Trump, Brexit, classism, and a side of policy

In general, what do you expect?

  1. It’s the same tactics the left use.

  2. It’s a direct result of politicians harming the public. You cannot expect a reaction.

Take Brexit, Take Trump as an example. The left, the establishment think that Brexit and Trump are a disaster. They can’t understand why people would vote against them for Brexit, for Trump. They think Brexit and Trump is bad. How can people vote for bad things? So to explain it they come out with the excuses, they must be ignorant. They must be racists. …

That’s the wrong question. You need to ask the question the other way round. What have the elite, the left done to people that they think that Trump and Brexit are a better choice?

That causes a discordance with the left’s belief. They believe they are doing good. How can what they do cause harm? Particularly when the ‘left’ are getting what they want. Their policies work for them, its self interest. The problem is they have to harm others to get what they want.

That’s the core problem. Being selfish and demanding others pay for your wants, comes with a consequences. The others have a vote, and they will vote for those that promise to redress the balance.

Hence, Trump Brexit. Even May doesn’t believe in free choice. She’s just one of the elite who is in it for themselves.

What’s needed is the right of consent. Left and right hate that. This applies to both sexual matters and the state. People need a right to peacefully say no, I don’t want to be involved in the state pension or social security. People should be allowed to ask, is the system working for me. Is it value for money? Turns out that the systems are crap value for money.

Think. Imagine if a private corporation had the right to force you to pay you for their ‘services’, and that even if you don’t want them, you are forced to pay. Then if you don’t pay they can get you jailed. If you think that’s far fetched, its exactly what we have in the UK with the BBC

Sorry, you think the elite establishment are left wing? In which country is this?
Hell, you describe May as one of the ‘elite’ and she sure as fuck ain’t left-wing!

Imagine if a private corporation had the right to force you to pay you for their ‘services’, and that even if you don’t want them, you are forced to pay. Then if you don’t pay they can get you jailed. If you think that’s far fetched, its exactly what we have in the UK with the BBC

This is patently false. I don’t watch television or use the BBCs online services, I don’t pay them anything, and I haven’t been gaoled, nor do they have any right to do so. They did send one of their goons around to ask why I didn’t have a television license, and I told him I didn’t need one and asked him to leave, which he duly did.

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The left sometimes uses those back-stabbing tactics, but right-wingers are more prone to do so because (as I noted) their political and economic ideology is based in zero-sum thinking.

This story is a case of infighting amongst politicians on the right. I wouldn’t bet a nickel against these conservative greedheads and thugs going a year in power before turning on each-other.

There’s plenty of evidence to back up both contentions as more than mere excuses. That’s the “reality-based community” for you, relying on facts.

It’s a sign of ignorance and delusion to equate the relatively powerless left with the establishment elites who’ve spent 40 years cementing the neoliberal globalist consensus that’s helped bring us to this turn.

Whether it’s Il Douche’s supporters or rank-and-file Brexiteers, it’s a mark of their stupidity and ignorance that they completely misidentify the actual elites who have caused them so much economic pain.

The BBC is not a typical private corporation but one that operates under a Royal Charter. It has tens of millions of stakeholders rather than a much small number of shareholders (those who understand that value can be measured in terms other than money know the difference). So no, your scenario is not exactly what you have in that case.

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If the government hires any company for any reason - paving streets, sewage line construction - you can make that same argument.

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What conservative anti-statists seem unable to grasp is that private corporations, left unfettered, can pave the Ro-o-oad to Serfdom just as well as the state can. But then, what do you expect from Know-Nothings who equate the progressive left with establishment elites?

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So here’s the basics. Applies to the US just as much as the UK.

Social security in both countries operates on socialist principles. The contributions come in, and are immediately redistributed. In both countries the income and expense accounts are published. In both however, the balance sheets are a work of fiction. Assets are zero, but the liabilities are omitted. They are omitted because if people were told about the debts they have to pay, they would work out the consequences.

The alternative pension system is a capitalist one. Here you invest, rather than have your money redistributued. End result, you are better off, have wealth, and don’t need poverty support.

May is in favour of the socialist version. In her case I suspect its that she knows if she told people of about their share of the debts, it would be a case of shoot the messenger.

So who in the UK doesn’t support the pension ponzi and is in power? None of the parties. They are all in it for what they can loot short term.

Correct.

Now think about sex and consent. I hope you are in favour of informed explicit consent when it comes to sex.

Why shouldn’t the same apply elsewhere?

So your examples are public goods, but lets take one example of yours. Sewage lines. In the UK we still have people who have septic tanks for waste. Should they be forced to pay for other people’s sewage lines?

Or roads. Should road users pay for the roads? Or railways. Why shouldn’t rail users buy tickets to pay for trains and not expect other people to be taxed so they can travel on the cheap?

I think you meant that in response to @KathyPartdeux

Because not everything in life is an economic transaction, and not all economic transactions should (as Libertarians believe) tend toward being zero-sum ones.

