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Free enterprise or socialism

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scotview
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Free enterprise or socialism

#365218

Postby scotview » December 11th, 2020, 5:45 pm

There have been a few significant (Tory) .GOV interventions recently in the UK market....eg energy (renewables) & banking.

Also looks like Mr Biden has a strong socialist, interventionist agenda.

Whither do we go ......socialist agenda or free market ?

Very, very strange times.

Your views are MOST welcome.

Mike4
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Re: Free enterprise or socialism

#365326

Postby Mike4 » December 11th, 2020, 11:36 pm

I think we have had a generation of broadly 'hands off' free enterprise and many of the politicians and voters in ascendency now are too young to have personal memories of the interventionist governments of the 60s and 70s, and all the negative consequences that flowed. So the fear of what happens when governments tinker and interfere is steadily being lost.

These things go in generation-long cycles. I think we are in for 30 years of intervention now, while the next generation learns the lessons over again from scratch. Who was it said "If there is one thing history teaches us, it is we never learn from history" (or something along those lines)?

And a further reason. I don't think climate change will be brought under control if the free market is left to do it, so massive intervention will be/is being attempted. It probably won't work though. Again.

AsleepInYorkshire
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Re: Free enterprise or socialism

#365331

Postby AsleepInYorkshire » December 12th, 2020, 12:07 am

scotview wrote:There have been a few significant (Tory) .GOV interventions recently in the UK market....eg energy (renewables) & banking.

Also looks like Mr Biden has a strong socialist, interventionist agenda.

Whither do we go ......socialist agenda or free market ?

Very, very strange times.

Your views are MOST welcome.

I think it's possible to engage a million people doing nothing but write about this subject for the next million years and still suspect everyone of them would ultimately end up running clean up their own [expletive deleted], being none the wiser.

Previous Strange Times

  1. WW I
  2. The Spanish Flu Pandemic
  3. The Great Depression
  4. WW II
  5. The Korean War
  6. The Vietnamese War
  7. The Suez Crisis
  8. The Cuban Missile Crisis
  9. The Three Day Week
  10. Thatcherism
  11. Brexit
The issue is "we" try to label and understand. "We" try to compare today with history. And I think there's an overarching need within all of us. We are always looking for a free lunch.

Labels can't describe our behaviours or our rules and our intricate "guidelines".

I'm sorry I know that's a very negative response to a genuine question. If I've learned one thing it's that I can never learn everything.

AiY

Nimrod103
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Re: Free enterprise or socialism

#365343

Postby Nimrod103 » December 12th, 2020, 2:54 am

AsleepInYorkshire wrote:
scotview wrote:There have been a few significant (Tory) .GOV interventions recently in the UK market....eg energy (renewables) & banking.

Also looks like Mr Biden has a strong socialist, interventionist agenda.

Whither do we go ......socialist agenda or free market ?

Very, very strange times.

Your views are MOST welcome.

I think it's possible to engage a million people doing nothing but write about this subject for the next million years and still suspect everyone of them would ultimately end up running clean up their own Pink marshmallows, being none the wiser.

Previous Strange Times

  1. WW I
  2. The Spanish Flu Pandemic
  3. The Great Depression
  4. WW II
  5. The Korean War
  6. The Vietnamese War
  7. The Suez Crisis
  8. The Cuban Missile Crisis
  9. The Three Day Week
  10. Thatcherism
  11. Brexit
The issue is "we" try to label and understand. "We" try to compare today with history. And I think there's an overarching need within all of us. We are always looking for a free lunch.

Labels can't describe our behaviours or our rules and our intricate "guidelines".

I'm sorry I know that's a very negative response to a genuine question. If I've learned one thing it's that I can never learn everything.

