Perhaps a Government elected by Millions might be more likely to listen to a group of hundreds if they didnt Demand things.
Suggestions or requests might be heard more.

1 is nearly sensible but we need *Better* regulation not more. In fact, there is a case for saying we need less regulations of the tick-the-box type so that the regulators can look at what is actually happening today and not spend all their time fighting the last war but one.
“We need regulators that are genuinely independent” Add a full stop.
It is obvious that you didn’t use British Fail to commute to work or you wouldn’t want to renationalise the railways.
5 unfortunately is illegal under international law (which may be why some frighteningly ignorant people in Brussels have proposed a FTT)

Again, they have issued specific demands. The Guardian reported on it here
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/oct/28/occupy-london-city-st-pauls

Sorry Jim I do not agree, the clue to the occupy movements is in the name ‘anti-capitalism’, it represents the growing awareness that the system really does not work.
Like many others who are left of centre or social democrats, you ignore the long history of the state tinkering with capitalism, it does not work to serve the interests of the many. And I doubt if real free-markets can deliver.
The only thing that state intervention does is, when the system fails, it gives pro-capitalists the upper hand by blaming it on to ‘statism’, which, they argue, is a socialist dogma.
And finally, how contradictory would it be if a movement that is anti-capitalism then states conditions that are actually pro-capitalist?

“And I doubt if real free-markets can deliver.”

But real socialism, whatever that means, can deliver right?

5
‘Real socialism’, it depends what you mean, there are several models, one thing it is not is the Soviet system.
One thing I know is that capitalism has not worked and though there are problems with regard to making assumptions about ‘real free-markets’, what we do know is, that with minimal state intervention, the free-market did not deliver, and I am making specific reference to health and education.

@ 4 AND 5
There is no doubt that they both can deliver.
The key question is *what* do they deliver?
On the one hand, libertarians like Tim Worstall invoke Adam Smith who wanted the state to intervene to prevent cartels fixing prices and on the other hand when Deng took control of China, the GDP (*not* GDP per head) of Taiwan was greater than that of mainland China.

For point 6 – wages within a company should be open-book.

@7 – What? No, Tim Worstal invokes the Adam Smith Institute, not Adam Smith!

@ 8 Leon Wolfson
Please buy a dictionary and discover what “invoke” means – if does *not* mean “write blogs for”. Tim W *does* invoke Adam Smith but does *not* invoke the ASI as he calls it.

Jim Jepps: “The bonfire of the quangos saw this government shift away from holding industries to account for their actions and towards trusting in the market. We need a stronger regulatory framework on the financial industry – and one that is genuinely policed, by the police.”

No – not by the Police, least of all by the Police. To quote Mervyn King, BoE Governor:

“The Bank of England’s new supervisory arm should be given broad discretion to force banks to restructure or cut back their borrowing without having to point to specific rules, according to Sir Mervyn King, Bank governor.”
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/137d6cfc-0613-11e1-a079-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1cqX6OZbh

The Police cannot be allowed that degree of latitude.

@ 6 steveb
“One thing I know is that capitalism has not worked” So pensions are useless are they? We were better off before the industrial revolution when agricultural labourers frequently starved if there was a bad harvest? The Albanians under Hoxha were happier than the Americans under Reagan? Pol Pot was right?
Capitalism has worked primarily because it has enabled people/companies to invest so that workers can achieve more with less effort by using machines but also because it allows farmers to buy fertiliser so that their crops are more bountiful and there is more food to eat.
It has made the rich richer but it has also, without meaning to do so, made the poor less poor. The latter is no a moral virtue, it is just a side-effect.
The major gains in health and life expectancy in the UK predated the NHS and the biggest increase in literacy occurred while most schools were set up, funded and run by churches and synagogues [I am open to correction if the Sunday Schools were run by an organisation technically separate from the synagogue, but I feel that would only be a technicality as the teachers and funders were members]. You do not seem to understand that the free market predates capitalism and includes rather more than it.

