Maybe start by calling him Mohammed!

I can’t see Mohammed catching on.

Joffrey, on the other hand…

A luxurious fortified London run as a police state and the rest of England (Scotland and Wales having had enough by then) simply abandoned. Or maybe China will own everything by then. Most unlikely is that the British come to their senses, send all the freeloading aristocracy packing and try real democracy.

Nobody can seriously believe that this child will ever be king. It would take a truly ahistorical understanding of capitalism to believe that this system could drag itself very much further into the future.

If by chance this boy did one day become king it would be because we have entered a New Dark Ages of permanent and savage barbarism. Capitalism is in a very real sense already dead as a functioning mode of production. In fact when it was on its death bed some 30 years ago it was given a steroid so strong it would have given Eric Pickles a chance of winning the Tour De France. It came in the form of credit deregulation resulting in a 30-year credit bubble turned Ponzi Scheme that collapsed in 2008 leaving a financial system owing trillions and trillions and trillions to billionaire and corporate creditors. At that point the decrepid old patient died. Late capitalism became the late capitalism. Not just monopolised and sclerotic as it was before but bankrupt to boot and with no earthly prospect of renewal just the gnawing of the insects globally liquidating their assets and the unedifying spectacle of the film of globalisation being run off backwards. Yes, indeed, if there is still a monarchy when this boy is old enough to become king we are truly fucked.

King?> King of what? Britian will be a housing estate in the united states of Europe by then.

Capitalism is in a very real sense already dead as a functioning mode of production.

You remain one hell of a raving lunatic.

What about Ralph or Bertrand. These are solid Feudal names.

6. Ob

No he’s not. Robert Sharp is however.

What will Britain be like when Charles is King?

Whats wrong with Elvis?

#6 I remain sir your obedient servant.

No of course not. So you think capitalism has a future even though the bankrupted global financial system, the alarmingly declining spending power of the masses and the state, and the humungus monopoly profits of the corporations (yes ironically profits are burying capitalism) are sucking all the life out of the world economy sending it well on its way to an irreversible and catastrophic global economic depression?

Something tells me that Baton Rouge (good name) would also cite low corporate profitability as evidence of the forthcoming “collapse”.

In fact global corporate profitability, as measured by companies real cash flow return on investment, was 6.8% in 2012 (ie companies generated excess cash of $6.80 for every $100 invested), more or less in line with the past 20 year average. This compares with 8.5% at the 2006-7 peak.

Same canned PANIC RUNZ!! worn out lines… can always spot a socialist, they are never happy and are always without fail looking to spread fear and greed, toxic.

Oh and yes, I think private ownership has a future, just not for you, hence you want your hands on every body elses.

@11 Rouge

Well presumably you are buying shares in these corporations making humungous monopoly profits? Which ones have you bought?

cjcj: Indeed I would. That is a substantial drop in the profit rate that you outline there and of course the monopolists compensate themselves by upping the mass of profit by selling above value, so that everybody else has to sell below, and by massive overproduction so in answer to #15 I’d be mad to buy shares in the corporations because they are sawing off the branch on which they are sitting. Buy gold my foolish friend.

Ob: you have much private property? If you do then yes we are coming for it. Please list your thievings. As for panic, the road to global irreversible depression can be fast or slow, linear or lumpy but it’s coming and it will be here long before this child is old enough to be king.

13. Ob

Spreading fear and greed!!! I thought that was what capitalism did!

Ob Goblin: `Oh and yes, I think private ownership has a future, just not for you, hence you want your hands on every body elses.’

When this Royal child comes of age he will be surrounded by incalculable wealth and posess huge wadges of power all as the result of the lottery of birth. Pure luck is really no way for a modern society to run itself. He could just as easily have been born on a rubbish dump in the Phillipinnes and he wouldn’t like that would he? He deserves neither.

Huge “wadges” of power?

In fact, as any fule kno, he will have very little power and a very constrained life.

