[Closed] Corporate Greed - what to do?

how long will it be before any UK government does anything?

When will you vote in a government who will do something?

Something, something picture of someone with someone, something, something, money, something, something, Paedolizards, something something.

Makes you think.....

TLDR?

It's long, but David Simon's lecture at the Sydney opera house in 2013 was kinda the "aha!" moment for me:

During a November 2013 speech at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas in Sydney, he said that America has become "a horror show" of savage inequality as a result of capitalism run amok, and that "unless we reverse course, the average human being is worth less on planet Earth. Unless we take stock of the fact that maybe socialism and the socialist impulse has to be addressed again; it has to be married as it was married in the 1930s, the 1940s and even into the 1950s, to the engine that is capitalism."<sup id="cite_ref-93" class="reference"></sup><sup id="cite_ref-94" class="reference"></sup>

(David Simon - writer of The Wire etc)

Answer - remove money from politics.

TLDR?

Sadly, you are the voice of the masses. Now, shouldn’t you be watching Britain’s Got Talent...?

When will you vote in a government who will do something?

EDIT:  deleted, doesnt matter, ive maybe just woken up in a grump 🙂

stop voting ruddy tory is the answer - are you listening england!

Until we have more counter-hegemonic dialogue/narrative in our world, the status quo  will continue to uphold inexcusable levels of inequality.

how long will it be before any UK government does anything?

The only party that would even try to do anything would be Labour so if enough people cared or understood they would vote Labour in.

Has always amazed me that the Tory party that serves the top 5% continues to be in government but then I am one of those people that care and understand I suppose.  Labour are far from perfect but their intentions are a whole lot fairer than any Conservative party.

ruddy tory

we just say "gammon" these days, tj

The main problem is, the people running the country are wealthy. Because of their investments it leads to a clear conflict of interests.

How can you have politician's making impartial decisions, when they have financial interests in the results.

I guess Labour have the legacy of Blair still fresh in everyone's mind. Difficult to vote for Labour when that horrible liar (but extremely wealthy) Ex Prime Minister is still in recent memory.

I would agree with removing money from politics, but is it possible? Politicians appear to start out as wanting to serve the people, just seems the higher they go they then only have their own interests in mind.

The problem I see is that its a corrupt world, not just the US or the UK, but a global problem. Even the poorest countries appear to have corrupt political leaders.

I believe the has to be some form of capitalism present to encourage people to take risks and to reward them, and those that work hard.

But this needs to be backed with a decent welfare system that offsets some of the misfortunate and unfairness of life, for example some people are born brighter, and some people are born or develop disabilities/illnesses - life is a crapshoot and there should be some sort of social constuct/organisation to even this out.

If you watch Michael Moores film on capitalism he shows a few companies working on shared ownership and that seems to work well, those that want to work harder are rewarded, others than opt for more work/life balance and accept less reward. Places like John Lewis and Waitrose have a degraded form of that but it seems to be enough to keep then happy - I try to shop there whenever I can and can remember not to use Amazon.

I worked at a few factories during and after uni and witness people working abnormally slow so they could get overtime, etc. A scheme like shared-ownership would stop this as you are directly letting down your co-workers by behaving like that.

As above but there's probably some fairly simple measures to help with those examples including making pension pot raiding illegal in certain circumstances and linking bonuses to long term performance (they can then raid the bonus pot if they get desperate).

Excesses of both capitalism and socialism don't work.  You only have to look at the US and Venezuela to see the excess.  We need a 'balanced' economy, where we have some of each, rather than flip-flopping between the two.  In the UK we have moved towards a more capitalist society - mainly because of the actions of the Thatcher governments, which in many cases were against the abuse of the Unions.  Neither was right.

There is no right answer, but we need to accept that the lowest price is not always the best.  A best price is something that delivers the services we need for a price that allows a company to pay it's workforce a reasonable wage, to allow it to do some R&D, pay its shareholders and meet its commitments to society.  Ironically doing this will reduce the tax cut to the UK government, but also reduce the need for government services to the company.

Executive pay is out of control, regardless of the means that we measure it.  We either need laws to manage it, for shareholders to show that they own the company and to refuse to allow execs to be paid their excesses.  It will happen.

But capitalism does mean that some companies will fail.  Partly this is because of poor management, partly because the underlying assumptions about their model will change and partly because a new competitor will come along with a better solution.  There will be an impact on employees, creditors and society.  Protecting those companies means that we keep inefficient means of production going and stop better ideas from being introduced.  Look at the mess that France is in, youth unemployment is rife as as consequence of protecting existing employees.

And you are also correct - there is no right answer.

I guess Labour have the legacy of Blair still fresh in everyone’s mind. Difficult to vote for Labour when that horrible liar (but extremely wealthy) Ex Prime Minister is still in recent memory.

I honestly think you need to go back further as to how/why new labour "became".

The real underlying issue is the UK isn't an island... well of course we are but not economically, not in food or goods ... and we haven't been for centuries.... ever since Walter Raleigh came smoking a potato.

For a long time we had a nice ideal... we as the UK would live well by exploiting slave labour in colonies.

The point being we have to sell things outside and we need to buy things with the profit.

Socialism only works when you can be part of the big enough "island"... and that Island needs to be able to produce 90% of everything so it doesn't need to compete on price of more expensive labour to buy things it can't make or do... This more than anything is what kept the cold war going.... (IMHO)

There is no right answer, but we need to accept that the lowest price is not always the best.  A best price is something that delivers the services we need for a price that allows a company to pay it’s workforce a reasonable wage, to allow it to do some R&D, pay its shareholders and meet its commitments to society.

Very well said sadmadalan!

Why do we expect government to change things when we, as individuals can make a difference with our spending habits. How many of us choose to go to Amazon or ebay to hunt down the cheapest price possible? And to what cost to our society?

When will you vote in a government who will do something?

Might happen a bit quicker now Dacre is stepping down...

Why do we expect government to change things when we, as individuals can make a difference with our spending habits. How many of us choose to go to Amazon or ebay to hunt down the cheapest price possible? And to what cost to our society?

For those in poverty the answer is obvious, for the rest of us it's materialism and consumerism...driven by corporates.

You've got to love how CFH treats some basic left wing ideas as conspiracy, I see him in a different light now.