UKMT September 2019 - A Fish-Abandoning Government

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > UKMT September 2019 - A Fish-Abandoning Government

Guavanaut: Nov 27, 2009; Looking At Them Tittys
1969 - 1998; Toilet Rascal

JeremoudCorbynejad posted:

Being a legislator should be like being in the army: there should be a chance you'll die at any given moment

That's why they're all appeasing the far right, because they're terrified of additional Thomas Mairs and there's no equivalent threat from the left or center.

e: 20/20 indicates normal vision at 20 feet, although it commonly means 'perfect vision'. The metric equivalent is 6/6. :devil:

Guavanaut fucked around with this message at 09:10 on Sep 3, 2019

# ? Sep 3, 2019 08:54

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# ? May 25, 2024 12:45

Josef bugman: Nov 17, 2011; Pictured: Poster prepares to celebrate Holy Communion (probablY)

This avatar made possible by a gift from the Religionthread Posters Relief Fund

AceOfFlames posted:

I said it before and I'll say it again: replace government with a computer. Even Samaritan would be better than what we have now.

Who programmes the computer?

As much as I can see the appeal it's humans all the way down AoF.

# ? Sep 3, 2019 08:56

TACD: Oct 27, 2000

Jedit posted:

This may be the stupidest thing any human being has ever said. You know what else is an underpaid, thankless and uncelebrated job? Internships. You know who takes internships? Rich people who can afford to work for free. And can you perhaps guess how rich people who don't need the money vote? I'll give you a clue: they're every loving one of them a Tory.

Your sterling plan would ensure that nobody who isn't a right wing shithead could afford to be an MP.

People still manage to afford to work for charities and to be nurses and teachers and a lot of other underpaid professions that do good work. The point is that we have perverse incentives attracting the wrong sort of people to politics, but many thanks for your earnest and useful contributions to the discussion otherwise!

Josef bugman posted:

I think it is also something to do with the way many people think they want a strong leader. In actuality I think we need to accept that we can do more as a collective rather than just individuals.

Very yes.

# ? Sep 3, 2019 09:03

Qwertycoatl: Dec 31, 2008

https://twitter.com/flying_rodent/status/1168779533790715905

# ? Sep 3, 2019 09:03

Barry Foster: Dec 24, 2007; What is going wrong with that one (face is longer than it should be)

Josef bugman posted:

That does seem worryingly prescient, and I think also helps to illustrate why Neo-Liberal economic systems are starting to come apart. With greater access to peoples internal thoughts via things like twitter it is becoming increasingly obvious that there is no consistent intellectual power justifying people in charge being there. It's seeing the wizard without the curtain as it were.

That does seem worryingly accurate. Do you think any system can prevent this sort of ideological decay?

Mhm. Never having to do anything other than people please whilst also demanding pleasure from every single interaction. Boris is never going to be as powerful as he believes and is going to be manipulated by anyone who turns on the happiness spigot in his brain.

Surely the collapse/pantsing of the neoliberal consensus isn't something to be worried about, but to be celebrated though?

Also the 'please like me' underlying motivation is fairly plausible, and also, like that great Mark Fisher article points out, very likely a product of our psychotic boarding/private school system

# ? Sep 3, 2019 09:05

Junior G-man: Sep 15, 2004; Wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma

Josef bugman posted:

Who programmes the computer?

As much as I can see the appeal it's humans all the way down AoF.

The worst thing really would be a massive government AI programmed by some silicon valley seasteading oval office.

# ? Sep 3, 2019 09:06

Junior G-man: Sep 15, 2004; Wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma

Another part of FT's series on the Corbyn Economy is up and I just wanna :fap:

quote:

UK�s Labour would seize �300bn of company shares
FT analysis reveals potential scale of confiscation while landlords face �right to buy� plan

A Labour government would confiscate about �300bn of shares in 7,000 large companies and hand them to workers in one of the biggest state raids on the private sector to take place in a western democracy, according to analysis by the Financial Times and Clifford Chance.

The UK�s 2.6m landlords would also face a moment of reckoning if Labour won the next general election after shadow chancellor John McDonnell said he wanted a �right to buy� scheme for private tenants as well as higher taxes on landlords.

With British politics in turmoil and the chances of a snap general election fast increasing, the FT is this week examining the consequences for the UK economy of a Labour government � which would be the most leftwing in modern history.

