Peterkin

3 hours ago, beecee said:

Thos that aim and wish to reach the top of their chosen profession, be it a Doctor, Laywer, or Sportsman, all need to make sacrifices.

Why does any profession need to have a top?

And why did sport become a profession? 

Somebody could punch you in the nose, or put a glass of beer in your hand, I guess.

But if the universe is a hologram, and we're part of the universe, we're obviously not real, but somebody much bigger, and clever enough to to project a hologram that looks so much bigger from the inside, probably is, but has no motivation to prove it to his holographic creations.

34 minutes ago, Sensei said:

Now governments want to increase taxes to get these money back from ordinary people and enterprises

Ordinary people, yes.  Ordinary enterprises, yes if they're still making any money. Mega corporations, which are making money, not so much; very rich people, not at all.

37 minutes ago, Sensei said:

At the same time they extraordinarily waste them on e.g. war equipment which ends up life on e.g.:

Oh, hey, all of that equipment is produced by corporations with big, juicy government contracts. By sheer coincidence, they also happen to be major campaign contributors and own a string of lobbyists.

40 minutes ago, Sensei said:

Governments are "persuading" financial institutions to lend them money and banks do so. Have no other choice as e.g. rates of interest (which govs control) are the lowest in the history and bonds seem to be the best way to "invest" extra money from their point of view (i.e. more reliable than customer credit or enterprise credit).

Aww, the poor banks! They've collected interest and interest on the interest for years already and are still in profit, when practically everyone else is broke. Do governments have to repay those debts? 

58 minutes ago, Sensei said:

Half-good if they are invested in something useful and longterm existing.

What, like their voters' health and education? Not a bad idea!  

4 hours ago, Prometheus said:

Yeah, you hear some real horror stories. On the flip side, to achieve a deep level of skill in many pursuits, not just sport, starting very young is a huge advantage. How much was Mozart pushed (i have no idea, i imagine at least a bit).

Why achieve " a deep level of skill" at the price of your childhood? How about just a shallow level of skill and a lot less pain?  What's so terrible about jumping, painting or singing quite well, rather than superbly? Yes, Mozart was pushed pretty hard by his ambitious father, but he was a little show-off anyway, so it didn't hurt him as much as it did many child prodigies.

5 hours ago, Prometheus said:

Also i think there's also a cultural component. The West is very focused on individualism so there might be a reluctance to push a kid toward any profession. In China and India it seems more acceptable for parents to decide what a child might be when they're older. On the average i don't think they are any less happy because of it.

Don't underestimate the American parent's desire for fame!  Yes, prodigal children very often are unhappy. Trouble is, they spend so much of their formative years acquiring the skill that they never learn how to relate to other people or or make independent decisions. They are often socially and emotionally stunted, lonely, anxious and unstable. They are sacrificed to the spectators' pleasure, their handlers' quest for success and the venue's profit margin. Also, their siblings and later their spouses and children can become collateral damage.

Anyway, whatever is good and not so good in professional sport, it does have some cohesive qualities. Participants in any particular sport are a community of sorts, with shared experiences and values. Fans really do seem to consider themselves something like a tribe. I don't know whether that translates to co-operation outside the stadium or pub, or whether they have more understanding and tolerance for one another because of this one passion they all have in common. 

It does not, however, seem to unite "people" in any other sense.

On the present scale, and with the present resource peaks, competition is unsustainable: it escalates to contention, hostility, confrontation, conflict and culminates in mega-death.  If we have a shot at survival, it's by means of co-operation.  We can resume competing, once the population figures stabilize around a reliable food supply.

5 hours ago, studiot said:

You seem to make capitalism into a dirty word.

I didn't make it. And I'm not using its as a dirty word, in the sense that capitalists have vilified socialism. But I do think it is a fatally flawed economic system, in that its survival depends on growth. Necessary growth on a finite medium means that when the nutrient runs out, the organism dies. An economic system that must necessarily keep growing on a single planet means that it will die when the planet is consumed. Unlike viruses or some plants, it cannot go dormant or store its seeds until more favourable conditions return. And when a planet's been trashed, they won't, anyway.  It could, in theory, emulate bacteria and slow its own growth when nutrients become scarce, but it doesn't do this voluntarily; the control has to come from outside. From revolution, natural catastrophe or strong government. 

5 hours ago, studiot said:

Indeed the original growth of the water industry in the Uk is a shining example of how it should be done.

Can you supply information on that? The earliest I found is this one, which isn't exactly shining on either private service providers or government. She attempts to present a fair view, though her sympathies lie with the water companies.  They and governments seem to have been acting at cross-purposes, each making some good and bad decisions, with the consumer paying the price of their muddles. 

5 hours ago, studiot said:

see nothing intrinsically wrong in capitalism, profit, enterprise, entrepreneurialism and so forth.

