Blue Socialism through-and-through

So Blighty has discovered where the productivity gap resides, that vast chasm of inefficiency and wastage that has defied economists' investigation for decades, estimated as us being 10, 20, and 30 percent behind the Froggies, Jerries and Yanks respectively.  Halleluja!

The rip-off public transport system, commercial properties, bars and restaurants, gyms, and the wasted 2-3 hours a day travelling to work (if you're lucky).  All ramping up the cost of inputs and reducing the output of operations, private and public, the length and breadth of Blighty.  Exposed and destroyed in one fell swoop by Covid, a silver lining like no other.

And into the bargain, the chance to smash the unions that have leeched off the transport industry and driven up costs, to redevelop commercial properties into housing and reduce the cost thereof through increased supply, to learn to make a decent breakfast, lunch as well as dinner, to get out and go for a run or cycle instead of sweating inside a stuffy gym, to work an extra 2-3 hours a day or enjoy some quality time to yourself.  All cost reducing, revenue boosting productivity gains, destruction of undesirable power, and lifestyle progress towards a more prosperous and freer world.

And what does DomBo make of this?  The party of business, the safe hands on the economy, the descendants of Margaret Thatcher?   "Go back to the low productivity, unionised, stifling, unsafe, sweat shop of the past - RIGHT NOW!" they say ...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/27/go-back-work-risk-losing-job-major-drive-launched-get-people/ 

Here's some quotes for those outside the DT paywall ...

'Go back to work or risk losing your job': Major drive launched to get people returning to the office

Absolute bullshit!  If you're more productive the business is more likely to keep you on, expand, and hire more people!  Where do they get this ludicrousness from?

A publicity campaign to begin next week will extol the virtues of returning to the workplace, making the “emotional case” for mixing with colleagues and highlighting the benefits to mental health.

What?  The "emotional case"?  Is that an admission of the fact there is no economic case?  And where on earth can you be more emotionally secure if not in your own home?

The relationships between colleagues have become more civil, less stressed, and easier by only meeting online on a need-to basis, compared to sitting next to them like battery hens.

When Dark Ages man was ploughing up and down his fields, was he afflicted by every neighbour in the village squashed up against him, talking crap, posturing, trying to look busy and important et al?  No he wasn't, and he was happier for it.  Only once a week, when he worked the lord's plot of land, were his fellow churls foisted upon him, and after that dawn-to-dusk session he was sated with company and ready for another six days of contact on a need-to-only basis!  That's uncannily about the exactly right proportion needed for visits to the office today.

One Government source said: “People need to understand that working from home is not the benign option it seems. We need workers to be alert to what decisions their bosses may take in the weeks ahead. If they are only seeing workers once a fortnight then that could prove problematic for some employees in the future.

“We want employees to be careful what working arrangements they accept. Suddenly the word ‘restructure’ is bandied about and people who have been working from home find themselves in the most vulnerable position.”

If your job is fake your job is fake.  Get rid, move on.  Let the neural network of the real economy rewire you into where you have a positive value.  Conserving someone in a fake job is undignified and humiliating, as well as an unproductive drain on everyone else.

If automation and productivity has reached the giddy heights where a handful of people can produce all the output and the rest of us can "feet up, cuppa tea" all day, then even better!  Give us all UBI and let the IT people sweat their cobs off making all the stuff - or more to the point: let the IT people work at home in a less stressful environment making all the stuff.

“People need company … especially those living on their own or with a limited support network.

If you really do feel the need to be crammed together like battery hens, talking crap, posturing, and trying to look busy and important, then why not go to your local internet cafe or pub, connect to the WiFi, and unload the contents of your wallet (freshly packed with the savings from your season ticket) into the landlord's cash till on lattes and cheese and bacon croissants?  (OK, I do admit, I miss those two, but I've mastered the art of the "microwave latte and cheese and bacon croissant" so consummately I can do it in my sleep!)

“There will be some economic consequences of shutdown. Companies will realise some people weren’t working as hard as they thought … There is going to be a review of how productive people are.”

Once again, that's good news.  If Tories don't understand productivity is a good thing then who else does?  Keir ruddy Starmer FFS?!

Another minister said: “Once the schools go back we will be switching our attention to getting people back to their workplaces. It will be a call to arms to the nation.”

"Call to arms to the nation", oh puh-lease?!

