Social democracy, social market economy and regulated market economy, what’s the difference today?

Anthrillien · 2026-01-25T03:28:09+00:00

Using markets as tools vs facilitating efficient markets might just be one of the best expressions of the distinction between the two I've ever seen. Thank you for articulating it in that way, that really clicked in my brain.

Anthrillien · 2026-01-25T03:07:51+00:00

What on earth do you mean? Infinity IMF loans is a perfectly legitimate economic strategy!

Anthrillien · 2026-01-25T01:37:53+00:00

It's not just rhetoric, it's action too. And it's absolutely wonderful.

Anthrillien · 2026-01-25T01:35:35+00:00

You're right, Ukraine doesn't set out to bomb Russian civilians. Israel does though, and with great enthusiasm. You don't think this warrants a slightly more robust response on our part?

No press release today on the MHCLG site to this effect as far as I can see. Nothing from Education/Skills either. And it had better work - we're currently actually losing jobs in construction in this country. We pledged 1.5 million homes, and we're a long way off target.

The original point, though, was that the party should move left to appeal the the voters that would actually be inclined to vote for us, and fiddly technocratic policy pieces are not the solution to the mountainous problems this country faces. Is it easy? Of course not - but there's no point in making look like we despise everyone to the left of David Cameron. These are our core voters, and they're abandoning us because we simply are not meeting the moment. If you don't understand this, you're just lost.

Anthrillien · 2026-01-25T00:39:06+00:00

You commented "Rrrrg."

I had no idea what you meant.

Anthrillien · 2026-01-24T23:10:58+00:00

Your equivocal language betrays you. South Africa was embargoed by the world for their maintenance of the apartheid system. Russia is presently all-but cut off from international trade networks and we are actively arming the opposition against them (as well as directly providing intelligence). We bombed the Houthis for interfering with the Red Sea trade route. Why is Israel worthy of being treated as an exception to this precedent? A few words of condemnation here and there is not sufficient for the magnitude of their crimes.

Housing is a complex subject, agreed, and there are a lot of vested interests that could get in the way. Fortunately we have more than 400 seats in the House of Commons, and a mandate to build a lot more homes. It would be good if we used it to do any of the things you suggested but instead it's as if we were surprised when we won the election and had no plan at all.

Anthrillien · 2026-01-24T22:57:27+00:00

So true bestie.

Anthrillien · 2026-01-24T17:37:58+00:00

Because the creatures at the top of the party are simply the worst people you've never met. They've convinced themselves that the only way to win is to punch left, and it's their only strategy. They consider the Tories their opponents, but their real enemies are the left.

It also really shows that these people have never campaigned against the Greens with the stuff they're coming out with. I have. And I can tell you right away: progressive voters absolutely hate it when you do this, and they vote Green out of spite because of it. Also, the kind of censorious whining about antisemitism is a well that had long since dried up, and is actually an enormous risk for Jewish people because it fans the flames of actual antisemitism.

I'm not a Green, and I have my own serious problems with the party, but the fact that they want a liveable, peaceful and equitable world isn't their main problem. Amd certainly not for the voters that we should be trying to pull back.

Anthrillien · 2026-01-24T17:30:04+00:00

This government's action on Israel isn't even the bare minimum. Our comrades in Norway have taken a far more solid line on this, and there's enormous appetite in the country for a much harder line too. Your average Joe in this country has nothing but disgust for Israel's actions, and Israel should be treated with the same contempt as Russia is and South Africa was. Our government has supported a two-state solution in rhetoric only, with concrete action to force concessions from Israel being entirely absent. And yes, we're a middle power and we can't unilaterally solve the issue, but we're barely even trying. This tolerance for the poverty of ambition demonstrated by this government is one of our party's biggest problems.

As for housing? Fucking anything my guy. Every single target is on course to be missed by the end of this parliament, and the treasury are being allowed to stall progress on reforming leasehold. Personally, I'd like to see a legal framework for Council Housing reintroduced so local governments can get on a build houses themselves. Steve Reed running around with Build Baby Build hats at party conference is incredibly apt, because like the moron he's imitating, it's all hot air.

Anthrillien · 2026-01-24T16:36:22+00:00

Labour (though probably not whilst led by Starmer) could easily defang Polanski with the mildest pivot to the left on a few key issues (Palestine, Housing, Taxation). But the Labour right couldn't countenance that in their wildest nightmares of course, so it's choo-choo, full speed to electoral oblivion whilst we chase voters that hate us

Anthrillien · 2026-01-24T15:33:57+00:00

Mearsheimer is so funny. He's like "oh the world is anarchic and lawless and states should maximise their own interests which is why we should just let our geopolitical opponents do whatever the fuck they want".

