Your argument is getting slightly incoherent. You're saying it's Ok for Ireland to be a corporate tax haven because everybody in Ireland knows you're a corporate tax haven and anyway everyone else in the EU is doing it? But the EU is also stopping doing it.
No, I'm saying that the level of political sophistication of the average voter here is that of a particularly self interested 13 year old adolescent, who talks a good game about fairness, but is brutally focused on their own short term self interest, and not afraid to throw a massive fucking tantrum if they don't get their own way or don't like something. While the level of political sophistication of the typical UK voter and politician is more on the level of a six year old who shoves crayons up their nose. This isn't because the underlying people are in any way different, it's because UK poltiical culture is inward looking, delusional, embarrassing and deliberately stupifying. Hence Brexit. Small Countries can't afford to have a political culture as absurd or as introverted or stupid as the one in the UK, because we tried that, we tried that to the point of destruction, and that leads to fucking disaster and total collapse. This is a lesson that the UK is about to learn. It's a brutal, painful and savage lesson to learn, but it seems that the UK is going to have to stick its whole hand into the fire in order to learn the lesson.
Also That statement isn't contradictory. It's just that we know that every country operates in exactly the same way, we just started before everyone else. First up Best dressed, and all that. We know that us unilaterally doing something isn't going to change anything, but we're not that averse to a gradual tightening up of the rules. We didn't arrive at this position by adherence to Neo-liberal ideology, whatever that may be. We arrived at this position because back in the fifties while the UK was desperately trying to cling onto as much of its empire as it possibly could, and retaining as much of the old economic system based on the captive empire market as possible, we had nothing, other than the dim awareness that you could make just about anything, anywhere, and transport it to everywhere. so why not do it here. This wasn't new to us, Thanks to our near neighbour, we'd been doing a variation of this since the 1650's. This is an old game, with slightly changed rules.
This isn't a function of ideology. This is a function of the invention of the Cargo Container. We started out with a moderately well educated work force who saw relatively low wages by western european standards as unimaginable wealth, so we started out making relatively unsophisticated labour intensive products, and shipping them tariff free to England. We joined the European Union in pursuit of this strategy, because it allowed us access to more markets, making us a more attractive destination for this type of investment. Then those industries died a death in the face of imports from Asia, so we moved one step up the production ladder, and started attracting companies that made more complicated things, and paid better.
Meanwhile it's wrong for the left in England who don't know if theycan win a General Election - given First Past The Post amongst other things to build a movement. If the sytem is going to be smashed there is precisely fuck allt hat Gilbert r anyone else can do about it- they can build an activist network which can organise and campaign about EU emmebrship and corprorate tax evasion- which has been raised inthe UK by the very groups you despise.
"There is a perfectly avoidable iceberg on our current course, but it's too much hassle to get the captain to even try and change course, he's more worried that some of the passengers are going to be more offended by any deviation from our course set in harbour, than by drowning at sea. So lets rearrange the fucking deckchairs instead, and start preparing for life in the lifeboats. I'm sure there's going to be enough lifeboats right?"
No, I'm saying that the level of political sophistication of the average voter here is that of a particularly self interested 13 year old adolescent, who talks a good game about fairness, but is brutally focused on their own short term self interest, and not afraid to throw a massive fucking tantrum if they don't get their own way or don't like something. While the level of political sophistication of the typical UK voter and politician is more on the level of a six year old who shoves crayons up their nose. This isn't because the underlying people are in any way different, it's because UK poltiical culture is inward looking, delusional, embarrassing and deliberately stupifying. Hence Brexit. Small Countries can't afford to have a political culture as absurd or as introverted or stupid as the one in the UK, because we tried that, we tried that to the point of destruction, and that leads to fucking disaster and total collapse. This is a lesson that the UK is about to learn. It's a brutal, painful and savage lesson to learn, but it seems that the UK is going to have to stick its whole hand into the fire in order to learn the lesson.
Also That statement isn't contradictory. It's just that we know that every country operates in exactly the same way, we just started before everyone else. First up Best dressed, and all that. We know that us unilaterally doing something isn't going to change anything, but we're not that averse to a gradual tightening up of the rules. We didn't arrive at this position by adherence to Neo-liberal ideology, whatever that may be. We arrived at this position because back in the fifties while the UK was desperately trying to cling onto as much of its empire as it possibly could, and retaining as much of the old economic system based on the captive empire market as possible, we had nothing, other than the dim awareness that you could make just about anything, anywhere, and transport it to everywhere. so why not do it here. This wasn't new to us, Thanks to our near neighbour, we'd been doing a variation of this since the 1650's. This is an old game, with slightly changed rules.
This isn't a function of ideology. This is a function of the invention of the Cargo Container. We started out with a moderately well educated work force who saw relatively low wages by western european standards as unimaginable wealth, so we started out making relatively unsophisticated labour intensive products, and shipping them tariff free to England. We joined the European Union in pursuit of this strategy, because it allowed us access to more markets, making us a more attractive destination for this type of investment. Then those industries died a death in the face of imports from Asia, so we moved one step up the production ladder, and started attracting companies that made more complicated things, and paid better.
Meanwhile it's wrong for the left in England who don't know if theycan win a General Election - given First Past The Post amongst other things to build a movement. If the sytem is going to be smashed there is precisely fuck allt hat Gilbert r anyone else can do about it- they can build an activist network which can organise and campaign about EU emmebrship and corprorate tax evasion- which has been raised inthe UK by the very groups you despise.
"There is a perfectly avoidable iceberg on our current course, but it's too much hassle to get the captain to even try and change course, he's more worried that some of the passengers are going to be more offended by any deviation from our course set in harbour, than by drowning at sea. So lets rearrange the fucking deckchairs instead, and start preparing for life in the lifeboats. I'm sure there's going to be enough lifeboats right?"
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