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Post by TroutBoy on May 4, 2006 6:43:36 GMT -5
Well I've read the "interview" and wonder if you have! ;D richard Which part of Ricardo was never right. Sure, there are more winners than losers, and winners profit to a greater extent than the losers suffer. But the assertion that everyone benefits simultaneously from free trade is simply incorrect or Billion-dollar tax cuts for the super-rich -- such as eliminating the inheritance tax -- are meant to generate growth for all. Conservatives like to say that a rising tide lifts all boats. Rogoff: The New Orleans disaster made it painfully clear what happens to people in deep poverty: they don't even have a boat. or This unbridled capitalism in the United States can't be sustained socially. It leads to tensions. If we experience another five years like the last five, we will start seeing greater social friction didn't you understand ? How big would the riot have to be before your blinkers finally came off ? Why go to the extremes of rampant capitalism anyway ? Does it make you feel like a 'proper' Tory? I would have thought that with so many years experience of observing nature you would have spotted that it tends to avoid extremes.
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Post by MichaelL on May 4, 2006 6:53:04 GMT -5
The country provides nothing. Looking at current employment levels is not possible by the conditions applicable 10 years ago because the "unemployed" are dispersed and hidden away in all sorts of cunningly formed places so they "don't count" anymore. richard Rubbish. North Sea Oil. The fact that we are in a timezone between Tokyo and New York accounts for a large number of people being employed in London. The natural and other resources of the country make it a good physical location (ports etc) trading (all sorts) to do business - since the country is governed by and for the people - we don't give away that service for free - thats stupid, we should (and do via employment law) charge for it. McD's don't give away free chips, neither should we. And yes, its perfectly reasonable to compare % unemployed now and % unemployed 10 years ago and make a basic quantitative statement about how/good bad employment policies have been (even if you model business cycle).
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Post by richardw on May 4, 2006 7:08:48 GMT -5
The country provides nothing. Looking at current employment levels is not possible by the conditions applicable 10 years ago because the "unemployed" are dispersed and hidden away in all sorts of cunningly formed places so they "don't count" anymore. richard Rubbish. North Sea Oil. The fact that we are in a timezone between Tokyo and New York accounts for a large number of people being employed in London. The natural and other resources of the country make it a good physical location (ports etc) trading (all sorts) to do business - since the country is governed by and for the people - we don't give away that service for free - thats stupid, we should (and do via employment law) charge for it. McD's don't give away free chips, neither should we. And yes, its perfectly reasonable to compare % unemployed now and % unemployed 10 years ago and make a basic quantitative statement about how/good bad employment policies have been (even if you model business cycle). All these things are only resources when someone (a business person) puts them to use. Certainly "the country" has done nothing so should get nothing out of the deal. Where the country does gain is that the businesses create wealth, which allows people to earn and live in the country concerned. richard
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Post by Cothi on May 4, 2006 7:37:44 GMT -5
Thank you for the reference to Prahalad's book Richard. I am familiar with it however. His main theme is that the solution to global poverty is for the private sector to become more fully engaged in creating business in least developed countries and that they should work closely with non-governmental and civil society organisations in doing so. This would be market-led development, creating wealth and unleashing the consequent massive consumer potential in these countries. Products and partners would need to be carefully chosen. Co-creation of wealth in partnership with NGOs and CSOs is crucial to any chance of success these new businesses might have. They are the essential checks and monitors.
Now this is very far from the unbridled capitalism that you were chuntering on about earlier. In fact it is almost the opposite of it so I can't see why you would quote it.
In fact I am a firm believer in the BOP approach. Why? Because my previous assignment was as Director of The Business Linkages Challenge Fund - a project created by the Department of International Development to promote private sector business partnerships between developed and developing nations - also within and between developing nations. The Fund had resources of 20 million pounds and provided grants to those enterprises who came up with the best ideas for business partnerships - the grants were a percentage of the total investment. Best ideas were those regarded as economically viable but also had a clear "poverty reduction" context. The purpose of the grants was to catalyse investment by the private sector into new ventures that they might not have gone into otherwise, or not as soon anyway. Many such partnerships were created by the Fund but in all cases, great efforts were made to ensure proper adherence to labour laws and international standards of ethical corporate behaviour.
I am presently managing a 70 million Euro programme of grant support to a specific private sector here in the Caribbean. The purpose of the Programme is to contribute to the eradication of poverty through assisting the private sector to upgrade their technologies and systems, to improve their management and to enhance their marketing. Again, compliance and empathy with national environmantal and labour legislation is a basic premise of getting grant support. It is also a key to the success of projects within the scheme.
Thus in my view, the realities in developing countries of market led development by the private sector is a complex matter and a million miles away from the simplistic and quite frankly, ridiculous notion that you propound of a totally unregulated capitalist system conspiring in some magical, seamless manner to bring the greatest happiness to the greatest number. Your, erm, model would indeed bring about the very opposite of that. Thank God that nutters like you are confined to little valleys in the heart of England swishing a hazel wand up and down..