Just the one thing: debt. Capitalism runs on the need to take out getting more  than one put in. 

5 hours ago, studiot said:

Greed, on the other hand,

Unfortunately, it's on the same hand, 99% of the time.

Regulated - very tightly regulated, by an un-coercable, incorruptible authority - both hands would be able to survive, alongside the citizenry, considerably longer. But not indefinitely: slow consumption is still all one way, toward depletion and eventual exhaustion of the resource. 

5 hours ago, studiot said:

I think you put your finger on it in your opening post.

On second reading, I'm not quite sure how the two situation between present world economy and the late stages of the Roman Empire are related.

5 hours ago, studiot said:

In conclusion in my opinion it is not capitalism that is the problem, it is moneterism and monetisation, which are visibly failed doctrines

I don't see capitalism could have arisen without money. All its siblings came out of theories about money. I don't see how they can be separated.... without a major shake-up. Which is what I'm asking: Is it time for? (in your opinions.)

4 hours ago, Phi for All said:

I think it becomes very dirty when misapplied, like most things. There's nothing wrong with reasonable ownership, whether private, public, or state.

Capitalism doesn't run on ownership; it runs on investment. Profit without effort.

4 hours ago, Phi for All said:

Post-pandemic, I'd love to see People pick a few very important things (water, roads, education, healthcare, energy, internet, ?, ?) and nationalize them, transfer ownership to the People, and then work very hard to keep them free from private influences. I'd like to actually see capitalism thrive in a true free market, without subsidies and monopolistic practices. I think we've allowed too many capitalists to convince us to run non-profits and public institutions like businesses, to the detriment of all. Business is necessary, but it's not always the right tool or process for the job.

I've heard a very similar idea articulated very well. The author proposed a split economy: essentials in the public sector, where money has no role; luxuries in the private sector, where voluntary participants can buy, sell, compete and make profit. however, for that to be sustainable, all the natural resources would have to stay in the public sector, which would also regulate land use and waste management.

In the present political climate, anything like is obviously impossible. But a massive increase in nationalization, regulation and taxation might become possible, if things go sour enough. Too bad no change can take place without a whole lot of people and other living things suffering harm that was predictable and avoidable.   

The other interesting factor, at least in Canada, is how a (not particularly adroit) Liberal government, having had to cope first with the long depredations and of the conservative administration it followed, then the (twice as long as initially predicted) pandemic, then the fallout from the pandemic and its dislocations, along with its international commitments, then the severely damaged business sectors and lost revenues, will recover.

One possibility is that it won't: that it will be knocked over a Republican wannabe riding a wave of public grievance he himself has whipped up, accompanied by a phalanx of racist, sexist, climate-change-denying, gun-toting regressed yahoos.  If he gets a majority, that Conservative leader may renege on every promise made to other countries, to the environment, to future generation, immigrants and workers of all kinds. 

What happens after that is unclear - except in it conspicuous ugliness.  

3 hours ago, Prometheus said:

Some humans will always want to push themselves to the limits,

That would be fine, if talented children were not pushed and driven by their parents and coaches, from a very early age. In some cases, it's parental ambition or vicarious accomplishment; in many cases, it's the only way a kid born without privilege can get an education, climb out of poverty or escape discrimination. And the pressures even after the initial success are not all internal!

3 hours ago, Prometheus said:

When Saka missed his penalty for England, how many Italians went to console him after the initial celebrations? There is more respect between opponents than you give credit for.

Saka may be too young, but many of those professional footballers have played on various foreign teams... to the extant that, when we're watching a match between European countries or even MLS,  we play "who can spot more poached South Americans". The fans may be partisan, even passionately and violently partisan, but the players are just doing a job and advertising a brand of sports gear.

48 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

Fame and wealth idolization have also led to placing unnecessary trust in some of these people. Being good at making money or acting in a movie or throwing a baseball doesn't make you a good leader automatically, yet we regularly allow fame to cloud even this simple truth. 

Also to bully their entourage, mistreat women and generally act like out-of-control adolescents -- which, I suppose many are, because, as physical training, drill and competition take up most of their youth, their socialization and culturation is largely neglected. Their little-boy egos swell - female athletes act out childishly sometimes, as well, but more often in frustration than from entitlement - without the concomitant self-discipline and responsibility it takes to earn status in a grown-up world. Nobody expects them meet the basic standard of behaviour demanded of a software designer or supermarket manager. I suppose that's what most appeals to children: adults acting the way they themselves would in the absence of parental supervision. 

In one way, athletes have an advantage over other celebrities: a relatively short time in the limelight, after which they retire to normal family life, become coaches, managers or sales reps of some kind.

The baseball reference reminds me of a neighbourhood sandpit game described in a book titled A Reasonable Life.