“As for panic, the road to global irreversible depression can be fast or slow, linear or lumpy but it’s coming and it will be here long before this child is old enough to be king.”

However, for now at least, global economic output continues to hit new highs.
While if anything has collapsed recently it is gold – from $1800 to $1300.

Whom exactly do you mean by the “monopolists”?
Which companies do you have in mind?

When this Royal child comes of age he will be surrounded by incalculable wealth and posess huge wadges of power all as the result of the lottery of birth. Pure luck is really no way for a modern society to run itself. He could just as easily have been born on a rubbish dump in the Phillipinnes and he wouldn’t like that would he? He deserves neither.
—-

Yep, greed spite and jelousy. That kid may be wealthy yet he will never have the chance to feel what its like to earn it, or to grow up like a normal person. He will face pressures you can not imagine. Everything is subject to the lottery of birth and you are surrounded by incalculable wealth and your own challanges. The trick is to get on with it. . .

`However, for now at least, global economic output continues to hit new highs.
While if anything has collapsed recently it is gold – from $1800 to $1300.’

Yes my friend you are right and I am so wrong… not! The stock exchange QE bubble is repsonible for the fall (not collapse) in the price of gold as speculators sense bonuses but bubble it is and gold will surge way past its previous highs soon enough not that you can do anything with gold. You can’t eat it and you can’t even exchange it for anything if they aren’t making anything. Oh well.

Exclusive Breaking News: The royal baby is to be called Colin.

For naming, I suggest sticking to a family one such as that of Queen Victoria’s husband and consort. Radio 4 could have a special broadcast of Charlotte Green giggling during the announcement.

Prince William will be 60 years old in 2042. Take that as a possible date for Prince A to succeed his father, which provides 29 years of social, political and economic change. Then consider 29 years previous to today.

Ignoring the Orwellian context, 1984 was a bloody horrible year: Thatcher was PM and at a further extreme, Militant ran Liverpool City Council; UK coal mining was being set up for a calamitous industrial conflict; it was a year before Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Russian Communist Party; Operation Spanner was midway through a criminal investigation of consensual BDSM.

On the positive side, the Police and Criminal Evidence Act was passed. PACE is an example of the two steps forward, one step back progress of liberalism. Economically, socially and politically, the UK is in a better place than 29 years ago.

In order to maintain progress for a further 29 years, we have to be confident and comfortable about our present circumstances and recent past. Liberals have to be self critical of EU, race, religion and migration policies, rather than letting the Daily Mail play out its agenda. Some things are wrong, so just admit and correct mistakes. (Fuck Off! to anyone who thinks I will sign up to an illiberal cause on the basis of my previous sentence.)

Most importantly, liberals have to be less technocratic or legalistic. Race/religion politics is allegedly being settled by judicial decisions rather than co-operative existence. In the real world, politics gets worked out over the garden wall or in the corner shop. Liberals need to regather informality.

`Yep, greed spite and jelousy. That kid may be wealthy yet he will never have the chance to feel what its like to earn it, or to grow up like a normal person. He will face pressures you can not imagine. Everything is subject to the lottery of birth and you are surrounded by incalculable wealth and your own challanges. The trick is to get on with it. . .’

Yes this baby is destined to be some kind of marionette but at least the Royals have the good grace to believe that they are appointed by god whilst lucky petit-bourgeois shits like you really do not realise they are acting out the script provided by the system. If you are a self-made man one can only say it’s good of you to take the blame.

20.
The fall in the price of gold followed speculation that Cyprus was going to sell tons of bullion. Make a currency trader your next PM and everything will be hunky dory for the 22nd century.

The UK will have become an archipelago.

The Daily Mail will still be obsessed with immigration but denying climate change however it will be delivered by boat.

OB

‘That kid may be wealthy yet he will never have the chance to feel what its like to earn it’

Sounds like he’s hit the big time to me. It’s a bit like having staff but on a national scale.