But there's the rub.  After the peeps were conned and shafted by the Brexiteer pols in the referendum, let's hope they're sharper tools in the box these days and give this "call to arms" a right royal Agincourt Archer's V-sign and stay put in that home of every Englishman, his castle.

SoD

Comments

[Steve T.]

Still with the Remoaning, eh? People 'conned and shafted' by the Brexiteer pols? Was that when we threatened World War Three? Eight hundred thousand job losses immediately? Over four per cent economic shrinkage? Oh wait - that was your lot, and you've yet to apologize for any of those lies. Even when you pursued us through the courts over that £350 million figure (now much higher) you lost, and had to rely on the Woke Media to refuse to cover your embarrassment.
Grow up and get your own website.

[Loz]

Growth 3.2% and the highest of the G7, unemployment and inflation trace, deficit dropping like a stone, debt falling as a percentage of GDP, living standards rising.

Fancy that Steve T? That's before the referendum.

And we haven't even done Brexit yet.

SoD

[Loz]

And if the peeps weren't conned and shafted by the Brexiteer pols, how come they keep voting for Remain in the polls ever since? ...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_on_the_United_Kingdom%27s_membership_of_the_European_Union_(2016%E2%80%932020)

SoD

[Backofanenvelope]

A man who believes opinion polls!

[The Jannie]

"A man who believes opinion polls!" and unicorns!

[FrankH]

I was with you right up to "After the peeps were conned and shafted by the Brexiteer pols in the referendum...". Why shoehorn Brexit into this article? Were you conned by the EU pols into voting against Brexit? No. You're obviously much too intelligent for that. So why ascribe lower intelligence to those of us who voted to leave?

[AussieD]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIYfiRyPi3o

[Lord T]

We have had the technology to work from home since the 90s and I know some businesses who started doing that then. The only thing that stopped it going mainstream was bosses didn't think their staff would work from home. Then came Covid, they were forced to try it and guess what. It worked fine. Businesses are now looking at downsizing offices, not staff, councils are now worried that their congestion charges are not going to make as much cash and rates will fall. The government can see some of the unexpected consequences of their knee jerk reactions.

Even worse the plebs found they liked it. No 2 hour commutes, no transport costs and they could get a real work/life balance.

Bear in mind that a lot of jobs are not suitable for working from home though. How many is yet to be seen.

We won't be going back to things as they were and I don't think we have enough info to realise exactly where we will end up. A lot of changes will be taking place but how far it will go we won't see for a while.

Thankfully though, we voted Brexit. All hail the public. That will help keep us from those really useless EU edicts although our clowns will try their best to keep up.

[Loz]

See, we do overlap, thee and I, y'all!

I rolled that last paragraph grenade in because I knew it would be all to chumsy and agreeable otherwise. What's the point of an agreement club?

If blogging and commenting is anything it's this ...

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2hwqn9

There is just one glimmer of a chance for total unification. I just wonder, is it too much hope, that in fact this whole first year of BoJo has been just a massive secret preparation and planning exercise? The Covid thing being just a beautiful, lucky, yes lucky, opportunity cover story, which has soaked up the MSM bandwidth and stopped the deep scheme that will be unfurled on Jan 1st 2021 from leaking out prematurely.

Think about it, what the hell has everyone else been doing aside from Hancock and his half hour? Gove, for example, and just about everyone else. They can't seriously have all been sitting around doing that much nothing for 10 months (that is "true nothing", bugger all, not the "positive nothing" of dismantling the state apparatus so as to be doing "true nothing" later), can they?

I mean, something like this for example ...

1. Corporation tax 12%. Half a point below the Paddies, the lowest in the EU. Suck every dollar of foreign investment out of the global capital markets and the EU and into Blighty.

2. 10 massive free-ports. One of which will be Surrey and Hampshire, the spinal column of middle England, the Eden on earth, God's own counties within his own country. With special dispensation for long-legged, pert-breasted, high cheek-boned, inky-blinky dahlinkies, who have been bloody scarce on the ground in the A30 / M3 corridor these past few years I've noticed.

3. Denationalisation of the NHS, state education, social services, and the BBC.

4. A multi-market with all the friends and allies of Blighty. No questions asked, we don't care if you, our allies and friends, tariff and quota our exports, all your imports will be tariff and quota free. Come and setup your standards, health and safety, whatever here and you check them per the regimes in your own countries. Use our courts by all means, or yours, for arbitration, it doesn't matter because the rules will be the same.

