European Politico-economics QA Mega-thread - Page 1036

On January 21 2018 02:38 Kickboxer wrote:


You sound like a child who slept through history class. It's precisely under Marxism that the government ("the people", lol) tells you what you need, what you can own, what you can do with your time, what you are allowed to think, what you are or aren't allowed to say. It's not a very pink place to be, but hey, at least you get to own an infinitesimal slice of the means of production.

Incidentally, these (totalitarian) are the single conditions under which communism can work in relation to the human race, since people vary so obscenely in their productivity and intelligence any semblance of equity collapses in a single free generation - unless of course you keep the population in check with the secret police and the Gulag. Especially the intellectuals.

This has been proven time and again throughout the 20th century but I'm sure your version of marxist utopia is way more efficient and liberating. Not to mention the massive error in failing to predict capitalism will, in a matter of a century, make the working class richer than feudal nobility.

Apart from being a decent critique of the most glaring weaknesses of capitalism (alienation of labor is one, let's concede) the entire philosophy is a pre-digital-era relic and a certified dump.

On January 22 2018 16:42 sc-darkness wrote:
What do you think of TTIP? I know Merkel was in favour of it. Do you agree with her?

On January 23 2018 04:09 RvB wrote:

Most likely most on this forum are very low on the wealth scale. Since it's a gamer forum ( and relatively young) a lot of us will have student debt + mortgages which means you have a net negative wealth. It's one of the huge flaws of studies like this. A farmer with €2 in his bank account in Zimbabwe has more wealth than a Harvard educated millennial with a mortgage and an income of 100k.

The remains of second world war sailors who died on British and Dutch warships in the Java sea were secretly dumped in an anonymous mass grave by modern-day metal scavengers as they rifled through wrecks illegally lifted from the sea bed, it has been claimed.

The reports from Indonesian and Dutch media prompted the Ministry of Defence to condemn those who had disturbed the graves of the dead, and speak of their “distress” at the news.

In recent years a series of huge wrecks have been all but removed from the waters off Indonesia by operators seeking to cash in on the valuable metals on board.

The ships that have been dismantled or vanished included the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Electra, on which 119 men perished, HMS Exeter, a 175-metre heavy cruiser on which 54 died, and HMS Encounter, which was scuttled to avoid capture by the Japanese.

It has now been claimed that those employed by the illegal scavengers to cut up the ships on Indonesian soil had also found skulls, jawbones, feet and hand bones, hips and ribs during their work.

It was claimed that the remains were dumped in a mass grave near the port of Brondong, in east Java.

According to an Indonesian journalist, Aqwam Hanifan, reporting on the Indonesian website, Tirto.id, British and Dutch remains were bagged and buried to a depth of one metre.

One contractor, Haji Ghoni, responsible for processing the ships, was quoted as saying of the remains: “Sometimes they are there and sometimes not.”

A ministry of defence spokesman said: “The British Government condemns the unauthorised disturbance of any wreck containing human remains. Under International Law naval warships and associated artefacts enjoy protection through Sovereign Immunity.

“International law also provides for protection for war graves. Desecration of wrecks of war and merchant vessels causes distress to loved ones of those lost on board and is against international law.

“A military wreck should remain undisturbed and those who lost their lives onboard should be allowed to rest in peace.”

The development has also caused outrage in the Dutch parliament as it comes in the wake of a report on war wrecks from the country’s defence ministry which suggested there were no leads as to the identity of the metal scavengers, let alone information to be gleaned about the fate of sailors’ remains.

André Bosman, a Dutch MP, told the daily newspaper De Telegraaf: “These publications in Indonesia and now in De Telegraaf raise new questions and a feeling of great indignation.”

Around 900 Dutch sailors died in the Battle of the Java sea on HNLMS De Ruyter, HNLMS Java, and HNLMS Kortenaer. They were sunk, along with UK, Australian and US vessels, in 1942, during one of the costliest sea battles for the allies, only to be the target of the illegal metal traders in a particularly frenetic period of activity between 2014 and 2016.

Dutch divers, planning to put plaques on the vessels, found they had vanished in 2016.

The wrecks are regarded as treasure troves by the salvagers and it is thought that up to 40 second world war-era vessels in the Java sea have already been partially or completely destroyed. Even poor quality steel can bring in about £1m ($1.3m) a ship, according to estimates cited by the Guardian in a special report last year. Other metals valued from the wrecks including copper cables and phosphor bronze propellors.

The Indonesian government has insisted it is not to blame as there was no formal request for them to be protected.

This month the National Museum of the Royal Navy and the Maritime Archaeology Sea Trust, which have charted every Royal Navy vessel ever lost around the globe, said they were linking up in an effort to deter those planning to rob sites in UK seas.

They will use satellites, radar and sensors to monitor suspicious activity near wreck sites, the Royal Navy said.

On January 23 2018 04:42 TheDwf wrote:
The goal of this "study" is more to point out the insane and increasing concentration of power and wealth at the top of the richest countries. That is the real problem. "Outliers" or statistical artefacts matter little in the end.

On January 26 2018 04:03 Nyxisto wrote:
Probably just recognition of the fact that both globalisation and fairness at home are issues that somehow need to be dealt with, because equality is no good if you don't have an economy and any jobs, and a booming economy is no good if you have a too high degree of inequality.

no such thing as a system free of contradictions

On January 26 2018 07:03 Nyxisto wrote:
I'm very much in favour of egalitarian liberalism, but I don't know where you're getting the idea from that the United States or Western Europe grew without property rights. Strong property rights are the foundation of any functional economy.

On January 26 2018 08:05 Big J wrote:


Property rights are always there, since a state is a construct of people, rights and land. The moment your society claims land, it has a property system. The owners are those who actually rule parts of the land, regardless of what the propaganda says who holds the land. (E.g. in the case of state socialism you have an elite party that gives the orders and no access from anyone else. it is the most anti-liberal, anti-egalitarian form of property. But those people would claim it is "the people" who rule)
So the core question is always by which mechanisms are those rights distributed.

In early America these were claimed and distributed between equally poor people. Which means the capital prices were low, everyone needed each other for trade and lots of innovation and growth happened.
In feudal europe this wasnt the case, the land was in the hand of very few people and the capital prices were high and access to being economically active was limited, because those who controlled the wealth didn't need the others but prevented them from becoming active.
An example of what changed this for some time: the French Revolution redistributed the property rights between many people, growth and innovation happened and subsequently Napoleon could conquer europe based on a rather free and therefore strong society.

The question is whether you want to go on forever waiting for war, crisis or revolution to open a small window of violent redistribution or whether you want a system in which property gets thrown back on the market under certain circumstances (like death) and we actively recognize bad distributions as part of an illiberal system.

On January 26 2018 08:19 kollin wrote:

Is there any precedent for the second system?

On January 26 2018 16:58 Big J wrote:


"New Deal" politics by FDR. High taxation on super high incomes (up to 90%) but low taxation for middle/low incomes which catches the "property based" part of income, but keeps the workbased parts undertaxed (obviously it does catch a lot of high earners without property too which is why I prefer a direct high wealth taxation and no/less wage taxation, but since there is no market for things not traded you need a central planner that gets the tax rates right, which might be worse than fucking over a few high earners that do so by work) and 77% inheritance taxes.
The only peaceful redistribution program that ever happened without destroying the economy first and one of the biggest economic wealth programs ever. Sadly its image has been distorted from the left (positively seen) and from the right (negatively seen) for its big state economy, when the actual achievment was liberal redistribution, not state economy.