Re: 17 Billion buys a lot of bongos : Sun Aug 11, 2013 9:36 am  

Sell them weapons to kill their own people and their neighbours, then sell medicine to the people who are being shot, sell weapons to the neighbours to fight back, soon as the war is over send over builders for infrastructure, when they turn on us with the weapons we sold them employ more soldiers to fight them which in turn means employing more nurses and doctors and speeds up the revenue of the undertakers.
Foreign aid, it's the future.

Re: 17 Billion buys a lot of bongos : Sun Aug 11, 2013 12:53 pm  

Sal Paradise wrote:

Rather than give billions in cash could we not give billions in services i.e. if you want a dam building we will build the dam for you at no cost to you?...

We could.

Sal Paradise wrote:

... Or would we not win the contract unless we provide 25% more than it costs to build the dam in 'consultancy fees'!!

Laissez faire capitalism, bit of a bugger sometimes, isn't it?

Re: 17 Billion buys a lot of bongos : Sun Aug 11, 2013 4:58 pm  

El Barbudo wrote:

... Laissez faire capitalism, bit of a bugger sometimes, isn't it?

How dare you!

What sacrifices have you made in order to be able to say that?

Re: 17 Billion buys a lot of bongos : Tue Aug 13, 2013 11:55 am  

Mintball wrote:

How dare you!

What sacrifices have you made in order to be able to say that?

One thing is for sure it will be impossible to sacrifice less than you - all that tax sacrifice - is that really the best you can come up with!!

Re: 17 Billion buys a lot of bongos : Tue Aug 13, 2013 11:58 am  

El Barbudo wrote:

We could.

Laissez faire capitalism, bit of a bugger sometimes, isn't it?

Not really you simply find other customers - free market capitalism in action, isn't this in reality the Chinese model right now?

Re: 17 Billion buys a lot of bongos : Tue Aug 13, 2013 12:24 pm  

Sal Paradise wrote:

One thing is for sure it will be impossible to sacrifice less than you - all that tax sacrifice - is that really the best you can come up with!!

Rampant capitalists and Tories always see paying tax as a sacrifice!

Re: 17 Billion buys a lot of bongos : Wed Aug 14, 2013 7:49 am  

Sal Paradise wrote:

Not really you simply find other customers...

You seem to have missed the point about laissez-faire (or, as you'd erroneously call it, "free market").
In a culture where "commissions" are the norm, that's actually a "freedom" in that market and considered by some companies to be merely a cost to be factored-in.
Such companies will only ignore such markets if the "commissions" are too great, not because of any moral imperative.

Sal Paradise wrote:

- free market capitalism in action, isn't this in reality the Chinese model right now?

China has a one-party government, Communist.
It deals with the world outside in a market economy.
It has opened its internal market more to market forces.

When even China embraces the power of a market economy but remains a communist state ... do you see now how your usual polarisation of opinions isn't valid?