People before Profit - Communists?

Son Of A Vidic · 18-02-2013 11:52AM

TheBigLebowski wrote: »

cristoir wrote: »

Is there more or less poverty in Europe then 100 years ago?...

Than Than Than Than Than

We all know what the poster meant, without the need for such pettiness on your part.

hatrickpatrick · 18-02-2013 11:52AM

jank wrote: »

No, where am I defending that but to label everyone as scum is hyperbole.

I didn't label "everyone" as scum, I labelled the golden circle and similar financial industry fraudsters around the world as scum.

For example, if your bank collapsed to the point at which the taxpayer had to bail you out and you still think you're entitled to a massive pension and annual salaries of more than five figures, the label seems very apt to me.

hames · 18-02-2013 12:09PM

awec wrote: »

:pac::pac::pac:

I have never, ever seen Sinn Fein speak out against the church and it's enormous wealth. I have never, ever seen Sinn Fein call for that situation to be addressed.

Then you have a short memory. Most of the current affairs program from the time of the child abuse agreement are probably hard to come by now, but in This exchange you can clearly see the SF spokesman press the Government on Church assets

also
http://www.sinnfein.ie/contents/25639

also
http://www.sinnfein.ie/contents/25639
including criticism of the Church

This state allowed the Catholic Church free rein for many years. Some clergy were and are good, decent genuine people but it is now undeniable fact that the Church was riddled in this country with people who lacked the most basic humanity, treating women and children especially like nothing more than their property useful but deserving of nothing but hate, violence and abuse.

As a Catholic, I can't say I have any time for SF, and have been making that clear in another thread. However, I share with them the revulsion we all do at the wrongdoing perpetrated by the Church in the past and in my own opinion, an ongoing wrongdoing in failure to account and make amends for it.

It's unusual to find myself in a position where I seem to be defending SF; I am not, but I am interested in the role of religion in this country and I'm afraid you have got it badly wrong on this one.

Ray Palmer · 18-02-2013 12:26PM

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

A lot of the world's super rich are financial industry scum like our resident golden circle who got rich through manipulating the market - to the detriment of everyone else - and walking away with the cash in 2008. Not through hard work.

Sure, among the super rich you have people like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, and musicians like U2 and so on who have indeed earned their money by working for it. Anyone who helmed the banking and financial industries in 2008 however is not in the same category. These people should be pursued to the ends of the earth, hauled in front of a judge to answer fraud allegations and if found guilty, have all of their assets stripped to try and pay for the havoc they've caused. :mad:

Bill Gates earned his money? Is that before he stole BASIC that got him going?
U2 who reduced their tax bill to this country by a tax dodge?
Mark Zuckerburg did swindle people out of shares.

You might want to look into who you campion.

Love to hear how informed you are on the banking fraud.

Anyway being wealthy or inheriting should not be a crime. I actually think the government taxing inheritence is closer to theft.

Chuck Stone · 18-02-2013 12:38PM

Ray Palmer wrote: »

Bill Gates earned his money? Is that before he stole BASIC that got him going?

And was only able to amass huge wealth and an effective monopoly because of good old government enforced copyright protection on a not so breakthrough product.

Also, it's quite some achievement how Microsoft (MS) have convinced individuals that having to buy MS software again and again for different products is 'natural'.

I'd like to see regulations introduced where all devices have a 'with Windows' price and a 'without Windows' price so people know that when they're buying a computer they're paying MS each and every time.

hatrickpatrick · 19-02-2013 12:23AM

Ray Palmer wrote: »

Bill Gates earned his money? Is that before he stole BASIC that got him going?
U2 who reduced their tax bill to this country by a tax dodge?
Mark Zuckerburg did swindle people out of shares.

You might want to look into who you campion.

Love to hear how informed you are on the banking fraud.

Anyway being wealthy or inheriting should not be a crime. I actually think the government taxing inheritence is closer to theft.

I agree about inheritance. My comments about Zuck, U2 etc is that at the very least they have made something and sold it. The golden circle simply manipulated mathematical concepts and in the process screwed over a vast multitude of ordinary people. Their crime is that instead of going bankrupt like I would have if I had bet all my money on the wrong horse in Paddy Power, they set up the system so that we would have to cover their losses.

The day Seanie has to sign up for the dole each week and actually live off minimum wage because the rest of his assets have been stripped to help repay the mountain of Anglo debt, I will stop calling for his persecution. It's that simple. They made the mess, they should be bled dry before one cent is removed from anyone who wasn't directly involved.

If I burn down my neighbourhood, sure others are going to have to pay to repair the damage - but only if I don't have enough money to pay for it myself. I should be jailed for doing it, AND have every posession I own sold to recoup the cost to the innocent bystanders of rebuilding their property etc. Fair's fair.

