What has the UK become?

[west didsblue]

Some sudden flash french? Porqoui? C'est vrai que je suis Belge mais mon Francais n'est pas parfait, et je connais pas cette mot en mon vocabulaire.

I presume your soliciting for empiricism, i can provide to some degree, but i have a lot more work to do as to work out this model to a respectable degree, for when it needs to go to academic review. If you can specify your question further, i may oblige you with a more detailed answer.

I’ll take that as a no.

 

[FlemishDuck]

I’ll take that as a no.

Oh if you going to react like that i'm not even going to bother with you.

 

[Eebo]

Great news, we have finally come top of a table and found something we are the best at.

England child alcohol use tops global chart, finds WHO report

The World Health Organization also finds higher rates of drinking and vaping among teenage girls.

www.bbc.co.uk

Lesser nations would have still have been licking their wounds after coming heartbreakingly close and just losing out to Khazakstan in the 'Most Miserable Nation' survey, but not us and not under this Government, we go again!

We fight to the end and on so many fronts.

I think that is what makes us so special, we are competitive across the board rather than just focussing on a few disciplines.

Can't wait for the results of the "Most shit in rivers" competition.

I don't want to jinx it, but with this confidence boosting win behind us I really think we have a great chance of picking up a big one.

 

[BobKowalski]

I would think one considerable element into this is the evolution of automation

The benefits of automation seems to have mainly gone to the owners of capital goods, the wealth gap has been rising for decades. In a sense, theoretically it could have been otherwise in a way that could have benefited employment, as what could have happened is that we could all have started to work less hours for the same total pay. This should have been workable, since automation tends to increase productivity per worker, you produce more in the same time than before, or you need less time to produce what you used to produce. Had it transpired as such, we would have distributed the workload among more people, creating jobs by it.

Afcourse, the same evolution has shifted the economy significantly to a "knowledge economy", where those who used to perform menial tasks see their jobs most easily automated away. Meanwhile, the rising wealth gap has increased the influence the economic elite has over politics. The same elites, unwilling to recognize the structural issues of the system they mainly benefit from and the effect it has on the poor, are more and more inclined to populist blaming to distract the now more angry lower classes from those structural issues. So the blame is far more put on the matter of immigration.

Granted, its neither to be ignored that immigration can be an issue, no country can just go invite everyone and expect it will necessary have good results. However, one of the great benefactors of such immigration tends to be the wealthy class, who have more and cheaper manpower to work with especially for where it regards ... menial tasks. Its a rather perverse cycle imho.

We should all, in my humble opinion, try to attain more control both of our politics and our economies, fight back elitism at it especially where it is of a nepotist form. In a peaceful and humane way though. In a sense, we have grown far to complacent as the electorate, it is as if we historically won it all when we got universal suffrage ... we are the boss however by philosophical principle of self determination, its time to reinvent our economic ideas so that it goes beyond the outdated models of capitalism and communism. For this we need a kind of "supplanting system", not to bring it about by revolution or violence or trying to reform institutions that desire to uphold a status quo, but by rebuilding from the ground up trough a system that is of that characteristic of being more efficient. Because a more efficient system growing from within can ultimately compete capitalism away by virtue of popular appeal.

And it shouldn't even be necessarily al that hard, were just not putting enough work in it. The key is with what i call "subjective value economics". Because the thing is that we tend to work usually towards a singular non universally shared metric of economic value in our system: "how much money do we have, how much growth etc", however it can easily be argued that it is not a common value necessarily that we should feel wealthier or better off for having more money or transactional tokens in our system, even by their own economic ideals of sustainability green minded people very often see no added value in further economic growth where it spurs unsustainable forms of consumerism as example. But that in itself also highlights where there is room for more efficiency that a monetary system of capitalism cannot easily provide, afterall "value is in the eye of the beholder", and capitalist monetary systems are limited in how well they can work with subjective value approximation.

In the next 2 decades, we will likely see the emergence of something that can fundamentally change economics. i call it "techno barter", it is basically a change from using money as means of goods exchange back to physical goods, yet not with the classical limitations of barter that ultimately spurred the change to monetary economics since techno barter will use the capability's of information technology, networks and algorithms to make far more complex trades possible trough combinations like parts of goods and various geographically distributed actors. It is also likely going to be the death of things like cryptocurrency's. it will take a lot of work though, bot for such platforms to develop and get popular, and for new economical models to base themself on techno barter based systems of exchange which fundamentally will be very different to how monetary economics works. The point is though that barter will allow better value approximation, afterall in a aspect where value is in the eye of the beholder a 50.000$ car is worth more to some than to others which results in a loss of potential gain for producers, in a techno barter system you choose how much you value each product in exchange both for what you get and what you want to offer. Granted, all this does not nessecarily away with the potnetial of having wealth gaps, or the fact that some own far more in terms of capital goods, technoligy, goodwill, clout etc. Yet it will add dimensions of societal values that elites wont find so easy to manipulate, and which can always outcompete them by sucking the oxygen from around them. it's .. complex, i bet a bunch of people might be a bit confused as to what i'm writing about, but this is the product of me reding and philosophizing about politics and economics for a long time, having put mental work in it, hence comming to the added conclusion that we have too few people putting in the work to develop alternative economic and political models to adress contemporary issues. We have deffinatly come to such a compex state of our human development imho, that ignorance and and lack of interrest wont bring us nessecarily further. Indeed, for that reason we will still need intelligent and enterprising people imho, it will just need to come to the point that people will need to understand who their true champions are in that sense while keeping everything under constant review.

