I’m more surprised that anyone gives a shit at all that they have the time to go do something like a review bomb or try to organise a boycott. People must have a lot of free time on their hands, I barely have time to play a video game, let alone sacrifice valuable free time to go organise a boycott.

If a game is bad or costs too much, I just forget about it and move on. Loads of other things I have to do with my day, and there are a billion other games I can play instead.

I played Warhammer 2 a bit, but saw their shitty patches that broke the game every time, so I just uninstalled it and forgot about it, and CA. I recommend people do that instead. Loads of other fun games to play instead.

It was a crazy amount of political instability, a G7 nation went completely bankrupt and defaulted on its national debt, imagine the US doing that. And, the Winter of Discontent led to so much political instability that it completely destroyed an entire political party and ethos - British Attlee-style far left socialism. The Labour party was pretty much annihilated, and wouldn’t see power for 20 years, and even then, only because it was completely remade in Thatcher’s image as New Labour by Blair. It wouldn’t be until Jeremy Corbyn that anyone even remotely tried on those same policies with the electorate again, and he was soundly defeated.

The leftist, socialist style government of Attlee, Wilson, and Callaghan had their hearts in the right place with their policies: government built lots of housing at a huge loss in order to give the masses affordable housing, the government nationalised many industries and utilities (such as 100% ownership of all trains, water, electricity, coal mining, but also auto manufacturing and aerospace), all of these nationalised industries had huge and very powerful trade unions, taxation on the rich was massive (this is why all the famous movie stars and musicians like Mick Jagger famously left the UK and moved to the USA in the 70s. Only Oliver Reed remained). There was even a wealth tax. Government provided healthcare was established by Attlee.

Basically all of the things leftists like Sanders and AOC want today, we had them in 70s Britain, and it did lead to “political instability” because it led to national bankruptcy, and a huge brain drain as millions of young Britons went abroad to find opportunities (many went to Canada and Australia).

The only thing that has survived from those days is national healthcare, but it’s an utter catastrophe these days due to the slave labour wages it forces on its workers with no ability to strike (they technically can strike, but it doesn’t matter, because the government can force them to accept any new contract regardless, which they did in 2016).

I’m not sure I understand, British capitalists were the same before, during, and after Thatcher. They weren’t allowed to be competitive prior to Thatcher because so many industries were nationalised, for example auto manufacturing and aerospace.

It was Thatcher who divested and deregulated all those industries, removing central government from being involved in any businesses such as trains, home building, aerospace, etc. Rather than be forced into deals with labour unions, British capitalists were now free to deal in the global market, and immediately began closing British factories because they were uncompetitive and the government was no longer forcing them to remain open or paying subsidies.

Post war consensus and the power of workers’ unions in Britain during the 1970s? Especially the Winter of Discontent in '78- '79.

The governments of Wilson and Callaghan were still a continuation of the Attlee socialist philosophy which gave public sector unions an immense amount of power in those days.

The general strikes called by the likes of Scarsgill were brutal for the country, I remember, I was there, culminating in pediatric nurses walking off the job and leaving child cancer patients unattended.

The trade unions did have legitimate grievances back then, their pay was paltry, and they hadn’t had an inflation adjusted wage increase in like 15 years. I totally support their strikes, but the government’s hands were tied, they simply had no money due to a confluence of factors, and eventually the whole country went bankrupt (like Greece) and had to be bailed out by the EU.

While it wasn’t pure socialism back then, Britain was still capitalist and deeply classist, it did basically destroy the country to have a lot of the social safety net and public building projects which people like Sanders and Corbyn champion today, along with very powerful unions. I’m a huge proponent of government building houses at a loss in order to give citizens a chance at affordable housing, but doing that for 20 years straight contributed massively to the UK going into financial bankruptcy in the 70s.

Also, giant workers’ unions can be a force for unbelievable evil, for example, the police union in the USA.

I agree the larger philosophy behind BLM isn’t a brand, but the slogan “BLM” is a brand.

To me personally, BLM is kind of stupid, the correct slogan we should all be wearing is ACAB, because from everything I have seen, US police are just as happy assaulting and killing anyone who gets in their way, regardless of colour. Cops in the US just want to kill people, it’s an us versus them mentality, and I’d say it’s pretty colour blind, like those 5 Nashville black cops who tortured and killed that black motorist. And I remember seeing the Atlanta BLM protests in 2020, and there were loads of black cops horrifically beating protestors too. It’s honestly not a black problem, it’s a blue vs everyone else problem.

And then some of the absolute worst police killings I’ve seen have been white cops killing white people, such as Daniel Shaver, Ryan Whitaker, and Officer Longman of Utah.

Some cops are definitely racially biased, but it’s hardly Mississippi Burning anymore, even in the South. What is a problem is a general militarisation of police and complete lack of oversight or consequences for their actions.

But make no mistake, any cop would just love to kill you to make his or her day, whether you’re white or black.

I agree with you about that, but these employees have chosen to do a job where they come face to face with customers daily, and some of those customers may get offended by seeing an employee wearing a BLM badge, in red states for example. The company doesn’t want to antagonise a potential customer and lose a sale, so they’re asking that no employees wear any political markings. And honestly, I think that’s a fair request if you work in a customer-facing role.

Notice that this ruling only applies to Whole Foods workers, not Amazon warehouse workers, who can probably wear whatever they want since they don’t deal with customers.

