Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/07/31/thinking-in-bets.html
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tl;dr version: put yer money where yer big fat mouths are, you bloody xenophobic yobs and wrinklies.
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Common sense is now banned in the UK, see PM Boris for details.
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You don’t risk your own money anymore, you either smooth talk investors, take your fee, suck the project dry and bail when it all goes bankrupt or you get bailouts from the government and give yourself a fat bonus for your genius.
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Wow, took you Brits a whole 2 1/2 years to catch up with us in the states.
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Wouldn’t it be easier, and more traditional, to just eat them all?
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The suckers who voted for Brexit (and for Biff in the U.S.) never learned the two cardinal rules of producing, per Max Bialystock:
Bialystock: One: Never put your own money in the show.
Bloom: And two?
Bialystock: [screaming] NEVER PUT YOUR OWN MONEY IN THE SHOW!
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U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S 
A!
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My favorite two cardinal rules…
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Oddly inspired by some obscure Irish writer…
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Yes, but also:
Leo Bloom:
Let’s assume, just for the moment, that you are a dishonest man.
Max Bialystock:
Assume away.
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Many of us this side of the pond have been aware of the death of common sense for a decade or more.
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That’s how it’s always been. Real estate developers, MLM hucksters, hedge fund managers, and Trumpinistas have always known you don’t get rich by puting your own money into the scheme and getting a payback. You get rich by putting your money into convincing suckers to put their money into the scheme and then ripping them off.
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Or put another way, equity only happens when all parties have skin in the game … and in this case old saggy racist skin is as good as any.
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Nice idea, but the basic issue with this proposal is the word ‘insure’.
Any insurer calculating the underwriting odds on any Brexit risk would write a policy so riddled with exclusions and caveats that it would not be worth the paper it was written on… a bit like all the Vote Leave/Johnson Brexit Bus promises, really.
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I actually think common sense (or the idea that it is a thing) is what created this problem. Common sense is what tells you that even though economists who study this their entire lives are not sure what is going to happen that you know best because your friend lost their job when the plant shut down and moved to eastern europe. Ha ha, those stupid economists with their “models” and “statistics” not understanding the “real world”
Common sense is bad. It is the opposite of knowledge, and in many real ways is the enemy. The world is too large, too complicated, and to interconnected for “common sense” to be a worthwhile predictor of almost anything important.
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You have an argument about the nebulousness of whatever common sense is. Fair enough. I’ve heard such arguments many times. I am not always fully convinced. But I do understand the argument.
But in this context (Brexit and Johnson) the lack of ‘common sense’ refers more to the delusional posturing of the Brexiteers and total lack of credibility of much that they say, in the face of reality.
For whatever good reasons they may think they have for wanting out of the EU (and let’s at least grant they somehow believe there are good reasons for being out) they have paid close to zero attention or given almost zero effort towards actually figuring out how it could happen. Common sense says if you want to achieve an objective, figure out how to make it happen. The referendum and everything since was mere tactics; actually making it happen in practice, in reality, without destroying the UK, needs the “how” questions answered in complex and comprehensive detail and can only be answered jointly by the UK and the EU. That’s common sense.
Johnson today says
“I will not talk to the EU until they take the Irish backstop off the table” - this guarantees a no-deal exit (but in the same breath he prefers a deal to a no-deal - more lies, as he clearly does not care)
“I will spend billions on investing in civil society (20,00 more police, education budget increases and so on and so on” - there’s hardly a sector has not been offered an in principle bribe in the past week or so) - when Brexit itself, let alone no-deal, will wipe out any govt’s room for any financial manouevre - not that it will have the bandwidth to deal with anything not Brexit related for months or years to come. (Let’s ignore the brazen false promise to effectively reverse everything the Tories have been banging on about for a decade, i.e. austerity was paramount, but suddenly it isn’t because Boris is - pretty openly - peparing to fight an election.)
“I will spend billions on protecting/supporting sectors impacted by no-deal Brexit, like the Welsh farmers” - see financial point above
Is any of that common sense?
One of his ministers was on the radio yesterday challenged about Welsh lamb farmers losing most of their market overnight when 40% tariffs are applied under WTO rules. His response? A new market for lamb is just opening up in Japan as a result of some agreement or other (not clear how, as UK not allowed to enter trade agreements until out of EU and if it was an EU one, we’ll be out of it after 31 Oct). This is a prime example of a lack of common sense. How is Japan - not a notable lamb-eating nation, with a population a fraction of the EU’s - going to backfill an entire EU market overnight on 31 Oct so Welsh farmers can just load lamb on to ships instead of trucks a of 1 Nov? I don’t know if you will call it common sense, but to me it is clearly common sense that this will not happen.
Tonight the BBC reports a load of N.Irish DUP politicians still saying there must be no border in the Irish Sea (i.e. N.I. must be absolutely no different to rest of UK**) and there must be no land border either. On which planet do two trading entities with different and unagreed rules, regulations, standards and so on, not have a border of some sort. And nobody EVER talks about other EU citizens going to Ireland, walking into NI and then effectively having evaded all/any new immigration rules UK puts in place post-Brexit. No common sense at all.
** All the while demanding that NI must be different as regards abortion, same-sex marriage, and so on.
Johnson is a proven fantasist, liar, and hypocrite. Common sense says when you are advised that the law may not let you use them, and the Home Secretary has not given necessary approvals, you pause and think again about either reversing your policy or finding a legitimate way to achieve it, but not just go out and spend taxpayers’ money on acquiring some water cannon just in case of more riots in London. But Boris just spent the money, bought the things, which never came out of storage and were sold off many years later for not even scrap value.
The ONLY ‘common sense’ Boris has is the ‘political’ common sense which dictates it is best to lie, cheat and make false promises to manipulate people to where you want them, and sod the consequences - those are someone else’s problem, later.
Forgive the nearrant, but @Papasan’s jokey comment was entirely appropriate given the subject is Boris the fantasist and his delusional followers.
So I defend common sense as a concept - applied logic in the real world. Boris has none of it. The type of common sense (which may be more what you are referring to) that says ‘EU immigrants are here, jobs are scarce, let’s stop EU immigrants’ when EU immigrants are a huge net contributor to the country and the lack of jobs is almost entirely a result of Tory austerity, is not common sense at all. So maybe we actually agree, after all. 
And I feel better for the rant. 
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If Boris Johnson is willing to accept a no-deal Brexit, he has no incentive to get anything better. Be prepared.
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Well Michael Gove said “Britain has had enough of experts” so it must be true. Don’t worry about “facts”, just go with your gut instinct. It’s common sense.
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