Monday, October 13, 2008

Socialism By The Backdoor

BBC NEWS | Business | UK banks' £37bn bail-out unveiled
Taxpayers will own about 60% of RBS and 40% of the merged Lloyds TSB and HBOS.
OH RIGHT. So socialism is evil, we can't have the government owning and running the banks...except when capitalism is imploding in on itself and we realise it's the only sensible option.

I'm slightly confused about this whole situation because as a Socialist, I actually think yes the government should nationalise the banks (and the railways, water, energy, schools, hospitals, healthcare), just not really in this half arsed way. But on the other hand, as a lifetime hater of capitalism a part of me wishes the government would just leave the bastards to it and let them burn in the fire they started. So to speak. Obviously this would be terrible not only for the bank managers but for the general public who have bills to pay, but I believe the choices are between a slow, long and drawn out end to our current financial infrastructure, or a sudden shock to the system where reality is allowed to rear its head, and we all face the consequences of the last few decades of abnormal growth.

Unfortunately though people would not, understandably, be able to cope with that. Someone said to me the other day, would I rather that the human race hadn't made such progress (that is brought about the competition in capitalism etc etc), well I would rather the human race hadn't begun to live beyond it's means. It's funny how two things have happened, people have borrowed more from the banks than really exists, in exactly the same way that we have used up more resources from the earth than actually exist. The value of every company in the world is based on how it is expected to perform in the future, and this is based on the assumption that there will always be oil and fuel to power the various infrastructures that these companies rely on. This is such a cliched and well known argument that I can see why the capitalists would have been bored of hearing it in recent years, but after this market crash I fail to see how they can continue to ignore this basic problem.

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