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Post by MichaelL on May 4, 2006 8:26:34 GMT -5
All these things are only resources when someone (a business person) puts them to use. Certainly "the country" has done nothing so should get nothing out of the deal. Where the country does gain is that the businesses create wealth, which allows people to earn and live in the country concerned. richard Rubbish Im afraid (well just in my opinion), We have a resource , e.g. our timezone - you suggest we give that resource away ? Businesses that give away their assets go bankrupt. Similarly, I may point out, the cost of trading in London for businesses and people alike is that wealth is redistributed to the regions. The lovely regions of the UK that some of us get to travel to once every other month would be bankrupt if Londonders weren't bankrolling the place.
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Post by richardw on May 4, 2006 11:41:32 GMT -5
Cothi Prahalad's examples that showed the greatest success were entirely without state interference (improving housing whilst increasing sales and profits; providing credit facilities to those who cannot get it through normal channels so the poor could furnish their homes; improving the health of the poor by producing and marketing a special salt product with iodine content). The only cases in the book where the State had to be involved was to remove some of the previously inflicted business conditions that the State had made originally. Corruption has to be eliminated everywhere before any system can be fair. I get offended by "beards-in-their-vodkas front parlour socialists" implying that Capitalism means corruption. It doesn't. Capitalism to work has to have honest dealing. The role of the State should be to punish the dishonest. That is the only regulation needed. MichaelL The only element of time being a resource is our lifespan. Each of us has this. It should not belong to the State (unfortunately the State demands that we give large portions of our lives over to the State - in the UK it is about half of our working lives, in the USA it is about a quarter). You are advocating slavery. "Hey! You are in my timezone buddy! You gotta pay me! You wanna work here? You gotta give me 50%! C'mon it ain't so bad you just gotta let me wet my beak a little..." richard
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Post by Cothi on May 4, 2006 12:32:35 GMT -5
Richard,
Have you been on the Lesser Celandine again?
Read the website that you sent me. It is full of the words "co-creation".
As I said above, I am involved on a daily basis in the efforts to get the private sector more actively engaged in development and in poverty reduction without there being a need for a change in their mindset and still allowing them to keep their shareholders happy. I am talking serious business here not the occasional social good.
Any effort to break the triangular compact of national decision making - government/private sector/labour unions would be disastrous. Blutering on about untrammelled capitalism is like saying to us that what we are doing is all very well in practice but does it work in theory? Get back to your Diary.
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Post by Dovey on May 4, 2006 13:02:35 GMT -5
Looking at current employment levels is not possible by the conditions applicable 10 years ago because the "unemployed" are dispersed and hidden away in all sorts of cunningly formed places so they "don't count" anymore. richard I have witnessed how New Labour's underhandedness, and obsession with all statistics (not just employment ones), coupled with their stealth taxes and pathological addiction to 'Big State' interference has made them deeply unattractive to many natural Labour voters; so I can quite see how it must 'do your head in' Richard. But the quantum leap you make from that to the views expressed in this thread is plain daft, and does you no credit. It's a pity that your palpable gift (other than your angling skills) is for making enemies so easily.
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Post by northdeeps on May 4, 2006 15:27:49 GMT -5
Richard, you are being disingenuous. Read this: www.theuniversityconcourse.com/II,6,12-6-1996/cc/Graham.htm As it says “most systems, economic or otherwise, need checks and balances. Sometimes the check on a free-market economy or a "true capitalistic" system is a government consisting of elected officials who have a moral concern for all people within the system. This does not mean the government is without flaw. All systems, because they consist of human beings, have the potential for exploitation” The checks and balances would be that folk would simply refuse to take work they didn't think was a fair bargain. Referrals to how things were in the Industrial Revolution are not valid if used to "prove" how horrid things would be now in an unregulated economy for those at the bottom of the pyramid. The past is the past and if you were in the past you would recognise that, at the time, child labour and long hours were actually welcomed by those who carried out the work. The way to ensure dignity and to make an end of poverty is by trade. You won't find my reasons for believing this quickly and conveniently on the Internet. What you would need to do is read a fairly long book called: The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, by C K Prahalad although this might give an insight: www.thenextpractice.com/?goog1Business is good and the politicians should keep their beaks out of it. It is their interfering that spoils it. Over regulation means underemployment... richard What f**k**g planet are you on? Where on earth did you get the notion that child labour and long hours were welcomed by working people? You make it sound like some kind of social and political awakening, where these hideous practices were seen as vehicles out of extreme poverty. If they were welcomed - as you say - it could only have been the same "welcome" felt by an African child from some drought ridden land that finds a few kernels of maize once the relief truck have long since vanished. Child exploitation and long hours for little reward wasn't a route out of the extreme poverty created by unscrupulous employers aided and abetted by an equally unscrupulous government; no, it was merely a socially acceptable solution to keep people from dropping dead due to hunger and the ravages of depravation. Trade is the answer to poverty? Is that the same trade where Africans were sold into slavery by western traders, or the same trade that seen South American sugar cane growers forced to relinquish their farms and irony of irony ended up working for the bastards who "traded" them from them? Is that the same trade that exploited black miners and worked hundreds of them to death in the Transvaal? Is that the same trade that condemned the Kentucky coal miners to a life with crippling black lung disease and a lifetime of being indebted to the company stores who sold them food at inflated prices, whilst "buying" their children as the next generation of miners. Or is there some other type of trade that nobody told me about. Fair and equitable trade is the answer to poverty you f**k**g clown. Now, go crawl back under the stone you slid out of and leave the real world to those of us with a social conscience. northdeeps
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Post by bigfisher on May 4, 2006 15:43:17 GMT -5
well said northdeeps , life doesn't come from a book richardw
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Post by richardw on May 4, 2006 16:27:03 GMT -5
The book I referred to is worth a read. It isn't a theoretical book. It reports what has been achieved.