5. UBI of £14k per annum for 40 hours present in a work place, whether engaged in work by the workplace employer or not, the UBI being spendable only on the Big 8.

We'd be the Singapore of the North Atlantic in ten years, on $100k GDP per capita per annum, like Singapore itself.

Michael Barnier would evacuate his bowels instantly on reading of it, something that would please y'all muchly.

But of course, I won't be holding my breath. And I will eat my hat if it happens.

But, damn it, they are just too quiet, even for them.

SoD

[Lord T]

Good example. What do you mean though about UBI only being spendable on the big 8?

[Glesga]

Loz, do you think it is beyond the capability for the British and European countries to have trade deals without having the EU Commission and EU Parliament? It is my view that countries can trade without having a massive beaurocracy fleecing of the cream.

[Loz]

The Big 8 are the 8 "things without which harm will come to you" as John Stuart Mill put it: food, clothing, shelter, health, education, energy, information, and transport. Everything else is fun money that no-one has an obligation to provide anyone else: spending on iThingies, foreign holiday, ten pints of lager on. Saturday night, etc.

The principle of a free society is that you can do what you like so long as you don't harm anyone. JSM pointed out also that you can harm someone by your inaction. For example, if someone is starving and you have the surplus means to feed them and you don't do it then you harm them by your inaction.

So while your obligation is to do no harm by inaction, your right is to see that your contribution to not harm by inaction, the tax take, is spent in the best possible way. So, not through the state operation of the means of production and distribution, which is always negligent, incompetent, and poor value for money. Not as cash to the recipient because they might spend it down the pub rather than on the Big 8. And always in exchange for work up to a reasonable amount if the recipient is able bodied.

The most efficient and fraud free means of discharging the "no harm by inaction" obligation is therefore a UBI that avoids any contact with the state sector and binds the recipient to buying power only for that service type, like a book voucher can only buy books, same for the Big 8 and the £14k. (The £14k was a rough working out of the cost of the Big 8 per annum over a lifetime).

With a £14k UBI covering the Big 8 you don't need a public sector, so you privatise the entire public sector and let the peeps go choose from the Big 8 markets instead.

The obligation to put in a 40 hour week is there to ensure that people who are not in harm's way because they can afford the Big 8 with the fruits of their labour are obligated to employ themselves so to do.

I call it Funded Libertarianism. The original Libertarianism, or Unfunded Libertarianism, as bestowed in the US constitution and in Blighty before the Napoleonic Wars when income tax was less than 10% and Big 8 state redistribution or the welfare state was non-existent or negligible, relies only on charity as a remedy for the Big 8: in Unfunded Libertarianism you can step over someone starving in the street with your wallet full.

SoD

[Loz]

Jimmy, trade deals between friends and allies are the greatest illusion of our time.

Free trade between two countries, so that is no trade deal: zero tariffs, no quotas, and both countries accepting each others standards, is the most beneficial system to both countries. Free trade won the argument and mercantilism lost years ago. Mercantilism is what you do with your opponents and enemies, or perhaps dodgy friends, for political gain, hence why the Don is doing what he's doing. There's only loss to both sides in a unilateral mercantilist act, and double harm when the act is reciprocated by the opponent. Mercantilism is the embodiment of politics as "war by other means" per von Clausewitz's two way maxim.

So if two way free trade is beneficial to both countries it follows that each one way free trade arrangement in the pair is beneficial to both countries. So if a one way free trade deal is beneficial to self, why would you self-harm by revoking it? It would only be if in battle with an enemy. A deluded friend, on the other hand, who didn't allow free trade in their half of the pairing should evoke only a sigh in us and a comment like "you mercantilist twat", but nothing more.

SoD

[Bob]

Libertarianism is the most naive political system ever devised. Business will always externalize costs and make the shoddiest products possible without a democratic state apparatus to supervise and regulate them. Just two examples: manufacturing pouring tons of particulates and poisons into the air and water, and fast and junk food. These products are generally without any consequential nutritional value other than calories. The purveyors rely on a specific balance of sugar, salt and fat that works on the brain like a narcotic:

"The truth is… sugar and highly processed junk foods can be addictive, just like drugs. Not only are the behavioral symptoms the same, but the biology also happens to agree."

