The situation now seems very similar to how it originally looked, except that "the government won't jump without having arranged a parachute" became "how long will the government wait after jumping before trying to arrange a parachute ( Read more... )

In fiction, when you see people reporting to the top person in a hierarchy, it's easy for the specifics to be really concealed. Like, their personal assistant, their bodyguard, their political advisers, and other senior members of government may all report to the president/prime minister/etc. But it's easy to just see B telling A what happened and ( Read more... )

Next week is the PCC election. I'm not convinced that's a good idea, but if we have one at all, better to have a good one. This time there seems to be less of a broad choice, there are four candidates who are endorsed by parties, even if that was not what was supposed to happen ( Read more... )

I've said similar things before, but I'm feeling like "capitalism" is used both to mean "fluid competition" and also "its natural end-state, entrenched monopoly" (or "whatever people with money want") and I almost want different words for those things ( Read more... )

On the scale between "raw libertarianism" and "wealth and jobs completely allocated by central fiat", I think we need less capitalism than we've got now, but a lot more than zero ( Read more... )

Via emperor http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-30976610Read more... )

The government controls the country. Votes control the government. Advertising controls votes. Money controls advertising. Companies control advertising.

Would the most effective form of political leverage be persuading middle class people with pensions to invest them in the right sort of company?

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When first exposed to the concept of a filibuster, most people's reaction is "That's ridiculous! Why would that ever exist in a civilised government?"

But how should a government be designed? One of the fundamental problems, is that if it alternates between a year of majority of Party Pro-X and a year of majority of Party Anti-X, what should ( Read more... )

A while back, I asked, "If you accepted the government did have to cut spending a lot, what would you cut." Several people made the obvious suggestion of cutting military. http://cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com/784255.htmlRead more... )

Most people I know are rightly extremely cynical about the PCC elections -- certainly the election seems to have been very weird, with almost no explanation of what they will do, or any publicity about it ( Read more... )