More Europeans Will Die from Energy Crisis Than Ukraine War?

[alexa]

You say that like it's a bad thing.

You seriously believe that it is good for Capitalists to fleece the public. That is what is going on now because there are no regulations. That is what has changed the West from Democracies to Plutocracies. This only leads to ever increasing inequalities between the people and the Plutocrats. It was one of the things which led to WW2. If it leads to a WW3 that is the end. We have no ability to cope with such contamination.

As George Phillips said, Adam Smith is regarded as the Patron Saint of Capitalism but he did not believe in laissez- faire understanding how the public would be treated as above.....which you think is OK?

From the prospective of laissez-faire economists, if traders and manufacturers (businessmen) could conduct their business in an environment of unfettered regulation, it would result in an economy that allows competition to work and business to maximize its growth over time. Adam Smith did not believe this. As he saw it, unfettered regulation of business would result in businessmen hijacking the economy to maximize their profits at the expense of society. This, he claimed, was what the mercantilists in England were doing. In Smith’s mind, this kind of self-interest at the expense of others was a real problem with laissez-faire economics, and he recognized that society somehow needs to protect itself from it. So while Smith saw the laissez-faire framework as useful when thinking about a perfectly working economy, he understood man’s nature too well to believe that it is a practical economic system.

Adam Smith was no Laissez-Faire Ideologue! - Gutenberg College

Challenges the common belief that Adam Smith, the pioneer of political economy, was a free-market ideologue.

gutenberg.edu

 

[fncceo]

You seriously believe that it is good for Capitalists to fleece the public.

What you consider to be "fleecing the public" is a totally voluntary agreement between purchasers and sellers.

If you think you're being cheated and you still pay for something, shame on you.

If you believe you're paying too much for utilities, go off the grid. Unless regulatory legislation, which ISN'T a valid component of Capitalism, prohibits you from doing so.

 

[luiza]

If you believe you're paying too much for utilities, go off the grid.

Always interesting to find new contacts who actually live in a different universe .

 

[alexa]

What you consider to be "fleecing the public" is a totally voluntary agreement between purchasers and sellers.

No it isn't. People have the choice of pay or do without and they must have. One of the reasons businesses in Europe are closing and the Government is needing to pay a large proportion for so many people.

If you think you're being cheated and you still pay for something, shame on you.

This is such a US meaningless mantra I am reminded that you usually joke, This isn't a funny issue though. It is one which is going to bring the people of the US just like the people of Europe down to the level of serfs if they don't get off their asses and do something. Now the UK Government should have followed the advice given and made the windfall tax on the gas producers larger. Our Governments like yours seem to be bought by them.

If you believe you're paying too much for utilities, go off the grid. Unless regulatory legislation, which ISN'T a valid component of Capitalism, prohibits you from doing so.

already answered above.

 

[sparky]

Adam Smith is regarded as the Patron Saint of Capitalism but he did not believe in laissez- faire understanding how the public would be treated as above.....which you think is OK?

Smith's take on free trade and government involvement was well before the level of globalization we have today.

Ask what the root of disparity rests on ?

~S~

 

[georgephillip]

Germany had been getting its gas from Russia for fifty years with no problems.

It has been slightly more than 50 years since President Nixon took the US off the gold standard. That's ushered in a half-century of war, imperialism, and financial parasitism based on what economist Michael Hudson calls the US Treasure Bill/Pentagon standard.

Infographic: History of US interventions in the past 70 years

When the USSR collapsed US investors had no intention of permitting free trade between Russia and Europe (particularly Germany) to cut into their state-subsidized profit margins:

Economist Michael Hudson on decline of dollar, sanctions war, imperialism, financial parasitism | MR Online

"The United States is pushing a world that can be controlled by American investors.

"The ideal of the American neoliberal plan is to do to other countries what it did to Russia after 1991: take all of your public domain, your oil companies, your nickel mines, your electric utilities, give them all to the wealthy oligarchy, that can only make money once it’s taken control of these companies, by selling the stocks to the West.

"The West will buy out oil, just like Mikhail Khodorkovsky tried to sell Yukos oil to Standard Oil in the West.

"And we’ve got to put an oligarchy that will sell all of the national domain, all of the patrimony and natural resources, and all the companies, to American investors on the cheap.

"The Russian stock market led all the stock markets in the world from 1994 up to about 1998.

"This was a huge rip off.

"The United States wants to be able to do that to the rest of the world."

 

[westwall]

Since Russia is much closer to Europe than the US, doesn't it make sense for Europeans to rely on Russia for their oil and gas?

Only if they wish to be held hostage.

