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Call To Power 2 Cradle 3+ mod in progress: https://apolyton.net/forum/other-games/call-to-power-2/ctp2-creation/9437883-making-cradle-3-fully-compatible-with-the-apolyton-edition
This is just idiotic. Seriously, have you ever bothered actually opening a history book and looking back at the times when unions actually didn't exist, and employers just **** all over workers? Or so you just not care about that?
Ignoring the last part from bankrupcy onwards, which is just downright wrong (Medicare accounted for only 14% of the budget in 2013 ffs), you are actually right about the first part. Yes, systems like Medicare (and the UK's National Health Service) are absolutely about moving the cost from the old to the young. The reason this is a completely rational and extremely moral thing to do, is because every damn one of us is going to either get old ourselves or die trying.
The idea that the young should just look after themselves and let the old manage on their own is both morally repulsive and idiotically short sighted. When you have a universal system that takes care of everyone, you not only lower costs but you ensure that people can actually concentrate on living happy productive lives.
Ignoring the moral component (because HC has shitty morals and doesn't care about his fellow man), it's just bad economics.
There's a direct correlation between so called "union busting" and lower/stagnating wages.
Nope. In the UK we genuinely did have a position where the unions had become organizations far removed from the direct needs of the workers, where political power and ambition was rife and where the needs of the country as a whole came far, far below the union leaders goals. We were far more socialized then than we are now, and yet we managed to reach a position where the dead weren't even being buried due to strike action.
i wonder what you mean by the workers' direct needs, as the strikes were invariably about pay and/conditions (or solidarity with others striking over pay and conditions), which are certainly things the workers are directly interested in. and of course they had political aims, which as you point out clashed with those of the capitalist state; and crucially they could exert political power and take actions that furthered those aims - whether or not you agree with the results of those actions - something they can't do today.
"The Christian way has not been tried and found wanting, it has been found to be hard and left untried" - GK Chesterton.
"The most obvious predicition about the future is that it will be mostly like the past" - Alain de Botton
i wonder what you mean by the workers' direct needs, as the strikes were invariably about pay and/conditions (or solidarity with others striking over pay and conditions), which are certainly things the workers are directly interested in. and of course they had political aims, which as you point out clashed with those of the capitalist state; and crucially they could exert political power and take actions that furthered those aims - whether or not you agree with the results of those actions - something they can't do today.
I won't argue for a second that things aren't far too far the other way now, however I won't agree that things were great back then either. Strikes may have been about pay and conditions, but they were about pay and conditions for particular sectors of the workforce that were represented by the major unions, and the decisions on whether to strike were very political. Strikes back then were sometimes called for reasons that today we'd consider farcical, and considering the effects of strike action were disproportionately felt by the poorest in society (not incidentally usually the people actually represented by the unions) they seems to give little regard to who was being hurt. There were also quite stark divides even in workplaces between the sectors who were highly regarded by the unions and those who were not.
Obviously the whole thing was hugely complex, and there were good union leaders and bad ones like with everything else in life, but the point I'm making is that once the union system became a national political force, it was not good for the country. Only accountable to its members (and back then not even that as much, as it'd be a brave man who argued against the union leadership over something like striking in solidarity with another union), prone to huge amounts of backroom dealing, and increasingly isolated from the actual workforce. The reason a strong socialist Labour party is so essential is to remove the need for overly strong union political action while proving workers with proper political representation.
I just got a letter today saying a few union groups in IL are suing the State Retirement Service (through which I get my disability payments). Their complaint is that they shouldn't have been taking money out of those checks to pay for insurance premiums. I don't know the particulars. But it looks like the lawsuit is going to either follow through or be settled pretty quickly. I'm due for a big check
OH BUT IF ONLY THAT MONEY WAS GOING TO A BILIONAIRE DURRRRRRR
I won't argue for a second that things aren't far too far the other way now, however I won't agree that things were great back then either. Strikes may have been about pay and conditions, but they were about pay and conditions for particular sectors of the workforce that were represented by the major unions, and the decisions on whether to strike were very political. Strikes back then were sometimes called for reasons that today we'd consider farcical, and considering the effects of strike action were disproportionately felt by the poorest in society (not incidentally usually the people actually represented by the unions) they seems to give little regard to who was being hurt. There were also quite stark divides even in workplaces between the sectors who were highly regarded by the unions and those who were not.
Obviously the whole thing was hugely complex, and there were good union leaders and bad ones like with everything else in life, but the point I'm making is that once the union system became a national political force, it was not good for the country. Only accountable to its members (and back then not even that as much, as it'd be a brave man who argued against the union leadership over something like striking in solidarity with another union), prone to huge amounts of backroom dealing, and increasingly isolated from the actual workforce. The reason a strong socialist Labour party is so essential is to remove the need for overly strong union political action while proving workers with proper political representation.