The Labour leadership is determined to shift power away from bosses and landlords and to workers and tenants.

The �300bn share seizure would be the consequence of Mr McDonnell�s plans for �inclusive ownership funds�, where every company with more than 250 staff would have to gradually transfer 10 per cent of their shares to workers.

The radical plan would see the transfer of 1 per cent a year of shares from shareholders to workers over 10 years.

Shares would be held and managed by workers, who would receive dividends up to �500 each per year. Any income beyond that level would be redistributed to the Exchequer, representing a stealth tax by the state.

Labour has never put an estimate on the scale of the transfer of private wealth from shareholders to workers that the policy would entail. But the FT and law firm Clifford Chance have sought to gauge the size of the policy by extrapolating data from the Office for National Statistics.

The ONS estimates that financial and non-financial corporations have a book value of �5.5tn. The national accounts do not separate out large companies, but 57 per cent of overall corporate turnover derives from large companies, according to the ONS. On that basis the value of large private sector companies is about �3tn � meaning Labour would expropriate �300bn.

For comparison, the windfall tax by Tony Blair�s New Labour government on utility companies raised just �4.8bn.

�There is no historic precedent for this,� said Dan Neidle, a partner at Clifford Chance. �We are in completely uncharted territory.�

Mr Neidle predicted litigation from aggrieved companies and shareholders, challenges from other countries, including the US and China, potential WTO complaints and perhaps �retaliation in kind�.

Matt Kilcoyne, of the Adam Smith Institute, called the share move �expropriation�. He added: �Our largest investors are pension funds and they�ll see billions of pounds wiped off their books. So we�ll all see the value of our pensions fall. It�s the biggest raid of all our nest eggs in living memory.�

Mr McDonnell said greater employee ownership increased a company�s productivity and encouraged long-term thinking. �It�s right that we all share in the benefits that investment produces,� he said.

Meanwhile, the shadow chancellor has told the FT that he wants to see a new �right to buy� for millions of private tenants.

Mr McDonnell said he wanted to �tackle the burgeoning buy-to-let market� to make it easier for workers to buy the homes they live in. He suggested the sum paid by tenants would not necessarily be the market price. �You�d want to establish what is a reasonable price, you can establish that and then that becomes the right to buy,� he said. �You (the government) set the criteria. I don�t think it�s complicated.�

If a Labour government pushed ahead with the policy, it could be as totemic as Margaret Thatcher�s �right to buy� policy in the 1980s, which allowed millions of council tenants to buy the property they lived in.

The idea of a private right-to-buy was mooted by Jeremy Corbyn, Labour leader, during his leadership bid in 2015 but it never became party policy. Reviving the idea as �great� and �radical�, Mr McDonnell said it could help reverse the problems caused by Thatcher�s policy.

Since then, the number of council houses has fallen from 6.5m to just 2m. Research by Inside Housing, a magazine, found that about 40 per cent were now in the hands of private landlords.

Landlords had failed to reinvest in properties and had made a �fast buck� at the cost of the community and their tenants, Mr McDonnell argued.

�We�ve got a large number of landlords who are not maintaining these properties and are causing overcrowding and these problems. In my street now . . . a third of the houses are right-to-buy, badly maintained, overcrowded; it�s horrendous.�

If they can only half the poo poo the FT describes in these articles, it would still transform society.

# ? Sep 3, 2019 09:11

StarkingBarfish: Jun 25, 2006; Novus Ordo Seclorum

Junior G-man posted:

The worst thing really would be a massive government AI programmed by some silicon valley seasteading oval office.

Beep boop input 'minimise inequality'
whrrrrrr.... beep solution output: 'genocide the poor'

# ? Sep 3, 2019 09:11

Guavanaut: Nov 27, 2009; Looking At Them Tittys
1969 - 1998; Toilet Rascal

Junior G-man posted:

The worst thing really would be a massive government AI programmed by some silicon valley seasteading oval office.

Fortunately the people who I think would most try are giant beardy Stafford Beer/GNU types rather than mount gox bit coin types.

Unfortunately that just gets you coup'd by the CIA.

# ? Sep 3, 2019 09:13

josh04: Oct 19, 2008; "THE FLASH IS THE REASON
TO RACE TO THE THEATRES"
_{This title contains sponsored content.}

Ms Adequate posted:

Ah, an opportunity to bring back one of my favourite UKMT memes.

