theory =mate theory cost's big money and lives ruined.i'm all for letting people go as long as they sign a waver to public health or protection from the results of their actions
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theory =mate theory cost's big money and lives ruined.i'm all for letting people go as long as they sign a waver to public health or protection from the results of their actions
When you ban a substance that has any demand at all, you wash your hands of it & give up any hope of being able to control it.
Junkies & tweakers are already using despite any laws. I've seen no evidence that there's a chunk of the population who are just waiting for legalization so they can become junkies or tweakers. If the drugs are legalized, the risk factor goes away & the price drops. The profit margin on the black market is 100% every time it changes hands, & it changes hands a lot between manufacture & use. The price hike is exponential. The same people would be junkies & tweakers. The difference is that they would be able to maintain their habit with a menial job. They can function you know. Then we can focus on the assholes who are going to rob your house whether there's drugs involved or not.
my missus has to deal with these dick heads when they are high or fucking up
Russtafa, it sounds cynical to say no pain no gain, but at least if there was a strategy behind it people might give it a chance. I was burgled by a junkie couple a few years ago, incredibly they came back the next day for more. We couldn't get the dna from prints to send them to court, but they were in and out of the justice system anyway. My thoughts at the time were -here I am, opposed to NATO's campaign in Afghanistan, and someone who relies on the junk that makes it way from there via Pakistan and Turkey to the UK, robs me of my laptop and so on.
What is this madness? At the root, the junkie has to wake up one day and say I have had enough (Bubbles, in The Wire was my favourite character, the one person whose personal development changed profoundly as it was tracked across the entire series).
I used to work in a central London hospital where we had to deal with junkies on a regular basis. I remember one woman who came in for I think the fourth time in under a year, and died right there on the table -she was in her 30s, had silky blonde hair, and the most astonishing blue eyes -the rest of her body looked like creased paper. I never had much sentiment for people destroying their own lives, and even then we had schemes to help people get off the junk and make the transition to normal life. In spite of government cuts the schemes are still there, but since the 1970s the population of addicts has grown enormously. These people have real emotional problems, problems of personal identity and self-esteem, and its wrong that we should be victims of their need to score -but at the same time, we use our taxes to fund remedial options, but ultimately they have to make the move, whether its in prison, or voluntarily. Remove the programme and you make it worse for all.
Published on Monday, August 22, 2011 by the Guardian/UK Report: UK Riots Were Product of Consumerism
Analyst's report points to 'deeply flawed social ethos' and calls for a shift of emphasis 'from material to non-material values'
by Alex Hawkes
The recent riots in London and other big cities were the product of an "out-of-control consumerist ethos" which will have profound impacts for the UK economy, a leading City broker has said.
The report by Tullett Prebon warns: "The consumerist ethos, in which a materialist vision is both peddled and, for the vast majority, simultaneously ruled out by exclusion, has extremely damaging consequences, both social and economic."
The report, the firm's global head of research Tim Morgan, the report is part of a series one of in a series put out by in which the brokerage in which it analyses bigger issues for the UK. Last month, the broker Tullett Prebon issued a report on the UK's economic situation as part of Morgan's Project Armageddon.
The report details recommendations to resolve what it sees as a political and economic malaise: new role models, policies to encourage savings, the channeling of private investment into creating rather than inflating assets, and greater public investment.
"We conclude that the rioting reflects a deeply flawed economic and social ethos… recklessly borrowed consumption, the breakdown both of top-end accountability and of trust in institutions, and severe failings by governments over more than two decades."
The note pinpoints the philosophy behind the riots as consumerism, which is also "the underlying message of the advertising and marketing industries, and huge budgets are devoted to pushing a message which, updated from Déscartes, is: 'I buy, therefore I am' ".
A typical internet user sees a hundred adverts an hour, the report says, and the underlying message many receive is: "Here's the ideal. You can't have it." Accompanying this is an inflation of government and private debt, a key theme of Dr Morgan's other work.
"The economy has been subjected to repeated 'boom and bust' cycles, above all in property. The overall pattern has been that an over-consuming west has borrowed and spent the surpluses of the increasingly productive and under-consuming East.
"The dominant ethos of 'I buy, therefore I am' needs to be challenged by a shift of emphasis from material to non-material values. David Cameron's 'big society' project may contribute to the inculcation of more socially-oriented values, but much more will need to be done to challenge the out-of-control consumerist ethos.
"The government, too, needs to consume less, and invest more. Government spending has increased by more than 50% in real terms over the last decade, but public investment has languished. Saving needs to be encouraged, and private investment needs to be channeled into asset creation, not asset inflation."
Dr Morgan adds: "A young person who tries to become the next Alan Sugar or James Dyson is as likely to fall short as if he or she sets out to become the next global football star.
"But… failure to become the next Alan Sugar can still leave a person well equipped for a career in management, finance or accountancy. Failure to emulate James Dyson will leave the aspirant with useful engineering or technological skills."
© 2011 Guardian/UK
government handing out money and no jobs and no respect for anything .it can only get worse
I agree. Jobs, jobs, jobs.Quote:
Originally Posted by russtafa
The conservative economist Paul Craig Roberts said we have to stop offshoring jobs. Which is done to increase profits and boost CEO bonuses.
Adam Smith, over 200 yrs. ago, was concerned about the free movement of capital and the free import of goods. Saying it would harm England. But felt companies would have, what he called, a home bias. But we know that ain't true -- :)
Free capital movement (thanks in large part to Bill Clinton) has offshored millions of jobs to China. This has to stop. If we want a full recovery.
Corporations are not concerned with creating jobs. That's myth number 1. They're solely concerned, and this is mandated by law, to maximize profits and minimize costs. One of the biggest costs: High wages in America. So, well, ship those jobs to China.
So, it's good for corporate profits. But bad for American workers and the American economy.
Free movement of capital (and, too, guest workers) are harming the U.S. economy.
Guest workers are simply brought in (Microsoft is a big proponent of guest workers) to lower wages. Again, this hurts and harms the American workforce.
Ben, Capitalism does not respect national boundaries -before China became the 'workshop of the world' jobs that used to be done in USA or the UK (shipbuilding, for example) went to South Korea, which has established itself as the world class producer or offshore oil rigs, note: a specialist type of heavy engineering. Who in 1960 would have believed that South Korea could make more than a matchbox?
When Adam Smith was writing The Wealth of Nations, he was at the cutting edge of industrial capitalism -he was fascinated by the way machinery transformed human labour; but money -money is like water, it flows, or it stagnates. The jobs lost to Asia are gone, finito, Kaput. You will not get them back. You have to create something new, which is why I keep saying: America, capital rich, brain rich, resource rich...the solution is right there, beneath your feet, in your head.
capitalism without morals ruins countries .there must be strong government to rein them in or they will destroy society for their own ends
capitalism without morals ruins countries
At the height of Margaret Thatcher's popularity in the second half of the 1980s there was a fierce debate about this following a critical report by Church of England Bishops -one Thatcherite called Brian Griffiths even wrote a riposte called Monetarism and Morality: A Reply to the Bishops. The key difference between the 'hardliners' and the so-called One Nation Tories or believers in Compassionate or even Caring Capitalism, is often shaped by this issue of morality, where the judgement is made one way or the other on the creation of wealth but its limited distribution...