Oh and Posh and Becks and other people I know not about!  Oh Posh now says "having got me hair cropped I realised me nose is big"

Could have told you that <wry whistle emoticom>

Whole world gone crazy with Celebs.  Do you know and do you care who they are?

No, but Footballers Wives seem to keep the world turning whilst ordinary people suffer.

I don't think all the unemployed bankers will find another job in banking.  There won't be like-for-like jobs for everyone of that many people.  I suppose they'll cream off the top best performers.  They should be ok in finding other employment but I think the vast majority will find themselves overboard.

Who knows, nobody knows, that is the point of the black swan book, nobody can predict the future, however, i do think the bank of england should have been demanding regulation and tighter lending in the past, to avoid this mess.

This is not the first time this kind of thing has gone on.

It appears to me that a cycle is evident, regulation comes in after a crash and then people want to boost growth so they reduce regulation which produces a boom and then a crash.

I read in the paper about an estate agent who got a job with a top agency, bought a new house at the top of the market, put his kids in private school and then lost his job and now says he wants a 'safe' job in future. 

I have met people who live on council estates and have a milk tokens for their kids, it seems rather odd to me, to watch relatively well off people complaining about the free market when it turns against them.

banks closing is just like the corner shop closing, the demand for goods remains and some staff will get job with the competition,others will not, nobody knows

http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/

under a free market system, the ability to get cash and invest it wisely is rewarded, this has no direct link to being smart, as taking risks, being ruthless etc. could be more important

Richard,according to tom, in his book 'how to be free', before, when the church dominated society, life was organised more along community lines and greed seen as bad, i am not completely sure on this but the scarcity of labour did mean it was well paid in cheap rents, land etc. etc.



you may find these links of interest...

http://www.philosophynow.org/

http://www.rbphilo.com/

But Richard, I never said that it did "work", at least not in the kind of way that would incline anyone with any intelligence and sensitivity to want to hold it up as the only way to any kind of human salvation; that said, however, the reason why I think that it needs overhauling rather than destroying is that every other actual or potential economic system ever devised and/or implemented in practice in recent centuries has been wholly or to a substantial extent dependent and predicated upon some kind of application of capitalism, to the extent that all such systems have involved the creation, exchange, distribution, etc. of capital. I most certainly do not believe that the present ways are remotely acceptable, but I cannot imagine other than that any alternative system devised will almost inevitably have to involve some aspects of market capitalism unless it incorporates and maintains as a fundamental principle the total and permanently sustainable abolition of anything resembling what we understand as tradeable currency.

It probably would, but it usually happens just exactly the other way around, as worried capitalists successfully take refuge in the kinds of inflation in art prices that have traditionally accompanied stock market, property and other devaluations in difficult economic times like these; as someone once ruefully observed to me (whether or not with tongue in cheek I cannot say with certainty), I wouldn't dream of selling the Strad unless the FTSE drops below 3,000...

I'm sorry to return to a subject everyone was probably hoping had been exhausted, but I've been away and have only just caught up on this thread.

I'm very sorry to see Ian go (willingly or not) from this board.  I was never personally "insulted" by him, maybe I'd be writing something very different if I had, but I like to think I can be more measured than that.  Yes he could be offensive and off-putting, and he seemed to persist in attacking views - and people - simply because of who held them.  His writing could be obscure and lengthy or short and vicious.  It could get very upsetting and tedious.

But he was often able to introduce points of view no one had thought of previously.  Or he'd insist on greater rigour in our arguments - and has in the past explained that he did so with the best of intentions (although some personal issues with other members no doubt crept in at times).

I was always disappointed to see him resorting to attacks, or to accusations of attacks.  Yes he could be belligerent.  He seemed to delight in making people uncomfortable, at the very least.  But that's something I value, even if at times repelled by it.  He'd often resort to clichés about smug middle-class English complacency, but maybe he sometimes had a point.

And people always rose to his bait, and often responded with worse - or at least less circumlocutory - insults than he gave.  It was always an option to walk away, skim his posts rapidly (something I admit I often did with the longer ones), or skip them altogether.  You all knew a post from Ian was likely to be incendiary, or to cross a line where most of us would have hesitated.  Yet some people can never resist responding.

If he was a troll (and I'm not necessarily conceding that), some people here relished feeding him - perhaps in the hope of making this outcome inevitable.

Just one more thing - I'd like to make an observation in favour of the idea of the mods having different accounts when in their mod role.  I'm not quite sure what to make of Ollie's role in this, I think he probably handled it as well as anyone could.  But it would be useful for a person whom a moderator is supporting in an argument - and for the rest of us - to be able to distinguish if they are being supported in an "official" capacity or simply as a fellow-boarder.  I'm not going to trawl back through the thread to find it, but I seem to remember reading an aside from Baz about having a moderator's support.  I'm not sure if this was true at that point in the proceedings.  It seems to me, if there's an argument brewing, and a mod-poster supports party A over party B, it's understandably tempting for party A to believe "I have the mod's support so I'm going to persist."  The mods having separate accounts would clarify this potential ambiguity.  It also means a mod will have to be very clear in their own mind at what point in an argument they decide to weigh in "officially."


Back to your regularly scheduled programme.