I thought your overall point was that half of people in "poverty" are in work?

You didn't actually respond to what I put to you. You said, "my ideology isn't focused on the very top exclusively" but that wasn't what I said. I said I think you are obsessed with equality as an ideal and that you would, given the chance, impose equality on everyone even if it meant that people in aggregate were worse off.

You also said:

"But those progressions [in the 'Third World'] show that with modern capabilities, legitimate redistribution could far more realistically happen on a global scale, leaving 80, maybe 90% of the global population better off (including people in Britain!). So a few bankers or whatever have to compromise their own living standards, based on the exploitation of labour which reinforces the refinement of wealth, I can live with that."

I disagree strongly that the "progressions" in the developing world are an argument for "legitimate redistribution".

On the contrary, they are an argument for enterprise, entreprenuerialism and the market. Ask your average Chinese or Nigerian what he'd rather: hand-wringing handouts from well-intentioned Westerners with a guilty conscience or a level playing field to try and make the most of himself?

Your comments about "a few bankers or whatever" reveals either your prejudice or your naivete, I'm not sure which.

Edited by Johnny Eagles (23 Mar 2015 5.22pm)

...we must expand...get more pupils...so that the knowledge will spread...

People prattle on about the left or right being in power, but the reality is that the extremes of both ideologies cancel each other out thankfully, so there is at least some left and right influence at all times, just to varying degrees.

People are tribal. Most here would be lost without the comfort they find in frothing at the mouth at opposing ideology.

Edited by imbored (23 Mar 2015 6.52pm)

I'm not sure I understand your point about cavemen and rags. You say that science and technology is the route to progress, but then you talk about wealth being "democratised". What drives scientific progress is the market. Wealth must be created before it can be shared. The market is therefore the best way to achieve progress. Yes, Nigeria and China are corrupt kleptocracies. But since they've been corrupt kleptocracies with functioning market economies their population's lives have been vastly improved.

My point is that equality ideologues (you're yet to convince me you aren't one) tend to think wealth is just *there* and all you have to do is distribute it. (You can tell this when they say things like, 'we're the 6th richest country in the world, it's disgusting that we can't afford blah blah'.) They see inequality as an intolerable rather than a necessary evil. In short, they are anything but utilitarian.

Yes, we need to curb the excesses of the market. I'm not a free market ideologue. I refute your assertion that I am. I do not believe that the market can solve all our problems. I am aware of its limitations, of the corruption and greed to which money tempts weak human beings.

I'm actually sympathetic with the pursuit of more equality. I just don't think you can impose it on people. "Democratising" wealth is just a euphemism for forcibly taking it off people who have it and handing it out to others, with no regard for who deserves it. Which in the end encourages more corruption, immorality and unfairness than the worst market excesses or the most egregious examples of coke-snorting trust fund parasites. This is borne out by any of the collectivist systems by which humans have lived.

I'm surprised you find my approach "aggressive", I assure you it's not meant to be. I'm challenging you and your views, but I do that because I enjoy debating with you, you're smart and eloquent, albeit misguided.

...we must expand...get more pupils...so that the knowledge will spread...

Point 1:

I happen to know the pharmaceutical industry well. I worked in it for several years. It is not as simple as you make out, for two reasons:

1. Big Pharma is more M&A than R&D, so you'd expect research funding to be miniscule. For a wide range of reasons, research is better done by smaller, more agile companies (often start-ups run by former academics). Once they discover something significant they get bought by a bigger player. It's an example of an efficient market.

2. Pharma Marketing is about more than just sticking up billboards. It's actually quite useful for your doctor to know which drugs are available. The layman assumes they get all this knowledge from university. They don't. Pharma educates them. Obviously not for altruistic reasons, but there's more to it than just making up slogans.

The market does drive scientific progress. Let me give you an example. I worked on behalf of a relatively small pharmaceutical company called Vertex. It developed a new drug for cystic fibrosis. If you have CF, the phlegm in your lungs is more like thick caramel. You cannot move a few metres without exhausting yourself. You are likely to die in your twenties. The product (Kalydeco) helps some (sadly not all) patients to live a much more normal life and extends their life expectancy. In a utopian world, companies like Vertex would do it just to help people. In the real world they do it for the money. But if it wasn't for money-hungry companies like Vertex, those cystic fibrosis patients simply wouldn't have Kalydeco.

The market is not perfect and not the panacea to all ills. But it is demonstrably the biggest and most effective force for positive progress the world has ever known.

Point 2:
I'm not arguing against "some form of redistribution." I support limited redistribution and well-funded public services.

However I'm tolerant of a degree of income inequality. Put simply, some people deserve to be better off than others. (If this last sentence makes you feel angry, then I'm probably right that you are an equality ideologue.)

I cannot disagree strongly enough with you when you say "free markets actively encourage monopoly in the long run". The opposite is true. The flaws of monopoly are an argument for MORE competition. Monopolies often ensue when the state -- which would be the biggest monopoly of all if you had your way -- intervenes. The banks were "too big to fail" because the state guaranteed them. The market would have let them disappear.

Point 3:
This sounds a bit like something you've picked up from reading a Russel Brand book. Fair enough though. I'm not saying that all collectivist movements are doomed to failure. It can work for some things. I'll happily accept that point. I also believe that the state is much better at providing some things (prisons, police, healthcare, railways) than the market. I'm not an ideologue. However, given the choice, I'd rather live in any country with a market economy over one with a planned or redistributive one. So would anyone who's ever lived in one. (And Scandinavian countries are more the former than the latter.)

As a final personal note (if you can be bothered to read this far), believe it or not, I used to be much more idealistic (I was intellectually woolier too). I remember telling my first boss that I thought it was "immoral" for us to try and make as much money as we could from our clients! He taught me that it was not. That it was actually good for us to earn more money, that we deserved it for being the best, that it drove us on to want to be better. I learnt a lot from him. I was very lucky to have met him so early on, because he was a very, very positive example for how capitalism should work. He was a caring employer. When he took people on it was with a view to keeping them in work for as long as they wanted it. He invested huge amounts of time and money in his staff. He was no softy. He could be ruthless and he had no problem firing people. But if you had the right attitude, he would do all he could for you.

I've since worked in companies which are run by much less positive examples. I have first-experience of companies that have been exploitative, short-termist, even corrupt. So, again, I'm no ideologue who believes that capitalism can do no wrong. But it annoys the hell out of me when people make sweeping statements that all employers are out for what they can get, that there is no morality in business, that the only "good" people in the world are the ones driving round schools in Africa in their rainbow buses. People can be proud to work in a market economy.

Which is quite an ironic point to conclude on, given that I've spent about 30 mins writing this instead of actually working!

...we must expand...get more pupils...so that the knowledge will spread...