London's Burning

TheMercenary · 08-10-2011, 09:43 PM

Tonight a group of the rioters blamed it on the "rich", and these were their neighbors. The business people who served their communities, again, pull out and let them rot. See how that works out for them.

Urbane Guerrilla · 08-10-2011, 11:12 PM

I remember the first time I clapped eyes on British punkers -- would have been down Bath way, around 1984. The whole ensemble and the worldview it symbolized was strikingly off-kilter -- an excrescence of Euro-socialism and of the welfare state, even then.

It was not merely distasteful philosophically, it was ugly-looking too. ("They ductaped me into a chair to give me this hairstyle. Then they boxed my ears a few times to impart a properly scroungy air.") And the scrounginess was widespread. Had to get up into Scotland and a year and more later to see any of it done with style -- scrounginess now being refreshingly absent, at least up there.

The sort of thing we're hearing now seems of a piece with that. The root cause of this is the existence of the welfare state. Absent that and things will freshen right up.

Marx outlined and theorized what caused this -- and it's a purely European idea, this classist thinking, this rigidity. Marx could not have come up with the error he did had he lived in America. But he didn't make it that far west.

Now it comes home to roost. England may have the best chance at turning from welfarism to a libertarian paradigm, as much of the libertarian philosophical literature is in English.

footfootfoot · 08-11-2011, 06:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

Tonight a group of the rioters blamed it on the "rich", and these were their neighbors. The business people who served their communities, again, pull out and let them rot. See how that works out for them.

While the "rich" may be at fault, these looters fail to make the critical distinction between "richer" and terminally "rich."

It's not the fault of the richer, and if you are not terminally rich then you are unlikely to ever encounter one of them.

People are just knuckleheads. Angry knuckleheads.

TheMercenary · 08-14-2011, 06:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by footfootfoot

While the "rich" may be at fault, these looters fail to make the critical distinction between "richer" and terminally "rich."

It's not the fault of the richer, and if you are not terminally rich then you are unlikely to ever encounter one of them.

People are just knuckleheads. Angry knuckleheads.

Agreed.

08-10-2011, 09:43 PM	#1
TheMercenary “Hypocrisy: prejudice with a halo” Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Savannah, Georgia Posts: 21,393	Tonight a group of the rioters blamed it on the "rich", and these were their neighbors. The business people who served their communities, again, pull out and let them rot. See how that works out for them. __________________ Anyone but the this most fuked up President in History in 2012!

08-10-2011, 11:12 PM	#2
Urbane Guerrilla Person who doesn't update the user title Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Southern California Posts: 6,674	I remember the first time I clapped eyes on British punkers -- would have been down Bath way, around 1984. The whole ensemble and the worldview it symbolized was strikingly off-kilter -- an excrescence of Euro-socialism and of the welfare state, even then. It was not merely distasteful philosophically, it was ugly-looking too. ("They ductaped me into a chair to give me this hairstyle. Then they boxed my ears a few times to impart a properly scroungy air.") And the scrounginess was widespread. Had to get up into Scotland and a year and more later to see any of it done with style -- scrounginess now being refreshingly absent, at least up there. The sort of thing we're hearing now seems of a piece with that. The root cause of this is the existence of the welfare state. Absent that and things will freshen right up. Marx outlined and theorized what caused this -- and it's a purely European idea, this classist thinking, this rigidity. Marx could not have come up with the error he did had he lived in America. But he didn't make it that far west. Now it comes home to roost. England may have the best chance at turning from welfarism to a libertarian paradigm, as much of the libertarian philosophical literature is in English. __________________ Wanna stop school shootings? End Gun-Free Zones, of course.

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