11
Can’t disagree, I’m a great believer in Marx’s notion that socialism needs to evolve from mature capitalism.But it’s reached a stage where capitalism no longer works.
As Joseph Schumpeter points-out, for a wealthy person, the invention of the electric light bulb is no big deal when you can afford thousands of candles and the staff to deal with it. Many things work for different reasons and much depends on pre-existing environments, but because something worked many years ago it isn’t really sensible to ignore it’s current failure is it?

@ 12 steveb
“But it’s reached a stage where capitalism no longer works.”
Er?
Have you any evidence (as distinct from rants) that this is true? Were Steve Jobs and James Dyson an illusion created by the Daily Mail? Do I imagine that my Dyson vacuum cleaner works?
I could go on ad nauseam.
Capitalism does not produce the result that you want (and no other system could ever produce the result wanted by Jim Jepps – Asimov assumes capitalism to generate the wealth necessary for humanity to live in luxury thanks to work done by their robots), but that does *not* mean it doesn’t work. If it doesn’t work the way the way you want it to do, too bad: I don’t have a 1936 racing Bentley either, but *I* don’t claim that proves it doesn’t work.

13
In case you are not aware, the Occupy movements are about the 99%, I would suggest that Steve Jobs and Dyson are very much part of the 1%. I do not disagree that capitallism is able to serve the interests of the 1%.
If you can observe the current situation in the West, and ask me if I have any evidence to suggest that capitalism doesn’t work any more, then there is nothing I can produce to convince you.
Btw, I don’t read the Daily Mail, is there any significance for you to quote it in this debate?

@6 steveb: ‘Real socialism’, it depends what you mean, there are several models, one thing it is not is the Soviet system.

You’ve said what country it isn’t, but what countries is it like? I.e. what existing countries are most similar to your model of “real socialism” (even though they aren’t completely like it)?

If your answer is (for example) Sweden, then why not just move to the Swedish model of capitalism?

If your answer is “nowhere”, then how do you know it would work?

I think Jim Jepps misses the point.

His proposals address several issues of economic justice — some I agree with, some I disagree with, and some I’d go further than him.

But economic justice isn’t the fundamental issue. The fundamental issue is that we have a society that’s largely run for and by the 1%, not the 99%. Now if a country is a democracy, then it would automatically be run in the interests of the 99%, because they would prevent things from happening that aren’t in their interests. But this hasn’t happened; therefore it cannot be the case that Britain is a democracy; at best we’re a half-democracy.

So the most important reform is to bring real democracy to Britain. If we don’t achieve that, then it doesn’t matter what other proposals we achieve: the 1% will just lie low for a few years, and then slowly, invisibly, inevitably, take back all our gains.

To get real democracy, we most of all need to get money out of politics, so that ideas/parties compete on a level playing field, instead of the situation we have now which is that ideas and parties favoured by the rich have a big advantage. We also need proportional representation, so that voters have a real choice not just the sterile Labservative duopoly. Recall elections and referenda would also put the people in charge.

I’ve written about this in more detail.

2. I’m fine with better regulation, the most important thing though is that it is enforced so that those guilty of white collar crime or tax evasion can reasonably expect that their activities may be investaged and they might go to jail.

3. thanks for that David – but without being over critical they don’t actually amount to much of a structural change do they? It seems to me that we have a big job to do on the economy and the financial sector and we need a bit more ambition – but they are a good set of demands though.

4. Steve, there’s a difference between pro-capitalist and reforms of existing capitalism. The occupy movement can and does put forward demands for reform exactly like these and I’m contributing to that discuusion. I don’t think posing the question as the end of capitalism or nothing is either very useful nor is it the only version of anti-capitalism out there. These suggested reforms would all, I think, improve the lot of the 99% in the teeth of the interests of the those who own and control a large part of our economy.

10. Bob. If we’re going to jail the bankers then the police need to be involved. That doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be other independent regulators though – it’s not one or the other. The alternative is to accept that criminal activity will go unpunished (as now)

16. I do actually talk about getting the influence of big money out of politics in the piece.

However, where we do disagree is that democracy is concrete, it is not simply process. We have to have specific policy demands that go beyond democratic reform (although I’m for that) and without those the movement is meaningless.

