England headed for A Caliphate

[Elixir]

You’re missing the point again.
Yeah, all that wealth is a mean s of production - of wealth for the “owners”. That’s its primary purpose. It benefits its customers only to the extent that such benefit increases the return for the owners.

In the current system, a multi-millionaire like the guy who put forth the “switch wallets” idea, can sit back and do nothing, and still have income in excess of that of a hundred day laborers. That is FUCKED UP. Even multi millionaires know it.
The result of the current system is that even the multi-millionaire is unhappy, and is driven by guilt to be a workaholic.

The problem is you are looking at it as money sitting there doing nothing. No, it's means of production. Your world, everyone will spend, nobody will build for the future.

You’re saying YOU (if you were lucky and the switch made you wealthy) would spend and never produce.
* it’s not MY scenario
* You are not everyone.
Some people enjoy being productive. Others are driven to it by their own nature.
* The stigma of being unproductive would increase greatly. People would be reliant on others’ productivity.

I suggest you try imagining a world where not everyone is driven by the concerns that consume you in the current world.

 

[DrZoidberg]

I think you are looking at what the result of communism was and ignoring all the steps that led to it. Liberalism led to economic liberalism which led to horrific standards for workers in Europe in the 19'th century. You'd hardly, from this, conclude that the point of liberalism is to make workers suffer?

I'm skipping a whole bunch, admittedly. But I think you're making a very fundamental error in your thinking.

Standards for workers in Europe in the 19th century are horrific... compared to what, exactly? Compared to today in first world country, definitely. Compared to the state of peasants across the board in the 17th century, not so much.

Liberalism is better than Feudalism in terms of quality of life. Communism is worse.

The 19'th century peasants didn't move to the city to find opportunity. They were forced off the land. Improvements in agricultular techniques and mechanisation had led to jobs disapearing in the countryside. While factories needed labour. More women were forced into prostitution than in any other time.

England in the 1840's was one of the worst times and places to ever be alive.

Being a peasant in the 17'th century was way better. No stress. Farmers worked very little, compared to now. They had less stuff. But so did everyone else. It was a simpler time.

You don't need to speculate on life behind the Iron Curtain. You can just ask people who lived through it. For the average person life in the USSR was great. As long as you didn't get involved in politics or were ambitious life was pretty nice and stress free.

You still haven't explained why you think socialism is fundamentally against free speech and freedom of expression? Who ever gave you that idea?

 

[Bomb#20]

Nope. The total amount of wealth isn’t changing. A social safety net would still be possible. ...

When you eliminate the incentive to create wealth while turning the incentive to consume it up to eleven, the total amount of wealth isn’t changing. Right.

Initial state only.
Obviously “things are gonna change” but not from a single binary choice of material incentives. Nor would any trend necessarily be terminal.
But if so it would be interesting to see the point at which it stabilized. Neolithic tribes? Total surviving human population at min sustainable levels? HSS extinction?
I don’t see how the experiment could set us back more than a couple hundred millennia*, even if rigorously enforced the whole time.

* not that there’s anything wrong with that

Total human population at zero. Humanity is in a very precarious position, we are so dependent on the interconnections. And when those interconnections fail you'll have cascade failures that take out most of humanity, and the most likely outcome for the survivors is fighting over what remains to below sustainable population. Post-apocalyptic fiction is common but it never answers where the next meal is coming from and why said meal wasn't already eaten by somebody else.

Oh come on. The Sentinelese will make it.

 

[Bomb#20]

Who do you think is more welcome?

Indeed. Thing is, that’s the wrong question. It’s shortsighted.
Who will have the better long term effect, is a better question.
Is an urgent need of the billionaire class to have plenty of people on the edge of starvation, desperate to serve them for a crust.

Why do you believe rhetoric like that? Billionaires need people who can afford to buy what they're selling. Take a look at the list of all the countries with no billionaires here:

B

Post in thread 'All Morals & Ethics are Biased, Self-Serving - Exhibit A - The Brahmin & the Royal'

Feb 24, 2025

By medieval standards, there are, and we are fairly close to giving such pay and prestige to everybody.

Certainly as a society we can (in the developed world) easily afford for every person to live in a comfortable home with heating in winter and airconditioning in summer, and with enough food that they need never go to bed hungry.

If that doesn't strike you as wealth or prestige, then you haven't grasped what life was like for most of history (and still is like for many in the developing world).

In the Roman and medieval periods, the idea that everyone could live with such...

• Bomb#20

There are a lot more people on the edge of starvation in those countries than in the countries with billionaires.

 

[Tigers!]

In a very few years at current rates the non-English > English.

Non-English names are already the majority, by your figures. 'Jones' and 'Williams' are Welsh names.

But wait - how are Muslim, Sikh, or Hindu indicative of non-English status? These are religions, not nationalities.

The idea that there are no English Sikhs, no English Hindus, or no English Muslims is nonsensical. You might as well divide names into 'English' vs 'Catholic' or 'Jewish'.

Your analysis is absurd.

I suppose it depends on whether you assume those english-by-citizenship surnames indicate cultural assimilation or not.

Why would you assume, and why would any sane person believe, that their surnames indicate anything at all about cultural assimilation?

Those Englishmen going by the name of "Jones" - why are they so poorly assimilated as to still use a Welsh surname? They could easily have changed their names, so the fact that they didn't clearly implies their support for Meibion Glyndŵr. They should all be closely watched in case they burn down any holiday cottages. Certainly we can't count them as really English.