Anglo's golden circle made a substantial amount of the mess we're in, they should be made example of. Sorry if that sounds harsh, but it's reality. Nobody is going to be ok with having money taken out of their pocket to pay for a mess unless the person who made the mess is seen to have empty pockets first.

Sh1tbag OToole · 19-02-2013 12:41AM

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

I agree about inheritance. My comments about Zuck, U2 etc is that at the very least they have made something and sold it. The golden circle simply manipulated mathematical concepts and in the process screwed over a vast multitude of ordinary people. Their crime is that instead of going bankrupt like I would have if I had bet all my money on the wrong horse in Paddy Power, they set up the system so that we would have to cover their losses.

The day Seanie has to sign up for the dole each week and actually live off minimum wage because the rest of his assets have been stripped to help repay the mountain of Anglo debt, I will stop calling for his persecution. It's that simple. They made the mess, they should be bled dry before one cent is removed from anyone who wasn't directly involved.

If I burn down my neighbourhood, sure others are going to have to pay to repair the damage - but only if I don't have enough money to pay for it myself. I should be jailed for doing it, AND have every posession I own sold to recoup the cost to the innocent bystanders of rebuilding their property etc. Fair's fair.

Anglo's golden circle made a substantial amount of the mess we're in, they should be made example of. Sorry if that sounds harsh, but it's reality. Nobody is going to be ok with having money taken out of their pocket to pay for a mess unless the person who made the mess is seen to have empty pockets first.

The Irish golden circle are only an informal gathering of "have a go" amateurs compared to the global financial elite that includes the offspring of the old school European merchant bankers who brought fractional reserve lending into existence

Annasopra · 19-02-2013 12:42AM

hames wrote: »

Then you have a short memory. Most of the current affairs program from the time of the child abuse agreement are probably hard to come by now, but in This exchange you can clearly see the SF spokesman press the Government on Church assets

also
http://www.sinnfein.ie/contents/25639

also
http://www.sinnfein.ie/contents/25639
including criticism of the Church

As a Catholic, I can't say I have any time for SF, and have been making that clear in another thread. However, I share with them the revulsion we all do at the wrongdoing perpetrated by the Church in the past and in my own opinion, an ongoing wrongdoing in failure to account and make amends for it.

It's unusual to find myself in a position where I seem to be defending SF; I am not, but I am interested in the role of religion in this country and I'm afraid you have got it badly wrong on this one.

I dunno

Is Martin McGuinness not a very strong Catholic? Is Peadar Toibin not very strongly pro life? Is Sinn Fein in the 6 counties not very strongly pro life. Didn't McGuinness make smart comments about Dawn Purvis running the abortion clinic? wasn't that guy Gerry McGeough of Hibernian magazine very involved with Sinn Fein? I've always seen Sinn Fein as having quite a strong catholic membership and tinge on it's politics up North. Down South I think they are a different party but to me there are clear links between Sinn Fein and the Catholic Church.

hames · 19-02-2013 01:48AM

mango salsa wrote: »

I dunno

Is Martin McGuinness not a very strong Catholic? Is Peadar Toibin not very strongly pro life?

There are a few active Catholics, but I'm thinking of the ideology of the party as a whole.

I'm not sure how SF members who are Catholic manage to reconcile their faith with their party's politics, but there is a greater gap between Catholic beliefs and Sinn Féin than any other party in the state. Not just ideologies that are in contravention with ordinary Roman Catholic teaching, but with de fide Dogmata, rejection of which would be a mortal sin and tantamount to heresy. Peadar Toibín is the only member I know to have rejected a Sinn Féin policy on grounds of immorality.

It's up to party members how they reconcile their policies with Church Teaching, but they certainly are further sway from Church Teaching than any other party imo.

Annasopra · 19-02-2013 08:08AM

hames wrote: »

There are a few active Catholics, but I'm thinking of the ideology of the party as a whole.

I'm not sure how SF members who are Catholic manage to reconcile their faith with their party's politics, but there is a greater gap between Catholic beliefs and Sinn Féin than any other party in the state. Not just ideologies that are in contravention with ordinary Roman Catholic teaching, but with de fide Dogmata, rejection of which would be a mortal sin and tantamount to heresy. Peadar Toibín is the only member I know to have rejected a Sinn Féin policy on grounds of immorality.

It's up to party members how they reconcile their policies with Church Teaching, but they certainly are further sway from Church Teaching than any other party imo.

