conveniently omits to mention that Britain's wealth was mostly through conquering overseas colonies and selling Opium drugs throughout Asia. and that was mostly led by corporation (e.g. East India Company). Just like current American system - mostly controlled through the major big corporations. So either an authoritarian government takes charge or you leave it to Corporations to run the nation. Choose your poison.

Is not history no more and no less than a set of beliefs about what is imagined or supposed to have taken place in the past? - Self-evidently the past cannot be known or directly immediately personally experienced and any information about it can only be hearsay, thus it must be composed essentially of belief or consist of belief or a set of beliefs - beliefs about what is imagined supposed or believed to have happened in the past.

@@vhawk1951kl that's absolutely hilarious nonsense! 😂

​@@vhawk1951klthink you have taken philosophy a little to far my friend. For my next trick I will prove that black is white and get run over at the next zebra crossing.

@@Robin-cf9ts You know where the un don't shine, " my friend"? Nuff said.

As a human being I don't think Dubai is a wonderful place.

I hope the desert takes it back.As a human

Spent 4 days of my honeymoon there. None of the locals would speak to my wife. If she order water at dinner they'd look at me to approve it. Taxis would only take directions from me. Etc etc wouldn't go back if I won a free holiday.

Have you been there? Some say they feel safe there. There are no hooligans, no car theft, no burglaries. It's against the law to be rude to someone on the road. It's actually a crime for a man to eye up another man's woman. I've seen gold worth over £2 million in a jeweller's window. And they don't get robbed. It's different. There is also a warning about 'Wasti' which is power. If you have a car accident with someone with power, then you're at fault. Even if they are 100% at fault, you're at fault. So there's pros and cons. I think it's good for a holiday. But the lack of balance of power is unsettling.

Really, for how long did you live there, or have you lived there? Does your sex necessarily predicate or condition all your reactions?

You are not the only one!

Well, I mean England was already stupid enough to sell a barrage of London to these criminal bastards from Russia, the Middle East, etc... They aren't the only idiots, NYC has done the same with all the aforementioned, plus tons of Chinese. Hell, the nick name of Vancouver is Hongcouver cuz millionaire Chinese investors came like a paralytic swarm and started buying every property they could get a hold of. These bastards add NOTHING to local economies as they don't live in the properties (and buy them through shell corporations, so they get tons of tax reductions, or sometimes pay no tax!), and price locals out of the market, while pushing the prices of everything in that city (food, services, etc...) higher and higher as the local residents and businesses are further burdened with the increasing taxes necessary to pay for the infrastructure upkeep for everything in the city!

@@plokijplokij97 I take it the percentages you cite are of total GDP? Or total GNP? Or were you refering to the percentage of taxation taken from annual company profits? Your comment is ambiguous. Could you enlighten us please? The point is that where any given multinational company - say Apple or Microsoft - are charged only a TINY percentage of their profits in the UK, a much HIGHER percentage is levied in tax in Scandanavian countries. This money is then used to fund public services, build affordable houses, etc.

A new reason to hate Churchill, thanks!

in the past, but now China is the pinnacle of growth, and it is the highly authoritarian, in the economic definition of the word it is also literally fascist.

singapore and china grew massively under authoritarian regimes

General elections are just questionnaires, aren't they ? People drink more Cola than Pepsi but both corporations thrive People tick boxes at elections, the millionaires notice the results & continue accumulating compound interest... It's an invincible system because it's slander to officially accuse them of fraud News corporations give the impression the electoral process has genuine significance which provides talking points for the public Thus the wheels on the 🚍 bus go round & round, metaphorically speaking Or to put it another way, life goes on because that's all it's ever done...

Germany did pretty well under the Kaiser, that was pretty authoritarian in its make up, and as the witnesses said, Hitler gave everyone a job.

@@sciencefliestothemoon2305 Nations can be ruled by force or economic systems...

It's true, On the BBC, in the Premier League (Football), in TV shows (Housewives, The Apprentice) etc. I have noticed this as well. Dubai, Qatar and the Emirates plastered everywhere. Don't see any adverts on TV telling me to visit , Brussels in Belgium or Strasbourg in France. Wonder why that might be lol.

he is Canadian i believe

@@gambit0913 That explains everything. But he does teach in an American university.