AiY


Haven’t you left off the biggest strange time of all?
The rise of Asia generally and China in particular? Deindustrialisation of the West, exporting productive good jobs. Leading to 300 year old record low interest rates, even negative ones.
The Western World’s ports are clogged with containers of stuff imported from China, some of it PPE, which we have found to our horror we should have making at home all along. But a lot is stuff just undercutting our own manufacturers, or tat we really don’t need.

88V8
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Re: Free enterprise or socialism

#365968

Postby 88V8 » December 14th, 2020, 10:06 am

Nimrod103 wrote:Haven’t you left off the biggest strange time of all?
The rise of Asia generally and China in particular?

Yes.
And who did that?
We did.
The great British consumer who doesn't care where things are made so long as they're cheap.

Some of the blame falls on the Interferocrats of the EU who deemed that goods could not be labelled with the country of manufacture, no more Made In Britain, it had to be Made in the EU. So whatever patriotic tendencies there might have been were thoroughly stifled.
At least they shot all EU members in the foot, not only the UK.

And another benefit of course, our emissions fall. We've outsourced them to China, who consequently become the bad guys. What galloping hypocrisy, eh?

Now, post-panpanic, let's see how onshoring goes.
Or rather, let's see how soon it's forgotten.

Do agree that the trend is towards Socialist interference with Capitalism. The media is on the whole, Socialist, which exacerbates the trend.

V8

scrumpyjack
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Re: Free enterprise or socialism

#365978

Postby scrumpyjack » December 14th, 2020, 10:20 am

Nimrod103 wrote:
AsleepInYorkshire wrote:
scotview wrote:There have been a few significant (Tory) .GOV interventions recently in the UK market....eg energy (renewables) & banking.

Also looks like Mr Biden has a strong socialist, interventionist agenda.

Whither do we go ......socialist agenda or free market ?

Very, very strange times.

Your views are MOST welcome.

I think it's possible to engage a million people doing nothing but write about this subject for the next million years and still suspect everyone of them would ultimately end up running clean up their own Pink marshmallows, being none the wiser.

Previous Strange Times

  1. WW I
  2. The Spanish Flu Pandemic
  3. The Great Depression
  4. WW II
  5. The Korean War
  6. The Vietnamese War
  7. The Suez Crisis
  8. The Cuban Missile Crisis
  9. The Three Day Week
  10. Thatcherism
  11. Brexit
The issue is "we" try to label and understand. "We" try to compare today with history. And I think there's an overarching need within all of us. We are always looking for a free lunch.

Labels can't describe our behaviours or our rules and our intricate "guidelines".

I'm sorry I know that's a very negative response to a genuine question. If I've learned one thing it's that I can never learn everything.

AiY


Haven’t you left off the biggest strange time of all?
The rise of Asia generally and China in particular? Deindustrialisation of the West, exporting productive good jobs. Leading to 300 year old record low interest rates, even negative ones.
The Western World’s ports are clogged with containers of stuff imported from China, some of it PPE, which we have found to our horror we should have making at home all along. But a lot is stuff just undercutting our own manufacturers, or tat we really don’t need.


It's only natural that lower added value jobs like manufacturing get offshored to China so our skilled workers can concentrate on more important higher paid jobs such as Diversity Officers. As long as the 'kindness of foreigners' continues to finance our ever increasing balance of payments deficit that's fine. Eventually the sh*t will hit the fan though!

ursaminortaur
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Re: Free enterprise or socialism

#365983

Postby ursaminortaur » December 14th, 2020, 10:31 am

88V8 wrote:
Nimrod103 wrote:Haven’t you left off the biggest strange time of all?
The rise of Asia generally and China in particular?

Yes.
And who did that?
We did.
The great British consumer who doesn't care where things are made so long as they're cheap.

Some of the blame falls on the Interferocrats of the EU who deemed that goods could not be labelled with the country of manufacture, no more Made In Britain, it had to be Made in the EU. So whatever patriotic tendencies there might have been were thoroughly stifled.
At least they shot all EU members in the foot, not only the UK.