BREAKING NEWS ITS CALLED KONG

Following @20. cjcjc: “Whom exactly do you mean by the “monopolists”?”

Monopoly, oligopoly or cartel? In most countries, there are free trade laws which prohibit or manage such structures. It is therefore important that we do not loosely use words which have tight definitions to describe companies which we do not like. See also the post “Are right-wingers evil? Yes” in which Sunny desperately seeks to circumvent Betteridge’s law of headlines.

Yes this baby is destined to be some kind of marionette but at least the Royals have the good grace to believe that they are appointed by god whilst lucky petit-bourgeois shits like you really do not realise they are acting out the script provided by the system.
—-

While people like you crack under the pressure of their surroundings, even in the most comftable times ever seen, people like me, try this, I..dont…give..a…fuck.

So there was a baby born, he is richer than you or I, and its part of the system. Deal with it, you are starting to sound like a fanatic and people are starting to wonder, are you going to snap and become a danger to those you despise???

I think William & Kate should call him Buster and when Wills is crowned he should adopt the name King Tubby.

@25. Nigel Flange: “Make a currency trader your next PM and everything will be hunky dory for the 22nd century.”

The UK has tried it. On 26 June 2007, Gordon Brown was the idiot who had announced that UK was going to sell a lot of gold which led to gold prices falling; on 27 June 2007, Gordon Brown became PM.

Thanks for the comments, folks, though I’m disappointed no-one has mused on the issue of our short term thinking brought about by the (relatively) short election cycle. Am I wrong in thinking that the futurism inspired by this kid could jolt political decision-making into a better place? If not this, then how do we help it to happen.

I’m also disappointed The Man on the Clapham Omnibus @ 8 didn’t call me a raving lunatic to my face, so to speak.

31.
I didn’t know that Gordon Brown is/was a currency trader.
The Chancellor has to give notice to the House of Her Majesty’s Government intention to buy or sell gold. When Gord made the announcement to sell, the price of gold dropped. It would be a good idea to change the HoC Standing Orders regarding gold reserves but that would be too sensible.

Skyvar is a good name.

`The UK has tried it. On 26 June 2007, Gordon Brown was the idiot who had announced that UK was going to sell a lot of gold which led to gold prices falling; on 27 June 2007, Gordon Brown became PM.’

It doesn’t make any difference when you sell gold as its value is more or less unchanging. It is the currencies that fluctuate against it so if Brown sold it for say £1 billion and the next day it was worth £2 billion that would only be because the value of the pound had halved so you’d only be getting more of something that was worth less. Not that I have any time for GB.

#23 `Prince William will be 60 years old in 2042. Take that as a possible date for Prince A to succeed his father’

I do believe that in trying to convert his party from street thugger to elections Nick Griffin predicted 2042 as the year fascism would come to power in the UK oddly enough so if the question put here was put to Griffin, what will Britain be like etc, he’d say fascist. Personally I think they’ll need to do it a lot sooner than that or there’ll be nobody to pay them.

This thread is just surreal. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a goldbug trot before. The goldbugs are invariably on the right if not the far right in my experience.

“What will Britain be like when the Royal Baby is King?”

Well on past experience it will be nothing like the futurologists forecast. The last few decades of the 21st century are for the most part unknowable from our perspective because most of the movers and shakers who will shape those decades are not even born yet. There are a few things we do know and some more speculative. When Baby is King he will probably be married to someone from an ethnic minority. He will be gently encouraged to seek a wife from that demographic to keep the monarchy relevant.

We almost certainly know Britain will have the largest population in Europe and France will be second with Germany relegated to third. France will probably be entering their fourth decade of fascist dictatorship by the the late 21st century. Our traditional allies across the Atlantic will be beginning the slow process of breaking up into about six different countries. China never did quite rule the world like so much hype forecast. Mainly because they never wanted to rule the world and their economy got stuck like so many before it in the middle income trap. Holding their own country together will be more of a concern than bothering with any other.

