Ending world poverty

[tinfoilhat]

Some form of global democracy. A bit like they do now, but much more easily.

 

And democracy works really well everywhere;);)

[chem1st]

What if my floods or is otherwise rubbish? Do I get a rebate? Borrow someone else's land?

 

You haven't been issued a small plot. if you choose to rent one, you insure it.

 

Currently the global population is going up by around 8% a decade. In you utopia I'm sure it will still keep going up at that rate at least. In ten years time after your revolution what are going to do with a 10% increase in population? Do I give up 10% of my land (which maybe a swamp/desert/cess pit at this point).

You don't have a proportion of the land, you a proportion of the rental pie.

 

Our global government would control it with guns and fear. I cannot even begin to think how this pipedream could exist without some very robust enforcement.

 

Land ownership is already enforced with violence to ensure individuals own it. Be much easier to use violence to ensure community ownership.

[tzijlstra]

A very good post. Capitalism is a twisted version of its former self. At the crash, at least one bank should have been left to fail - capitalisms natural selection. Houses shouldn't be too expensive for professional people to buy. It's all gone a bit wrong.

 

All banks should have been left to fail. We are heading for a massive period of stagnation (like Japan has had for over 20 years now) due to the decision to save them with public money.

 

The problem with capitalism now is that it is becoming clearer and clearer that there is a ponzi scheme being played by the banks (and there still is). They gamble billions and billions of pounds every day on 'futures' and 'options' which aren't representing any intrinsic value, it's like bookies exchanging their books with each other all the time, blindfolded, hoping they know something that someone else doesn't but not knowing how relevant that might be.

[chem1st]

Welcome to the socialist state of Sheffield.

 

There isn't half some rubbish being touted in this thread.

 

1. Can someone explain that if land for everybody is the answer, how come large swathes of it are vacated in Scotland alone? This highlands and islands have been struggling with a drain of young people to the effects of urbanisation for decades and it is getting worse, not better.

Highland clearance, private ownership being subsidised with CAP benefits, turning land in Scotland into financial instruments which are actually traded.

 

2. The states where poverty is mostly eradicated are those states that have a high degree of free market combined with a government that takes its duty of care seriously (ie. most of Europe).

You can have a free market and communal ownership. We currently have a tightly controlled market and direct ownership by a single being. t'crown.

 

 

3. China still has enormous poverty, it also has communal land-laws - in other words, any one entity other than the state can not own land. They only started climbing out of their self-dug hole of despair when Deng Xiaoping realised that even if this was the case, they would still need to let 'a chosen few' exploit the communal land to ensure inward investment and to optimise returns on that communal land.

 

Land reform there is oft cited for their rapid growth and increase in living standards, the reduction of poverty.

 

4. Look at other examples in the past: The USSR failed, Cuba failed, North Korea fails miserably. Even more gentle socialist states (Portugal technically is a socialist but non-marxist state for example) have a hard time being thoroughly socialist. Planned economies have a tendency to become over bureaucratised, there is no cleansing mechanism and corruption in such systems (well documented even by USSR sources) is rife, there is no way to avoid it.

 

It is great that you want to end world poverty, truly noble.

 

That is all it is though.

 

Instead of the land being owned by the crown and the crown receiving rent, it would be owned by the community and rents used to fund citizens income and welfare state in case of UK, can also be done globally.

 

People would still be free to pay £500 000+ for a pre WW1 2 up 2 down in some god forsaken ghetto near London freehold tenancy and to trade it if they so wished.

 

People would still be able to 'own' tenures in the way they do now, just that they'd have to pay the ground rent to the communal pie, rather than to some aristocratic rentier.

 

---------- Post added 16-09-2014 at 00:27 ----------

 

A very good post. Capitalism is a twisted version of its former self. At the crash, at least one bank should have been left to fail - capitalisms natural selection. Houses shouldn't be too expensive for professional people to buy. It's all gone a bit wrong.

 

For capitalism to work there must be distinction between land, capital and labour.

