(no subject)

[johnny9fingers]

I was speaking to Nick yesterday.

He told me approximately 8% of China's GDP is spent on infrastructure. In terms of total tax revenues this must be somewhere between 30 and 40%.

Now China is a 'Planned Economy' with all the concommitant disadvantages in terms of personal freedom - they can do this sort of thing without being voted out - disagree and you really don't have a good time.

But I do begin to wonder, how much personal freedom do we in the west retain?
And given the diminishing differences between the two forms of government, wouldn't we be better off with clever and able planners; folk who can think of the problems we may face and have good contingency plans in place, rather than the dreck we have leading us now.

Or is that a synthetic point too far?

Comments

Market chaos v. planned economy

[ankh156.livejournal.com]

I can't say I'm a big fan of maoism ("political power comes from the barrel of a gun") nor stalinism ("one murder is a crime, a million murders is a statistic"), but there's something nasty and dangerously anarchic about free market capitalism. Given all our options are fatally flawed, it strikes me that the situation is fairly simple to portray : we're up Shit Creek without a paddle.

It was ever thus...

My motto ?

Semper in fimo, sed infimum mutandur.

If you can't work it out I'll translate it for you. (Have a go.)

Re: Market chaos v. planned economy

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

Fimo...I'll have to look it up...
Always (or ever) in **** but with/of/to smallest/least variety (change)? It's a long time since Latin O level, sunshine, and more than six years since I've been in a relationship with a woman to keep me on my toes about this sort of thing, and even that was part-time.
My guess (as a coloquialism would be) bolloxed/crap.
Some Poet wrote that, didn't they...it rings a bell of an ancient kind.
My contruing is well out of practice, and I'm not going to dig out Lewis and Short.....oh dear.

Translation :

[ankh156.livejournal.com]

Always in the shit, but the depth varies.

Universally true of my life.

I had a Teeshirt printed with that across it, and one day when walking through Trinity College a don saw it and burst out laughing. ("Fimo" ('shit') is a colloquialism from the middle ages.)

Talking of Cambridge, a cloistered tale of zoophilia :

There was a young grad from St John's
Found alone in his rooms with some swans.
A kindly old porter
Said "I'll go and fetch my daughter,
Them swans is reserved for the dons !"

Re: Translation :

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

Cambridge college porters are notorious for charging too much for their daughters. Hahaha.
Trinity's a good college. My godfather was there as was my best friend.
I've heard that limerick about St John's Oxford too....I think it must be the only rhyme that springs to mind.

[vlion.livejournal.com]

Well, the US has city planners.

I'm gonna throw out a guess as to why the bridge failed: it would have been a political disaster to close the bridge for repairs, and the beaurocrat made a decision to save his job instead of acting with integrity.

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

City planners are odd beasts. A civil engineering inspectorate is surely a requirement given the huge number of engineering work in the infrastructure. If a military bridge had failed there would be a court of enquiry, and blame would be attached. There would be one single part of the organisation who would have shouldered the responsibility for the bridge being sound.
There seems little accountability in the present organisational structure, or at least little I can appreciate with my search facilities, but this could be due to ignorance.
I suppose some mayor or other will find the buck stopping on his/her desk. I hope he/she read the reports and tried to do something, whether anything could be done or not.
Anyway, from here on in, no-one will be able to save their job by letting a bridge collapse.
I just wish we hadn't needed deaths to provide the impetus for such a change.

[winterlion.livejournal.com]

It's a good question.
"representative democracy" is supposed to be a solution but all too often places incompetent people at the helm.

Honestly, I wouldn't mind seeing some much more extreme penalties for politicians who accept bribes.

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

True, but you should see what the Chinese do to senior management folk who either try to screw the system, or cut corners.
I think they executed a couple recently.

If the Enron guys had been Chinese....
Or this Bridge inspector....

Not that I'm vindictive on my own behalf, you understand.
Now if the US had in place the sort of extradition treaty that they demanded from the UK....