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http://www.ukresults.net/08sep.html#penningtonQuote:
Originally Posted by Roadrunner
If you haven't sorted it by weekend, you could always run this! The Prize Money should keep you going a few days.
That's as long as someone will sub you the entry fee:D
Exactly! Good stuff Witton.Quote:
Originally Posted by witton Park
Just want to mention something on the FSA. I am against regulations, all regulations and here's why:Quote:
Originally Posted by Witton Park
About a week ago a top financier was on Hard Talk( a BBC news program on Sky). He said the FSA couldn't regulate the banking sector, because they couldn't understand it. It was too complex.
They weren't the only ones. The bloke on the show didn't understand it either. In fact he said hardly anyone understood what was going on. Loans and investments with big names and pages and pages of information.
What was understood was that it couldn't last. There was too much money going out to too many people.
So we were paying taxes to regulate the banking sector and it couldn't be regulated. So more waste and also the illusion we were being protected.
With the pound tied to gold the markets wouldn't need regulation
I suspect I'll not be the only forumite who finds your thinking on China naive to the point of stupidity and hope I'm not the only one who thinks you using the phrase, 'primitive cavemen', sickening!Quote:
Originally Posted by christopher leigh
Give me a break Derby. Tell us why it's naive?Quote:
Originally Posted by Derby Tup
The way it's going over here, we'll be getting Chinese investors coming over here to invest in manufacturing plants
- taking advantage of the cheap labour force!
And I'm not joking - a shoe factory in Fuzhou recently told me that they were having to pay some of the sewing machinists wages that would be close to the UK minimum wage over here, such is the shortage of skilled workers in the Chinese industrial areas.
The China comment may be naive, but it could be taken two ways.Quote:
Originally Posted by Derby Tup
1. Of course China is relavant to the current economic problems. The huge growth there in a country with 25% of the worls's population has put so much pressure on the world's resources. The pressure on Oil, Steel, Coal etc - even items such as rubber is incredible and these commodities have seen huge increases in price over the last 3 - 5 years.
Remember $10 a barrel?
2. IT isn't relevant. CHina has gorn as it was the natural factory of the world - if it hadn't have been - somewhere else would have been - such as Africa etc.
In fact China will soon start to lose as it is becoming difficult to source from in som instances.
DT - I just think that sometimes we shouldn't get too sickened by such terms.Quote:
Originally Posted by Derby Tup
I have young white youths in my neck of the woods I often refer to as Pond Life, Neanderthals etc - basically just terms to describe the local useless nob-heads that blight our society.
I think it is fair to say that this and other countruies have been assisting quite powerful Pond-Life in other countries around the world in the name of "Aid"
but in fact have been making the life of the poor sods on the ground a misery, rather than helping.
Much of the government "Aid" dished out is poorly targetted at thugs and villains, who seem to have a very nice life thank you.
Mugabe certainly has some dapper suits!
"primitive cavemen" Christopher? You're in danger of losing respect. If you start talking like that you'll find yourself surrounded by shouting rednecks slapping you on the back and respectable people won't be fighting through them to get near you.
And by the way, with regard to "primitive", what is gold? Just stuff. Only worth what people agree it's worth. No intrinsic value at all. More like fantasy capital. It can just as easily turn into a floating anchor if people stop believing it's heavy.
China is creating an interesting situation at present. For several years we've seen them selling commodity goods including clothes and household goods at below actual global cost because of low labour costs but also importantly, their government's subsidies. As you point out WP this is changing. I travel the world selling chemicals and manufacturing is becoming more and more itinerant. The time it stays in one place is getting shorter too as employees expectation rise and rise more quicklyQuote:
Originally Posted by Witton Park
China has to compete on the market for it's resources(Oil, metals etc) just like all other countries do. The demand will push up prices to a point, but then the demand will decrease. In other words everything has its price.Quote:
Originally Posted by Witton Park
BUT if governments start printing money out of step with economic growth (production), to pay for things, then the price of goods must rise. Hence the rapid rise in commodities.
There are other political factors as well(wars etc), but the main reason for rapid price rises is government borrowing. That's why our government is to blame.
But it's not just governents, it's individuals who borrow money. The credit crunch came on the back of a prolonged period of economic growth fuelled largely by credit. So, in fact we're all to blame (except me, as I don't have a mortgage or a credit card :p).Quote:
Originally Posted by christopher leigh
All respectable people know that Mugabe and others like him are primitive cavemen.Quote:
Originally Posted by Guick Dotto
Guick nothing that exists has intrinsic value including gold. Value is that which one acts to gain/keep. Since people desire(value) gold it therefore has a value to them. That's why when currencies fail gold is king.
Yes but it's the low interest rates prompted by huge credit expansion that makes people take on loans. With a gold standard money was tied. In other words you couldn't just print bits of paper(cash) unless your gold reserves had increased.Quote:
Originally Posted by noel
Bank managers could only loan money to the most productive enterprises. Since they were productive, the high interest payments were paid back rapidly and so the banks could make further loans. If the businesses failed then the banks lost gold and hence their lending capacity.
No one can print gold!
There are different kinds of value: to a hungry man it's irrelevant whether a bowl of rice is a wooden bowl or a golden bowl in fact the bowl is largely irrelevant altogether as long as he can get the rice to his mouth without spilling any on the ground.
