Out of the frying pan ...

This was an interesting post with much truth to it but it was skewed to a socialist mentality - I'll put in bold the iffy bits in the excerpt:

The Daily Mail has been running a series by Richard Kay on ‘vulture capitalists’, i.e. the hedge fund managers who have run out of twisty things to do in futures and options and have turned to buying up real businesses, hoping to continue making stellar profits. The social consequences may hasten the Revolution.

Years ago as an IFA I attended a presentation that explained we were passing peak pensioner prosperity: hordes of companies were closing ‘final salary’ pension schemes and loading the risk onto private individuals through alternative, ‘defined contribution’ arrangements. Ordinary people are now facing a standard of life in retirement that depends on the vagaries of the stock market (so very volatile in recent decades) and annuities (now crippled by ultra-low interest rates as the country’s debts pile up so that we cannot afford to raise bond yields again.)

Like the worm Ouroboros, capitalism has begun to eat itself. Once, a business would increase its profits by attracting more customers through offering a quality product. Also, employers enlightened by Christian values would experiment with better pay and conditions for their workers 

(I know that other religions urge similar ethics but we are discussing this country as it was, historically.) 

Oh really?  And which major religions would they be perchance, based on altruism and ethics? Sustainable ethics I mean, not the climate and other scams the young have force fed them today.   I know of but one which ticks all boxes and is not based on greed.  Still - anti-Christians will keep trying this on with no basis, let's move on.

However, in the 1980s, business management began to preach a new doctrine, that of maximising shareholder value. How to achieve this profit maximisation? By externalising costs – de-risking pension schemes (and grabbing the fund surplus, if any) and downsizing the labour force (to be supported by the public purse); by arbitraging labour and materials costs through globalisation; and even by trying to short-change the customer (think of the cheapening of ingredients in Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut; what happens when you take quality away from a product that sells on quality ? Who cares? This year’s dividend and this year’s executive bonus are all that matter.)

In short - minimising what you give and maximising what you get, which I have no issue in criticising at all.  You'll notice I did not put ‘vulture capitalists’ in bold above because I agree with Sackers on that but what we really have, the real crisis, is ...

... a crisis in spirit inside human souls, not a crisis in free enterprise per se. 

And having lived in Russia in the backwash of the USSR damage and heard the tales na russkom yizike - the one system you do not ever wish to be under is coercive socialism, for the simple reason that it never, ever leads to these idealised, localised communities - it always either goes the way of local warlords or becomes global socialism - communism.  Always has, always will.

I'll go further - when your core philosophy is humanist, faith in the essential goodness of Man, then you are ignoring the duality and the portals.  And by portals, I mean that there's always a little demon on the other shoulder urging, 'do as thou wilt' 'take as you want and lay all to waste in your path'.  That does not stem from good and yet it is inside the human soul.

The natural corollary, therefore, is that there must be checks and balances people can live with - permalockdowns are a perfect example of ones people cannot live with.  In short, we're talking the rule of law - consistent law, administered by a proud judiciary which even holds leaders to account and as you can see, reading this, we're edging here towards classical liberalism, wherein people are free to work where they wish and in the field they wish, buying, selling and I have an example of this.

In Russia, once one went downstairs and out onto the street, lined along the street were stalls and everyone, especially grandmothers, were selling their wares. My mate over there warned be careful not to buy tvorak from this one or footwear from that one - he knew the local ropes. Yet the system worked well. 

Along came the govt, cleared all of it away and those more enterprising were herded into a big barn a mile away and so it was back to Soviet days.  The excuse the govt gave was hygiene levels, testing what was sold and to a point, govt was correct - there did need council officers spotchecking and if necessary, refusing that person permission.

But the central thinking behind it though had nothing to do with the welfare of the people - it was sheer greed in the oligarchs who ran the barns - the mafia. And that was a vestige of Soviet days, just as Italy is highly socialist in its workplace.

I'm well aware that socialists cite kibbutzes but socialised communities like that only exist within a larger, free enterprise system.  The film The Beach, with DiCaprio, displays what I'm saying here in gruesome detail.  The way that man was left in that tent after the shark and almost no one cared - that is socialism.  Snitching on your neighbour [as we've seen urged by govt in Britain] is also a product of socialist societies.

If they were really pro people, then all right - herd them into parks, land bought up and let them ply their trade in rows for a small fee to the council - that's a compromise position.  But not this canal boat crashing into left bank or right.  Maybe a better example is maglev, where a force pulls the train to the middle the whole time, whilst not impeding its forward motion.

There are obviously variants in communism such as national socialism, state socialism, state capitalism, the Judaean People's Popular Front, but they all involve[d] state coercion, greed and theft at politburo and henchman level ...

... then impoverished plebs below.  Now I'm certainly not an Ayn Rand devotee at the other end of the spectrum - why oh why must this eternal canal boat analogy apply the whole damned time - where the boat does not navigate down the middle but crashes, drunkenly, into the left bank and then the right, then across to the left again?  Red-blue-red-blue-yellow-red-bleu etc.

You can always tell a socialist-leaning mind [in one of its many variants] by this talk of the Capitalists or 1%, without understanding that that grandmother selling wares is just as much a capitalist in the sense of free enterprise.  Free.  That's the operative word.  Within agreed limits.  She's one of the 99%, not the 1% and she wants her right to trade protected.

Yes, the vultures are a completely different breed, rapacious creatures, yes they need taking down, yes they are anathema to free enterprise because they buy up and asset strip, cherry pick and leave the rest waste - again, crisis of the soul.  I want to sell my wares downstairs, little things I make in wood - am I a rapacious capitalist?

The left really must stop this bollox about "capitalism" - capitalism is just a system of free enterprise, that's all. It leads to prosperity when within its limits, e.g. the consistent application of the law, unlike Cressida bloody Dick and Heels Up over there - Son of Satan Obama.  Nothing whatever wrong with buying and selling and the genuinely needy being charitably looked after, e.g. your old gran - Britain was once a fairly charitable nation.

But I'm saying this - the global socialists and the rapacious capitalists are from the same philosophical place, the same Narrative.  And it is diabolical.  Somewhere in the middle is what the land needs.  Why must a profit margin have to mean rapacious beast?  Why can't it mean that the man provides for his family?

And protection for the workers?  Yes, of course it's required, but not through corrupt shop stewards and Big Labour.  No way. Steer the canal boat down the middle please. Reconnect with one's Maker and the universe, not by coercion but because people see the advantage of such a culture, not in sackcloth and ashes, bashing ourselves over the head with a bit of 4 by 2 or in pointy hats in cathedrals, waving incense and chanting mumbo jumbo, Mercedes parked out the back.

Reconnect with our history as a nation, reconnect with the notion of man + woman = baby in a sanctified unit protected by the community.  I surely need go on no further, it's so bleedin' obvious what I'm pushing here.