Britain for King Baby will not look a whole lot different to now, just more people in it. People will still moan about the weather. The far left will still be irrelevant and still be forecasting imminent breakthrough any day now. There will be no flying cars.

It doesn’t make any difference when you sell gold as its value is more or less unchanging. It is the currencies that fluctuate against it so if Brown sold it for say £1 billion and the next day it was worth £2 billion that would only be because the value of the pound had halved so you’d only be getting more of something that was worth less.

:LOL:LOL:LOL.

34.
The US Treasury has over 3500 tons of gold and it’s worth is what people are prepared to pay for it. Read about the Passengers of the B Ark and their unit of currency.
35.
Not as surreal as the mainstream meejah today.

Arbitrage is a good name.

Daz will be improved

@35 Richard W: “This thread is just surreal.This thread is just surreal.”

If you have comprehension problems, it might be time to time to think about yourself. What do you know about life? How do you like yourself?

You are a smart geezer, Richard W, but there are smarter people than youze. Most of the time you can win an argument, and on LC some targets are low.

Will you be my friend, Richard W?

What will there be for him to be king of?

The Scots may well have used the canniness traditionally ascribed to them (if only by themselves) to walk away from the hypercentric micromanagementmania of the so-called UK.
Perhaps even my own nation would have felt sufficient stirrings of conscience to have made a similar break (if it hasn’t by then been effectively ‘Latvianised’ by the importation of welfare junkies. ‘Good Life’ fantasists and downsizing pensioners).

The M25 would be mined on the outer side to prevent those displaced by enforced gentrification and EasyCouncil gerrymandering from returning to their homes.

And he would be left to rule over nothing much more than a system of franchises held by ATOS, Capita, Serco, G4S, Unum, Kaiser Permanente and their heirs and successors, with only the armed forces and those parts of the police dealing with the constant existential threat from Al Qaeda In The Isle Of Purbeck or some similar manufactured bogeyman being still firmly in the public realm.

Good luck, kid; you may need it.

Joffrey, on the other hand…

Seconded!

@35. Richard W: “Well on past experience it will be nothing like the futurologists forecast.”

At which point, Richard W receives two buzzes on the balls, one for each century.

“The last few decades of the 21st century are for the most part unknowable from our perspective because most of the movers and shakers who will shape those decades are not even born yet.”

At which point, Richard W receives three buzzes on the balls, one for each century. Starting from the lowest letters of the alphabet: Alfa Romeo, Auto Union…

Robert

Am I wrong in thinking that the futurism inspired by this kid could jolt political decision-making into a better place?

Sorry not to have called you a raving idiot to your face. Please consider this corrected.

The fact is Robert you have to be completely delusional to imagine this kid will make a jot of difference. When my kids were 2 and 3 they ,like you, believed in Disney, but unlike you they dont anymore.
Many intelligent people have underlined the structural issues facing future generations ie insurmountable debt, peak water,peak food, peak oil, democracies turned Oligarchies and Global warming. If you think the birth of our future king (all kneel and look wistfully to the heavens) is gonna save us I hereby rescind my sensible suggestion of Mohammed and hereby decree (for at this moment we surely are in La La land) he shall be named Canute.

42.
What if the alphabet is stacked vertically?
My other car’s a Horch.

@44. Charlie Maine: “My other car’s a Horch.”

As an Anglo, I respect your car.

Do you have a Deek in the back yard?

Girls calm yourselves. We all know how clever you are but
car jokes are so passe these days. Back to the business of revolution I implore you both.

@46. charlemagne: I foolishly thought that you are not a cunt. My mistake, but your cuntishness wins international awards. You really are a cunt.

When I was born there were 2.5 billion humans abroad, now there is over 7 billion. I suspect the young prince in 60 years will still be able to ride for miles across his lawns with rooms full of treasure to look at after his ride. Meanwhile outside the gates the people will be licking GM food sticks and feeling proud they can fit all that furniture into a small dwelling unit. And the sewage.

