Broken_Erika
Play with me.
I thought the right to Bear Arms would not be infringed? Or is that just the US?
Popular protests in the EU
- Thread starter innonimatu
- Start date
Lexicus
Deity
I haven't read it - I've asked for the book for Christmas, so will hopefully have read it by the start of the new year. But I have a lot of respect for Bill Mitchell, I've read a lot of his blog posts and some of his academic papers. And I know that the argument he makes in that book dovetails with a lot of the arguments you've made here in the context of EU politics.
In Soviet Russia, you have the right to arm bears.
TIL that the Russian Bear was since the 16th-17th century already popular in the UK to depict Russia
Here a more recent caricature
On the site you can read the text if you zoom in.
https://www.raremaps.com/gallery/de..._By_Walter_Emanuel/Johnson, Riddle & Co..html
innonimatu
the resident Cassandra
- Joined
- Dec 4, 2006
- Messages
- 15,377
In France the government is still worried, they're trying to buy the loyalty of the police. The once-mighty Jupiter acts as a failing Emperor...
Which only goes to prove, you get what you actually seize the opportunity to demand, and will get nothing if you do not organize to make demands.
Which only goes to prove, you get what you actually seize the opportunity to demand, and will get nothing if you do not organize to make demands.
Thorgalaeg
Deity
In Spain we can see the typical Japanese bullfighter.
Sickening
Chieftain
- Joined
- Sep 21, 2015
- Messages
- 52
1. Wasn't it a fact though that refugees has costed the EU too much??? Most of them wanted to be "entrepreneur", only to drive the tourists away or they'd become pickpockets or create some shady jobs that needs to be protected and "inadvertently" costing EU a great part of the budget ? Yes, I know that it is extremely tough for someone who is a refugee to find a job especially at these days and age. However, they should have known themselves to not become a problem to the country that has granted them protection. I mean, don't just go to to the touristy cities of Europe, go somewhere rural or somewhere in the Balkans for example where there are tons of jobs opening created by China. Paris, Berlin and everywhere else in the Western Europe are already doomed for good because of Trump and need to struggle for its survival. Why would you want to go where the jobs are scarce if you were a refugee seeking for better opportunity in the first place ? Eastern Europe is the only place to go for them.
2. LGBT community itself has not contributed much to the economy. The gays have all the opportunity but have no ambition while the lesbians are the other way around. The other at queer community is too few to contribute the economy enough. Yes, it needs further study and yet it is awfully close to reality.
3. The only way we can get healthcare is to give up protection for LGBT and minorities, or maybe copyrights and quality control but I mean, Europe won't survive without luxury goods and cheese but that would be another story. Creating an army of United Europe is a necessity to defend Europe from Russia and China before 2020. If there is any other way, let me now.
4. All in all, what I'm trying to say is that EU needs to be more practical. It's history repeating itself, just like China and Europe in the 19th century, except China is now Europe and Europe is now China.
Last edited:
innonimatu
the resident Cassandra
- Joined
- Dec 4, 2006
- Messages
- 15,377
You have some rather strange ideas and I wonder where you got them from?
1. immigrants are drawn to the wealthiest areas, that is perfectly rational. Why labour for miserable wages (and no rights!) as agricultural laborers if they can have a go at services jobs in wealthier cities? They're bad, refugees and other immigrants will always be exploited, but it's better than agriculture! What is actually happening in Europe is that the owners of agricultural enterprises are actively importing immigrants, and mistreating them, in an all-out competition with other businessman in the same area. It is your typical race to the bottom when the state has refused to intervene because it has been bought by these interests. First they imported romanians and eastern europeans, then they moved (in Spain and Italy) to importing moroccans and other africans. In Portugal I'm seeing bangladeshis, pakistanis and other indians, even indonesians being flown in. All these businessman justify their demands to governments (allowing this immigration and turning a blind eye to terrible working conditions) with the "need to compete" within the EU single market, as others are engaging in the same kind of practices. The locals have been gradually evicted from agricultural paid labour due to the cheaper foreign labour thus imported.
Naturally those immigrants who moved on their own initiative, and even these who were flown in specifically to be exploited in agriculture, attempt to flee these conditions and find jobs in wealthier areas, better-paying services. It's perfectly rational. The irrational thing is allowing them in, but to put a stop to this it would be necessary to end the EU and the "single market competition" excuse. Until that happens tensions over immigration will continue to rise.
