Whats going to be privatized next?

OK the earth does have certain natural resources such as sunlight which are functionally inexhaustible. But that has very little to do with free-market capitalism, because it takes in the whole of nature over the several billion years the earth has been supporting life. A 500-year-old human economic system has nothing to do with it.

Manpower reduces the amount of time men are able to think about things and thereby challenge established power structures. You can tell they want to keep the worker ants working because automation has not resulted in a reduction in working hours but pursuit of ever-increasing output. Time to think, tinker and loaf around would benefit humanity incalculably, and maybe give us a chance of doing something like make it out into space so we can extract resources from asteroids rather than die like caged animals here on earth.

The only resource "created" from "nothing" by man is knowledge and technology. And that is what gives us a chance at transcendence. But as we have seen, a lot of this can be lost when empires fall.

Automation has not been met with reduced hours for the simple reason that we live in a global economy and are ~3 times richer than the global average, thus we can fuel greater output to take advantage of these less developed markets. Once the UK is closer to average (if i should say) then i imagine you'd have an argument as there would be less gain from increasing output. It should be noted however that the last 60 years have seen the average number of hours worked go from 50+ to 31 in 2012 although that's mostly because of more flexible labour markets.

Surely there's an irony there, it is the wealthy billionaires who are perusing resource extraction from asteroids and the like (i agree a potential game changer).

Reply 41

LukeM90

17

Original post by Babylid

David Camerons forehead

Piss off I've already got money on that, find you own gambit

Coincidently I also put alot in botox :wink:

lol

Reply 42

Isleworth

Original post by Rakas21

Lloyds and RBS are next up however for outright privatisation i'm all but convinced the Tories will sell a large steak of the BBC post 2015.

mm yes i wanna get some of that juicy ****ing bank stock mm gonna pound a dripping button so hard to get as much as possible out(dripping my all the sweat due to my apprehension of course)

Original post by felamaslen

I would also prefer the BBC to be privatised, the very phrase "state media" gives me the creeps.

mm gonna get that bbc and shove it inside my porfolio mmm gonna fill me up with dividends

Reply 43

Pro Crastination

19

The BBC is one of the institutions that British people can boast about when travelling abroad. It sets a precedent for both state financed and privately financed foreign media outlets. A good 70%+ of my TV and radio listening and viewing belongs to corporations such as the BBC and America's NPR, there really isn't much else that stands up to the content that they produce. If Radio 4 was replaced by Heart Radio, I would consider emigrating... hehe.

It's true that state-owned media outlets (such as Russia Today) can act as mouthpieces of vile regimes. However, I follow a range of both state financed and private news sources and, comparatively, I would argue that BBC content is exceptionally even-handed.

So yeah. Don't even think about touching the BBC, Cameron.

Reply 44

Isleworth

Original post by Pro Crastination

The BBC is one of the institutions that British people can boast about when travelling abroad. It sets a precedent for both state financed and privately financed foreign media outlets. A good 70%+ of my TV and radio listening and viewing belongs to corporations such as the BBC and America's NPR, there really isn't much else that stands up to the content that they produce. If Radio 4 was replaced by Heart Radio, I would consider emigrating... hehe.

It's true that state-owned media outlets (such as Russia Today) can act as mouthpieces of vile regimes. However, I follow a range of both state financed and private news sources and, comparatively, I would argue that BBC content is exceptionally even-handed.

So yeah. Don't even think about touching the BBC, Cameron.

Let me ask you one simple question.

If the BBC were to be privatized, do you think the BBC as a brand, would grow or would it shrink?

Reply 45

Pro Crastination

19

Original post by Isleworth

Let me ask you one simple question.

If the BBC were to be privatized, do you think the BBC as a brand, would grow or would it shrink?

Potentially it could grow, it's got a huge monopoly over the UK broadcasting industry. I'm not arguing against the economics of the situation. What I'm saying is the quality of the product may deteriorate/be aimed at more of a mass market. Do you really think that every one of the documentaries they produce is profitable? Or Radio 6? A huge proportion of the quality content that people from around the world look up to would be shafted, and we'd have more of 'The Voice' (for example) instead, because that would be what sells to the mass market.

Sorry. It's just one of those institutions that I don't think should be sold off. I'm all for most of Maggie's privatisations, though.