Now get this into your thick heads:
Trade is the only way out of poverty.
Can you imagine what life would be like in Great Britain if it wasn't for trade? We would be lucky to live 40 years apiece.
All wealth everywhere was created by trade. All wages are paid by the results of trade. Who creates this universal benefactor called trade?
Businessmen and women that's who, not the destructive force of the unions and of strikers, but the benevolent work of business people all over the world.
richard
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Post by richardw on May 4, 2006 16:46:28 GMT -5
Looking at current employment levels is not possible by the conditions applicable 10 years ago because the "unemployed" are dispersed and hidden away in all sorts of cunningly formed places so they "don't count" anymore. richard I have witnessed how New Labour's underhandedness, and obsession with all statistics (not just employment ones), coupled with their stealth taxes and pathological addiction to 'Big State' interference has made them deeply unattractive to many natural Labour voters; so I can quite see how it must 'do your head in' Richard. But the quantum leap you make from that to the views expressed in this thread is plain daft, and does you no credit. It's a pity that your palpable gift (other than your angling skills) is for making enemies so easily. Enemies? I suppose the frustration of not being able to shout folk down on the Internet must get to those who are or were used to doing so at school or the workplace. It doesn't work anymore and home truths can sting so maybe you are right about enemies. I enjoy offering some balance to these arguments and have no need to shout anyone down. Frankly, I don't care about enemies. My critics on this thread are pretty much a collection of socialists, so to me they may as well not exist. Socialists are simply thieves who "rationalise" their crimes by spouting about society and helping the poor and needy, when really they are motivated by idleness, greed and envy. They always seem to be very good at getting rid of other people's money... and they always want more of it. In the long term the needy are better off not being made reliant on benefits but instead being treated as normal people for whom business has to be creative to include them in trade. richard
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Post by MichaelL on May 4, 2006 17:48:19 GMT -5
My critics on this thread are pretty much a collection of socialists, so to me they may as well not exist. Socialists are simply thieves who richard Wrong again. Im no socialist, I work for an investment bank, and arn't motivated by envy of all those Tory voting Sheffield workers, I wouldn't call myself a socialist and I think in general economic liberalisation is a good thing. The freedom of movement of capital and labour again a good thing. You fail to grasp some basic concepts: "they always seem to be very good at getting rid of other people's money" BTW, we (collectively Londonders) are bankrolling your roads and Hospitals etc, so please pipe down about your nuttier arguments about state funding etc. The country has natural resources and its location provide it with an asset - I gave your an example - our timezone - that we 'sell' to businesses that want to work here, the cost is in part labour law. In that respect its a simple trade , businesses want to buy the right to use UK as a base we sell them that asset - at a price. Simple when you think about it - something is sold, something is bought. A product doesn't have to be a produced out of a dirty dark satanic mill, in some northern sh-thole to be a tradeable asset.
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Post by Silver Stoat on May 4, 2006 18:40:31 GMT -5
- I think I would, oh dear me, miss him! Cothi, Do you mean like you would a boil on the back of your neck ! Dave.
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Post by Cothi on May 4, 2006 19:37:26 GMT -5
But the quantum leap you make from that to the views expressed in this thread is plain daft, and does you no credit. It's a pity that your palpable gift (other than your angling skills) is for making enemies so easily. Enemies? I suppose the frustration of not being able to shout folk down on the Internet must get to those who are or were used to doing so at school or the workplace. It doesn't work anymore and home truths can sting so maybe you are right about enemies. I enjoy offering some balance to these arguments and have no need to shout anyone down. Frankly, I don't care about enemies. My critics on this thread are pretty much a collection of socialists, so to me they may as well not exist. Socialists are simply thieves who "rationalise" their crimes by spouting about society and helping the poor and needy, when really they are motivated by idleness, greed and envy. They always seem to be very good at getting rid of other people's money... and they always want more of it. In the long term the needy are better off not being made reliant on benefits but instead being treated as normal people for whom business has to be creative to include them in trade. richard Dear, dear me. I think it's time to draw a veil over this thread. RichardW has become the Falstaff of the Forum. It is clear that he truly believes this " "When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him." Bye Bye - Poor, lonely, beleaguered yet true genius of, erm, Derbyshire. Me - standing in the corner, facing the wall, wearing my long pointed hat with a big D on it.
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