This is a fight for economic justice, that means real economic change, not just running our meetings and elections differently.

@ 14 steveb
“In case you are not aware, the Occupy movements are about the 99%” NO: I am part of the 99%, I have been politically aware from the age of 5 [I expect a torrent of abuse in response to this but I am in the habit of telling the truth] and they are NOT about me – they are about a lot of things like trying to sell Richard Murphy’s stupid lies about the City, but not about the 99% who are poorer than Richard Murphy.
I never buy the Daily Mail but I am occasionally required to read it when someone quotes it at me. So – do you think that Steve Jobs and James Dyson were invented by The Guardian or the Socialist Worker?
Would James Dyson have made a business out of selling vacuum cleaners only to the richest 1%? Well?
I can observe the current situation in the west and compare it with that in the 1940s when most of the west was ruled by left-wing governments. So are you admitting that for anyone who can do this there is nothing that you can produce?

@ 17 Jim
Thanks for that support.
The FSA reduces fines for criminals if it will cause them financial hardship instead of sending the to jail: we need more 150-year jail terms in the UK.
However, the police do not currently have the skills to spot financial fraud until some whistle-blower tells them. You would need to *draft* many of the best brains in the City when they retire in order to do this.

Phil Hunt in #16 makes a blatantly false assumption and deduces that Britain is not a democracy because it doesn’t do what he wants. Boo hoo! It doesn’t do what I want either, but I’m not about to launch a military coup (if MI5 are reading this: D

@21,

No, it isn’t a democracy because it doesn’t work in the interests of the majority. Or do you think it was in the interests of the people to give £456 billion — that’s £7300 for every one of us — to the rich, greedy, incompetent bankers?

@18 Jim Jepps: However, where we do disagree is that democracy is concrete, it is not simply process. We have to have specific policy demands that go beyond democratic reform (although I’m for that) and without those the movement is meaningless.

If I’m reading you correctly, you seem to be saying that if the Occupy movement talks only about real democracy, then it won’t get much traction, because people will think that’s too abstract and doesn’t really address their particular concerns. I think that’s correct; but I also think we do need to talk about democracy.

This is a fight for economic justice, that means real economic change, not just running our meetings and elections differently.

I agree we need real economic change.

But I wouldn’t have used the phrase “just running … elections differently”, because it can be read as meaning that elections aren’t really very important. That’s not true: the electoral process decides who gets elected, which in turn decides everything else. The process by which a country’s leaders are chosen is the most important factor in determining what sort of country it will be: it’s why, for example, North Korea is a shithole while South Korea is a nice place to live.

@17 Jim Jepps: I don’t think posing the question as the end of capitalism or nothing is either very useful nor is it the only version of anti-capitalism out there.

I don’t think it’s useful either. People are aware that the USSR was horrendously inefficient and that as a result it collapsed, so it’s not possible to sell them on the idea of a centrally planned economy, because it blatently doesn’t work. And if you don’t have a centrally planned economy, then you have to have an economy where decisions about how to price and allocate scarce resources are made in a distrributed way by lots of economic actors, i.e. a market economy.

So instead of talking about destroying capitalism, we should be talking about making it work for the 99%.

17
Jim, there have been so many reforms of capitalism over the years, indeed it’s what the free-marketeers quote as being the cause of the failure of capitalism. How many sticking-plasters do we need to use before we eventually acknowledge that the system is beyond repair.
19
Your points are now getting so obscure I really don’t know what you are attempting to say. I don’t think I ever accused you of being in the 1% of those who benefit from capitalism and neither would I consider that owning a vacuum cleaner is a reasonable yardstick to assess whether an economic system is working.
Also, being left-wing doesn’t actually mean that you are a socialist, many on LC would say they are left-wing but not socialists.
Your point about left-wing governments in the 1940s is not relevant unless you are refering to the Soviet Union, even Lenin asserted that the system was not socialist. But, as I'[ve pointed out, state socialism is only one model.

@9 – Then he’s lying about, not “invoking”. There’s a sharp difference.

@15 – Be VERY happy if the UK adopted the Nordic Model.