 

[AlexanderPK]

Only if they wish to be held hostage.

Being held hostage by America doesn't count then? They say they are freezing now, occasionally to death, why don't you worm them up a tad?

 

[georgephillip]

You say that like it's a bad thing.

What do you say?

 

[sparky]

The Russian stock market led all the stock markets in the world from 1994 up to about 1998.

the notion of 'what come around, goes around' hit me hard w/this one George

~S~

 

[georgephillip]

What you consider to be "fleecing the public" is a totally voluntary agreement between purchasers and sellers.

What's voluntary about being fleeced for your food or starving to death?

 

[westwall]

Being held hostage by America doesn't count then? They say they are freezing now, occasionally to death, why don't you worm them up a tad?

Talk to our dear globalist leaders. They are the people responsible.

Go get them.

 

[Confederate Soldier]

Vey reasonable comment .

So why did the trouser wetting pedo do otherwise ?

Crime syndicate decisions perhaps ?

" Oooh Hunter my darling boy , suppose they find out about Burisma and our Nazi pals "

Threatening world war over a shady business deal seems a bit of a tin foil hat idea.

 

[georgephillip]

Only if they wish to be held hostage.

How many hostages has American imperialism pillaged since the end of WWII?

Why History Matters: the Left and Ukraine

"This post-War history includes the partial or total destruction by the Americans of Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Yemen, and Libya.

"Of these nations, only those that threw off the yoke of American imperialism are prospering today.

"The child-refugees still finding their way northward to the US from Honduras, ‘illegals,' are mostly orphans fleeing the political violence that was set in motion when American liberals supported a Right-wing coup there in 2009."

 

[fncceo]

What's voluntary about being fleeced for your food or starving to death?

You have a choice, pay for your food, grow your own, or starve. Life is full of choices.

 

[georgephillip]

the notion of 'what come around, goes around' hit me hard w/this one George

~S~

I wasn't paying attention to such matters in 1996.
Which could explain why I found the events of 2016 puzzling?

"Meddling in other countries’ elections is an exciting adventure–when it’s the United States doing the meddling."

Hypocrisy of Russia-Did-It Stories Is Hard to Stomach - FAIR

"A cover from Time magazine (7/15/96): a chipper Boris Yeltsin holding an American flag, and the line 'Yanks to the Rescue! The Secret Story of How American Advisers Helped Yeltsin Win.'

"You can make 'one law for me, another for thee' your credo, but you can’t be too surprised when others are unimpressed.

"Whatever story there is to be told about Russia and the 2016 election, corporate media have squandered the credibility it would take to tell it."

 

[AlexanderPK]

Talk to our dear globalist leaders. They are the people responsible.

Go get them.

So you don't give a damn but blame us anyway. Isn't that undemocratic and not rules based?

 

[alexa]

It has been slightly more than 50 years since President Nixon took the US off the gold standard. That's ushered in a half-century of war, imperialism, and financial parasitism based on what economist Michael Hudson calls the US Treasure Bill/Pentagon standard.

Infographic: History of US interventions in the past 70 years

When the USSR collapsed US investors had no intention of permitting free trade between Russia and Europe (particularly Germany) to cut into their state-subsidized profit margins:

Economist Michael Hudson on decline of dollar, sanctions war, imperialism, financial parasitism | MR Online

"The United States is pushing a world that can be controlled by American investors.

"The ideal of the American neoliberal plan is to do to other countries what it did to Russia after 1991: take all of your public domain, your oil companies, your nickel mines, your electric utilities, give them all to the wealthy oligarchy, that can only make money once it’s taken control of these companies, by selling the stocks to the West.

"The West will buy out oil, just like Mikhail Khodorkovsky tried to sell Yukos oil to Standard Oil in the West.

"And we’ve got to put an oligarchy that will sell all of the national domain, all of the patrimony and natural resources, and all the companies, to American investors on the cheap.

"The Russian stock market led all the stock markets in the world from 1994 up to about 1998.

"This was a huge rip off.

"The United States wants to be able to do that to the rest of the world."

I'll get back when I have been able to properly look at the Norton Hudson interview.

 

[alexa]

It has been slightly more than 50 years since President Nixon took the US off the gold standard. That's ushered in a half-century of war, imperialism, and financial parasitism based on what economist Michael Hudson calls the US Treasure Bill/Pentagon standard.

Infographic: History of US interventions in the past 70 years

When the USSR collapsed US investors had no intention of permitting free trade between Russia and Europe (particularly Germany) to cut into their state-subsidized profit margins:

Economist Michael Hudson on decline of dollar, sanctions war, imperialism, financial parasitism | MR Online

"The United States is pushing a world that can be controlled by American investors.