The EU wanted to make source country labelling mandatory in 2014 but the UK was one of the countries which opposed such a move.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/15/european-plan-made-in-label-source-country

Customers may in the future get a better chance to tell whether a car advertised as "Made in Britain" really was made in Britain or assembled abroad, after the European parliament narrowly voted to make labels specifying the country of origin mandatory for all goods sold in the EU.

The proposal opened up a new dividing line across the continent, with southern European countries such as Italy welcoming the proposals as a boost to the fashion, shoemaking and ceramics industries, and Britain and Germany in particular warning that compulsory "made in" signs could damage companies that rely on global supply chains.

Currently, companies that use "made in" labels do so on a voluntary basis, and there is no central body in charge of handing out the label. Companies in countries renowned for their manufacturing sectors, such as Germany or Italy, frequently use the label.

XFool
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Re: Free enterprise or socialism

#366021

Postby XFool » December 14th, 2020, 11:51 am

Nimrod103 wrote:Haven’t you left off the biggest strange time of all?
The rise of Asia generally and China in particular? Deindustrialisation of the West, exporting productive good jobs. Leading to 300 year old record low interest rates, even negative ones.

But is that really so "strange"?

Most here grew up in the post WW2 period, with its high interest rates, and that was normal for us. But, from a historical perspective, those 'normal' rates were abnormally high. It was a very uncomfortable period as they returned to historical norms (Endowment mortgages, Equitable Life, Split Capital Trusts).

A large, undeveloped world, lay outside the industrialised West. Just as the Western nations had industrialised so, in time, did Eastern nations. Just as Britain used to be ruler of the world, in time that mantle passed to the US. Nothing lasts forever.

XFool
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Re: Free enterprise or socialism

#366022

Postby XFool » December 14th, 2020, 11:54 am

88V8 wrote:The media is on the whole, Socialist, which exacerbates the trend.

LOL!

Comedy Gold. :)

Nimrod103
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Re: Free enterprise or socialism

#366082

Postby Nimrod103 » December 14th, 2020, 1:52 pm

XFool wrote:
Nimrod103 wrote:Haven’t you left off the biggest strange time of all?
The rise of Asia generally and China in particular? Deindustrialisation of the West, exporting productive good jobs. Leading to 300 year old record low interest rates, even negative ones.

But is that really so "strange"?

Most here grew up in the post WW2 period, with its high interest rates, and that was normal for us. But, from a historical perspective, those 'normal' rates were abnormally high. It was a very uncomfortable period as they returned to historical norms (Endowment mortgages, Equitable Life, Split Capital Trusts).

A large, undeveloped world, lay outside the industrialised West. Just as the Western nations had industrialised so, in time, did Eastern nations. Just as Britain used to be ruler of the world, in time that mantle passed to the US. Nothing lasts forever.


Periods of high inflation are not that unusual in the last 300 years, caused by wartime shortages. or famines. During gold standard days, they were balanced out by periods of relative deflation. Since we all became addicted to fiat money, periods of inflation were obviously going to become more common and extreme.
However, now most countries would love some inflation and a boost to demand, because the current very low or even negative interest rates are causing havoc with the World monetary system. Nobody knows how it will all end end up. It is unprecedented.

dealtn
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Re: Free enterprise or socialism

#366088

Postby dealtn » December 14th, 2020, 2:08 pm

Nimrod103 wrote:
However, now most countries would love some inflation and a boost to demand, because the current very low or even negative interest rates are causing havoc with the World monetary system.


In 5 years the RPI Index has gone from 260.0 to 293.9

I think its fair to say that with a decline in purchasing power of 13% over 5 years the UK, at least, has had "some" inflation.

anon155742
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Re: Free enterprise or socialism

#366094

Postby anon155742 » December 14th, 2020, 2:32 pm

scrumpyjack wrote:It's only natural that lower added value jobs like manufacturing get offshored to China so our skilled workers can concentrate on more important higher paid jobs such as Diversity Officers. As long as the 'kindness of foreigners' continues to finance our ever increasing balance of payments deficit that's fine. Eventually the sh*t will hit the fan though!