Phil Hunt says that Britain is not a democracy because it doesn’t do what he wants although we now have a government elected by a majority for the first time since 1959 [if you adjust for The Speaker being deemed non-party and the seats where neither Labour nor Sinn Fein could nominate a candidate the winning party had majority support in 1955 and 1959].
So democracy means doing what he thinks is right? NO.
Democracy means rule by the people. I think it would be better if I could tell everyone what to do, but unlike Phil Hunt I don’t claim that it undemocratic when a majority disagrees with me.

@ 25 steveb
Basically you have no evidence to support your claim so you are ducking my challenge.

@ Anybody
Can anyone quote me an example of Tim Worstall lying abut the Adam Smith Institute?
It’s not unthinkable, just I have never seen it and cannot imagine why he should bother.
The alternative is that Leon Wolfson is, as usual, spouting tripe.
Why does he waste my time? (Please censor your replies)

28
Right, I’ll have a go at interpreting your challenge which may or may not be about vacuum cleaners.
No,I don’t think Dyson and Jobs were invented by the Guardian or the Socialist Worker.
Yes, Dyson and others provided vacuum cleaners for the many and made money out of it. But as I’ve already pointed-out, I do not believe that owning a vacuum cleaner is a suitable yardstick for assessing the economic system.

@29 – Nope, you’re just lying your ass off about what I said again. Why come here when you’re just going to lie and troll, really?

And no, we don’t have a government elected by a majority of the voting age population. More tripe to defend your arguments.

15
Sorry, I’ve just seen your post. No country has ever had a socialist system, which is not capitalism with a welfare state and, therefore, is not the Nordic system.
I don’t think anyone could give absolute guarantees that socialism would be perfect but then industrial capitalism could give no guarantees to the previous economic system that it would work.
Let me just give you a couple of examples of failure – in 2007, £61 billion was paid out in unemployment benefit, ie paying for people not to work, I don’t have recent figures but I guess the cost is much higher.
The rise in materialism does not seem to have given us emotional happiness either, there is a huge increase in depression and suicide and not all of it is about the failure of markets.
The occupy movements are verbalizing what many are now recognizing, the system has failed.
My personal preference with regard to what a socialist society might look like is the model proposed by Andre Gorz, which is a mixture of socialism and liberalism.

@ 30 steveb
Great – especially if it gets you to think
Leon Wolfson decides to insult me rather than produce a single example of Tim W lying about the Adam Smith Institute. Since Tim has posted thousands of blog entries including dozens on the ASI site or about the ASI, it cannot be all that difficult to find a few examples if Tim is in the habit of lying about the ASI.
Anyone who likes to look can see that the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Parties obtained a majority of the votes cast in the 2010 General Election, as I said. Leon Wolfson who has said elsewhere that he is to the left of Labour, so his support is much less than that of Tim Worstall’s UKIP, is trying to say that this is undemocratic.There is no polite response to this but maybe two doctors in white coats may be able to help?

24
Just out of curiosity, you say that a centrally planned economy didn’t work but you are wanting the state to intervene to make the market work for everyone, isn’t that what central planning is?

@ 25 steveb
I am among the 99.9999% who have benefited from capitalism. That does not mean that I like Bob Diamond or Eric Daniels, let alone Kervier et al

@ 34 steveb
Not quite. The state can intervene in bits of the economy – such as Alfred creating a navy – without there being a centrally planned economy. When I was working in Siberia I learned that Gosplan determined that there should be a 2000km gap between refineries (equivalent to deciding that oil from BP’s Forties field should be landed at Sullum Voe in the Shetlands and then pumped to its refinery near Marseilles to be refined). The ROCE on building a refinery near an undeveloped oilfield was greater than 50% pa in some cases.

@32 – You make SMFS look sane.

No socialist system. Right. Never mind the examples. And you’re against paying people out of work entirely, I see.

And £61 billion in unemployment benefits? A typical social darwinistic big lie. 6.6 billion is the accurate figure, of course.

That you whine about that shows you have no understand of what social ecology even is or the basic concepts such as the thousand-hour working year or the nature, or autonomous activities. from of writing such as that of Horst (Gorz), let alone the massive evolution FROM his writings which has occurred to make his philosophical ideas into useful tools.