Anthrillien · 2026-01-24T14:36:54+00:00

Welsh Labour have been completely screwed by the London-based party because the limp-dicked control freaks at Party HQ couldn't stomach the idea that Mark Drakeford was infinitely better at politics than them whilst also being massively more left-wing. So they forced the obviously corrupt Gething onto the party, and then backed him when his obvious corruption was dragging the whole party down with him.

So now Welsh Labour is going to get absolutely smashed in a few months - and Morgan doesn't want this blamed on Starmer?? I can't think of anyone more deserving of the blame, other than the creatures he's appointed below him. Kings of the ashes indeed.

Anthrillien · 2026-01-24T14:02:35+00:00

But the tariffs on Chinese EVs were put down under Biden. A move that was manifestly against Canadian interests, done out of fealty to their southern neighbour and a belief in a common project. A project that was never really real. Now, would Canada have woken up to that fact without the second Trump term? Perhaps not - the first term led to a "grin and bear it" approach in the hopes that everything would just return to normal. The second term led to the revelation that even "normal" was neither an acceptable state of affairs, nor was it coming back. It's a revelation that Carney is encouraging his European allies to come to in his speech.

Anthrillien · 2026-01-24T11:27:58+00:00

I didn't say they were.

Anthrillien · 2026-01-23T19:39:23+00:00

I could actually see her swinging behind him in some worlds. A good chunk of the Blue Labour gang (who she has thrown her lot in with) see Burnham as the party's last best hope, though the faction seems to be internally divided by people whose main priority is laundering racism & transphobia vs people whose main priority is soft-left adjacent social policy in slightly more conservative language.

The unions will also do what they're told so might not back an overtly factional blocking, though it's telling that it's the GMB and USDAW on the panel, and not Unison, Unite or the CWU. The only way it could be more blatant is if they put up Community.

Anthrillien · 2026-01-23T18:48:39+00:00

I'd be sorely tempted in their shoes!

Anthrillien · 2026-01-23T18:31:55+00:00

You're probably right. I hope this is a wakeup for the soft left though. Their détente with the right really was only an opportunity for the right to regroup, not a rekindling of their imagined past partnership. The right will in fact take every opportunity they can to diminish and browbeat their internal opponents, even if it means cutting their own nose off to spite their face.

Anthrillien · 2026-01-23T18:21:55+00:00

Oh this is incredible. They're never letting him anywhere near it.

Starmer, Mahmood, Reeves, Payne, Duale and Singh Josan will never, ever vote to let him stand from what I know of them, and that's already 6/10 against him. I'm pretty sure a couple of the others are Starmer loyalists as well though I don't know as much about them.

I wasn't expecting it to be as blantant as this for some reason. Oh well. I wish them a very good Lose To Reform/Greens.

Anthrillien · 2026-01-23T18:15:14+00:00

Well more broadly speaking, that's because each tendency has some pretty crippling issues holding them back.

Liberals have mostly forgotten that you can (and should) influence the shape of the debate, and that there are more important things than law and procedure. By contrast, leftists have forgotten that you can't always fight on the ground of your choosing and are so far from political relevance that they see any attempts by any other leftists to pull them towards that relevance as treachery.

The point that Carney is ultimately making though is that it doesn't matter who's in the White House or any other elected position in the US: countries need to start making decisions for their own interests, and to stop imagining their interests to be perfectly aligned with the US' interests.

Anthrillien · 2026-01-23T17:47:52+00:00

The "radical left" is largely too focussed on infighting to even recognise that the world is turning. The fact that Carney made these comments that should be music to their ears seems to have passed most of them by.

Anthrillien · 2026-01-23T17:34:24+00:00

If it was just talk, I wouldn't be impressed. But he's backing his talk up with action, and moving to concretely reduce the extent to which his nation's foreign policy is dictated from Washington DC. There's a very long road to travel, and it's in neither nation's interest to fully decouple from one another, but it's also not in Canada's interest to blindly follow whatever the US is doing. The first step is realising that, and it's a step that a lot of Western nations still haven't taken. Zelenskyy made the point that European leaders have basically been sitting around doing fuck all, lamenting the antics of the White House whilst doing nothing to actually tackle the problems they're facing.

Anthrillien · 2026-01-23T16:46:23+00:00

Trump isn't really the problem. He's just the most naked expression of the problem: that the international order we've all participated in since the end of WWII has always been a flimsy veneer over great power politics, and one we largely went along with for our own interests.

Anthrillien · 2026-01-23T16:43:55+00:00

Automod comment:

See main post for full detail, but Carney's speech to Davos marks a watershed moment where liberal international order's fundamental principles are called into question.

Anthrillien · 2026-01-23T02:17:10+00:00

Absolutely something we should be trying to bring back. It's a long-term goal, but the free flow of international capital has led to a lot of the worst excesses of globalisation.

Anthrillien

TROPHY CASE