Metal Reviews

I'm curious. I really want to know everyone's opinion in as elaborate detail as possible. It's a tough question because I can't fully even flesh out my own ideas but I want to know what people think. I'm accused of idealism so I want to see what realists want out of the world. If you're going to say "a unicorn in every garage" then just please don't post.

This is all off the cuff and stream of consciousness, and I would probably add more later. For all my recent libertarianisings, I don't actually want to see an immediate, anarchic, stateless society, even if that were somehow possible through laws passed over a decade or so - let it come naturally. In the meantime, the state can do good if reformed - I can't stand utopian forecasts that will clearly never happen from anyone, so I think life as it currently is should continue, with massive improvements along the way, rather than any sort of ZOMG REVOLUTION!111 in the Commie or Tea Party sense. So for the more 'extremist' types, this will read like a list of small changes, rather than large ones, but I think they'll add up to an interesting manifesto - sorry if this isn't quite what you wanted.

Obviously, people should be as free to live their own lives as possible, as long as they don't harm others, and somehow businesses should be rewarded for being ethical without being forced into it. States should be smaller, but not savaged - power should be capped, and devolved as much as possible. Somehow, Social Liberalism should replace Democratic Socialism as the philosophical ideology of choice of the left, Classical Liberalism should replace Conservatism as the philosophical ideology of the right, and the two should work together rather than subject countries to a never-ending spiel of nationalisation, privatisation, and back again - switching to a fully proportional system of voting would help, as would the abolition of big, broad political parties. Cap party donations from individuals, and reform trade unions so they are more accountable to their members. Election days are equivalent to bank holidays, give 16-year-olds the vote. Evidence-based policy-making, stop listening to populist tabloids and start listening to scientists. As far as possible, free trade, open borders, green business practises, religion and state separated, and genuine liberal democracies everywhere, including the middle and far east, which should be encouraged through capitalism rather than bombs.

A British constitution, like the US one, but, y'know, sensible. Legal protection of free speech, rather than legal protection of taking offence. Trial by jury set in stone, detention without charge lowered to 48 hours, abolition of control orders, allow wiretap evidence where appropriate. Legalisation and taxation of drugs and prostitution, lowered income taxes on the less well off, and a gentle shift towards taxing spending rather than income in general. Cut universal welfare and redirect it to the poorest and most deserving rather than the current nonsense like winter fuel payments, with an aim of Churchill's 'safety net' (at a fair height, obviously) rather than some lifestyle-funding bottomless pit. Liberalise abortion laws, to give the mother the rights rather than the foetus, and to ensure that pro-choice means exactly that. Work to break up ghettos by broadening housing values and investing in poorer areas, and shift educational taxes towards the richest, not the brightest.

Reform the National Health Service and BBC and bring them into partnership rather than competition with private healthcare and networks - perhaps the tv licence could take the form of a card that removes adverts, rio? and introduce a higher rate of licence fees for houses with more than one television. Remove all state funding and powers of the royal family, and turn Buckingham palace into a museum. Turn Royal Mail into a John Lewis-style employee-owned corporation. Allow pubs to offer smoking rooms if they want to, given how much money is earn from tobacco taxation.

In the long-term, abolition of nuclear weaponry, massive national defence cuts and increased NATO funding, a switch towards tidal, wind, solar and so on power, investment in nuclear fission and safe renewable energy sources - economies that are not based on oil. Make it easier to make your own power, and sell it to the national grid. Establish an international worldwide federal government, like the EU or US, but very different, that's firmly minimalist but has the task of working towards solving environmental issues, which are too big to be undertaken by individual countries. Law itself should be internationalised as much as possible, so no more extradition - including international ages of consent, sorry Thailand! Find another source of tourists other than perverts. Tax everywhere the same, so an end to offshore tax havens, etc.

You can tell there's still a bit of hippy in me, as eventually I want to see nationalism and racism naturally destroyed by the natural abolition of borders and flags, as they'll be pointless in the end.

Add instant replay technology to football for the cherry on the cake.

Agreeing with Zizek. Nice.

Heh, really? Oh dear. I don't follow the usual libertarian logic that international governments are automatically a bad thing (the more I read around, the more I realise how infested with conservatism and paranoia the various organisations are, rather than the radicalism and optimism that I find appropriate) and the climate change scepticism is something awful. Organisations like the EU and UN could provide a good environmental response if they were reformed and refocused - we can't do much in Britain whilst China and the US spew their respective filth, and environmentalism and the free market should become partners rather than clashing. I really believe you can be green without being an eco-fascist, although it's a subject I need to do more reading on - hard to find objective matter.

Historically this is a self-serving meme that Thatcherites somehow managed to turn into some kind of "classical liberal" common sense. Most trade unions are far, far more accountable to their membership than the most democratic national government or political party. It's always been manipulative hypocrisy (or ignorance) by people who can't accept that strikes and other industrial disputes generally happen because of the behaviour by employers and because workers have grievances, not because of militant leaders or whatever. If you talk to trade unionists who've been around a while, they will tell you how legislation meant to make unions "more accountable" completely annihilated decentralised activity at the grassroots level.

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As for me, I would like to see a society administered by producers according to need rather than profit.
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Maybe what I meant was to remove the Thatcherite laws. Huh? HUH? Of course, strictly speaking libertarians want unions banned, which is far too illiberal and undemocratic for me.



The Producers... sounds like a Doctor Who episode. and a Mel B comedy, I know, that was the joke, hurr durr.

But is that what you would really want? Give unions more power or "make them more accountable"?