2. The LGBT community does not exist. Or rather, there are some very vocal "activists" who pretend there is one, that being "LGBT" is something special or different, and make a living from this idea. And then there are the actually gay, lesbian, etc people most of whom are spread throughout society and doing what everyone else is doing, just happen to also be gay or whatever. A (comparatively) handful of very visible people make for a distorted idea of what your "gay", "lesbian", or whatever actually is.
3. Health care in Europe can be good and cheap, there is no real difficulty with providing it. There are a number of different systems and several that work fine, others that are threatened only because big capitalist interests see it as one very profitable market to be exploited and are trying to destroy public provision of health care. Imho all private health care insurance, and all business for profit in health care, apart from private practices where one sells his own labour, should be forbidden. Even pharmaceutical research should be conducted by state agencies. Efficiency would be higher, coordination better, and costs far lower with a totally public-run system.
4. The EU needs to be ended. It works exactly as intended, meaning as an enabler of big business, monopolies and oligopolies too large for people to even dream of fighting. These will prey upon the population. The population must fight back, and that requires ending the EU, the entity that gives them political/legal protection, that from the start has had a strategy of creating them outright (creating "european champions" to "compete" with other multinational corporations, instead of shutting out foreign multinational corporations).
1. immigrants are drawn to the wealthiest areas, that is perfectly rational. Why labour for miserable wages (and no rights!) as agricultural laborers if they can have a go at services jobs in wealthier cities? They're bad, refugees and other immigrants will always be exploited, but it's better than agriculture! What is actually happening in Europe is that the owners of agricultural enterprises are actively importing immigrants, and mistreating them, in an all-out competition with other businessman in the same area. It is your typical race to the bottom when the state has refused to intervene because it has been bought by these interests. First they imported romanians and eastern europeans, then they moved (in Spain and Italy) to importing moroccans and other africans. In Portugal I'm seeing bangladeshis, pakistanis and other indians, even indonesians being flown in. All these businessman justify their demands to governments (allowing this immigration and turning a blind eye to terrible working conditions) with the "need to compete" within the EU single market, as others are engaging in the same kind of practices. The locals have been gradually evicted from agricultural paid labour due to the cheaper foreign labour thus imported.
Naturally those immigrants who moved on their own initiative, and even these who were flown in specifically to be exploited in agriculture, attempt to flee these conditions and find jobs in wealthier areas, better-paying services. It's perfectly rational. The irrational thing is allowing them in, but to put a stop to this it would be necessary to end the EU and the "single market competition" excuse. Until that happens tensions over immigration will continue to rise.
2. The LGBT community does not exist. Or rather, there are some very vocal "activists" who pretend there is one, that being "LGBT" is something special or different, and make a living from this idea. And then there are the actually gay, lesbian, etc people most of whom are spread throughout society and doing what everyone else is doing, just happen to also be gay or whatever. A (comparatively) handful of very visible people make for a distorted idea of what your "gay", "lesbian", or whatever actually is.
3. Health care in Europe can be good and cheap, there is no real difficulty with providing it. There are a number of different systems and several that work fine, others that are threatened only because big capitalist interests see it as one very profitable market to be exploited and are trying to destroy public provision of health care. Imho all private health care insurance, and all business for profit in health care, apart from private practices where one sells his own labour, should be forbidden. Even pharmaceutical research should be conducted by state agencies. Efficiency would be higher, coordination better, and costs far lower with a totally public-run system.
4. The EU needs to be ended. It works exactly as intended, meaning as an enabler of big business, monopolies and oligopolies too large for people to even dream of fighting. These will prey upon the population. The population must fight back, and that requires ending the EU, the entity that gives them political/legal protection, that from the start has had a strategy of creating them outright (creating "european champions" to "compete" with other multinational corporations, instead of shutting out foreign multinational corporations).
Moriarte
Immortal
- Joined
- May 10, 2012
- Messages
- 2,690
When you say end the EU, I wonder if you mean the political or economical union.. Other than that, what you write about EU's future seems utopian to me, at first glance. One can argue creation and maintaining of the EU is the natural reaction to the strengthening of the US, China and Russia - similar "unions" in a sense. To compete with behemoths one needs to consolidate strength and finance. Surely, EU is a strange beast, but perhaps you meant it needs to be reorganized and mended again on more favorable terms? Going to nation states again seems like two steps back to me. Besides, one can't really fight the process. If we all agree to build capitalist system, capital will consolidate and reorganize surrounding reality to their liking and comfort, creating economical and political superpowers to better serve their goals of expansion and competition. "Ending the EU" in this sense is like fighting windmills, or the wind, rather.