You actually can fire people based on their political beliefs, because believe it or not, political affiliation is not a protected class under current US federal law (maybe some state law though). There are only 7 current federally protected classes: age, race, sex, religion, marital status, disability, and sexual orientation. That’s why Republicans have been announcing they want to make political affiliation a protected class soon, because I guess that’s the next big battleground, is employers start to hire/fire based on politics.

I take your points, but I guarantee you this isn’t a decision about politics by Amazon, but purely a maximisation of revenue decision. Whole Foods employees interact with customers face to face, every day, all across the US, from blue states to red states. They know that their customers in some places consider BLM to be a political organisation, one that they don’t support, and that goes for proud boys, KKK, whatever. The point is, you don’t want to antagonise any customers coming in through the door, and corporate is aware that people are awfully sensitive these days and ready to kick off over any tiny thing, so to ensure no customer gets offended and takes their business elsewhere, and to ensure a policy which can be applied nationally for all states where Whole Foods exists, it’s just easier to say they won’t allow anything which their customers could potentially consider political.

That’s all this is, it’s not the political dog whistle some are making it out to be. This is just corporations wanting to remain neutral and take money from every customer, not just liberal ones. Hence I agree with this policy, it’s not coming from a bad place and it’s not an absurd request either.

And yes, as you said, not allowing someone to wear a religious article of clothing is a lawsuit waiting to happen, which will be a slam dunk, but this isn’t the same.

I think you’re way into the weeds here and forget the most important thing to remember about “freedom”: things like the Bill of Rights and the Constitution are a compact between you and the government, not you and private companies. Private companies don’t owe you anything besides whatever the government has expressly legislated, such as explicit protection for religious clothing and icons like crosses, Sikh turbans, etc.

However, beyond that, individual companies have the right to request their employees look and dress in certain ways. The flip side there is, if you don’t like those rules, you are free to not work there anymore.

Of course, legislators can always choose to pass laws forcing companies to allow more exemptions, but that hasn’t happened yet for displays of a political organisation.

It’s not just a corporate thing, police, military, and fire brigade aren’t allowed to wear overt political badging either.

There’s a general rule that if you work for an organisation which asks you to wear a work related uniform of some kind, you don’t get to add anything to it, political or otherwise. You don’t see bobbies with a Pink Floyd sticker on their chest.

BLM is a brand though. The lady who founded it just bought a £1.25M house in LA’s exclusive Topanga neighbourhood for all cash.

That doesn’t sound like some sort of grass roots, help lift people up, Mother Teresa sort of organisation to me.

Hence yeah, people don’t like BLM. Some don’t like what it stands for, while others, like me, don’t like it because the founders used it as a massive vehicle for grifting and lining their own pockets.

I’m with Amazon on this, seems a reasonable ask for employees to not wear any political/cultural/social things at work with their official uniform.

How much money do you get if you file?

I have no idea, I’m not Republican.

I have no idea, I’m not a Republican.

I’m not sure. They definitely wanted one, but after that ridiculous plea deal which Weiss got, it’s clear he’s an absolute weasel and company man after all, and this is coming from a hardcore Sanders democrat. That plea deal was insanity – a misdemeanor for lying blatantly about drugs on a federal firearms transfer? And not paying taxes? Imagine if those charges were leveled against an ordinary person, and not a member of the ruling elite.

There needs to be a special counsel appointed, but fuck this Weiss guy.

Hope the driver goes to jail.

Why is it not accurate? House prices come down but cost of materials and labour stay constant or go up, what am I missing?

Also, I feel like we have gotten so far off track so as to forget what exactly we are arguing about.

The original discussion was how to fix the housing market so as to create way more affordable housing. My original argument was the government has to do that, by building houses at a loss, which only the government can do.

Your argument seems to have originally been that the true problem is the zoning and government red tape, but I feel like we have both come to the conclusion that neither of those is true. Firstly, even if zoning isn’t a problem, in places like LA and NYC there’s no physical space left to build, except vertically. In London, the only new land to build is way outside Zone 5. Furthermore, what incentive is there for private sector builders to flood the market with new supply, either horizontally or vertically? No industry likes it when the price of their product goes down, not a single one, and no industry is going to help that happen.

Finally, building vertically requires way bigger companies to get involved, meaning there are fewer of them, meaning it’s easier for them to collude to keep prices high. Building a ranch house out in Wyoming can be done by some local two-bit builder, but a skyscraper in Manhattan would need to be some big multinational. Ergo, even if the only solution is Shanghai style vertical flats, the prices are even more suspectible to collusion by the few big companies able and willing to build them.

Or, like I said, bypass all this bollocks and have the government build loads of houses and sell them at a loss, flood the supply and bring prices down for the altruistic, non-profit motive of getting more people into housing. Done and done.

Your own answer from earlier said so: increase supply massively whilst demand stays constant, means prices come down. Fair enough.

Well, if prices come down, margins by definition decrease, because building materials and labour aren’t decreasing too.

Ergo, even if zoning restrictions were relaxed massively, and permits handed out quickly and easily, there’s no incentive to flood the market like in 2007. This is especially true of big high rise, high density properties, as there usually are only a few companies who can build such buildings (in central London there’s like 4), so it makes collusion to keep supply low much easier. Sort of like how OPEC works.

Yeah but by whom? What’s the incentive for private sector builders to do that at scale if it means lower prices and lower margins by dramatically increasing supply?

The cops were all black too.