To be honest, I'm not sure - like the environment, it's hard to find objective material. Unions are either scummy collections of unwashed bastards who want to destroy economies and ruin everything for everyone, or fundamental fighters for fairness who stop capitalists from making unfair profits at the expense of their workers and ruining everything for everyone (I bet you can't guess what sort of people hold which opinion!).

I lean towards the former, but don't see how a true liberal could stop a voluntary self-organised organisation like that without turning into a fascist authoritarian - the right to form organised, democratic groups vs the right to piss off if you don't like not being able to force people into giving you more money. Greater men than me have failed to find a middle course - I'll follow the Lib Demmy approach of taking each dispute individually and mediating before strikes can happen. Heck, even my avatar supported striking workers at one point.

For starters prostitution would have to be legalized everywhere. I want said prostitutes to be riding unicorns in every garage in the land. But most of all, I want it to be like Willy Wonkas chickate factory. That is a magical place where there is no corruption just wonderful little orange people who aren't scared to sing to their hearts content.

I want a world where the streams of whiskey are flowing.

And I dont want fucking drunken unicorns drinking my whiskey.

I want a unicorn in every garage

A good remedy for this is reading some history books.

The right to "piss off" is a false right borne out of dogma. If you are a textile worker in a textile factory and you get paid starvation wages, you can't just go next door to the next textile factory where they miraculously pay five times as much. Wages converge.



Hmm. You didn't mean that, though, did you?

I find that libertarians turn into stern-faced hierarchs ranting about...



...when they get challenged by wage labourers. This is why no me gusta.

No unions =! starvation wages. I mean, you can't say unions = great wages, since the history books don't really bear that out, do they?



Like I said, I need to read more on the matter, and not written by commies or libertarians - I made the exact same point as you there above.

I want to live, and I want to die.

My personal experience with unions are from my current company, in which one of our 14 plants is unionized.

That one plant is regularly at the bottom of the heap when it comes to KPI measurements. Any which way you want to measure them, their performance is lower than their non-unionized counterparts.

There are several reasons for this.

First, it is very very difficult to fire anyone in the union, making it hard for management to hold them accountable. Second, advancement is mostly based on seniority, which frankly does not motivate an individual as much as advancement based on merit. Finally, they have a policy of not using contractors unless absolutely necessary, which means they do not benefit as much from specialists as other plants.

The history books will bear out the correlation between trade unions and rising wages. Starvation wages are very rare in Britain, now, yes. They aren't as rare in countries with much lower union presences, by the way.



You will struggle to find a detailed history of trade unions that isn't written by some kind of left winger because other historians don't consider it a subject worthy of investigation. This seems to me to be unfortunate but the truth- for the same reason that you will often find industrial relations departments to be full of left wingers- nobody else gives a shit. That said, can we do away with the assumption that left wingers are incapable of objective scholarship. If you read Thompson - The Making of the English Working Classes, you will not be having the wool pulled over your eyes, you will have a balanced and detailed account of the facts that then goes on to argue in favour of a specific interpretation of them. i.e. what history should be. If you have to wait to find someone who is strictly "neutral" on the issue they are writing about you will be waiting donkey's years.



Unions do make it harder for people to be fired and for the company to do what they want without consultation with the staff, this is true.

Depending on the relationship between employer and union the effects on productivity (if they are significant) can be mitigated by increased staff discipline, a better relationship, staff development, and a formalised bargaining framework which can be good news for everybody.

http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals. ... w=abstract

e.g., trade unions can mean that different pay structures can be better implemented

http://www.dspace.cam.ac.uk/bitstream/1 ... pe0323.pdf

The effect of union recognition on productivity is dependent on various contextual factors. Now, I don't want to be presumptuous so please tell me more. But I would guess that, seeing as how only one of 14 branches is unionised, it was an uphill struggle for the workers in that firm to unionise? That in turn would suggest something else- that there was a significantly higher level of antagonism between workers and management at that site than at the other 13... Antagonistic relationships will lead to productivity decreases union or not.

If this is wild and inaccurate speculation, fair enough- I don't really want to get into some pointless row about some company I've never been in. I'm just saying that union resistance to management isn't necessarily just an example of truculent workers.

I know companies that pay trade unions substantial sums of money to organise their workplaces. The reason being that the union can contribute to quicker resolutions of disputes, invaluable support on technical issues, and also it can give the company much more legitimacy and a reputation for better practice.

I'm not too upset with the way the world is currently, it seems to be working- except for a few remnants of outdated thinking that need to be abolished in the current zeitgeist.
I want the decriminalization of consumption of all drugs and the legalization of marijuana; the legalization of prostitution; the banishment of religion in the public sphere (schools, jobs, government, etc); and I want Americans to finally realize how inferior they are to Europeans.

Despite this zany rewriting of history you refer to, I'll have to finally read this book, since it's becoming your answer to every question ever. Incidentally, I like how that one little bit about trade unions is the only thing you moan about. If I let you have them in order to get the rest through, I'd be happy.



Marijuana's not a drug?

Heh, not really my answer to anything, just essential reading for anyone wanting to know more about how and why trade unions emerged in this country. Not that it's a magic bullet to make everyone else realise they are wrong, it's just the best of several books on the subject and the most widely admired in non-leftist circles.

It's quite dry and academic at times though- if you want something less rigorous but more immediately readable and equally as inspiring, you should read Mason - Live Working or Die Fighting.

Some of your list is kinda odd. I mean when asked what you want the world to be like- an open invitation to blissful speculation- you say "closer partnership between public and private in the NHS", which is a bit like a New Labour manifesto promise circa 2005.

Heh, I suppose. It was off-the-cuff and sensible (most of it, anyways) so I didn't set my aims too high.