Diversity officers, selling houses to each other, cutting hair, running charities, administrating public sector projects, and making coffee for the middle classes.

Unemployment for the lower class.

Selling off assets built by the previous generations, building public sector or legal fiefdoms or just buggering off elsewhere for the upper classes.

Modern Britain

88V8
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Re: Free enterprise or socialism

#366282

Postby 88V8 » December 14th, 2020, 11:06 pm

ursaminortaur wrote:The EU wanted to make source country labelling mandatory in 2014 but the UK was one of the countries which opposed such a move.

OK, I sit corrected. Thought I had the EU dead to rights there. Damn.

V8

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Re: Free enterprise or socialism

#381186

Postby funduffer » January 27th, 2021, 12:00 pm

The trouble with this question is that it assumes there is no middle way.

Unrestricted free enterprise has its problems, and so does communism or total state control.

Nearly all countries work in the middle ground in between, and labelling things as socialist or conservative just muddies the waters. The Democrats in the USA are currently to the right of the conservatives in the UK, yet they are labelled as socialist. Yet many believe we have a right wing government in the UK. It makes no sense.

It seems to me, most of the wealth creating periods of the 20th century were times when there was reasonably high amounts of government spending, but with incentives to allow the private sector to flourish.

Communism didn’t work.

Tax cuts for the rich, austerity and trickle down economics don’t work.

Some degree of social democracy seems to work. The only argument is how much.

There is a middle way, and I wish we could return to it.

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Re: Free enterprise or socialism

#381214

Postby Charlottesquare » January 27th, 2021, 1:35 pm

funduffer wrote:The trouble with this question is that it assumes there is no middle way.

Unrestricted free enterprise has its problems, and so does communism or total state control.

Nearly all countries work in the middle ground in between, and labelling things as socialist or conservative just muddies the waters. The Democrats in the USA are currently to the right of the conservatives in the UK, yet they are labelled as socialist. Yet many believe we have a right wing government in the UK. It makes no sense.

It seems to me, most of the wealth creating periods of the 20th century were times when there was reasonably high amounts of government spending, but with incentives to allow the private sector to flourish.

Communism didn’t work.

Tax cuts for the rich, austerity and trickle down economics don’t work.

Some degree of social democracy seems to work. The only argument is how much.

There is a middle way, and I wish we could return to it.


Agreed, the trouble always seems to be some group labelling something as one or the other, the fact is that sometimes say public ownership is a good idea sometimes it is not, sometimes taxes being used as a redistributive tool is sensible sometimes it is mere implementation of an ideology with no sound underlying reason, and worst of all sometimes we get a group with a bee in their bonnet that seems to make them ignore everything else except their preferred goal, often coupled with an unerring belief that they are right . To cap it all we then get periods of stop start policies as the sides battle out their beliefs, these tend to result in the worst of all worlds where any merits the differing approaches might have possessed get extinguished by the constant changes in direction.

The startling thing is that any business that operated as governments operate would die, their recruitment policies are poor(best person for job, what a joke) their long term plans are never completed, direction changes are ten a penny, their time horizons are limited and if they can master detail they really hide it well.

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Re: Free enterprise or socialism

#381231

Postby dealtn » January 27th, 2021, 2:08 pm

funduffer wrote:The trouble with this question is that it assumes there is no middle way.

Unrestricted free enterprise has its problems, and so does communism or total state control.

Nearly all countries work in the middle ground in between, and labelling things as socialist or conservative just muddies the waters. The Democrats in the USA are currently to the right of the conservatives in the UK, yet they are labelled as socialist. Yet many believe we have a right wing government in the UK. It makes no sense.