Carole Middleton’s Sunderland-born mother’s parents were a Durham miner and the daughter of a Durham miner. That gives our future King a claim easily outranking those made by many a speaker at the Gala over the years.

Three or four decades from now, I for one greatly look forward to hearing him address that event from the platform. Doubtless, that platform will still be bearing its customary advertisement for the Morning Star.

It is inconceivable that his ancestors did not attend the Big Meeting every year, marching behind a colliery band and banner. It is beyond unlikely that his relatives, known or otherwise, do not still turn up to it.

They could give him a bed for the night before, thereby saving the Durham Miners’ Association the usual expense of accommodating a speaker in the Royal County Hotel.

There are those who are complaining that we now know that our next three Heads of State, probably stretching into the next century, will all be white males. Well, they would all have been white males, anyway.

The present one is not male. But any elected Head of this State always would be. And white. And quite or very posh. So why bother changing the present arrangements?

No one with anything like the Royal Family’s foreign background would ever stand a hope of becoming the President of Britain.

Nor would anyone aged 26, as the present Queen was when she came to the Throne. Nor would anyone aged 87, as she is now.

Me: `It doesn’t make any difference when you sell gold as its value is more or less unchanging. It is the currencies that fluctuate against it so if Brown sold it for say £1 billion and the next day it was worth £2 billion that would only be because the value of the pound had halved so you’d only be getting more of something that was worth less.’

Ob Goblin: `:LOL:LOL:LOL.’

What is it that you don’t understand about gold being a hedge and not an investment? Even the most basic common sense passes you by.

`This thread is just surreal. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a goldbug trot before. The goldbugs are invariably on the right if not the far right in my experience.’

Rubbish. You must have little or no experience. It is not difficult to understand the labour theory of value which states that the exchange value of a commodity is the amount of socially necessary labout time required in its production. Gold is a great store of value and an excellent hedge because unlike cash money you can’t simply flick a switch and churn the shit out in the billions rendering the same value as confetti. If you want more gold you gotta dig it up and that takes time and effort not just government or central banker decree.

As for the rest of your post what a load of idealist tosh. Nothing will change eh? It’s changing all the time and in the most radical of ways.

What is it that you don’t understand about gold being a hedge and not an investment? Even the most basic common sense passes you by.

Enjoy your “hedge” I loaded up mid 2007 and sold bang on the high, but hey, haha, yea..

I’m still waiting to hear which companies Baton Rouge regards are “monopolists”.

#52 Ob Goblin: `Enjoy your “hedge” I loaded up mid 2007 and sold bang on the high, but hey, haha, yea..’

So you are a capitalist fuck who likes to gloat at the poverty of others? We already knew that you shit bag.

cjcjcjcjcjjc: `I’m still waiting to hear which companies Baton Rouge regards are “monopolists”.’

Don’t hold your breath. You are lucky I’ve bothered to engage with you at all. Go and do some research.

51. Baton Rouge

“It is not difficult to understand the labour theory of value which states that the exchange value of a commodity is the amount of socially necessary labout time required in its production.”

Well the labour theory of value is nonsense that can be empirically disproved. Do you seriously believe all labour is the same and time is the metric whereby an objective value can be determined? If I spend 20 hours of labour time producing an oil painting and a famous artist spends 20 hours producing one. Do you think because both contain 20 hours labour time that they will have the same value? Value is subjective and is determined at the margin. For example, the value of something is what you are prepared to give up to have said something.

“Gold is a great store of value and an excellent hedge because unlike cash money you can’t simply flick a switch and churn the shit out in the billions rendering the same value as confetti. If you want more gold you gotta dig it up and that takes time and effort not just government or central banker decree.”

It was not my intention to critique gold as an investment because in my experience true believers are impervious to facts. Gold is an “excellent hedge” only if you ignore all the time when it was not. For example, 1915-20, 1941, 1947, 1951-66, 1974-76 1981, 1983-85, 1987-2000 and 2008 all contained massive sell offs.