@34 steveb: Just out of curiosity, you say that a centrally planned economy didn’t work but you are wanting the state to intervene to make the market work for everyone, isn’t that what central planning is?

I’d describe that as a regulated market economy (of course, an unregulated market economy doesn’t exist, and probably never will).

To illustrate what I mean by centrally planned and market, consider an economy that has (among other things) a steel mill and a fridge factory. The fridge factory uses steel to make part of its fridges. So, how does the economy “decide” how much steel goes to the fridge factory, and how much to other users?

If we have a central bureaucracy determining this, and determining what price is paid, how much steel is produced, how many fridges are produced, etc, it’s a centrally planned economy.

If we have the fridge factory phoning up the steel mill and negotiating to buy a certain quanitity of steel, with the price it’s willing to pay determined by how much it thinks it can sell the fridges for, and the steel factory deciding who to sell its steel to based on who offers the most money, etc, it’s a market economy.

@33 – No, you decide to lie your head off about what I said. I never said that, and wouldn’t. He’s entirely in agreement with the Adam Smith Institute, of course. Also of course, that institution would have disgusted Adam Smith himself – what they do amounts to mocking his legacy.

And a majority of the votes cast is a not a majority of the voting age population.

Of course your response is the men in white coats, when in fact the problem is you.

38
Thanks for replying Phil but I do know what a market economy is (in theory at least) but that’s not what I really meant.
As I have mentioned on numerous posts, there has been many attempts by the state to centrally control the direction of markets, the largest being the welfare state, and it just hasn’t worked, hence the rise of the Occupy movement.
What I am saying is that central planning appears to be problematic either way whether within a state owned economy or within an economy which supports private ownership.

@32 steveb: in 2007, £61 billion was paid out in unemployment benefit

2 million people at £67.50 a week works out as £7 billion. So your figures are way out.

Leon Wolfson he say:
“What? No, Tim Worstal invokes the Adam Smith Institute, not Adam Smith!”
then
“@9 – Then he’s lying about, not “invoking”. There’s a sharp difference.”
then, after I point out
“Can anyone quote me an example of Tim Worstall lying abut the Adam Smith Institute?
It’s not unthinkable, just I have never seen it and cannot imagine why he should bother.
The alternative is that Leon Wolfson is, as usual, spouting tripe.”
he says:
“No, you decide to lie your head off about what I said. I never said that, and wouldn’t
If you want to find Leon Wolfson in a dictionary don’t look under ‘leo’ try ‘lia’

@ 32 steveb
I am not an expert on this but didn’t Kampuchea claim to be such a system?

37
I sometimes wonder whether you live in an alternative universe, when I say a system fails because it pays for people not to work, I am saying the system has failed, how many f’cking times have I written that on this thread.
I happen to believe that most unemployed people want to work and don’t work because there are no jobs, if you know anything about Gorz (and I seriously doubt it) you will be aware that he was in favour of redistributing work and time not wealth (as in the welfare state)
35
I have never met the people you speak of so I cannot comment.
36
I think Alfred came a few years before the the modern central state, and certainly he preceded industrial capitalism and the USSR.

41
The figure quoted includes other benefits given to the unemployed eg housing benefit and council tax relief.

@45 – Which the vast majority of claimants of are in-work. You’re attacking the entire social infrastructure, then, for anyone at all. Thanks for that great display, again, of social darwinism.

The social infrastructure doesn’t exist, as you believe, to pay people for not working, except those to whom society owe a duty of care (the most disabled and the elderly). It exists to give them choices other than destitution when the capitalist system will not pay it’s externalities or when it finds them surplus to requirements.

The problem isn’t the fact a social network exists, the problem is it’s far too weak, as the Nordic countries – the demonstration of socialism which “doesn’t exist” shows.

@42 – Revisionism again, I see. As I said, SMFS makes you look sane, at least he tries to justify his social darwinist corporatism

Allegedly pointing out that Leon Wolfson has told lies is “Revisionism”.
I cannot say that Beria would have said exactly the same because I never met him: he died before I first visited Moscow

@47 – No, your telling lies about what I said is revisionism. And you keep doing it…conflating Adam Smith and the Adam Smith Institute.