Could you clear up a little more what exactly do you mean by "ending the EU"? And why..
Could you clear up a little more what exactly do you mean by "ending the EU"? And why..
Sickening
Chieftain
- Joined
- Sep 21, 2015
- Messages
- 52
1. Nah, I'm sorry to say this but every economic models wouldnt work without exploitation of labor. In the end there would always be population that needs to be sacrificed so that economic gear would always run smoothly. The US, China and Singapore on which has different economic ideology respectively and with its success are still unable to solve the catch 22 of how to spread the wealth evenly.
Scandinavian socialism success is due to oil, gas and small number of population. It is impossible to apply the system everywhere else.
2. It was just a social commentary, I myself was a part of the community and it exists if you know where to look.
3. You need to realise that it's impossible to provide cheap healthcare in the EU without sacrificing quality healthcare. There is no big pharma, there is only little competition in pharmaeutical industry and it is governments' fault that they are unable to control the industry because they had always feigning ignorance that medicine is always a necessity and not a general manufactured goods. Just to point out on how South Korea is able to provide the cheapest and the fastest internet in the world by ensuring competition to be tight because their gov realised that internet is necessary for future economy. China did the same thing, pointing out whats necessary and control the competition. I mean the fault is not on the system, but on the government.
4. The EU needs to stay, capitalism needs to stay. Marxist utopia is imanginary place created by dictators and oligarchs so that they are able to control the market with zero competitors.
Last edited:
Patine
Deity
- Joined
- Feb 14, 2011
- Messages
- 12,039
Well, to be fair, using that rationale for the sake of argument, it would be POSSIBLE to apply that system, by your description, to the Persian Gulf States and Brunei - if their absolute theocratic monarchies who have First World governments by the balls, weren't completely and utterly antithetical to the concept.
Moriarte
Immortal
- Joined
- May 10, 2012
- Messages
- 2,690
'Zero' is gross misunderstanding of the subject. Chinese state/private companies do compete with each other/outsiders. And just like their western guests, they dislike excessive competition, especially in sensitive areas.
Sickening
Chieftain
- Joined
- Sep 21, 2015
- Messages
- 52
Except China is not a Marxist state, it's Maoist and I don't believe that currently China is a socialist country. Yes there are competition, but it is still controlled and backed by the government. With the downfall of Soviet Union, why would people still believe that Karl Marx's socialism would still work out?
Last edited:
Sickening
Chieftain
- Joined
- Sep 21, 2015
- Messages
- 52
Have no idea about arabian peninsula but Brunei already implemented socialism since its founding. The monarch pays for the education and healthcare. During muslim holiday the monarch may even give bonuses to Bruneian citizens.
Moriarte
Immortal
- Joined
- May 10, 2012
- Messages
- 2,690
I don't think people believe it. Some people, however, make active steps to build a superpower based on Marx's works, on Lenin's/Stalin's, Mao's, then contemporary Chinese socialist scholars. And they succeeded in building second largest economy in the world in no time. I do understand that such result is pathetic for you to even consider that Marx's socialism will work out, but the Chinese think different.
Spoiler Xi's speech :
And? Growing billion dollar stateless corporations, forming cartels and other shady practices is That much better than competition with government oversight?
Well, if you keep insisting that it is a question of faith.. there is no point arguing anything.
Patine
Deity
- Joined
- Feb 14, 2011
- Messages
- 12,039
Well, considering the vast, immense number of people in the world today who have been utterly hoodwinked into believing that Capitalism has not failed as completely, utterly, and firmly as a WORKABLE, FUNCTIONAL economic system as Communism has before it, I sometimes wonder about people's beliefs (and gullibility) even in this Information Age...
innonimatu
the resident Cassandra
- Joined
- Dec 4, 2006
- Messages
- 15,377
I never agreed to have a capitalist system, others decided that. I don't recall being asked about it. Capitalism requires the protection of a state actively enforcing its myriad rules. Capitalism is the antithesis of free market competition, it is the realm of big business for profit that necessarily must be protected with the full power of the state. Someone mentioned king Philiph IV of France in another thread, how the with one strike wiped our the Templars and his own debt problem. It turns out that the big bankers of the age in France, the Templars, depended on the protection of the king. Once the king decided to turn against them, their power crumbled. This is capitalism: it accumulates profits from capital and depend on the complicity of political power to keep those profits. In England at the time the bankers were a few italian families (chiefly the Bardi). They conspired within the court to go as far as controlling the income from british ports, and got Edward II assassinated for opposing them. But his son would go on to avenge the father, defaulted on the debt and let the Bardi to bankruptcy. That was the beginning of the end for the high capitalism of the middle ages centered in Italy, the northern countries drifted away from their grasp.