DWP HAS FOUND YOU
DWP HAS FOUND YOU
DWP HAS FOUND YOU
DWP HAS FOUND YOU
DWP HAS FOUND YOU
RUN WHILE YOU CAN
RUN WHILE YOU CAN
RUN WHILE YOU CAN
RUN WHILE YOU CAN
RUN WHILE YOU CAN

Old men, warning warning. Should probably re-do this for the "Brexit Boris" administration.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t79nk5oKdJQ

# ? Sep 3, 2019 09:15

Josef bugman: Nov 17, 2011; Pictured: Poster prepares to celebrate Holy Communion (probablY)

This avatar made possible by a gift from the Religionthread Posters Relief Fund

Barry Foster posted:

Surely the collapse/pantsing of the neoliberal consensus isn't something to be worried about, but to be celebrated though?

Also the 'please like me' underlying motivation is fairly plausible, and also, like that great Mark Fisher article points out, very likely a product of our psychotic boarding/private school system

Oh that I have no issue with. I just mean that if we, as Socialists, win we will need to not get so complacent either in our moral certainty or in our conviction about the systems we build continuing forever.

# ? Sep 3, 2019 09:16

AceOfFlames: Oct 9, 2012

Barry Foster posted:

Surely the collapse/pantsing of the neoliberal consensus isn't something to be worried about, but to be celebrated though?

Unfortunately what will replace it is fascism followed by climate anarchy/more fascism.

# ? Sep 3, 2019 09:16

Josef bugman: Nov 17, 2011; Pictured: Poster prepares to celebrate Holy Communion (probablY)

This avatar made possible by a gift from the Religionthread Posters Relief Fund

AceOfFlames posted:

Unfortunately what will replace it is fascism followed by climate anarchy/more fascism.

I think this is again running to despair as an excuse to not feel bad if things go wrong.

# ? Sep 3, 2019 09:17

AceOfFlames: Oct 9, 2012

Josef bugman posted:

I think this is again running to despair as an excuse to not feel bad if things go wrong.

Inaction is better than failure. Low expectations are better than disappointment. Loss aversion is better than risky victory.

These have been my mottos for the past decade. Terrible ones, painful ones but they have shielded me from even more pain than what I have now. Live your life in managed decline because that's how the world will go.

AceOfFlames fucked around with this message at 09:22 on Sep 3, 2019

# ? Sep 3, 2019 09:20

CGI Stardust: Nov 7, 2010; Brexit is but a door,
election time is but a window.

I'll be back

*extremely programmer voice* Government should be like.... *thinking hard* ...a computer!!

Josef bugman posted:

That does seem worryingly accurate. Do you think any system can prevent this sort of ideological decay?

Possibly. You might need to build into the total governing process a way of thinking about the system and its structure, and a way of altering the system's self-interaction, and it'd have to be separate from the system; systems design and metasystems stuff.

# ? Sep 3, 2019 09:20

Pistol_Pete: Sep 15, 2007; Oven Wrangler

A few weeks in and this administration's leaking like a sieve. Shows how much internal opposition there is to the current direction of things.

# ? Sep 3, 2019 09:23

Josef bugman: Nov 17, 2011; Pictured: Poster prepares to celebrate Holy Communion (probablY)

This avatar made possible by a gift from the Religionthread Posters Relief Fund

AceOfFlames posted:

Inaction is better than failure. Low expectations are better than disappointment. Loss aversion is better than risky victory.

These have been my mottos for the past decade. Terrible ones, painful ones but they have shielded me from even more pain than what I have now. Live your life in managed decline because that's how the world will go.

They have also shielded you from joy and the only reason they keep you safe from pain is because you have learned to live with the kind of pain you would prefer.

If you wish cowardice then do so, but do not pretend it expresses anything other than your own preference for failure.

# ? Sep 3, 2019 09:25

Guavanaut: Nov 27, 2009; Looking At Them Tittys
1969 - 1998; Toilet Rascal

CGI Stardust posted:

*extremely programmer voice* Government should be like.... *thinking hard* ...a computer!!

*extremely executioner voice* Government should be like.... *thinking hard* ...hanged!!

# ? Sep 3, 2019 09:25

Junior G-man: Sep 15, 2004; Wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma

Pistol_Pete posted:

A few weeks in and this administration's leaking like a sieve. Shows how much internal opposition there is to the current direction of things.