The dream of automation was that we would all work less and comparatively speaking we probably do (this is just my general feeling with no stats to back it), except we are still on a five day week and are obliged to work until 67. There is a discussion to be had on the obligation to work as opposed as the option to work when older, but I see no merit in cutting the period to enjoy retirement. A four day week has been trialed along with universal basic income - both of these will arrive at some point.

There is an interesting discussion to be had on work/life balance. The hostility to ‘working from home’ from the reactionary Right is a foretaste of the opposition to people enjoying a better life - the Right see ‘enjoying‘ as ‘easier’ which they are totally against - but like all progress it will come, albeit in fits and starts and driven largely by reality. I would add that reality is something the Right and to an extent the Left are intrinsically hostile to given their common roots in an authoritarian mindset.

 

[BobKowalski]

The pyramid ischeme is alive and well in those who want a comfortable life and the future can go and fuck itself.

They love a bit of cheap labour they do.

Immigration is driven by people and circumstance. We have been importing labour and skills since - well, the early 1800’s with the Irish - and exploitation of that labour is often part of that equation, but there is nothing to stop the accepting country ensuring that conditions and pay are acceptable and exploitation is minimal.

A population that is hostile to immigrants - no matter how necessary - will be a barrier to fair treatment. ‘Immigrants get it easy/are favoured over native populations etc’ allowing Govts and business to exploit/mistreat immigrants. The UK is a classic of this genre. We spend half our waking moments bemoaning immigrants/freedom of movement, made ourselves miserable in the process and ended up with record levels of migration (okay, still makes me laugh). It also has landed itself with a Govt legislating that the earth is flat, Rwanda is a paradise and is no longer processing asylum applications because it can no longer perform the basic functions of Govt. Another feature of battling reality is that it erodes basic competence.

In short, I’m just pointing out the reality of how the world works and what a developed country like the UK needs to function. You are free not to like it - I’m not keen on how some things have turned out either - but reality, alas, doesn‘t care.

 

[BobKowalski]

…

Honestly I think you lot consider the 3rd world to be just a baby factory pumping out workers to do the jobs you don't want to do, it's not far off trafficking.

The people coming/fleeing here are doing so freely and employing desperate measures to do so. And you support a scheme that is paying blood money to transport them against their will to a country on another contiment?

It has echos of a time when British ships and companies transported people in chains from one continent to another.

 

[MillionMilesAway]

The dream of automation was that we would all work less and comparatively speaking we probably do (this is just my general feeling with no stats to back it), except we are still on a five day week and are obliged to work until 67. There is a discussion to be had on the obligation to work as opposed as the option to work when older, but I see no merit in cutting the period to enjoy retirement. A four day week has been trialed along with universal basic income - both of these will arrive at some point.

I suspect we have moved to a more stationary working model in many working areas, meaning less exercise.

When I started my job in the late 90s, we were standing and moving regularly for much of the day.
Now we have it all computerised.

 

[mexico1970]

The people coming/fleeing here are doing so freely and employing desperate measures to do so. And you support a scheme that is paying blood money to transport them against their will to a country on another contiment?

It has echos of a time when British ships and companies transported people in chains from one continent to another.

Best get them in to wipe your backside and serve you coffees, again will we be importing even more people to look after them too?
For what it's worth I believe the Rwanda solution is a bad one, we need a proper system that allows what we need in and gets rid of the ones who fail quickly.

Asylum is different in that people applying need a system they can apply to and be allowed entry (Numbers also need to be taken into account not just unfettered) but those people coming in through asylum if they fail there has to be a mechanism in place to remove them and quickly.

Not popular with the open border allow everyone in to make our beds brigade but there it is.

 

[hilts]

Immigration is driven by people and circumstance. We have been importing labour and skills since - well, the early 1800’s with the Irish - and exploitation of that labour is often part of that equation, but there is nothing to stop the accepting country ensuring that conditions and pay are acceptable and exploitation is minimal.

A population that is hostile to immigrants - no matter how necessary - will be a barrier to fair treatment. ‘Immigrants get it easy/are favoured over native populations etc’ allowing Govts and business to exploit/mistreat immigrants. The UK is a classic of this genre. We spend half our waking moments bemoaning immigrants/freedom of movement, made ourselves miserable in the process and ended up with record levels of migration (okay, still makes me laugh). It also has landed itself with a Govt legislating that the earth is flat, Rwanda is a paradise and is no longer processing asylum applications because it can no longer perform the basic functions of Govt. Another feature of battling reality is that it erodes basic competence.

In short, I’m just pointing out the reality of how the world works and what a developed country like the UK needs to function. You are free not to like it - I’m not keen on how some things have turned out either - but reality, alas, doesn‘t care.

The population aren't hostile to immigrants some are

We don't spend half our time bemoaning freedom of movement, you may have spent an inordinate amount of time on the subject to.

The Rwanda scheme is a Tory fuck up and i didn't vote for them and looks like not many will this time:-)

Reality can change if the will is there but the gdp whores, the status quo and election cycles mean this won't happen.

There is no reason why these things can't be discussed though. The selfish centrists need not reply mind.

 

[Alan Harper's Tash]

The population aren't hostile to immigrants some are

We don't spend half our time bemoaning freedom of movement, you may have spent an unordinate amount of time on the subject to.

The Rwanda scheme is a Tory fuck up and i didn't vote for them and looks like not many will this time:-)

Reality can change if the will is there but the gdp whores, the status quo and election cycles mean this won't happen.

There is no reason why these things can't be discussed though. The selfish centrists need not reply mind.

Whilst what you argue is idealistically pure, the cost of implementing it would be too high for a vast swathe of the population, who are already struggling with the cost of living.

Having a vastly British workforce, with a loaf costing £4 isn’t viable.