there are a couple of things i'd say about this. firstly, people will always do things that can be characterised as ridiculous (there's a "carry on" film of all things that perfectly summarises the bourgeois attitude towards industrial strife - mockery, exasperation, but above all the idea that those bloody bolshy workers needed to be put firmly in their place), but that doesn’t mean that something should be destroyed. it's like saying that we need to put an end to wage labour because some workers have timed toilet breaks - which is ridiculous - but quite different from the real reasons for why we must end wage labour. secondly, all discussions about wages, conditions etc. are inherently political, they're about the worker/boss relationship, about power, about who gets what. it is not actions themselves, or the reasons behind them that matter here, but rather the fact that actions could be taken at all; that the workers had the power to take them.
i wholly agree with you that the workers having and wielding power is not good for the country, and by country, i of course mean state. the workers having and wielding power is very bad for the capitalist state, precisely because the fundamental interests of workers and the capitalists, landlords etc. that the state protects, are opposed; because nothing would be better for workers than to free and disassociate themselves from the hierarchies and patriotic myths that the state peddles. this is also why the unions, that is, the workers, had to be gelded. it's why even today the government will on the one hand say that unions are irrelevant and on the other enact laws to further restrict their actions; they're scared of the workers combining and see it is as a direct threat to their power. if only the workers saw it in those terms...
"The Christian way has not been tried and found wanting, it has been found to be hard and left untried" - GK Chesterton.
"The most obvious predicition about the future is that it will be mostly like the past" - Alain de Botton
there are a couple of things i'd say about this. firstly, people will always do things that can be characterised as ridiculous (there's a "carry on" film of all things that perfectly summarises the bourgeois attitude towards industrial strife - mockery, exasperation, but above all the idea that those bloody bolshy workers needed to be put firmly in their place), but that doesn’t mean that something should be destroyed. it's like saying that we need to put an end to wage labour because some workers have timed toilet breaks - which is ridiculous - but quite different from the real reasons for why we must end wage labour. secondly, all discussions about wages, conditions etc. are inherently political, they're about the worker/boss relationship, about power, about who gets what. it is not actions themselves, or the reasons behind them that matter here, but rather the fact that actions could be taken at all; that the workers had the power to take them.
Except that I didn't say they should be destroyed, I said they were out of control back then and needed to be restrained. You can't just brush off the things that happened with a casual 'it's not the actions that matter', of course its the actions that matter, or else you're just being blinded by ideology. Actions have consequences, and those taking them have to be accountable for those actions. Reining back the political force of the unions is not the same as removing the voice of the worker.
i wholly agree with you that the workers having and wielding power is not good for the country, and by country, i of course mean state. the workers having and wielding power is very bad for the capitalist state, precisely because the fundamental interests of workers and the capitalists, landlords etc. that the state protects, are opposed; because nothing would be better for workers than to free and disassociate themselves from the hierarchies and patriotic myths that the state peddles. this is also why the unions, that is, the workers, had to be gelded. it's why even today the government will on the one hand say that unions are irrelevant and on the other enact laws to further restrict their actions; they're scared of the workers combining and see it is as a direct threat to their power. if only the workers saw it in those terms...
No sorry, we're not America where the state can be seen as some puppet of the rich that has no interest in the working man and his issues. We're far too socialized for that, and the existence of the Labour party (at least until its New Labour incarnation) proves the wrongness of it. Unions do not and never have represented all working people, and their actions often harmed those non-members while helping their members, which is why the unions are a terrible way to try and provide the prominent voice to working people. That's the job of Labour, along with protecting the perfectly reasonable rights of unions to protect their members interests while simultaneously protecting the rights of non-members too. The fact that Labour are utterly failing to perform that job in any adequate way is the real issue that needs addressing.
Except that I didn't say they should be destroyed, I said they were out of control back then and needed to be restrained. You can't just brush off the things that happened with a casual 'it's not the actions that matter', of course its the actions that matter, or else you're just being blinded by ideology. Actions have consequences, and those taking them have to be accountable for those actions. Reining back the political force of the unions is not the same as removing the voice of the worker.
not destroyed then, but hollowed out, gelded, stript of their ability to act and combine. and the workers haven't had their voice removed, it is their ability to act that has been taken away; talking is about the only thing they can do.
let me put my point about actions in another way. imagine that workers are free to exercise their power by taking actions 1-100. of course one can debate whether each of those actions was correct and justified given the context and circumstances under which it occurred, and no doubt people will have diverse opinions based on their political views and interests. now let's imagine that workers can only, being restricted by anti-worker laws, take actions 1-10. inevitably these will be the lightest, blandest and least threatening (to the interests of capital) actions. whatever anyone thinks about this, the fact is that the workers have had their power restricted, the result is a foregone conclusion, capital has won because the workers must fight with one hand tied behind their backs and if they have the temerity to untie themselves, they will feel the full force of the state come down upon them.
