I'm not sure if any survived for any length of time, or if any have been started since then.

One view is that the typical capitalist big organization with shares listed on the stock exchange is a kind of co-operative, since you can become a part-owner of it if you want. And vote on how it's run.

Edit: existing UK cooperatives are the John Lewis Partnership which includes Waitrose, Coop supermarkets, and in Spain Mondragon. Working for them as an employee is I expect the same as working for any other organization of similar size, especially if they have an employee share ownership scheme. Waitrose and the Coop are the most expensive supermarkets for consumers, while the uber-capitalist Aldi is said to be the cheapest.

You seem to be trying to convince yourself. You certainly won't convince me.

"Capitalism has failed" and has been failing from day one. It only really succeeds for that 1% of people. To those struggling to make ends meet in the rest of the world, in the sweat shops, producing the goods for western consumption, to those dealing with the pollution, deforestation, etc which are the collateral of a profit and growth driven society, capitalism isn't working at all. You are in fact making the perfect argument against it - "it's working for me" and that's what it it's all about. The accumulation of "capital" to benefit an individual at the expense of others.

Just because socialism has failed in the handful of attempts made to pull it off in the 20th century, it doesn't equate to the current unfair system being an automatic success. Under fascism, there were also great technological strides and a select few enjoyed great wealth. The Romans were very advanced for their time and there is no question, that Germany's military hardware at the time of the second world war was among the most advanced in the world. Medieval and Renaissance Europe gave us some of the best art, architecture and music the world as ever seen/heard, but was ruled by despots who committed the worst of abuses and attrocities. I could go on and on.

That's all I have to say. I suggest you take this to your personal blog.

What would you propose to do now if you were Prime Minister?

("Just because socialism has failed in the handful of attempts made to pull it off in the 20th century...")

It seems to me some kind of blend is required for tyhe following reasons :

1) Socialism- "From each according to his ability to each according to his need" - First of all this should be obvious that while that might initially be very human, at least to the needy, that bias insures growth of the needy since it is at least to many, more comfortable even desirable to get more for less and not be a provider for what can be seen as a parasitic arrangement. Then iof we consider the actual means of deciding who is more needy than the next guy plus the need to keep those with ability in check, this is how despotism begins.

2) Capitalism - "Economic Democracy" (Dollars are in essence, votes, determining which ventures succeed and survive and which fail) - While this sounds ultimately fair, given that A) it never begins with a level playing field, and B) the producers as they gain wealth and power inevitably seek legislation that benefits them to the exclusion of competitors and clients, it is common that elitism grows, first into ologarchy, and finally iinto Fascism where Commerce and Government become indistinguishable. Since then the production of essential goods are owned and controlled by the same elite who govern this becomes despotism as well ie: The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

Nobody has the solution but it should be obvious that in pure form neither ends well. Some means of balance needs to be implemented without forming an elite ruling class. Perhaps this can become easy once essentials are cheap and available but at the very least that includes food, shelter and energy. Then there is the issue of psychological fulfillment commonly associated with meaningful work.

Of course this only addresses the supply and distribution of resources. Most conflicts in history have had either a component of ideology or have been entirely due to ideology in that ancient Us vs/ Them struggle. It will be interesting to see how AI affects this progression.

Sweatshops exist because there is too little capitalism locally, not too much. If there were more business in that locale there would be more competition for workers resulting in higher wages and better conditions. In any case, as I wrote above, even people doing bad jobs prefer that to an even worse job choice.

Capitalism is like electricity - although a very tiny proportion of people get electrocuted, that is no reason to ban it. Banning electricity would make everyone poorer, returning us to Victorian times.

I agree that capitalism does a bad job regarding deforestation in the Amazon and pollution etc.

Edit: You could argue that "Electricity Has Failed" since some people in remote areas have none at all, because greedy people in cities are taking more that their fair share; and there is in many places dodgy wiring that causes harm. So it must be banned completely, and instead we all make our own candles.

You might - might - be wondering what I would do if I were prime minister.

I would raise inheritance tax to 100% to reduce privilege being passed down the generations. I would decrease Capital Gains Tax to zero to encourage investment and enterprise.

I would give tax incentives to employees who do manual work of any kind, since there is a shortage of them.

I would require that all salaries are only quoted net of tax, with the employer paying all the tax behind the scenes, so that employees never feel they are being fined for working.

And I would have a lot of fun flying around in my private jet.

Funny the turn this is taking. When Brexit was being talked about, I started a thread back in 2015/2016 and asked if this was the wisest move. I've no irons in that fire, or any fire, as I try to stay neutral. Anyhow, I was told in blunt terms what people wanted. I still wonder.

Most of the Brexiteers here at the time, resisted the idea that people had been manipulated, en masse, to vote to leave by the two leave campaigns, media, social media, etc. According to many posters at the time, they had made up their own minds and could not be influenced by anybody/anything - and in fact it was the remainers how had been manipulated by the scaremongering of the remain campaign.

We are all manipulated, influenced, indoctrinated and shaped from the moment we are born.

The remain campaign was poorly managed and came across as insincere from the start, but we can look at a lot of the claims made by the campaign and it's clear that most of the scaremongering was economic - i.e. we will all be poorer, prices will rise, there will be problems with/imports exports - unfortunately most of which has sadly come true.

Unfortunately the perception of remain, to the person on the street, was that they were politicians and business people with their own agendas for remaining in the EU, or were serving corporate interests.

The two leave campaigns resorted to xenophobia, anti EU rhetoric and misinformation surrounding EU spending (e.g. lies such as the claims of "floods" of immigrants coming from Turkey if we remained, or the amount of money being sent to the EU being better spent on the NHS, which was just smoke and mirrors).

I still firmly believe people were manipulated into voting to leave - and I know this is a perhaps a perceived affront to those who believe they made up their own minds. Despite everything; "leave things as they are" was always going to be the default option. A large percentage of people would have gone for that regardless - it took a lot of propaganda and effort to convince all of those eligible to vote in the referendum to take the plunge, tip the scales to get the 51%/49% result.

Indeed, to put my cards on the table, though I dislike and disagree with concept of the EU in principle, I voted to remain, precisely to avoid the horrendous economic situation many of us find ourselves in now. What is clear, as with any war/famine/plague event, there are those few who profit hugely at our expense.

I'm an outsider and have no business really judging British politics as a Neutral. For the Irish, it's inconvenient that you left. The NOI mess seems worse.

But the constant repetition of wrong ideas is a powerful force.