That's how sport should be!

1 hour ago, studiot said:

What I don't see, as an answer to the question of this thread, is any probability that the coronavirus pandemic would return us to the circumstances that generated such an effective (water) industry.

I don't either. Just an interesting diversion, following an example - one of many - wherein governments have abdicated their responsibility to the public and allowed private greed to prevail. When private greed (capitalism), from causes of its own making (like stock market crash, crunch, slump, contraction, retrenchment or whatever it's called) or an external one (like a viral infection) is in danger, the government is obligated to rescue it, because so much of the society's infrastructure and functioning has been entrusted to private enterprise that the failure of a few big corporations, interconnected as "the financial sector" is, could bring down the whole country's economy and cause wide-spread hardship, impoverishment, privation and death.

The central question, how many of these rescues can any particular government carry out before it's exhausted its assets, capabilities and credibility - and falls or is toppled. 

20 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

I'm not willing to give up my shilling.

Yes, don't be in any hurry.

The newly created, privately owned, water and sewerage companies (WSCs) paid £7.6 billion for the regional water authorities. At the same time, the government assumed responsibility for the sector's total debts amounting to £5 billion and granted the WSCs a further £1.5 billion—a so-called "green dowry"—of public funds.

It's only wiki, but checkable by interested parties. Coming and going, the corporations get a sweetheart deal from a conservative government; coming and going, citizens get.... the usual. How the Ontario government gets around its subsidy to private electricity providers is through allowing them to pass their debt on to the consumer (of course there isn't a competing provider you can switch to!) plus a "delivery" charge (i.e. use of the infrastructure we paid for when it was a public utility and that we continue to pay for in their debt retirement item on the monthly bill)  and then, if the electric bills are too heavy for low-income consumers, the government sends them  a semiannual  pittance to offset the cost. The private provider risks nothing. 

28 minutes ago, studiot said:

Yes, I offered two examples suggesing that little, if anything, will change.

The pithy French saying is perfectly self-contained and doesn't invite discussion. It also, IMO, quite untrue as a description of societal conditions, though probably true of human nature.

28 minutes ago, studiot said:

The fictional example is interesting because, although obviously contrived, it doe (IMHO) accurately mirror the behaviour of real people.

I had not read it. I thought the point was in the title.

28 minutes ago, studiot said:

But the punchline came about when one enterprising individual set up a business offering the service of operating a replicator for others.

So, like, seven people in the world have jobs again? Until the rich people's money runs out or becomes worthless .... um, why hasn't it already? Why does this enterprising fellow, or anyone, even want a job?  I can't respond adequately unless I read the story to see what makes it plausible.

I notice a further incongruency with the present situation: in the story, something new and positive was added, while bifurcations in history tend to be marked by the loss of or threat to something vital, which altered the hominids' circumstances so that he had to adapt or relocate. That negative change sometimes comes suddenly, as a flood, or in increments, like the troubles that beset the Roma Empire during its long decline.

2 hours ago, studiot said:

I can't seem to see a response/discussion to my answer to your thread question.

That's because I didn't think one was required. I took it to mean you don't think his present situation will have any significant affect on how the world economy is organized. That's a valid position  and quite possibly correct, and it didn't seem to invite discussion. 

I did respond, if not directly, by pointing out that major changes had taken place in previous civilizations. In retrospect, historians can identify the events that led to a collapse, but the people - particularly the political leadership of the time, didn't see it coming.

I woud be happy to elaborate, argue, look for examples and discuss in detail, if you were so inclined.

In Canada, it's hockey. Seems the fans like "the physicality" of the game - meaning fights.

There really is quite a lot not right with professional sport.

I don't know about uniting, but sport has certainly been used by many societies to sublimate aggression and channel rivalry into a manageable form, with rules and far fewer fatalities.

OTOH, those loyal fans can turn into football hooligans in some social climates, and international relations have not been noticeably improved by the Olympic Games. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-nazi-olympics-berlin-1936

This is just a personal opinion, but I really don't think the hype is doing sports or athletes any good: the competition is so intense, and the stakes are so big that they're pushing themselves beyond human capacity, burning out too soon and suffering too many injuries. 

And the money is doing a good deal of harm to society. In gambling, in education, in the buying and selling of athletes like prize cattle, in commercial sponsorships, in the inflation of frivolous spectacles to eclipse serious endeavours. 

Also, I think  art, entertainment and games should be play, not work.   

1 hour ago, studiot said:

Has my answer offended you ?

Of course not! Why would it? Why would you think I was offended?

22 minutes ago, exchemist said:

What has happened is the franchise system for rail blew up. Most of the companies were in financial trouble and the pandemic has holed them below the waterline, forcing the government to step in. Franchises have now been abandoned.