Capitalism is old, contrary to what many marxists think. But Marx's basic idea that it is inherently unstable is entirely correct: the accumulation of profits and the reproduction of capital accumulates wealth in each cycle capital -> commodities -> more capital, and cannot go on, everyone but a few of the wealthiest would eventually be immiserated. Success in this game is only temporarily obtained by getting political protection, bent rules, otherwise competition would prevent profits from being made. Eventually wealth gets too concentrated, rebellions break out against the political order that protects it (might even the the new rulers of the state if the state is led towards bankruptcy), and then the political rules that protect the high capitalism of the age are broken and the cycle restarted, based elsewhere. This is a profoundly irrational and wasteful system. Marx seems to have been the first one to successfully draw people's attention to this.
The EU was a political project to "Make Europe Great Again". Trump before Trump, I could describe it. Because the means to "MEGA", from the start of this project, was to create a big european market so that big european businesses could compete on scale with the american. And in the 1970s as "globalization" was started, Delors and his clique decided that this would not be enough, the EU would make european both banks and companies big as multinational corporations. A market and a currency.
Of course this MEGA was about a past greatness that never existed as the "fathers of the EU" intended to "recreate" it. The Europe of the past was divided and had much competition within. Large-scale business, as well as large-scale political power, failed time and again (Philiph II, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Hitler, etc). It was innovative because people could try their luck in other country if they got persecuted in their own. And because states experienced with different systems of government and did not stagnate in one. And because the dead weight of vested interests and corruption was periodically wiped out in revolutions, wars, and general "political instability". Apart from wars, that instability was what made Europe advanced. Empires prosper on scale for a while, but then stagnate. Socially, economically, politically, as wealth gets concentrated and the whole organization of the empire shifts to be about the protection of the powerful. That is the capitalism the EU is imposing on Europe. That is what must be destroyed: the european single market, the european political union, the pacts of stability through which governments protect each other's corrupt officials in an unholy alliance against any "populist" manifestation, democracy be damned.
The seed of the idea for the EU came from the old nobles of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. An empire that died from its long decadence and internal contraction, and empire that got World War I kick-started as a result of from its internal tensions! People want to emulate this?
The EU will fail, it is not about fighting windmills. Were it to success in creating the Empire it aims to, the rot would be built-in. The only question is when and at what cost it will fail. Now, peacefully, allowing for people across Europe to democratically attempt their local, more adequate solutions for their needs and expectations. Or in the future, toppling as a rotten empire torn apart in revolution and warfare like the former prison of the peoples, Austria-Hungary?
mitsho
Deity
Sure, I like your framing of European History of the last century as MEGA, it is quite illuminating. But then again, historical comparisons are usually too easy. The world has changed since the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. Netflix is probably doing more for European Unity than has ever been possible by making television series and movies from all over Europe available and mixing this culture in a way that has so far only been available for Erasmus students. And by the way, there are already quite a few children of Erasmus. But I am looking very much forward to the first Estonian Netflix series.
EnglishEdward
Deity
Exactly, capitalism existed in the Roman empire.
Which is why, one of the first things a new emperor would do if his predecessor
had been in office a few years, was to declare a general amnesty on debts.
That wasn't kindness or even populism, but a technical necessity because
the debt burden the ordinary owed the wealthy was stifling the economy.
If an Emperor lived too long, he'd likely need to declare another amnesty in his reign.
The system in the west broke in 2008, but the wealthy got the governments to limit
the debt amnesty to themselves by having the central banks apply quantitative easing,
ultra low interest rates and the states providing them with tax cuts funded by state deficits.
innonimatu
the resident Cassandra
- Joined
- Dec 4, 2006
- Messages
- 15,377
You can put me on record as hoping that the EU will prosper as much as Netflix will in the future...
Speaking of Estonia, I'm sure that the Soviet Union mixed estonian culture with russian culture, and the cultures of the other republics within it. Didn't prevent it from breaking apart. Somewhat violently and catastrophically. Has the world changed, really? This time is different, how many times have people said it?
Similar threads
- Poll