 

Labour must be allowed to use land to create capital.

 

And a tax on land is the fairest of them all. Effectively nationalised land, where people pay rent to the state to occupy and use land - land tax.

 

Freedom to build, freedom to grow food.

 

We don't have that though, we have a perverse socialism for the wealthiest landowners, where they dominate the economy, but we distort it further by taxing labour and capital to further subsidise land and landowners.

[firemanbob]

Some form of global democracy. A bit like they do now, but much more easily.

 

So like I said earlier, the corrupt and powerful would control it.

 

---------- Post added 16-09-2014 at 06:56 ----------

 

You haven't been issued a small plot. if you choose to rent one, you insure it.

 

 

You don't have a proportion of the land, you a proportion of the rental pie.

 

 

 

Land ownership is already enforced with violence to ensure individuals own it. Be much easier to use violence to ensure community ownership.

 

So I could choose to rent a plot and the rent would be split equally between everyone, I could work my fingers to the bone and I would be taxed so that everyone can have a share of the wealth I generate. Meanwhile the lazy just sit back enjoy the benefits of my hard work. Nice plan.

Edited September 16, 2014 by firemanbob

[Anna B]

Africa was occupied by Humans for thousands of years before the UK was occupied by humans, they have had plenty of time to build their own infrastructure with their own resources. We can't even afford to maintain the infrastructure we have and you think we should cut what we spend so that we can build infrastructure for other people.

 

According to you, 1% of the population own £110 Trillion pounds.

 

This sum is simply beyond the imagination of most people, and certainly beyond the entire economy of many countries. Much of it has been aquired at the expense of other people.

 

It's about time they shared it.

 

Either through taxes, or phillanthropy some of it should be used in a co-ordinated way to do some serious good. They'll still have more than enough left over for yachts and mansions.

 

I know some wealthy people do give, Bill Gates for example, and his foundation to wipe out serious disease in Africa, and there's lots of giving here and there, (much more so in America, than here,) but it's not enough while there are still people in the world dying of starvation and with no access to clean water.

 

As for your rather naive statement about Africa having had time to build their own economy, they have consistently had their resources and people plundered (and continue to do so) by those who now represent the 1%.

You only have to look at the slave trade, and, for example, the modern diamond trade, to see how they have been exploited.

 

The 1% deliberately keep the rest of the world poor.

Edited September 16, 2014 by Anna B

[firemanbob]

According to you, 1% of the population own £110 Trillion pounds.

 

This sum is simply beyond the imagination of most people, and certainly beyond the entire economy of many countries. Much of it has been aquired at the expense of other people.

 

It's about time they shared it.

 

 

And when the wealth of the world is shared out equally between 7,000,000,000 people the majority of the UK population would be worse off.

[chem1st]

So like I said earlier, the corrupt and powerful would control it.

 

---------- Post added 16-09-2014 at 06:56 ----------

 

No.

 

Although that could happen if the decent stood y and let them.

 

So I could choose to rent a plot and the rent would be split equally between everyone, I could work my fingers to the bone and I would be taxed so that everyone can have a share of the wealth I generate. Meanwhile the lazy just sit back enjoy the benefits of my hard work. Nice plan.

 

Better the rent to go to all than a landlord as it does now. Everybody would benefit from your hard work rather than just one lazy person.

[firemanbob]

No.

 

Although that could happen if the decent stood y and let them.

 

 

 

Better the rent to go to all than a landlord as it does now. Everybody would benefit from your hard work rather than just one lazy person.

 

I prefer just my family to benefit from my hard work and I don't mind other hard workers benefiting from their hard work, I don't see why the lazy should benefit from the hard work of others. And whilst you are dividing the planet equally will all other life forms get their share?

[tinfoilhat]

I prefer just my family to benefit from my hard work and I don't mind other hard workers benefiting from their hard work, I don't see why the lazy should benefit from the hard work of others. And whilst you are dividing the planet equally will all other life forms get their share?

 

The environment seldom does well under chem1sts schemes.