Gold is the ultimate suckers bet pushed by pump-and-dump charlatans on the unsuspecting where its value relies on the greater fool phenomenon. In poker they say if you do not know who at the table is the sucker it is because it is you. The people doing the hyping are the same people doing the selling hence pump-and-dump. The greater fool phenomenon depends on people believing something is worth X today because there will always be people tomorrow who accept it is worth X or more. However, pump-and-dump markets eventually always run out of fools and the price collapses. That is the story of gold with run ups in price and then price collapses. The best long term investment and by extension hedge are shares. Anyone can cherry pick short periods of data to try and prove a point but that is why it is best to look at long term performance. Looking at the entire 20th century, even with two world wars, the Great Depression, communist revolutions, two huge oil price shocks and the 1970s great inflation. UK equities with all those headwinds still beat every other investment including gold. Gold has never beaten the US S&P in any 30 year period in history. Equities are the best investment/hedge/store of value because they are a bet on human ingenuity. Gold is not a bet on human ingenuity, it is a pessimistic bet and a barometer of fear. It acts like a VIX index, whereby people buy a protective hedge against volatility.

Even if price collapses results in long term store of value being maintained not everyone bought at the previous bottom and they certainly will not all be able to sell at the top. Their buying caused the run up in price in the first place and the vast majority will lose their money.

“If you want more gold you gotta dig it up and that takes time and effort not just government or central banker decree.”

So how does that fit with your labour theory of value. What if someone was having a walk in the Australian outback or in California and found a gold ingot. What labour time went in to producing that gold ingot to give it value?

If it was obvious that central bank so-called money printing drove up the price of gold, why isn’t that fact already incorporated into gold prices? Therefore, if that fact is already incorporated in the price it is not a hedge at all. Only surprise actions would affect gold prices. Moreover, if gold investors were smarter than everyone else by anticipating actions resulting in outperformance. Behavioural finance research predicts that outperformance will reverse by people jumping on the bandwagon. So the hedge argument does not stand up but the greater fool theory does.

My intention is not to criticise gold investors or your opinions. Some with good timing will make money and many more will be taken for a ride. However, I just find it strange that someone on the far left makes arguments that can be found mostly on right leaning sites. So which rules apply to you, Baton?

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2013/04/the-10-rules-of-goldbuggery/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

” As for the rest of your post what a load of idealist tosh. ”

The last thing I am is idealistic. Idealism to me is naive dreaming. However, history is full of Cassandras always predicting cataclysmic change and usually being wrong.

So you are a capitalist fuck who likes to gloat at the poverty of others? We already knew that you shit bag.
—

Financially illiterate fuck:

Golds a hedge not an investment! Buy gold! Then even in the worst of times when every body has lost everything you can still be rich!!!!

Capitalist:

Well actually, I treated it like any other investment and made a decent return over a few years.

Financially illiterate fuck:

You scum! Capitalists scum! You made money! You like to gloat at the poverty of others how dare you make money! Its not fair on those who never! Scum!
–
What a confused abusive mentaly poor little man you are.

All hail Prince GAL o’ Weybridge

I suspect, by the time Georgy Boy becomes King Britain is going to be a diabolical mess along with worldwide disasters. The United Kingdom will be totally irrelevant with the masses suffering starvation except for the fortunate/unfortunate that have been able to escape only to find their is no escape.

The bloody world is entering meltdown and is not going to be safe anywhere, not even if you have money !

Even for a prince the world will not be a safe place from environmental disaster, starvation, violence and all the associated problems of this world meeting it’s decline due to the civilized madness and greed.

😆

“Go and do some research” = “I really don’t know what I’m talking about”.

Monarchs may be useful milestones, but so too are presidents, for example, in the US. Or, for that matter, years, decades, centuries, all of which are often more useful than talking about a specific monarch and have the added benefit of being slightly more universal than monarchs.