You too are making assumption about what I assume.
My purpose in talking about the numbers of 'non'-English' surnames vs. 'English' surnames was that a good many people (Restore UK etc.) in UK/England/Wales/NI/Scotland (need to say all the possibilities for those pedants amongst us) are exercised by the quite rapid rise in those numbers.
I am not as exercised as others seem to be.
My apologies for not being clear enough for the pendants.

 

[Elixir]

Billionaires need people who can afford to buy what they're selling.

How charmingly naive.
Elon is “selling” mars to millionaires who can afford Teslas. And you and I are paying for the equity Elon has in mars.

 

[WAB]

Pretty soon you'll have to be a billionaire to afford a ticket to a Taylor Swift concert.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I would thus expect an automated detection that he was prohibited.

Your expectations are not laws of nature, nor facts about reality.

Why would such a system exist for aircrew? Before this incident, what would have inspired the considerable expense and effort to bring aircrew (who travel internationally daily, often many times a day) into a system designed to manage passengers (who rarely travel internationally even weekly)?

Does that system even exist for passengers travelling to non-US destinations? You assume that everywhere has the same, or at least a very similar, approach to that taken by the US; And that aircrew face the same, or at least a very similar, approach to that taken for passengers. Both assumptions are highly implausible.

In the time since I wrote that we've

We? You and who else?

seen I guessed correctly. Israel caught a prohibited pilot on another flight--the manifest wasn't sent until the plane was in the air.

So - EITHER Israel changed their processes to prevent a recurrence of a serious issue; OR this is evidence that you were right all along.

Forgive me for thinking the former vastly more likely.

And people blame Israel because the plane had to dump fuel and turn around.

Which people? Are they people whose opinions we should care about? Are they anyone you or I know personally? Or are they as mythical as the "we" who saw that you guessed correctly?

Just read the news! The rule has been no flight crew from nations that do not recognize Israel. However, enforcement wasn't adequate. We saw what happened with that plane from Ethiopia--the manifest was only sent after the plane was in the air. Israel spotted the problem, denied it admission, they had to dump fuel and return to where they started from.

The idea that flight crew from a country that doesn't recognize Israel would be permitted is preposterous. What's the most basic requirement of entering a country? A valid passport. If your passport says it can't be used for travel to country X you do not possess a valid passport for entry into country X.

Just because people have gotten away with cheating doesn't make it wrong for a government to actually enforce the rules that people should have been following anyway. This has been a big problem for many Chinese expats--they were not reporting their foreign income, China had no system in place to catch it. They've started cracking down and there's garbage on social media about China not allowing anyone out of the country. Reality is China is saying that you can't leave the country if you haven't paid your income tax.

 

[Bomb#20]

Billionaires need people who can afford to buy what they're selling.

How charmingly naive.
Elon is “selling” mars to millionaires who can afford Teslas. And you and I are paying for the equity Elon has in mars.

Elon doesn't have any equity in Mars, and I'm paying him for the internet that lets me read your posts -- thirty years in and he's the first guy to finally provide reliable high-speed service in my area. If he wants to use what I pay him for Starlink to build more rockets instead of a mansion like a normal tycoon, whatever, man. It's his money -- I got what I paid for, so why should I care? And so did you if you're paying for his Mars dreams too. He got what he needed from you and me, and you and I aren't "on the edge of starvation".

 

[Elixir]

Elon doesn't have any equity in Mars

He has equity in the dream, B.

 

[bilby]

The idea that flight crew from a country that doesn't recognize Israel would be permitted is preposterous. What's the most basic requirement of entering a country? A valid passport.

All international aircrew have the same passport requirements and checks as anyone else on the flight. The idea is not only preposterous - it's an idea about something that exists only in the fevered imaginations of people who have no clue how the systems they are outraged against actually work.

You're mad because the system you imagine is in place has failings that the actual system in place does not have.

If your passport says it can't be used for travel to country X you do not possess a valid passport for entry into country X.

Could you give me an example of any passport that says it can't be used for travel to any specific country? A passport is valid for entry into any country.

In addition to a passport, a visa is also typically required for entry to a country. These don't say "Not valid for travel to country X"; Rather, they say "Valid for travel to country X", and their absence implies invalidity. Aircrew, like regular passengers, require a visa in order to enter a country of which they are not a citizen. However, note that entry to the airspace of a country, or even to the airside spaces of an international airport is not, de jure, entry to the country in which it is located.

This is not a passports issue; It's not even a visa issue. It's a pilot issue - Israel don't allow pilots from nations they have no diplomatic regognition of to overfly Israeli airspace, whether or not they plan to enter the country, or even to land in the country. If the same guy was sitting in seat 36F, no problem. The problem is that he has control of the plane, not merely that he is on board.

I have no problem with Israel setting whatever rules they want; But your idea that these rules are easy to implement or enforce, or are simply an extension of existing rules to include pilots, is false. Pilots are already subject to the same rules as any other international traveller. No exceptions are carved out for them.

The big problem here is that the last (and strongest) line of defence against arriving in Israel (or anywhere else) without a valid visa is at passport control at the arrival airport. Obviously that defence is too late, and ineffective if the threat is from a person who is merely in Israeli airspace. Which is true only if that person has control of the aircraft.

I can fly from Brisbane to London as a passenger, or even as a pilot, without requiring a visa to enter Singapore, even though I change planes there. I also don't need a visa from the Afghan or Indian or EU authorities - even though my plane will transit their airspace.

Israel is trying to build a new system to defend against pilots flying through Israeli airspace. The failure of airlines to properly and effectively implement that system is NOT a failure of existing systems that should be automatic, because until recently, nobody cared who flies through their airspace at the individual level. Bans were applied to entire airlines, and/or to military aircraft of particular nations, without regard to the identity or nationality of the specific pilots.

Your outrage is misplaced.