Yes, because sewage lines scale better as solutions outside rural and exurban areas. Occasionally Rugged Individualists have to visit cities and it’s much nicer to do so when they don’t have to worry about cholera and other epidemics that won’t respect the no-trespassing signs on their compounds.

They already do. So do the non-drivers who get their goods delivered to them on the same roads.

A business owner who never travels on the railway still benefits from its ability to get his employers to work in a cost-effective manner without his having to raise their salaries so they can call buy cars.

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Defending incompetence through whataboutery.

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Because the private sector fails on issues of the public interest and the commonweal.

https://www.water.org.uk/about-water-uk/water-industry/history-uks-sewers

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So how much does the UK or US state owe the public for pensions? Current value, please don’t inflate it by adding up future payouts.

Interested as to why you think that’s not damage. Or if you don’t know it proves the point

BBC an organisation that gets people jailed for refusing to fund it. Proves the point.

On the socialists not doing damage.

Do you have that debt number for pensions? That’s the damage.

Nickle, I and others on this site have provided the links to these numbers countless times before, as your old comment history will attest. We’ve also tried numerous times to explain the fundamental difference between state pensions and SSI in terms a high school student could understand. You’ve chosen to ignore all that in the past and continue rocking on your hobbyhorse. I’m not going to waste time pretending that this time will be different.

As @Celandine_Crane pointed out above, that’s not true. A lie proves nothing.

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A walking, word-vomiting example of the Dunning-Kruger effect in action.

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I partially agree. Commonwealth is typically called public goods.

Lets take examples. Fire services. Lets say you opt out. Others don’t. Your house catches fire. Firebrigades would put the fire out to protect those around you who have paid. You have free loaded.

It’s a question of consent. In this case the free loader has forced others to fund his services. Those paying haven’t been allowed to say we don’t consent to free loaders.

A proper system of consent works both ways.

So I conclude for public goods, people should pay, and there should be tight voter control over politicians, not politicians deciding for themselves. For example, I think executive pay in companies should be subject to shareholder votes. Politicians agree with this. Ask about voter control over their pay and they get angry.

Now for non public goods, and here pensions are a good example, or railways and roads. Why should people be forced to hand over money to the pension ponzi? Politicians demand it because if people had consent, the sensible would invest their money, not have it skimmed off to pay debts. They can’t allow that, so they resort to the usual threats.

A big added bonus of consent on top of the moral, is that people would be better of by investment. It also sends a very clear message to the state as to what people really value. They can then concentrate on what people want, not what politicians want.

Rail is another. Why shouldn’t the users of rail pay for rail? The left’s argument [in the UK] is that someone who doesn’t use the train should be forced to pay for others to use the train on the cheap. HS2 is the prime current example. Why?

https://www.irishnews.com/news/2018/07/26/news/chronically-ill-west-belfast-grandmother-59-sent-to-jail-for-failing-to-pay-fines-for-having-no-tv-licence-1391675/

Ill grandmother sent to jail for not paying TV licence fines

Private corporation, the BBC [It's the legal structure], gets people fined for not buying its services and then jailed. 

Notice the date? Yesterday

The date on that news story is 26 July. Are you living in a time warp? Also, the woman in the story clearly states “In hindsight, I should have had a licence”, so she’s not some anti-statist crusader but someone who ran into bad luck.

The reality is that cases like this are extremely rare (most end up in court, 1/3 are dismissed, and the vast majority who are found guilty pay their outstanding fees and fines and call it a day). The cases would be rarer still if the BBC didn’t outsource collections to a rapacious and corner-cutting for-profit firm that employs the usual thuggish and deceptive tactics of that bottom-feeder industry.

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I always think it is interesting that the propertarians on the right have failed to actually self-govern themselves for any length of time during the last 100 years (Microstates consisting of someones basement do not count). Libertarian-socialists had managed this at least three times by the time their ideas were the same age. If they can’t even manage the disastrous six days of the first Bavarian Soviet Republic I don’t see why I should consider their ideology anything other than a sick neo-feudalist joke.

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I think you meant "there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!'”

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If you, the illustrious and sage Nickle, wish to be a hermit in squalor, get thee hence to a nunnery.

A word is a word is a word, but a collection of words aimed at communicating a point or opinion is not only a statement, it is an action. These statements you made, if placedunder force of arms or law, would be an act of great violence. Is your goal to cause harm to the people of this great commonwealth of humanity?

More cynically I think you are but a wilting May flower attempting to distractfrom the actual harm the May governnent hath wrought in policy and most recently, by attpting to subvert the public discourse.

Fie on you. Begone, damn spot!

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That goes once again to their seeing everything as needing to be as close as possible to a zero-sum game. Right-leaning Libertarians just don’t seem to be satisfied with a transaction unless one party ends up on top and the other gets screwed, and as a result of that they recursively turn on their allies and comrades the moment the moment they’ve won a battle against a common enemy (sometimes before).

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