I've no gripe with you. I just didn't want this interesting subject disappearing down the rabbit hole of a political argument.

That seems like the No True Scotsman fallacy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

A day or two ago I saw on the news the Scottish Labour Party singing The Red Flag anthem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_Flag The English Labour Party used to routinely sing it as well, but have either stopped singing it or not so often. I think singing The Red Flag means they are a socialist party.

When or if Labour wins I hope they will re-introduce the ten per-cent capital gains tax rate that Gordon Brown (or in actuality a team of advisors I presume) had.

And they could make every kind of long-term investment taxed like a pension for people over retirement age, not just a narrow range of them.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intens...nder_socialism

Also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess..._Joseph_Stalin

Like a lot of dysfunctional organizations and bad leaders, they are/were primarily concerned with being dominant, and productive work is just something they do in their spare time.

Perhaps we still have echos of dekulakisation in the UK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dekulakization where the wealthy are regraded as bad people, instead of economic heroes providing jobs products and services to society.

There are a few requirements for unlimited growth, and one of those is unlimited resource. The UK has limited resource. Stagnation can be avoided by connecting to remote resources and resource sharing, but Brexit has limited the previously established channels and they have not fully been replaced causing development blockage.

Some remediation that allows for expanding economy can be experienced with expanding population. The fast way to expand population is to allow more immigration, but that seems unpopular right now.

With all of the EASY ways to expand and develop the economy blocked, there is nothing left but the slow and difficult ways. Luckily the UK populations have a long history of experience with using long, slow ways to expand instead of faster or easier ones.

On the bright side, at least the UK does not share a border with Russia.

Yet.

While what you're saying is basically true, it's also got some errors to fix.

1) Being overweight is still a sign of poverty: Metabolic dysfunction. MOST people have some form of metabolic disease, such as insulin resistance. You don't need to do a muscle biopsy to confirm. If you're poor, you're just not eating as well. Partly, that's food quality. Partly, that's because you just don't know. UK processed food is full of sugar, seedoils and preservatives, only the USA has more of this. The oil slowly kills mitochrondria. The preservatives destroy the microbiome. I shouldn't need to state the obvious that processed food kills people.

Why do these people eat that food?
Can we have some sympathy here? I took a trip back to the UK a while ago a surveyed the shelves. By god, probablt HALF of EVERYTHING in the supermarket had oil added. It's in bread and pies for goodness sake!

It's tough on the breadline to really prioritise this kind of thing.

2) Occupational outlook (borrowing this term from occupational therapy). It's hard to imagine why someone would spend thier only $2 on a McDonald's burger, Sky TV, or a can of booze. But all those things take away the pain for a while. People need to feel in control of something, even if just for a moment. Sleep rough on the streets or go in with the crackheads in a shelter? The difference is that you've got some control on the streets. Some choices.

I'm doing alright at the moment after having left the UK, but I always wonder what I'd do if somebody sued me into debt. Could I get back on my feet? Could you? George Orwell slept rough for his research...

----
Since you got into cultural stuff, criticising the UK, I can go there. But lets think about more obvious and basic things. The UK has been printing money for years like nobody's business. To fly past all the waffle and lies, just plot GBP against gold, silver, pretty much anything if you remember it's relative, not absolute. Now compare to previous years, or other currencies. The money machine destroys countries throughout history. It's the same thing here. Then we've got all the spending on COVID. Had to be seen to be doing something. It's harder to show jabs and isolating causing more deaths than they save. This is really basic. I don't blame the rich or the poor. Nobody's in control.

But culture...
well, there's been a breakdown of religion. The UK used to be religious. Now the UK hates religion. You'd think science and rationality would be a good thing but it's also replaced the humility of Christian culture with arrogance. UK people are more arrogant than those backward bible bashing nations we love to look down on. Specifically, you see the results of this arrogance in British politics.
Then there's the change in family structure. Poor marriage laws between sexes have weaken the family unit. It's a shame to say, but all the controversy around gender, sex, and these other cultural underpinnings changing has to be in some way destabilising. As things get crappy, people turn to extremism; communism around the corner already in heavy socialism; equality over equity. None of this is good for stability. Stability is what brings growth.



...
In the end, AI will lead to people feeling totally useless. That alone will destabilise the sensitive global system required to keep it going (i.e. Taiwan semiconductors). That will cause a collapse and everything we know, slowly but surely go to the dark ages, much like the fall of Rome, the bronze age collapse, Stonehendge society return to nomadic lifestyle etc etc. Technologies will be lost. Wars will be fought. Many will die. It makes sense to build a pyramid to communicate some kind of message to the future, but nobody else seems able to think long term, yet positively?

I heard Fareed Zakaria on the radio this morning. He observed that the UK's per capita GDP is lower than any state in the US.
Wealth is created by productive labor. Get more people working, make them more productive.

https://marginalrevolution.com/margi...shortfall.html

Labour says they will nationalise the railways again, even though it will only save 12p a trip according to this https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy63j4x66ylo

I am old enough to remember the days before privatization, and the service was a lot worse. Trains were often cancelled at the last moment, frequently late, and the staff often rude and uncaring.

