Cyprus-Forum.com

[Lordo]

What is it?
When did it start?
Has it always worked?
Has it got limitation?
Has it ever failed?

These bits of info would be very useful. Especially in Cyprus if nothing else the hair cut and why did it happen? I mean a government to avtually go into peoples' accounts and take money? It is the first time I have heard such a thing happeneing? Why was it allowed under the EU rules?

[Lordo]

I feel I ought to explain my journey in politics. At the age of 17 I had lived in UK for a few years and was clearly influenced by right wing propaganda in Cyprus. Hated communism and GCs.

Anyway I started dating this girl and she told her father about me, and he asked to meet me. Now I knew nothing about her father so you can imagine when I turned up at her house for a party mind you, it was not just me that was going to be there. It is then that I realised what kind of a person her father was. To today standard I would say his house would be worth at least 5 million. Very big house in Enflied.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, he pulled me to one side and asked me about my political views and I explained what I believed in.

He asked a few questions. After I answered, he simply said what the hell reason do you have to be right wing?

I had an awakening as to what real politics was about. But bad luck has it, as soon as I could vote we went on a crazy time where the Tories kept winning. How unlucky can you get, but here I am 45 odd years later and my views have not changed since.

However, it saddens me that there people who like sheep follow capitalism as if there nothing we can do, it is what it is. Especially a person that suffered the haircut. And doubly unfortunately most of the working class have been hoodwinked to believe it and vote against their own interests in elections. But do we give up? Nope, we must continue with the quest of waking people up.

I found a clip of a very well-educated economist who puts it in language even the least educated person can understand.

[Lordo]

So anyway here is Proff. Wolff explaining capitalism.

[Lordo]

And this actually giving examples of solutions to manipulate capitalism to help the working class. Look at 12 minutes in, little old haricut is mentioned.

[Lordo]

I think this bit of info for my friends that idolise capitalism may be an eye opener. May be not but woorth a shot.

I am not against capitalists who invest money and create product or a service and pay their workers a fair wage and take out profits for return of investment.

But there is a shit capitalist you should know about. And he is not alone.

Martin Shkreli born March 17, 1983 is an American former hedge fund manager and convicted felon. Shkreli is the co-founder of the hedge funds Elea Capital, MSMB Capital Management, and MSMB Healthcare; the co-founder and former chief executive officer (CEO) of the pharmaceutical firms Retrophin and Turing Pharmaceuticals (now Vyera Pharmaceuticals); and the former CEO of start-up software company Gödel Systems, which he founded in August 2016. Martin Shkreli is currently at the low-security Federal prison in Allenwood, Pennsylvania with an expected release date in late 2023.

In September 2015, Shkreli was widely criticized when Turing obtained the manufacturing license for the antiparasitic drug Daraprim and raised its price by a factor of 56 (from US$13.50 to $750 per pill). In 2017, Shkreli was charged and convicted in federal court on two counts of securities fraud and one count of conspiring to commit securities fraud, unrelated to the Daraprim controversy. He was sentenced to seven years in federal prison and up to $7.4 million in fines.

He hicked up a drug he bought ready on the shelf by 56 times. That was legal.

[Pyrpolizer]

Oh no, not again...
For one I congratulate you for been a thinker about so many issues, trying to understand the world and if possible make it better.
On the other hand if there were solutions, the issues wouldn't exist.
So what's the point?

[Lordo]

Oh no, not again...
For one I congratulate you for been a thinker about so many issues, trying to understand the world and if possible make it better.
On the other hand if there were solutions, the issues wouldn't exist.
So what's the point?

Capitalism is like an elephant. It can be moved but it takes a lot of effort and time. I think those who control elephants.

Don't worry I have some very good examples where capitalism is being contained and caged. IThe ideas can only grow. It may have taken capitalism to set itself in our life like a cancer for a couple of hundred years but I beleive with todays techonolgy we can bring it to heal in a matter of decades.

It just is not true there is no alternative. There is a more friendly capitalism if we can tame it. Woolf to a dog as it were. But in very short time.

[Pyrpolizer]

I 've watched both videos. Actually the first one was not hear able so I downloaded and did an operation.
It's all about the workers taking part in the decisions or about co-ops.
Looking at the history of co-ops in Cyprus it's a fact that it was the only reason the farmers and the poor started seeing light in their misery. Helped them get rid of the loan sharks which were sucking the blood of the peasants making them abandon the place. If one year the farmer couldn't pay for the seeds and fertilizes he would do it next year, no problem no mistrust, no dishonestly. It did work up until the early 80's (some of the co-ops for a decade more.
Why did it work? because everybody was honest. There was trust between the people.

Then the co-ops started operating like Banks.
That was the beginning of their slow death. The personal contact and honesty got lost. More than 95% of the people were taking loans with no intention of ever paying it back.
Just recently all co-ops shut down having the highest rate of non performing loans.

Still co-ops do fine in small communities in Germany and elsewhere though.
Imo what this professor advocates can only work in small communities where there's honestly and personal contact. It can't work on a huge scale as it didn't work in USSR. It can't work in corporations like General motors who employ thousands.

[Lordo]

You are wrong my friend.

Although I agree it probaply works better in rural areas where everybody knows everybody. But there is a way of making it work. I think they may number 100,000 workers by now.

Also if you borrow money from the bank they want 4 times the coalateral. It does not need to be that way.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation

[Lordo]

Here is another example of a lovely American corporation who sets up in India to avoid regulations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster