OT: EV Charging Stations Stripped of Copper Cables

Pull the other leg. You were trying to be patronising about your own imagined technical expertise, and got what you deserved.

I don't think I'll ever understand you Communists.

Since you can't even identify them correctly, that isn't any surprise. If you are trying to label me as a communist, you are being remarkably stupid, even for you. From time to time I get to remind the qroup that I'm a democratic socialist - while Communists are autocratic socialists, and got slung out of the International Socialist movements in 1871, when Karl Marx's silly ideas about "the leading role" of the party were rejected.

Mikhail Bakunin's famous quote dates from that period

I do post contemptuous comments about contemptible people. They don't constitute the bulk of my output, but John Larkin only reads stuff about him, and regards anything less than fulsome flattery and awed admiration as contempt.

I've had nice things to say about Phil Hobbs and Piglet, amongst others, but John won't have read them.

Very kind of you! But a small point - the CP was, theoretically, a socialist bridge to communism. Nobody - especially Marx - know what communism would be in detail - simply that the process of revolutionary socialism would put an end to capitalism for the right reasons.

So history might suggest :-)

The problem is that the communist party was a authoritarian bridge to socialism - and authoritarian implies that was going to be a small group telling rest of the population how to be socialist. Any theory that imagines that that is every going to work is clearly based on false premises - as Bakunin clearly and prophetically pointed out.

Marx had a lot of brilliant insights into economics, but he was less brilliant at practical politics.

In other words, power corrupts.

Which means that governments are dynamically unstable, and a long-term-democratic society is a remarkable thing.

Why end "capitalism"? Economic and intellectual plualism works.

Some governments are dynamically unstable. Proportional representation (in places like Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands) seems to lead to multi-party democracy, and coalition governments. This leads to incremental change and much more stable administration.

Australia settled for a single transferable vote and single member constituencies in the lower house, and it doesn't work as well.

Nobody wants to end capitalism - but everybody recognises the need to regulate it. America - with it's anti-trust legislation - was the first to recognise the necessity, but it failed to take it anything like far enough. Others have done better.

Possibly wiser to bury it in a lava flow (so that it becomes encased in rock) but only if the volcano can be relied upon to continue gentle euptions and not suddenly explode. and the rock seals well.

It's a waste being polite to Sloman. His only mode is sneering contempt.

There, FIFY.

Sorry, Bill, but I'm not buying it. You're a bit too familiar with Karl Marx for my liking. Something of a giveaway IMV. I've often thought about blowing up his headstone which is in Highgate Cemetary IIRC. Drill a half inch hole in the top of his head one dark night, pour a load of amatol in there and attach a blasting cap. BAMMM!!!! LOL! :-D Sadly that'll never happen now I no longer live in London so it'll no doubt be one of my main regrets in life when I'm finally about to pop my cloggs.

So does a mixed economy of both private enterprise and publicly-owned bodies if the size of the state sector can be constrained. Unfortunately, states have a tendency to grow themselves if not kept in strict check and this is in large part responsible for the truly *vast* debt burden now carried on the back of so many Western countries.

There's a race between government getting bigger and wasting ever more resources, and technology making us more productive to support all that waste.

I was just talking to a fellow old fogey (who is literally a Fellow) and we agree that young people are getting stupider, so the productivity increase probably can't keep up.

Yes, the debt will have consequences too. It keeps increasing and can never be paid back. Economists keep getting stupider too.

Traditionally, the solution for that problem has always been devaluation or rampant inflation, or both. Either way, it's a form of gross theft.

Jeroen Belleman

Because it's inefficient, immoral, exploitative, and thrives on social injustice and inequality.

Not sure that holds on a number of levels - technology was supposed to result in a 3 day week and prosperity for all when I was growing up in the 60s.

And I've just come across Jevons paradox while studying retrofit. The notion that as technology increases efficiency and reduces cost, a sort of dumb reaction happens, where people tend to consume more - 'leave the heating on - it's an ASHP and hardly using any electricity' type of thing. Apparently it's quite common in energy efficient homes.

Maybe we're all just idiots and there's nothing to be done :-)

The reliable investment seems to be land and housing, which will probably survive inflation.

Unless property taxes become ruinous.

Speek fur youre selfs!

That's one factor, another is the enormous increase in regulations since the Sixties. Not only is government much larger, but private businesses must employ or hire accountants, compliance officers and other lawyers to keep the directors out of jail. The work force has to a large degree shifted from productive work to non-productive work.

And of course the birth rate has been greatly reduced, meaning that retiring productive workers are not being fully replaced. Add in the large increase in graduates, who feel they are too well educated to do anything involved with making stuff or maintaining their country's infrastructure, and it's a wonder anything useful gets done today. Also add a mature welfare state, which will eventually consume all production.

Starting a business is horrible. You need a zillion registrations and businesses licenses, local and state and federal. You need a lawyer (at $500/hour) and an accountant and a business manager, three overhead people for one working employee. And a Board of Directors and insurance for them.

Not to mention product liability insurance, UL and FCC and CE compliance, ITAR and stuff.

U.K. WORKFORCE STATISTICS ( or Who does all the work ? )

United Kingdom population 65,925,000 Unemployed - 3,292,610 People remaining to do all the work 52,632,390

Children under the age of 16 -23,678,943 People remaining to do all the work 38,953,447

College and university students - 7,987,370 People remaining to do all the work 30,966,077

Housewives and pregnant mothers - 5,773,211 People remaining to do all the work 25,192,866

Retired & Old age pensioners - 9,520,720 People remaining to do all the work 15,672,146

People in hospitals and off work due to ill health - 4,836,300 People remaining to do all the work 10,835,846

Criminals in prisons and institutions - 2,466,342 People remaining to do all the work 8,369,504

Persons serving in the armed forces - 6,956,224 People remaining to do all the work 1,413,280

People working abroad - 1,413,279 People remaining to do all the work 1

(joke)

Well, to be fair, that phenomenon is confined to the West and is due to the dogmatic insistence of Leftists that all are equal and must be educated accordingly. So the classes grind away at the speed of the slowest ship in the convoy ("no child left behind" - George Bush Jr - RINO). The brighter children in the class are thus dumbed down at best (at worst, switch off altogether and start sniffing glue) and grade inflation is employed to fudge the facts and make it appear that everything's fine when it most assuredly isn't. This is definitely NOT happening in countries like China and that is why they're kicking our arses and have been for some time.

"Top economists" are no different from the "top climate scientists" - they're paid handsomely for parroting whatever the Globalists at the WEF tell them.