"The ideal of the American neoliberal plan is to do to other countries what it did to Russia after 1991: take all of your public domain, your oil companies, your nickel mines, your electric utilities, give them all to the wealthy oligarchy, that can only make money once it’s taken control of these companies, by selling the stocks to the West.

"The West will buy out oil, just like Mikhail Khodorkovsky tried to sell Yukos oil to Standard Oil in the West.

"And we’ve got to put an oligarchy that will sell all of the national domain, all of the patrimony and natural resources, and all the companies, to American investors on the cheap.

"The Russian stock market led all the stock markets in the world from 1994 up to about 1998.

"This was a huge rip off.

"The United States wants to be able to do that to the rest of the world."

Wow I have read that now. It is a lot to take in but at the same time in many ways is so obvious.

Regarding Ukraine

And the World Bank’s leading objective was to prevent other countries from investing in their own food production.

they cannot be permitted to grow grain or wheat to feed themselves; they must be dependent on the United States.

.
That clearly has already been arranged in Ukraine. First I know I read that the US would not promise them any help till they agreed to go by neo liberalism. Then I heard they had sold half their arable land to an outside investor. Now who is going to be running off with their wheat?

Unless people start to read about and understand this they have no ability to have a clue about what is going on.

This briefly speaks about what has been happening to Latin American countries

And so the function of free trade, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund has been to finance dependency, backed up by the American support of dictatorships throughout Latin America who agree to have client oligarchies supporting pro-American trade patterns and avoiding any kind of self-reliance, so that the United States can do what it has recently done to Russia and other countries, impose sanctions–say, well, now that you depended on us for your grain, we can now impose sanctions, and you can’t feed yourself if you don’t follow the policies we want.

Now I remember when I was watching a Pilger film on Venezuela when Chavez was in power. As always with Pilger it was extremely good.....but the bit that got me was when I saw striking workers in another Latin American country gunned down when they were striking for a liveable wage and hearing that this had been helped and supported by the United States. Pilger then went and spoke to some ex State official and asked him about it. What were the US doing being involved in doing this, The man agreed they had. Pilger asked why. He said 'National Security'. Pilger I think did get him to say in what way and it simply was about the US getting money from treating these people as slaves and being prepared to gun them down if they tried to use the right to strike.

The Free World they call it. Who is joking? I mean the more you learn the more horrendous it is.

So onto Russia still from your interview

So basically, free trade means no government, no socialism. It means central planning essentially by Wall Street–countries should let American firms come in, buy control of their raw materials, resources, control of their oil and gas, and mineral rights, and forests and plantations, and basically let other countries send their whole economic surplus to the United States, where it will be duly financialized to buy out other countries’ raw materials and rent yielding resources.

And it was furious when Russia said, we’ve lost more population as a result of neoliberalism than we did in all of World War Two fighting against Nazism. We’ve got to stop.

And Russia began to say, we’ve got to use Russia’s population, and industry, and natural resources for Russia’s benefit, not for the United States’ benefit.

Well, the United States was absolutely furious with this. And the fury has erupted in the NATO war against Russia in the last few months, and what’s ongoing now.

And the United States says, U.S. State Department officials have said, what we want to do is carve up Russia into maybe four different countries: Siberia, western Russia, southern Russia or Central Asia, maybe northern Russia.

Economist Michael Hudson on decline of dollar, sanctions war, imperialism, financial parasitism | MR Online

Economist Michael Hudson discusses the decline of the U.S. dollar, the sanctions war on Russia, his concept of “free-trade imperialism,” and financial parasitism.

mronline.org

I had to stop taking bits down to talk about as more and more were coming

I am going to read more on this.

 

[surada]

"More people will perish in Europe this winter because of unaffordable household energy costs than those who have died on the battlefield in the Ukraine war, according to research by the British weekly newspaper The Economist.

"Last week, the United Nations said the official civilian death toll from the Ukraine war has risen to nearly 6,900, with civilian injuries topping 10,000.

"Whilst the death of military forces in Ukraine has been difficult to verify, the number of soldiers thought to have died in Ukraine is estimated at 25,000-30,000 for each side.

"The Economist modeled the effect of the unprecedented hike in gas and electricity bills this winter and concluded that the current cost of energy will likely lead to an extra 147,000 deaths if it is a typical winter."

Estimate for "a particularly harsh winter" range between 185,000 to 335,000 extra European lives.

Do you believe governments across Western Europe should be alarmed by these numbers?

Germany and Norway are building a hydrogen pipeline.