It seems to me, most of the wealth creating periods of the 20th century were times when there was reasonably high amounts of government spending, but with incentives to allow the private sector to flourish.

Communism didn’t work.

Tax cuts for the rich, austerity and trickle down economics don’t work.

Some degree of social democracy seems to work. The only argument is how much.

There is a middle way, and I wish we could return to it.


Given your third paragraph where you acknowledge nearly all countries work in the middle ground, can I ask when you think we left the "it" (presumably the middle) in your last?

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Re: Free enterprise or socialism

#381238

Postby XFool » January 27th, 2021, 2:22 pm

funduffer wrote:The trouble with this question is that it assumes there is no middle way.

Unrestricted free enterprise has its problems, and so does communism or total state control.

Nearly all countries work in the middle ground in between, and labelling things as socialist or conservative just muddies the waters. The Democrats in the USA are currently to the right of the conservatives in the UK, yet they are labelled as socialist. Yet many believe we have a right wing government in the UK. It makes no sense.

Couldn't have put it better myself. But that seems to be the world we are in...

funduffer wrote:It seems to me, most of the wealth creating periods of the 20th century were times when there was reasonably high amounts of government spending, but with incentives to allow the private sector to flourish.

Indeed! Against everything we are usually told, politically, these days. Mind you, 'correlation is not causation' and there were other factors at play.

funduffer wrote:Communism didn’t work.

Tax cuts for the rich, austerity and trickle down economics don’t work.

What if there is nothing that works? :(

funduffer wrote:Some degree of social democracy seems to work. The only argument is how much.

There is a middle way, and I wish we could return to it.

"middle way" sounds very like "Third Way"! :)

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Re: Free enterprise or socialism

#381244

Postby XFool » January 27th, 2021, 2:34 pm

88V8 wrote:Yes.
And who did that?
We did.
The great British consumer who doesn't care where things are made so long as they're cheap.

Some of the blame falls on the Interferocrats of the EU who deemed that goods could not be labelled with the country of manufacture, no more Made In Britain, it had to be Made in the EU. So whatever patriotic tendencies there might have been were thoroughly stifled.
At least they shot all EU members in the foot, not only the UK.

And another benefit of course, our emissions fall. We've outsourced them to China, who consequently become the bad guys. What galloping hypocrisy, eh?

Now, post-panpanic, let's see how onshoring goes.
Or rather, let's see how soon it's forgotten.

Do agree that the trend is towards Socialist interference with Capitalism. The media is on the whole, Socialist, which exacerbates the trend.

V8

Funny! I thought I didn't have access to PD. :lol:

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Re: Free enterprise or socialism

#381332

Postby funduffer » January 27th, 2021, 6:49 pm

dealtn wrote:
funduffer wrote:The trouble with this question is that it assumes there is no middle way.

Unrestricted free enterprise has its problems, and so does communism or total state control.

Nearly all countries work in the middle ground in between, and labelling things as socialist or conservative just muddies the waters. The Democrats in the USA are currently to the right of the conservatives in the UK, yet they are labelled as socialist. Yet many believe we have a right wing government in the UK. It makes no sense.

It seems to me, most of the wealth creating periods of the 20th century were times when there was reasonably high amounts of government spending, but with incentives to allow the private sector to flourish.

Communism didn’t work.

Tax cuts for the rich, austerity and trickle down economics don’t work.

Some degree of social democracy seems to work. The only argument is how much.

There is a middle way, and I wish we could return to it.


Given your third paragraph where you acknowledge nearly all countries work in the middle ground, can I ask when you think we left the "it" (presumably the middle) in your last?


2008!

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Re: Free enterprise or socialism

#381338

Postby scrumpyjack » January 27th, 2021, 6:59 pm

funduffer wrote:
dealtn wrote:The trouble with this question is that it assumes there is no middle way.

There is a middle way, and I wish we could return to it.




I quite agree and it is so sad that we are well to the left of it at present :D


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