If you mend a broken chair you are adding value to it; if you cover the broken chair in gold leaf you are not.
Maybe I'm talking about a hierarchy of values. A warm overcoat from the charity shop for a quid is at the top and a flimsy feminine haute couture item for £2000 is at the bottom.
You're divorcing value from valuer. A mended chair is not a value to someone bedbound, unless he has visitors. The chair with gold on though may be an added attraction to the room he is in.Quote:
Originally Posted by Guick Dotto
A warm overcoat may be a value to someone living in freezing conditions, even if it is a pound, but not to someone living on the equator.
Even with a hierachy of values you have to ask who's hierachy? Importance can only have meaning in an individual sense.
Actually a broken chair coloured gold would probably win the Turner Prize and be worth a fortune!
But are you saying that we can only create value with our imaginations and that we cannot distinguish rationally between such value and intrinsic worth.
Fruit Pastilles have been a grossly undervalued confectionery for years & are simply reaching their true market value.Quote:
Originally Posted by christopher leigh
I think they've probably peeked though now.Quote:
Originally Posted by Doonhamer
I'd get out of them if I were you.
Word is that cream soda is cert
http://www.aquarterof.co.uk/cream-so...oda-p-370.html
There are physical and spiritual values depending on one's standard of value and sometimes these clash. For instance humans require food and water and most of us recognise this. For anorexics though food is the enemy because death is their standard of value. Not a sudden death but a long, painful, drawn out death.Quote:
Originally Posted by Guick Dotto
Each of us has physical and spiritual needs and to satisfy those needs we have to discover values. The values you discover depend on what's important to you. If what you seek isn't something that furthers your physical or spiritual life then it can't be a value.
Social Solipsism. You refuse to acknowledge "intrinsic".
I deny it Guick. If things didn't exist there couldn't be such a thing as conciousness. The idea that conciousness is primary is an excuse for subjectivism, and I'm not promoting that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Guick Dotto
So: how many pebbles for a pig?
How big's the pig and how big are the pebbles?Quote:
Originally Posted by Grouse
Sort of pig sized and errr... pebble sized:D.
Are you a Pig Farmer or a buyer with a stash of pebbles?Quote:
Originally Posted by Grouse
How big do you think it is? And what colour are the pebbles?Quote:
Originally Posted by dominion
What do you deny? That your philosophy/economics is "self" centred or that you have no use for the word "intrinsic"?Quote:
Originally Posted by christopher leigh
Guick is it your position that good and evil exist in certain things or actions(intrinsicism)?Quote:
Originally Posted by Guick Dotto
A mouthful of rice is good for a malnourished man. The growing, giving, boiling, chewing , swallowing and metabolising thereof: all good.
For a clinically obese man (who's already had his dinner): all bad.
A chair is good but clearly not if you smash it over an innocent man's head, in which case it is an object to be avoided at all costs by the innocent man. Things and actions are imbued with good and evil depending on circumstances; obviously. However, we can usefully wriggle back out of this blind alley and agree, on a less rareified plane, that food is good, warmth is good, laughter is good etc and that poison, hypothermia, lies are bad. In order to be able to come to agreement we need to be able to agree about a common language in which things are what they seem. Otherwise we are only clearing the stage for an endless debate.
Intrinsic value is a notion that may be a useful pivot in the debate.
You describe it.
You can still barter in Hayfield
Grouse can be used to trade all sorts of things
Hey: make me an offer, big boy.;).
Value is a relationship between the value and valuer. Without living things there cannot be any values. A rock in itself is neither good nor evil. It has no intrinsic value. Only when a living being finds a purpose for it does it become a value. It's my understanding that if you say food is intrinsically good and all animal and bacteria life came to an end, the food would still be good. Good for who though?Quote:
Originally Posted by Guick Dotto
One of the problems with the laws in the bible is the idea that certain actions are intrinsically good or evil e.g. lying. But I can think of situations where lying is moral.
If something is intrinsically good then it follows that others won't hesitate to force it on you.
Let's remember the title of the thread. I'm not really wanting to talk about the value of objects on the moon. Surely economics is wholly a human area of activity. Within that context what is intrinsically valuable?
In a Biblical context the whole point of the Garden of Eden story is that the "fruit" has no value of its own. It is the actions of the humans concerning it which give it any significance at all.
I think I am suggesting that we need to rediscover "real" value and base our economic transactions on that.
Does CL's line of thinking imply that there is not such a thing as 'real' value?
Of course not. You exist don't you grouse?:)Quote:
Originally Posted by Grouse
We have it's called capitalism. Any person can go onto the open market and purchase THEIR values.Quote:
Originally Posted by Guick Dotto
Back on the banking issue things are looking bad. Eric Daniels of Lloyds TSB pointed out that the banking disaster was caused by central banks(government) pumping too much liquidity into the markets. In other words he said "they were printing money." (His interview may still be on Sky news web site.)
Gordon Brown though was blaming the banks, and I could see from the look on his face that he didn't believe what he was saying.
Expect a bit of a lull before things really get bad. Sad to say.
Surely it's both? Government printed the money, but the banks gave it out to people who couldn't pay it back.
Brown and Greenspan where the biggest pair of idiots ever to be given powerQuote:
Originally Posted by christopher leigh
I mean Brown gave our bloody gold away for naff all ( twat_) :mad: