Presumably they’ve ruled out prisons in northern European countries perceived to be too humane; imagine the Sun/Daily Mail thundering about “hardworking taxpayers’ money spent to give criminal scum holidays in luxury Finnish prisons”, along with a photo of a cell that looks vastly better than the typical London rental opportunity. So I’m guessing they’ll be asking around, say, Turkey, Morocco and various former Soviet republics. Possibly the US as well, though that may involve leaving the ECHR.
I don’t see how this is much different from u.s. police. You could easily be charged with “assaulting a police officer” in the u.s. if a cop wanted to be a jackass. You could get thrown in jail for months or years until it gets sorted out even if you are found not guilty.
Yes, that’s why we should always call it out in all forms about how any person of authority can extort people and the importance in ensuring it doesn’t happen.
The crazy thing here is that she wasn’t even traveling to Dubai. It was a layover! And all she wanted was help putting on some sort of medical device they made her remove. The whole thing was basically an extortion scheme.
I’m no economist, but I’m pretty sure what we have now is 100% capitalism. It’s exactly how many people predicted capitalism would look like if given enough time.
Many years ago, a libertarian classmate asked me how I think the world would look like if corporations were unregulated. I told him (again, without being an economist) that corporations would probably become the new countries, that they would own everything like monarchs used to, as a few corporations monopolized everything. (I still find his answer funny: “And wouldn’t that be better?”. I just told him “Of course not!” thinking “WTF?”).
My point is that this idea that the current system is “worse than capitalism” and “capitalism is dead”, stems from some kind of idealization of what capitalism is supposed to be like, and not from the realities that many people have been pointing out throughout the XX and XXI centuries about how capitalism works and what its end-goal is. This is exactly what capitalism looks like. “Technofeudalism” seems like yet another way of not addressing the issue, like when people say “the problem is not capitalism! it’s crony capitalism!”. As if there is some form of capitalism that has ever put people over money.
Also:
It might look like a market, but Varoufakis says it’s anything but. Jeff (Bezos, the owner of Amazon) doesn’t produce capital, he argues. He charges rent. Which isn’t capitalism, it’s feudalism.
Again, I’m no economist, so someone correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure the capitalists (i.e. the owners of the means of production) have never produced capital. The workers do. The capitalist have always taken the profits of their worker’s labour in exchange for using those means of production. You could call that “charging rent”.
There is nothing new about what’s going on right now, except on the superficial level, the specific tech that’s being used to achieve the monopolistic goals of any corporation. Given enough time, the inevitable concentration of power that capitalism leads to, will always look like feudalism.
I still find his answer funny: “And wouldn’t that be better?”
libertarians man, I swear
feels like every other one I meet just repeats what the rest of them say without even thinking about it. Reminds me of the video I saw where a leading libertarian presidential candidate said he supported driver’s licenses and the entire room booed him.
Every libertarian I’ve ever met is convinced that actors will somehow be way more rational and benevolent when laissez-faire economics allows the market to act freely, as though ‘zero regulations’ is not already the goal of every major corporation, in order to more completely fuck over everyone they touch.
Either that, or they’re convinced they’re a good enough prepper to avoid being killed or captured by the inevitable PMC armies that arise from the libertarian apocalypse.
Every libertarian I’ve ever met is convinced that actors will somehow be way more rational and benevolent when laissez-faire economics allows the market to act freely
But then they’ll use the exact opposite reason as to why forms of socialism won’t work; that people are selfish, greedy and exploitive.
From a humanitarian standpoint, I feel we needn’t make it more emotionally difficult for anyone. Struggling just to get medical care should not be required.
theguardian.com
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