I still don't see this strong clash between Catholicism and their ideology at all - could you be a bit more specific?

hatrickpatrick · 19-02-2013 11:10AM

Sh1tbag OToole wrote: »

The Irish golden circle are only an informal gathering of "have a go" amateurs compared to the global financial elite that includes the offspring of the old school European merchant bankers who brought fractional reserve lending into existence

I agree entirely. I refer to the golden circle as the most obvious Irish manifestation of this kind of fraud. In reality there should be an international crackdown in which every banker who ever deliberately concealed a loan or misled a regulator is hunted down, brought before the courts to face criminal charges, and in my harsh opinion, have their wealth confiscated by the Criminal Assets Bureau in their country and use to service banking debt, if that country has had to bail out any banks.

Only after there's nothing left in that area should we be talking about cuttin nurses' pay and disability benefits. That's what I meant about justice.

OCorcrainn · 19-02-2013 11:46AM

mango salsa wrote: »

I still don't see this strong clash between Catholicism and their ideology at all - could you be a bit more specific?

I am in SF and I can assure you that myself and most of the people I know are atheist/agnostic and support secularism. Religion has caused enough problems in this country. Secularism is a core principle of Irish Republicanism, but alot of people including the sectarian knuckle draggers who call themselves republicans have no idea whatsoever.

19-02-2013 11:53AM

Zillah wrote: »

A well-regulated free market

A paradoxical paradox?

We need regulations to prevent it becoming a libertarian nightmare with a slave underclass. We need taxes to pay for the running of the state.

How much of a state we need and how much should be forcibly removed from people to be squandered is an important question
Disadvantages of regulations include decreased self-reliance, barriers to entry for those entrepreneurs you mentioned, use of regulation as a tool to smother competing business (happening in california), and direct costs
What slave underclass would that be?

KyussBishop · 19-02-2013 07:32PM

The primary barrier to entry we have for entrepreneurs at the moment, is the shortage of money moving around the economy, caused by the austerity policies, which free market advocates like to tout.

The 'slave underclass' a Libertarian society would like to impose, is pretty easy to determine based upon the policies said free-market-advocates support: Slashed wages and living standards, rising food/oil prices on top of that (due to massive speculation in deregulated asset markets, further pressuring living standards), no unions or ability for workers to engage in collective bargaining (thus continually worsening work conditions), decimated public services requiring people to pay more than they would in taxes to equivalent for-profit private services (and no avenue of complaint against bad business practice, except going to a competitor who may be exactly the same), regressive flat-taxes so the less-well-off are pouring a higher percentage of their income into paying for services, than high-earners, among more.

Pretty much everyone who doesn't run or own a business (and even then, business owners who aren't screwed over by other business, due to the greshams dynamic, i.e. bad business driving out good, put in place in a deregulated business market), or people who aren't already rich or related to wealth; i.e. workers/labour in general (the real 'wealth creators', as business can't function without employees), become the slaves, because they end up working shítty hours, for less, and for a living standard moving towards subsistence (for the neverending goal of 'more profit', but only for the CEO's and shareholders/owners).

Add to that, complete deregulation in finance and business, so CEO's can loot corporations, and so that the finance industry is unrestrained enough to pump the same property/asset bubbles as before, particularly housing (to create another massive rise in profits alongside private debt), with the same 'too-big-to-fail' (due to deregulation) banks that end up needing to be bailed out again to prevent the economy from being obliterated, due to their size.

The entire fraud is extremely simple, for those with a lot of money: Buy houses/real-estate when cheap (either partway through a bubble, but preferably after a bubble has deflated), push for deregulating finance/banking (easy when money buys a lot of political influence), watch banks start pumping out credit recklessly so that house prices inflate (knowing it will lead to economic catastrophe), when the bubble looks ready to burst, offload the houses at the point of maximum profit (sociopathic bonus points, for knowing about the coming crisis, and not caring that the people you're selling to are getting a shítty deal, and may lose their jobs in the ensuing crisis and be left with unsustainable debt), then when the bubble bursts, wait for the bubble to finish deflating and for the foreclosures/homelessness to begin, then start buying up the cheap houses (which everyday people don't have the money to buy because of economic conditions), and then start the whole housing bubble mill rolling again as soon as possible.

That's all deregulation is: legalized looting on a massive scale, and turning a blind eye to fraud even where it is illegal, like we're seeing all the time now today (the banks and their execs are apparently 'too big to jail' now as well).

The previously mentioned 'greshams dynamic', puts the lie to the deregulation myth, wherever it is applied; when applied to business, it basically states "bad business drives out good", because it's not possible to compete economically with fraud, when that fraud brings about an unfair advantage and edge in competition; the only way to remain competitive, is to commit the same fraud yourself (thus the 'good' non-fraudulent businesses, are driven out of the market by fraudulent ones).

People before Profit - Communists?

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