I remember commuting by train in London. It was only a few miles, but was really stressful as you never knew if you would get home or have to spend an extra 40 minutes or an hour or more waiting on the platform.

What should be done is to have more than one company operating on the same lines, so that they compete for customers, instead of being in walled regions.

The 12p saving is going to rapidly disappear in reduced efficiency. Nationalization will mean paying more for a worse service.

Edit: Labour are apparently just parroting what the government have already said they will do - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_British_Railways

The rent subsidy for council houses and flats should be abolished. They only pay 30% or 50% of the market rent, not sure if they pay any council tax but I suspect not.

Council estates are pits of despair. Once you are in a council flat or house, you are stuck in the same place for life and cannot leave or move around (although in recent years it has become possible to swap with others). People roll into them and never escape, because normal renting is two or three times more expensive in comparison.

The stigma creates despair, and the despair shows itself in high rates of crime.

I understand that it is commonplace for council rents not to have been paid for years and years. They look upon people outside the estate like millionaire snobs in my experience.

They are also a dead-weight and inefficiency to the economy, as rather than being motivated to get training for better paying jobs, the huge subsidy means people are willing to accept a sub-optimal life such as a career of living off benefits. As a tax-payer I object to having to pay their rent.

If you are living in some grim post-industrial town or city in the north or midlands, you have no chance of ever moving away to somewhere better, sunny Clacton-On-Sea for example, but are stuck there until death. https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property...ouseFlatShare=

The old Soviet Union is alive and well and living in council estates.

They won't and they can't - but they should. If they did, it would actually make sense and would work much better and more efficiently.

At present you have one company maintaining lines, signalling, etc and private equity companies owning rolling stock, with train operating companies renting rolling stock from those and a whole host of contractors providing maintenance, security, cleaning, other services, etc, etc. The shareholders of all these want their cut and guess who pays?

To add to the insult - the train operating companies are heavily subsidised by the tax payer. The situation is already a farce.

It's the same now. It was due to lack of funding then, as the successive Tory governments were preparing for privatisation and it's due to the pursuit of profit and low investment now. You can't blame the state of the railways during the nationalisation era on nationalisation itself - the government arrange funding and the funding was never there. Since the 1960s the railways only ever saw cut backs in real terms.

You seem to view public ownership as "socialism" and automatically rail against it, no matter what. In many cases it's actually a good thing and makes sense, whether you're a socialist or not. Do you also advocate for privatised health care? The private energy fiasco should be enough for anyone to see the potential problems.

You should do some more research on how trains are actually run and then you will realise how naive that statement is. Even in the pre-nationalisation era, the private railway companies operated their own lines and routes.

(Not going to bother with you Daily Mail fueled rant on housing benefit.)

I made a complaint to the Top Gear show many years ago saying the three boffins complain about every country but what did England do? They made a show about all the things they thought England did and built.

I still didn't see any metal matchbox cars in the lineup.

Even the Russians gave up on socialism, because it didn't work.

Labour: pleasing fictions

Tories: cruel reality.


If Liz Truss was in the Labour party, she'd still be leader.


The Tories should be given praise for getting the country through the deadly pandemic Covid without a major recession, and for getting an innovatory new vaccine injected into people at top speed and saving many many lives.

I often travel by rail and the service is now a lot better.

If a company does badly you can sack them and replace them with another. That cannot be done if nationalised. You reasoning is another example of The Big Myth Of Socialism as described above. 12p profit a trip is at a rough guess probably less than a 1% profit on turnover, worth paying as a reward for efficiency and service.

Lumo trains have begun operating on the LNER route, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumo_(...ating_company)).

LNER is a company owned by the government, rather than being part of the government. It's very nearly already nationalised.

I travel on 4 trains per day, 5 days per week.

Lost count of the numbers of "fault with the signalling system" and "broken down train" incidents. Also the number of occasions sat on a train which they cancelled, where they didnt inform the passengers - it goes on and on. The passengers, or "customers" now come last. If a delayed train gets changed to express to suit their schedule, you stand there for an hour, then squeeze into the next packed one - if you're lucky.

If LNER has gone back under government ownership (I wouldn't know),that's only because the private franchises are a shambolic disaster and they have that public money safety net to fall back on. You seem ok with such parasites, yet you rant about poorer people and benefits.

Aside from the railways topic, I won't comment. You're repeating the same anecdotal misinformation / blanket statements. I'm pretty much done with that.

You should probably put these musings in a personal blog.

PURE Socialism appears to have problems. PURE Democracy has problems. Andy form of pure authoritarian system becomes unsustainable. Any socioeconomic system that does not take human characteristics and behavior as individuals and in groups into account is going to have vulnerabilities.

That said, systems that incorporate the best of known systems to balance power, opportunity, and responsibility with oversight to reduce any successful exploit of weaknesses. A system that suppresses and punished corruption BY DESIGN has advantages, more so if it can adjust to new threats and vulnerabilities. No pure system can be that resilient.

Government is messy. Economics is worse. Combining them is both necessary and ugly.