Capitalism at its worst

This event reminds me why I was a communist in my youth.

Summary: the UK is closing down, like other countries. There will be economic hardship all round, no question. And those who own only their labor-power will be hit the hardest. The answer is not government ownership of the economy, but we can argue that elsewhere. However, there is unavoidable hardship ... and then there is being a pig.

I just wanted to bring this story to PoliticalForum people.

We have a hotel chain in the UK, called Britannia Hotels. I don't recommend staying in
it under normal circumstances: it has been voted the worst hotel chain in the country, for
seven years running. [ https://www.theguardian.com/busines...orst-chain-seventh-year-in-a-row-which-survey ] On the other hand, maybe that's made them lower their prices and the tradeoff would have been worth it. Free market and all that.

But now ... here is what these pigs did: they sacked their staff (mainly overseas workers), and evicted them, with no notice. Out on the street, immediately. Here's the story:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...2-staff-over-coronavirus-making-them-homeless

Click on it, read it.

Of course, these pigs immediately tried to CYA:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...wner-Britannia-Hotels-claims-admin-error.html

I've followed the story ... nowhere does it say they rehired the staff or fired the pig who did the sacking. I contacted them. No reply, of course. Stonewall it. No one cares, right?

So ... I would like to request everyone to repost this story wherever you can: Facebook, Twitter, whatever other forums you are on.

And -- most important -- email them and tell them you will never ever ever stay in their filthy hotels again, and that you are going to spread the word among all your friends to do the same. A couple of days have passed now and they're probably saying, 'Ha, it's all blown over'. No it hasn't. It doesn't matter whether you ever did or ever would stay in one of their hotels. Go ahead and lie. God will forgive you.

Here's their contact details. It will take you thirty seconds to type in a message: https://www.britanniahotels.com/contact-us

What they did is disgusting purely in its own right. As a tiny footnote, this is what makes idealistic young people become Reds -- by this act they probably recruited five thousand kids to the Incredibly Revolutionary Socialist Proletarian Peoples Party or whatever the toy revolutionaries call themselves nowadays.

And I think that it would be just terrible.... really really terrible ... if, in a year or two, when things are back to normal ... if they're still in business ... some Hacktivists made their website an ongoing never-ending target for denial-of-service attacks and the like, unpredictably, every few months. I would cry myself to sleep over that.

Capitalism, with all its brutality, is the only system that brings prosperity. There is no alternative. But some of its worst enemies are certain capitalists themselves.

Make them suffer.

 

So layoffs = people joining the communist party??

 

And what you are asking people to do in your OP is why capitalism works so well and fixes itself when some facet of it breaks.

 

No, of course not. Support for communism has nothing at all to do with social conditions, or people being almost literally thrown into the streets.
Support for communism is simply a reflection of evil, corrupt moral character. Communists and socialists are wicked people who consciously want to
see mankind living in slavery.

 

You bet. The free market.
There is sometimes a facile understanding of Adam Smith, who was actually a great moral thinker.

 

Did we punish ANY OF OUR AMERICAN companies who driven by greed took all their manufacturing offshore driven purely by capitalist greed??? They wanted CHEAP LABOR, the products they imported NEVER went down in price invariably they went up.I know exactly where the poster is coming from.We saw it here over my lifetime 0n a GRAND SCALE. GREED CONQUERS ALL.

 

So you supported Ross Perot?

Sorry i will phrase it differently..

sO YoU??? supPorted!!! Ross PEROT?!?!?!!

 

This is how capitalism works. You can call it greed or whatever you want, it's given the human race an enormous pull up out of the mud.
But ... it has downsides.

If anyone reading this -- any conservative, I mean -- is interested in a project to pull the Republican Party away from the free-market (for the masses) model, towards something that is more committed to maintaining American society and in particular its working class -- which means some state intervention in the market ... please PM me. I'm talking about a project to put into practice the ideas adumbrated in FH Buckley's The Republican Workers Party.

 

Interesting. Of course people having to fight for rationed toilet paper enjoyed it enough to make it a regular thing.

 

Ridiculous, capitalists countries are handing out money like cupcakes atm, Communist countries just leave their citizens to die from hunger, jobless and pennyless. We're going to see some shocking levels of starvation in the coming months and years in communist countries.

Capitalism can do that, (provide for their citizens) Communists have a tiny elite who holds ALL the wealth....and they're not sharing, ever... even during a complete economic standstill.

 

And presumably, why you're not a communist now.

When the voluntary collectivists like myself (call me a commie if you like) have spent their lives trying to tell others that they should NEVER rely purely upon their own singular labour power, in a futile attempt to encourage forward thinking/planning and strength in numbers, none of this comes as a surprise. I'm watching people I know go from living large a month ago .. never saving for a rainy day, living paycheck to paycheck for decades .. to not knowing if they'll be homeless and starving in another month. Even then, they still refuse to plan or prepare, preferring to wait for Govt to tell them what to do. I spent much of yesterday trying to convince a friend to move decisively, while land travel is still possible. I even offered them a house for as long as they need it (they're life renters, which they admit will be a problem when they start defaulting in a few weeks), but they turned it down. Why? Because it's not in their preferred inner city location. Other people I know who are struggling are refusing to move in with family, preferring to wait for a miracle. It's incredible to see just how little people are prepared to do to save themselves. Incredibly saddening, and sadly not surprising.

 

And you conveniently ignore the communists started all this.

 

Well... of course ... very conveniently ... how else could I advance the dastardly communist plot to enslave the world?
"The Communists made me do it!!!!!"

 

No, haven't been any sort of socialist in the real sense for a good thirty years. The Socialist Calculation Question alone is enough to reveal why the Planned Economy won't work. (Although who knows what sort of 'economy' we'll be living under in 500 years.) But also empirical observation of non-market situations where failure doesn't result in a penalty -- go to any inner-city state school ... or, really, almost any state school.

I don't blame your friends. America has been so lucky .... a virgin continent -- save for a few natives to be exterminated or pushed into reservations -- settled by Protestants ... two huge oceans on either side to protect it ... weak neighbors north and south.... how could such a country fail?

Then its capitalist rivals exhausted each other in violent struggles. We emerged after WWII the dominant nation on the planet -- with a majority of the world's productive powers. The Soviets were a serious rival, but ... they had socialism!!!! So they were fighting with a lead weight tied around each foot. (I lived there for a few months in 1984, by the way -- a real eye-opener.)

I think our rulers pissed away the post-Communist triumph. A long story, but we managed to make enemies where we needn't have, and to arm and make strong enemies that would have remained weak. And then there's China, on its way to becoming the leading nation of humanity by the end of the century, unless we all destroy ourselves.

Anyway, now the task is to shake off the chains of empire, get Americans used to the idea of being a strong Number Two in the world, and try to rebuild what we can of the American working class, which is rapidly heading towards becoming like the Black lumpenproletariat. That means trying to transform the Republican Party, in the direction of Francis Buckley's The Republican Workers Party. We must take on the Donor Class, defeat the free-market ideologues, 'make America great again' -- build on what Trump has inconsistently stirred up. AND at the same time, combat ethno-nationalism on the Right -- the inevitable reaction to the Left's adoption of 'Identity Politics', and, in my opinion, a serious threat.

This will just be a time-buying measure, however, even if we are successful.

(By the way, I can't tell you how it goes against my grain to give up the idea of complete Free Trade. In the long run, I think we'll see the dissolution, or transformation to irrelevance, of all the stupid national barriers that have evolved over the centuries, and the reintegration of our species -- with genetic engineering playing a central role. But we're talking about things that may occur generations from now assuming we don't destroy ourselves in some ingenious way. Right now, the immediate task on a world scale is to avoid a big war, and in the US, to transform the Republican Party. )

 

Oh he is 100% correct, go and check my Comintern thread, there has been a deliberate push by the Comintern Soros to corrupt capitalism under the guise of Democracy.

Now you see the communist push for their ideology. Threads galore "5 reasons why Capitalism suck" 10 reasons why communism is better" if it wasn't so serious it would be very funny indeed.

 

The great 'occupational hazard' of the Right is paranoia, which expresses itself in various conspiracy theories. The egregious Alex Jones is just the most repulsive example of the sort of people who make a dollar from the gullibility of many ordinary people on the Right. It's a tragedy because it gets in the way of effective political action to defend Liberty.

Partly this world view exists because we have all got our REAL education from Hollywood -- which portrays history as the struggle between Evil Villains, and Heroes.
Hollywood does it because that's what its audience wants... they're just carrying on a tradition that goes back to the bards that recited the story of Gilgamesh.

It does get in the way of our thinking, however.

 

I think what gets in the way of your thinking is your bias against conservatives

 

Exactly. And with a communist government, complaining about the authority in power is likely to have bad results. Spreading that authority around to millions of business owners is decidedly better than concentrating that power in the hands of a few.

In the present system, the OP can complain about the hotel management with impunity. But if said hotels were owned by the central authority, complaining may have disastrous consequences for the complainer.

 

You bet! Socialism -- the real thing -- has been tried and tested and has failed. Full stop. Anyone who cannot see that can be dismissed with a wave of the hand. The argument now is only over how much government intervention to have into a capitalist system. All the conservatives I know ... and I am sure all the conservatives here ... are perfectly happy with plenty of government intervention and even government ownership.

 

Not all the conservatives here, you missed by at least one.

 

So you are in favor of privatizing the Marine Corps and auctioning off the National Parks? All roads should be toll roads? The fire department should be privatized? Education should be entirely private? (No taxpayer involvement, not even vouchers? No FDA or EPA? I can open a lead refinery next door to you?

We must distinguish between sensible conservatism, and libertarianism. I love the libertarians, because they are the Right, with a human face. But they are not to be taken seriously. They are the Marxists of the Right.

I suppose every idealistic, thoughtful young person has to go through either a Marxist, or a Libertarian, phase -- pure idealism wedded to pure logic -- but as we get older we need to appreciate the infinite complexity of society, and what terrible things can happen if we try to re-order it according to some set of abstract principles.

 

Capitalism

Pits Americas mayors against each other in trying to get masks for doctors, nurses, and first responders. Masks that normally cost 80 cents...because of demand...are going for 5-8 dollars...each. And mayors are forced to pay the price.

Ventilators are being produced...and shipped overseas because overseas buyers are willing to pay more.

Capitalism. Yea... great

 

That's supply and demand that happens in any economic model.

 

And it shows the failing of capitalism.

Capitalism doesn't care if people die. In fact it doesn't care of society implodes

 

That's exactly right. The capitalist looks out on his workers and customers, and says. ... "Ha ha ha ... I hope they all die! Then I will prosper!"

And my goodness, how incompetent those capitalists are!!! They rule the world, and the human population has grown steadily ... deadly illnesses have shrunk to a fraction of what they used to be ... (This virus, before the modern era, would have been seen as NOTHING by the people who lived through the Black Death.)

Of course ... there is one system where we have seen mass executions, gulags, deaths by the tens of millions due to insane economic policies -- the Great Leap Forward -- but it wasn't capitalism.