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/10-similarities-between-junk-foods-and-drugs

Both practices result in huge costs in terms of health care. Taxpayers in the US also usually pay to clean up industrial waste. There are countless other examples. The idea a "free market" will always get the best result is a ludicrous fantasy.

[Loz]

Bob, your ability to selective read is astounding!

You missed the bit where I said "both countries accepting each others standards". The role of the state is as poacher-turned-gamekeeper: as the most negligent, incompetent and abusive operator of the means of production and distribution, pols are ideally placed to spot these things in market operators. But even in the role of rules, regulations and standards definers they need some competition: hence multi-market free trade accepts the standards from both participants and the people choose which standards body they want in the decision as to which products and services they buy.

And before you say "that will be a race to the bottom in standards because lower standards will allow for lower cost of production, and low income people will be coerced into poor quality products and services", not if the Big 8 are funded to the individual through UBI. If you've got enough UBI voucher to choose between chlorinated chicken or others, you're no longer coerced through low income into choosing only low cost products and service.

Funded Libertarianism is Libertarianism minus the naivety, if you like.

SoD

[Bob]

SoD,

With a £14k UBI covering the Big 8 you don't need a public sector, so you privatise the entire public sector and let the peeps go choose from the Big 8 markets instead.

Not only are you implying a lack of need for public protection, but a magically honest distributor of UBI funds. Merlin had nothing on you.

[JK]

"Not only are you implying a lack of need for public protection"

Expand on that if you would Bob.

I think I've a clue to where Loz ends up but with you [Fed] statist folks I can never be confident.

Like for instance with this "pandemic" - you prefer DC generally, the Prez specifically "protect" the public while I for one, prefer that protection be provided at the localest level possible.

[Glesga]

Loz, you never did give an answer to my question. Do we need the EU Commission and the EU Parliament.

[Loz]

Jimmy,

If Blighty did the 1-5 = Funded Libertarianism then no we wouldn't need the EU Exec or Parliament.

Because we all know Blighty will never do it, the EU Exec and Parliament was the second best way of getting at least some of it.

SoD

[Glesga]

Loz,we never needed the EEC/EU it was those who had personal financial gain who wanted it. Did your Da ever get the 500gm of butter from the mountain?

[Loz]

My Da got plenty of butter from the mountain, the single market and four freedoms grew the motor trade like nothing else on earth.

All those competing cheap autos for the punters to choose from, something for everyone. And the Japs parked a huge dollop of capital "oop North" on account of Blighty being in the single market and blew away British Leyland and the unions into the bargain.

We're all finding out what life without butter is like, next up, after we really do Brexit on Jan 1st 2021, the bread as well.

SoD

[Backofanenvelope]

I've just looked inside my fridge and there are at least five blocks of butter.

[Lord T]

SoD, Thanks for the explaination. I'm not convinced that the list is finished but it does make a good starting point.

However, I don't agree with the bit on inaction. I have noted several people make themselves destitute helping others and want others to do the same. Most though just want others to be forced to contribute while they could do more. Despite those we don't have a dint in the number of people that don't need help. IMO the UBI would be all that is needed. Even with that there will always be people that end up in harms way. Must I bail them out again, and again....

[Bob]

JK,

It's an article of faith among reactionaries everywhere that the federal government can do nothing right. History doesn't support the idea. In America we have Social Security and Medicare. The Brits have the NHS. They're not going away no matter how often some bag of hot air declares otherwise.

So far as protecting the public, let's do some thought experiment: If your child was kidnapped, who would you rather have looking for them, your local sheriff or the FBI? Who would you rather have establishing rules for commercial airline safety? In the event of a foreign invasion, would you rather have the US armed forces or state police and militias fighting them off? etc.?

[JK]

Extreme scenarios persuade me little.

However to the first I might say, it depends.

My memory seems to inform me at least two of the children on the premises of that David Koresh episode in Waco some number of years ago were "abducted" by a non-custodial parent. If I'm recalling accurately I think then I might be tempted to saying the local sheriff would have been my preference.

I'd prefer not wasting my day arguing with you Bob so how's 'bout us just calling this a gimme? In your favor.

[JK]

Well Bob it would appear my memory's not played a trick on me.

Get into the vault and look up the 'probable cause' for the original search warrant. I'd linked but I prefer you waste your time.

[Bob]

JK,

The David Koresh episode in Waco wasn't an extreme scenario?

[JK]

Didn't have to be.