No sorry, we're not America where the state can be seen as some puppet of the rich that has no interest in the working man and his issues. We're far too socialized for that, and the existence of the Labour party (at least until its New Labour incarnation) proves the wrongness of it. Unions do not and never have represented all working people, and their actions often harmed those non-members while helping their members, which is why the unions are a terrible way to try and provide the prominent voice to working people. That's the job of Labour, along with protecting the perfectly reasonable rights of unions to protect their members interests while simultaneously protecting the rights of non-members too. The fact that Labour are utterly failing to perform that job in any adequate way is the real issue that needs addressing.
workers in britian have certainly wrung more concessions out of the boss class than those in the US, because through combining they were able to exercise power. whence did the labour party come? from the union movement, from workers combining to achieve their political ends. your distinction makes little sense.
you're right in the sense that workers don't have much real representation, and this is because politics itself is not real unless it recognises the fundamentally opposed interests in society. however, the point i would make is that that can never really happen within the confines of a nice, safe bourgeois parliament where everything is stacked too ensure that the 'balance' (bosses and landlords on top workers and peasants on the bottom) is maintained; where workers' only participation in the process is putting a tick next to the name of some shill with a red/blue/yellow rosette every five years. the only way that workers can use their advantages, i.e. that there are more of them and that the wealth of society is dependent on their labour, is through direct action, bypassing the bourgeois structures in place to prevent that.
"The Christian way has not been tried and found wanting, it has been found to be hard and left untried" - GK Chesterton.
"The most obvious predicition about the future is that it will be mostly like the past" - Alain de Botton
not destroyed then, but hollowed out, gelded, stript of their ability to act and combine. and the workers haven't had their voice removed, it is their ability to act that has been taken away; talking is about the only thing they can do.
You seem to be determined to conflate my desired outcomes with the outcome that actually occured. Did you miss the part where I said things have gone too far the other way?
let me put my point about actions in another way. imagine that workers are free to exercise their power by taking actions 1-100. of course one can debate whether each of those actions was correct and justified given the context and circumstances under which it occurred, and no doubt people will have diverse opinions based on their political views and interests. now let's imagine that workers can only, being restricted by anti-worker laws, take actions 1-10. inevitably these will be the lightest, blandest and least threatening (to the interests of capital) actions. whatever anyone thinks about this, the fact is that the workers have had their power restricted, the result is a foregone conclusion, capital has won because the workers must fight with one hand tied behind their backs and if they have the temerity to untie themselves, they will feel the full force of the state come down upon them.
If someone has the power to impact peoples lives then they have to be accountable for their actions. I don't think that's a particularly radical point of view to take. You keep trying to turn this into a black and white fight between the oppressed worker and the heartless capitalist state, and that's a bit too simplistic for my tastes.
workers in britian have certainly wrung more concessions out of the boss class than those in the US, because through combining they were able to exercise power. whence did the labour party come? from the union movement, from workers combining to achieve their political ends. your distinction makes little sense.
You mean the union movement that I have said repeatedly that I support and want to continue to exist? Or am I supposed to just be playing the evil conservative stooge that you get to rail against? It's hard to remember my expected role sometimes..
ken you haven't really responded to anything i said, and i think it's because you're taking it as a personal attack when it really isn't meant like that. i do think though that there are opinions, such as whether one believes that industrial action went too far/not far enough in 1970s, and there are facts, such as the fact that restricting union activities means less power for workers to act. we're unlikely to change each other's mind about the first, but we ought to be able to agree about the second.
"The Christian way has not been tried and found wanting, it has been found to be hard and left untried" - GK Chesterton.
"The most obvious predicition about the future is that it will be mostly like the past" - Alain de Botton
ken you haven't really responded to anything i said, and i think it's because you're taking it as a personal attack when it really isn't meant like that. i do think though that there are opinions, such as whether one believes that industrial action went too far/not far enough in 1970s, and there are facts, such as the fact that restricting union activities means less power for workers to act. we're unlikely to change each other's mind about the first, but we ought to be able to agree about the second.
I do agree about the second, but I think the result was the fault of the unions who abused their power. The conservatives would never have been able to be elected much less destroy the unions if they hadn't had a solid support of the country behind them. The reason they had that support was because much of the country was sick of the endless strike actions, electricity blackouts, rubbish not being collected etc, when there seemed to be increasingly few collective benefits in return.
Remember the whole 'who runs the country?' question and its answer from the UK people? Why did that change just a few years later?
well that's a good question. i think there were several factors: the oil crisis; the subsequent end to the post-war consensus, the establishment left trying to defend a failing system, while the right seized the initiative; industrial strife; the UK's very right wing media, which is very good at framing issues in a certain way to bend public opinion.
and it's worth remembering that a lot of thatcher's first term policies were extremely unpopular, she was saved by the falklands war and north sea oil, while being helped along by that very right wing media.
"The Christian way has not been tried and found wanting, it has been found to be hard and left untried" - GK Chesterton.
"The most obvious predicition about the future is that it will be mostly like the past" - Alain de Botton
Yes, he punted and we won't hear an answer until he wins some primaries. Then he might be able to say it.
It's almost as if all his overconfident, absolutist assertions were spoonfed to him by a trusted website or subreddit. Sheeple
RIP Tony Bogey & Baron O
well that's a good question. i think there were several factors: the oil crisis; the subsequent end to the post-war consensus, the establishment left trying to defend a failing system, while the right seized the initiative; industrial strife; the UK's very right wing media, which is very good at framing issues in a certain way to bend public opinion.
Media does not exist in a vacuum, it reflects the people. England has always had intrenched right wing conservative values, even in the midst of a strong socialist instinct.
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