But Dominic the Dom said that anyone who leaked would be sent to the stockades.

How can there be leaks then? He's the Eye of Sauron but for government.

# ? Sep 3, 2019 09:25

ChairmanGoesWoof: Jul 12, 2016

AceOfFlames posted:

Inaction is better than failure. Low expectations are better than disappointment. Loss aversion is better than risky victory.

These have been my mottos for the past decade. Terrible ones, painful ones but they have shielded me from even more pain than what I have now. Live your life in managed decline because that's how the world will go.

Jesus gently caress seek help already

# ? Sep 3, 2019 09:27

radmonger: Jun 6, 2011

Barry Foster posted:

Surely the collapse/pantsing of the neoliberal consensus isn't something to be worried about, but to be celebrated though?

Say what you like about the tenets of neoliberalism, at least it was an ethos.

# ? Sep 3, 2019 09:29

CGI Stardust: Nov 7, 2010; Brexit is but a door,
election time is but a window.

I'll be back

Junior G-man posted:

But Dominic the Dom said that anyone who leaked would be sent to the stockades.

How can there be leaks then? He's the Eye of Sauron but for government.

Dom Cummies is the one doing all the leaking, for some higher purpose probably related to game theory and genetic determinism

# ? Sep 3, 2019 09:31

Junior G-man: Sep 15, 2004; Wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma

AceOfFlames posted:

Unfortunately what will replace it is fascism followed by climate anarchy/more fascism.

Just read the FT article I posted above first before you dissolve into despair. Good things are possible.

# ? Sep 3, 2019 09:32

forkboy84: Jun 13, 2012; Corgis love bread. And Puro

AceOfFlames posted:

Inaction is better than failure. Low expectations are better than disappointment. Loss aversion is better than risky victory.

These have been my mottos for the past decade. Terrible ones, painful ones but they have shielded me from even more pain than what I have now. Live your life in managed decline because that's how the world will go.

If you live your life like that you give yourself little opportunity to be proven wrong. Better to try to make things better and fail than stick your head up your own backside and moan about the smell of poo poo.

Jesus Christ, I'm a severely depressed extreme pessimist and even I get that you need a little hope in life to keep going.

# ? Sep 3, 2019 09:32

Borrovan: Aug 15, 2013; IT IS ME.
🧑‍💼
I AM THERESA MAY

Podcast good. You fuckers made me guffaw on a crowded train with the gag about the Atlantic

e:

AceOfFlames posted:

These have been my mottos for the past decade.

How's that working out for you, bud?

You literally have no basis for comparison here. You've just baselessly asserted that it's better than the alternative, which justifies the behaviour that makes you feel poo poo and leads to these kinds of lovely assertion, it's a textbook vicious circle that any therapist would spot in a split second. Get therapy ffs

Borrovan fucked around with this message at 09:41 on Sep 3, 2019

# ? Sep 3, 2019 09:36

Guavanaut: Nov 27, 2009; Looking At Them Tittys
1969 - 1998; Toilet Rascal

And now these three remain: Faith, Hop and Charity. But the greatest of these is Hop.

The funny thing is that of the great philosophical pessimists most of them recommend the exact opposite to "just do nothing" even if they vary wildly in what that something is.

# ? Sep 3, 2019 09:36

Jedit: Dec 10, 2011; Proudly supporting vanilla legends 1994-2014

Junior G-man posted:

The worst thing really would be a massive government AI programmed by some silicon valley seasteading oval office.

Don't you believe it. Someone recently tried to write an AI expert system that completed a test and attempted to improve by finding ways of beating the previous high score measured on a number of metrics. One iteration figured out that if instead of comparing with the other scores it simply deleted them, its own score was automatically the highest.

# ? Sep 3, 2019 09:38

Communist Thoughts: Jan 7, 2008; Our war against free speech cannot end until we silence this bronze beast!

Climate anarchy would own

# ? Sep 3, 2019 09:40

Guavanaut: Nov 27, 2009; Looking At Them Tittys
1969 - 1998; Toilet Rascal

Jedit posted:

Don't you believe it. Someone recently tried to write an AI expert system that completed a test and attempted to improve by finding ways of beating the previous high score measured on a number of metrics. One iteration figured out that if instead of comparing with the other scores it simply deleted them, its own score was automatically the highest.

Is that better or worst than governance by a system of public school chodes trying to cement their own power and retire to cushy directorships?