Let me guess! The Tory government bails them out (adding lovely gold life-buoys for the CEO's who scuttled it)  with money collected from the people not rich enough to avoid taxation - the same people who took the hit when their national assets were sold off and they got no dividends, and who have been paying higher transportation fees ever since. Sounds vaguely familiar....

27 minutes ago, exchemist said:

Water privatisation has been fairly disastrous. The companies loaded themselves up with debt, using  their assets as collateral, and paid their directors and shareholders huge dividends and bonuses while neglecting the basic service they were supposed to be providing. Almost every month now there is a new story of operational mismanagement. 

Funny story. It had been a disaster every place it was done (committed?), and for much the same reason every privatized essential service is a disaster. By the time Thatcher's hatcheteers got 'round to it, they had examples to learn from, like Chile.  

The first time I read about such behaviour in corvids was from Conrad Lorenz, who was scolded by jackdaws simply for walking down to the river with his black bathing trunks in his hand - and not, when he wore it. They suspected him of being a black-bird killer. Even though he didn't hunt them, other humans and predatory animals did.

Lorenz was my early introduction to the study of animal behaviour, on which subject, he was more sound than his contemporaries. (In other areas of life, alas, he wasn't.  Don't you sometimes wish you hadn't learned personal details about people you admired?)

I think if you turn it, you expose more of the already burning fuel to air to make it burn faster and hotter, not unlike blowing under it. 

And yet the Mughal empire, the Roman empire, the Mayan empire and the Soviet empire declined and fell over varying periods of time; other kinds of economy have been replaced. It's not a question of whether something will end, but when and by what means. I'm particularly interested in the intermediate steps.

Maybe so, but a couple more pandemics could balance that out.... Unless the delta and lambda variants tip it back again. 

It's those "unknown unknowns" that mess up prediction!

9 minutes ago, beecee said:

Some things may change forever, but as in the past, we'll all make adjustments.

That's exactly what interests me: what will change and how.

2 hours ago, Endy0816 said:

Did happen when people were draft dodging back in the day. Would be hard for majority but some could definitely manage.

Depends on the administration, the economy, the state of cross-border relations, the public mood ... It's not just up to every American to decide where he'll live; it's also up to the country thus honoured whether it wants him.  The Canadian government was no fan of the VietNam war from its inception, and the Trudeau I government was sympathetic to draft evaders, conscientious objectors and later, deserters. Most of those people were educated and progressive; they made a valuable contribution. (I knew several of them personally, and found them valuable people.)  Of course, quite a few went back, once Nixon backed down, but many had established homes and families here by then. 

I'm not sure how many actually relocated because of Trump, but there was a rise in immigration from the US at that time.

As there have been at other moments of political retrogression. (Not to mention the first lot, in the 1790's)

Quote

a graph of citizenship application numbers would show definite spikes in some politically significant years: 2001, when Bush was elected president; 2003, when the US invaded Iraq; and 2007, during the US housing market crash and recession.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/19/americans-move-canada-trump-bush-immigration

3 hours ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

We were going to build a wall and make the Americans pay for it...but in our laid back way we never got around to it.

I'm glad we didn't do it! I'd hate to have missed out on Spider Robinson, William Gibson, John Irving, Ted Gonzales and a whole lot of other smart, talented, good people. 

I don't suppose the working class will return? I mean as an identity, as an economic force, as a socially recognized stratum, or as a political faction.

I remember when there was a working class - perhaps even a Working Class - that industrialists and politicians had to take seriously. I know the Reagan-Thatcher-Mulroney axis staged a major assault on the working class, was very successful with substantial help from Rupert Murdoch et al , and since then, even the the Labour and NDP parties have looked everywhere but straight in the eyes of their support base. Sometime between 1980 and 2010, everyone in the western world became "the middle class, and those working hard to join it" as Trudeau II keeps saying.

Now that they've been told and thanked and lauded for how essential they are (too essential to be allowed to strike, but not so essential as to be in the early vaccination queues) might the underpaid, disrespected workers find a collective will again?

That's a helpful clarification. Thanks.

Are workers going to unite again? Class warfare has been long and fraught with trade unions playing a major role - first, in the betterment of working class conditions and then as the huge and easy target of business-friendly government.

Quote

President Reagan - Reagan Kicked off the era of union busting by successfully shutting out the air traffic controllers union in 1981. After a nationwide strike 3,000 workers were dismissed by Reagan. This was a signal to industry that union busting was o.k. It was also a signal to future presidents and politicians that taking an anti-union stance was not necessarily a political liability.

  https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikecollins/2015/03/19/the-decline-of-unions-is-a-middle-class-problem/?sh=717d2a257f2d

Or will they consider themselves each a free agent, to seek the best deal for themselves, without regard to all the other "essential" workers?