If course you need to revert to veiled insults, because you have no rational response. Beria’s your kind, not mine.

23. I agree. Democratic reform, including addressing the influence of multi-nationals ans big money lobbyists, is a cause close to my heart.

24. Making capitalism work I think is a task beyond human capacity – however, I do think that there are real reforms that can improve the lot of millions and make society fairer. I doubt capitalism will ever be fair, but it’s clear that it is possible to save people’s lives, make people happier and advance the rights of the population. I’d like to see some of that.

25. ‘we’ve seen so many reforms over the years’: what we’re seeing at the moment is the end of undoing of many worthwhile, social democratic reforms instituted after WWII. I think those reforms are worth defending.

The NHS, for example, was a reform of capitalism in the UK that big money opposed but accepted were necessary. This is being undone and it seems to me that opposing casualisation, out sourcing and full blooded privatisation is something every anti-capitalist should support even though they are reforms.

Quoting literally Leon Wolfson’s previous posts by copying and pasting them is now “telling lies about what I said”.

“No country has ever had a socialist system”

But there have been numerous revolutions led by people intending to introduce a socialist system. That none have succeeded in introducing what you would regard as a socialist system says a great deal about the feasibility of the project does it not.

On the other hand we have numerous examples of countries with economic systems involving both markets and elected governments proving to be highly succesful accross a wide range of activities and areas – succesful both in terms of improving each generation’s living standards(*) and compared to alternative political and economic models.

*A number of factors such as the financial crisis, house price inflation, energy insecurity, climate change etc are putting this at a serious risk. But, without wishing to trivialise the problems, I think this is largely going to be a historical blip, with technological advances coming on-stream by the end of the decade and political solutions developed. The later will only occur by seriously thinking about what reforms and changes are necessary, rather than the intellectually lazy approach of waiting for the non-existant revolution that this time really will work.

51
There has been no revolution by a capitalist country, which has resulted, successfully or otherwise, in socialism. So arguing that it is unfeasible based on historical experience is nonsense.
I don’t think anyone would argue that capitalism has not created favourable conditions or that it has never worked, indeed Marx waxed lyrical about it. But like many things that become outdated and inefficient, the view of many of us on the left is that it needs replacing by something new and more appropriate for existing conditions.
What is intellectually lazy is the view that it will be alright in the end because it was alright before, never mind that the world has changed.

@50 – You quoted a highly selective portion of the post and then proceeded to draw entirely false conclusions off it based on your reading which had nothing whatsoever to do with what I said.

You’re a liar, plain and simple, who twists and turns like the wing the LibDem’s lying produces.

Leon Wolfson’s stupid and increasingly insults are getting just too boring. After I point out there is a difference between Adam Smith and the Adam Smith Institute he accuses *me* of conflating them. When I quote him verbatim, he accuses me of lying about what he said. Now he accuses me of drawing a completely false conclusion by merely quoting what he said including “I never said that, and wouldn’t” referring to a quote that I had pasted from his earlier post.
I am not going to bother to respond to his remaining insults because I have better things to do than repeat myself, let alone repeating his self-contradictory rants.

@54 – Yea, you take your toys home, now you’ve thrown them out the pram! Logic and you don’t mix…

In reality, of course, I am quite aware of the difference you’re trying to hide… you have repeatedly tried to muddy the waters over the desecration of the views of Adam Smith that the Adam Smith Institute routinely practice.

@55
OK that’s not so boring: it’s imaginative, because I have never in my life commented on whether or not the Adam Smith Institute represents the views espoused by Adam Smith.

John77: “Leon Wolfson’s stupid and increasingly insults are getting just too boring.”

Beware or you will be accused of being a rabid antisemite for criticising one of the chosen people.

@57 – No, I just call neo-fascist scum like you that because you are. Did you think it was hard to CHECK? Sigh.

@58; “No, I just call neo-fascist scum like you that because you are.”

ROFL ! I feel really let down now. Why only “neo-fascist”?