Sadly no, he is merely a sanctimonious prig that would impose his infernal religion on others exactly as all religious fanatics seek to impose their infernal religion on other people.

Privateers would be a more accurate description

@@therealrobertbirchall Agreed. It is first-year, A-level Economics to understand the clear distinction between an oligopoly, which is what we have in every sector of economic activity in this country, or an actual free market, which is what they tell us we have, even as they try desperately to avoid any of it’s consequences, usually at our expense.

Perhaps if you define free as uncontrolled, or untrammelled by religious fanatics or bullies that would impose their religion on other people. Does not free mean unconstrained and if it does not mean unconstrained or uncontrolled man what the devil does it mean? According to that dreamer Rousseau man is born free but is everywhere in chains, and of course he is entirely constrained by or slave to his functions and one of them in particular.

@@cambrian_ranger Sorry to break it to you, but the "Free Market" doesn't exist and never will. All capital accumulation is built on exploitation and unequal power dynamics by default. You cannot have capitalism without wage labor and you can't have wage labor without leverage. You're "free" to sell the hours and years of your life on the market or else you're free to starve.

What makes you suppose believe or imagine that there is any such thing as what you call "capitalism"? Do you suggest there is particular merit in whatever you mean by democracy? Are not all markets necessarily reflective of demand? - Or do you suppose that markets arise as a result of some wicked conspiracy? - I thought I detected in a whiff of religion in your remarks

@@vhawk1951kl Capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production. Democracy is literally rule of the people. If you can't see how private persons owning all the finite resources disrupts the rule of THE PEOPLE, meaning all the people, then I guess you really don't have a good grasp on the meaning of these terms.

@@jacobjones630 Calm down dear; those that abuse capital letters emphasise nothing but the hysteria of the abuser, and in your religious hysteria into the do not understand that what you call “the people” is imaginary - or no more than some vague generalisation. You clearly take a normative or moralistic or religious view of what you call the means of production (although you have no idea what you mean by that, do you?) What exactly do you mean by “ownership”? Leaving aside the fact that “the people” is and can only possibly be imaginary, when you use the word capitalism you use it to describe the state of affairs to you not? - Something rather like foxes eat rabbits? Would you describe that as an “ism”? Do you take some particular objection to the means of production being whatever you mean by “owned” by whatever you mean by private people, and if so what exactly is the basis for your objection - do you object on religious or moralistic or normative grounds and what exactly are those grounds? Leaving aside the screamingly obvious fact that your famous and imaginary “the people” is and can only possibly be imaginary, exactly how many of them constitutes whatever you imagine to be “the people”? Do you understand that your famous and imaginary “the people” and any universal can only possibly be imaginary in the sense that it cannot be directly immediately personally experienced?

@@vhawk1951kl Buddy you are a sophist and not worth arguing with. When I say people I literally mean every person in a country. When I say means of production, I mean the way people make everything we need to survive. Food, housing,medicine, transportation, ect. When I say ownership, I mean they have legal property rights over them, meaning they can be bought, sold, leased, inherited, or excluded from use by the public. By legal right, I mean the government literally protects them with force. Real, concrete reality that you can see and experience everyday. Foxes and rabbits aren’t people and don’t have much agency in their social organization. They do however have a relationship. One is predator the other is prey. They exist in opposition to each other and struggle against each other to for their existence. If the rabbit dies the fox gets to eat, if the rabbit lives the fox starves. Capitalism as a social system has the same kind of diametrically opposed relationships between people. The existence of rich people means there are necessarily poorer people. In a democracy, where literally everyone is supposed to have equal say in making and following the rules, having such disparities in wealth and power make it impossible. And while you’re busy trying to figure out what the meaning of “is” is, in the real world you can look at things like child poverty and homelessness in countries with less state intervention in the economy. Liberal governments in countries like the United States have 1/20 children going hungry everyday. Far worse than governments that provide robust social safety nets. A country like Japan has capitalism but also has massive state intervention, and in tokyo, the most densely populated city on earth there is virtually no problem with homelessness as compared to the much less densely packed and richer San Francisco.

