UK Politics Mega-thread - Page 18

On September 12 2013 21:36 farvacola wrote:
Is liking bananas some sort of faux-pas in the UK, or am I missing something?

On September 12 2013 19:33 Eufouria wrote:

This is not true I don't even know where you got the idea, maybe because poor people in 3rd world countries live in slums but that's a consquence of poverty not a cause?

On September 12 2013 19:33 Eufouria wrote:Also do you really think the cause of our slowing down economy is immigration? Firstly it's going to take a lot longer to be able to know what sort of long term effect the immigration between that time caused. Secondly I suggest you learn a bit about economics before writing about it on an internet forum.

On September 12 2013 23:22 GhastlyUprising wrote:
You're simply wrong. Trivially, transparently wrong. It's obviously true that much poverty is a result of excessive population density. You just have to look up the scale of malnourishment or UN's comments on population growth in sub-Saharan Africa or the one-child policy in China or the notion of Malthusian crunch to get an idea of how wrong you are. And yes, malnourishment IS caused primarily by excessive population density. Discounting famine, people tend not to starve in countries where an extra hand on the farm will be sure to pay his way, or where the lowest taxes on distributors will be guaranteed to feed everyone.

Well that's pretty rich from someone who just demonstrated his own ignorance of the notion of Malthusian crunch.

I didn't say anything about immigration "slowing down" the economy. I reject GDP as the measure of the well-being of a nation. Immigration does lead to short-term pressure on jobs and social services and long-term damage to the environment. On environmental issues we should be striving to become a world leader, not competing for highest carbon emissions per capita.

More generally I think the proposal that we should turn ourselves into a Great Britain-sized metropolis, while the developing world is perpetually held in a state of serfdom, is a proposal that does not take into account the interests of either party.

On September 12 2013 23:57 KwarK wrote:
Supermarkets are allowed to turn away shoplifters. Countries cannot do the same. The "privatise and it'll be fine" argument relies on a country being run by the same basic rules as a business. It is not.

On September 13 2013 00:07 farvacola wrote:
So what are y'all's thoughts on the proposed privatization of the postal service? Sounds like trouble to me.

On September 12 2013 23:38 Zaros wrote:
Noone is saying make GB a metropolis you would have to expand the population and the living space by 50 times to get to that state, you're welcome to complain when we have 3 billion people living in GB with no technological and efficiency advances at all. As for immigration "pressures" thats caused by public ownership of the education and health sectors because no government can run them, IMO they should be privatised, you don't have immigration "pressures" at a supermarket when there is more customers or any other private industry they will bite your hand off for more customers not complain about "pressures"

On September 13 2013 00:20 GhastlyUprising wrote:
Either you draw the line somewhere or you do end up with 3 billion people living in the UK. Actually, it's far more likely that we would disintegrate as a country before we even exceeded 120 million, let alone 3 billion. There's a reason they have the one-child policy in China, and it's not because they await enlightenment by people of the intellectual calibre of the Tea Party.

You apparently think privatization is the answer to everything. Continuing this exchange would seem pointless. In my opinion no thinking person would agree with you. Thinking people are the only ones likely to profit from reading this thread anyway.

On September 13 2013 00:07 farvacola wrote:
So what are y'all's thoughts on the proposed privatization of the postal service? Sounds like trouble to me.

On September 13 2013 00:24 GhastlyUprising wrote:
Privatization of almost everything has been a disaster. With the rail services, prices are far more expensive than ever and "innovation" has been stagnant. With the electricity industry, prices are far more expensive than ever and "innovation" has been stagnant.

It simply does not tend to happen that the "competition" of the free market drives down the prices. Quite the opposite.

On September 12 2013 23:59 Zaros wrote:


erm I don't really understand what you are trying to get at. Illegal immigrants can be turned away otherwise i don't understand the comparison.

On September 13 2013 00:52 olias wrote:
Ps, Ghastly Uprising, your argument on poverty and population density is backwards.

On September 13 2013 00:52 olias wrote:
Zaros, thats the point. The reason some services including the post office, trains and the health service should be government run is because competition doesnt work in these scenarios. Can you imagine having multiple train tracks for competing firms? Or competing trains that dont coordinate? it would be a complete disaster and a huge waste of resources.

Its not a failure of privatisation, its a failure to understand how privatisation works.

Ps, Ghastly Uprising, your argument on poverty and population density is backwards.

On September 13 2013 01:05 KwarK wrote:

His argument was that because no supermarket complains of too many customers the reason the NHS doesn't like having too many patients is because it's not motivated by profit. And that if you gave healthcare/education/housing etc provision a profit motive then you could have limitless people. Except that's not how it works for a country because not everyone can afford healthcare and houses etc and if enough people can't then best case scenario they start voting and worst case scenario they start rioting. It was a very poor argument being made.