At least it had an original thought.

# ? Sep 3, 2019 09:41

Doccykins: Feb 21, 2006

https://twitter.com/tnewtondunn/status/1168803953246703616

# ? Sep 3, 2019 09:41

feedmegin: Jul 30, 2008

CGI Stardust posted:

*extremely programmer voice* Government should be like.... *thinking hard* ...a computer!!

As a programmer I have wondered if we could do a better job of a planned economy with modern computers as opposed to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn ...

Edit: am giant beardy Stafford Beer/GNU type

feedmegin fucked around with this message at 09:50 on Sep 3, 2019

# ? Sep 3, 2019 09:44

Junior G-man: Sep 15, 2004; Wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma

Doccykins posted:

https://twitter.com/tnewtondunn/status/1168803953246703616

Given that there's no formal constitution and apparently you can ask Her Maj to make Parliament piss off for a few weeks for *reasons*, why not?

# ? Sep 3, 2019 09:44

Guavanaut: Nov 27, 2009; Looking At Them Tittys
1969 - 1998; Toilet Rascal

feedmegin posted:

As a programmer I have wondered if we could do a better job of a planned economy with modern computers as opposed to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn ...

Step one is building a computer that can survive being smashed up by men with guns.

# ? Sep 3, 2019 09:46

thespaceinvader: Mar 30, 2011; The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

Guavanaut posted:

Step one is building a computer that can survive being smashed up by men with guns.

This is step one for human governments as well, though, and they seem to have managed so far.

# ? Sep 3, 2019 09:47

Sanitary Naptime: May 29, 2006; MIWK!

AceOfFlames posted:

I said it before and I'll say it again: replace government with a computer. Even Samaritan would be better than what we have now.

Arghhhhhh

AceOfFlames posted:

Inaction is better than failure. Low expectations are better than disappointment. Loss aversion is better than risky victory.

These have been my mottos for the past decade. Terrible ones, painful ones but they have shielded me from even more pain than what I have now. Live your life in managed decline because that's how the world will go.

AAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH

Get. The. Help. You. Require.

Seriously mate, we are on the cusp of finally having this country run by bastards veer off the course that hellworld has set for it and you are inexplicably here wailing into the void rather than joining in. This thread has been so patient with you and gave you the recommendations that would help you feel better and you just constantly come back and post this poo poo.

Get some fuckin hope in you already.

# ? Sep 3, 2019 09:48

Sanitary Naptime: May 29, 2006; MIWK!

thespaceinvader posted:

This is step one for human governments as well, though, and they seem to have managed so far.

[Cries in Chilean]

# ? Sep 3, 2019 09:49

Guavanaut: Nov 27, 2009; Looking At Them Tittys
1969 - 1998; Toilet Rascal

thespaceinvader posted:

This is step one for human governments as well, though, and they seem to have managed so far.

Human socialist governments don't have that great a track record of not being shot up by people sponsored by the CIA either, but it's the most stark failure mode in the one time we tried it by computer.

# ? Sep 3, 2019 09:50

Nothingtoseehere: Nov 11, 2010

Junior G-man posted:

Given that there's no formal constitution and apparently you can ask Her Maj to make Parliament piss off for a few weeks for *reasons*, why not?

Parliamentary sovereignty works here - If parliament passed a bill stripping that power it would be gone by the end of the week, and no reason they can't?

# ? Sep 3, 2019 09:56

AceOfFlames: Oct 9, 2012

Sanitary Naptime posted:

Get. The. Help. You. Require.

My therapist ended my process in which even she recommended I go see someone else with "I am going to write to your GP that you are feeling better". Now I don't know if that can be a basis for my insurance to gently caress me over if I go somewhere else.

# ? Sep 3, 2019 09:58

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# ? May 25, 2024 12:45

feedmegin: Jul 30, 2008

Jedit posted:

This may be the stupidest thing any human being has ever said. You know what else is an underpaid, thankless and uncelebrated job? Internships. You know who takes internships? Rich people who can afford to work for free. And can you perhaps guess how rich people who don't need the money vote? I'll give you a clue: they're every loving one of them a Tory.

Your sterling plan would ensure that nobody who isn't a right wing shithead could afford to be an MP.

Yeah. MPs were unpaid until 1911. There's a reason that got changed!

# ? Sep 3, 2019 09:58

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