On not in 😉

Wouldn't think so with BBC news etc only show what they want you to see not what's relivent or what's good for the UK

Oh. Now why is that then, I wonder?😏

Sort answer no, longer answer, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

spot on, whilst we just sit there and let it all happen, or blame our problems on immigrants and people on benefits

​@@54wsbrdtyd6ryeb56d you'll find those things are interwoven into the way society is reproduced.

Help me with this please if you would be so kind: exactly what function does the "well" perform in "Well, it does need a population who feel like"? - Decoration? Is it not slightly absurd to speak of any creatures that are the slaves of their functions as being free or capable of experiencing freedom?

​@Peter Codner it's a sociological question if anything. Structure and Agency. And how does one define 'freedom'? In the context of limited agency within a finite Structure bound by rules, laws and social dictates? Flip side being how limited is the Structure in its ability to give people agency..

I don’t think he means sub-consciously, he talks about neoliberals looking to Dubai as a model and I got the impression he’s saying they’re making this aspiration purposefully. Maybe he just means consciously rather than self-consciously.

Tbh I haven't watched the whole video so can't really relate to what you're exactly saying, but I am going to guess that they are self-concious that they have this 'free zone', when the rest of the country lives along different rules which aren't so 'free'. In the same way that someone wearing a fine suit would be self-concious about it if they knew that if you looked behind them you would see their butt cheeks because there is no seat in the pants. In short, they are nervous that it is easy to see through the facade of what they want you to see, to see things they don't want you to see. But like I said, that is a guess because I haven't watched the whole video. :)

It's an odd one.. because when 2 trillion pound of dark money was lost in the economy, dubai magically appeared.

Vox Pop, basically their videos asking the public their opinion on current topics

He was pointing out the privatisation of common space.

He was trying to interview members of the public, which would be legal in a public space but can be prohibited in private spaces, or special 'zones' like Canary Wharf.

There is no backing track.

It’s just the intro my man

Slurpcore fits the current state of our civilisation perfectly.

When you point the finger at someone, three fingers are pointing back at you. And it is you who is the zealot, because you do not have the courage to be skeptical about your own claims of knowledge. Markets are not free in any sense. They are not organic, but are constructs, shaped and controlled by defined structures for the benefit of the economically powerful. The dream of capitalism has always been mechanistic, because machines don't argue back. That's why mainstream economics is at a loss to prevent capitalism crashing the bus repeatedly, over and over again with its mechanistic models and graphs. Dubai, and the other economic utopias beloved by such "free marketeers" only exist to cater to their fantasies. The grubby misery behind it is carefully tidied up, hidden, or removed. And those who worship these mega rich, predatory, Disney theme parks, can forget the mess they left behind. That's your religion. You want to escape to places like that with your wallet and portfolio of assets. That junk is as bad as heroin.

Your whole rant falls down at the first hurdle, you've failed to demonstrate that politics is a form of religion. For one thing, it's frequently questioned, debated and refined.

Chase the offshore accounts and tax them. Tas on dividends should be the same as income tax.

The problem with "Capitalism" is it takes geniuses to understand it & evil ones to work it. (Green Fire, UK) 🌈🦉

You are incorrect, why would the minority rich tolerate being told how to spend their money by the poor majority? Why would they support the teaching of critical thinking necessary for the functioning of democracy when that critical thinking questions their right to earn hundreds times more than their employees? Why would they support a free press which criticises them? Why would they support unions which challenge them? Why would they support human rights when they damage the bottom line?

​​​​@@laurencedavey3121I am not. Money is an incentive for you do do something. With out it all you have is fear and threats. And that is what communism is.

​@@laurencedavey3121Read 1984, that is what happens what happens when their is no market mechanism indicating what people want!!

​@@laurencedavey3121The issue isn't that capitalism doesn't work, the issue is a few greedy people manage to get control of all the money and effectively size control of everything.

​​​​@@laurencedavey3121 the minority rich need the poor to buy their products. If they make something no one wants they have no profits. If they make a newspaper no one agrees with, no one buys the newspaper. If a politian says something no one agrees with, he doesn't get voted in. That is democracy!!