Dan:
the Government has conferred an economic advantage on him at the expense of someone else. John as an economic actor can now make decisions that he wouldn’t have been able to had he been receiving only £2.50 (his real economic worth.)

For a start, you’re assuming labour markets are flexible enough to assume his real worth is only £2.50. Wages may be artifically depressed. Secondly, you’re assuming by giving the person that position, someone else is missing out.

Douglas - I’m waiting to see what happens. Davis hasn’t officially resigned yet. The Labour party haven’t yet announced whether they’ll put up a candidate. And no one knows whether MacKenzie will run. Let’s wait and see what happens.

You are not going to:

see a more equal, socially just, environmentally friendly and free society then we can’t just hope for it - we have to fight for it. And we have to do that by having a vision and spreading it. We have to take that vision out to society.

achieve that by avoiding your own campaign against 42 days.

Which, it seems to me, is what you are doing.

This is stuff we all agree on. Could you please address the point you are avoiding, or explain why you are avoiding it? Why, exactly, are you standing on the sidelines when David Davies is fighting for a cause you express - and I agree with - in the top right corner of this blog?

This is flim flam, frankly.

You have no idea how annoyed I am that you see this as more important issue to comment on than the 42 day issue. Comment 9, btw.

There is very little time left for a Liberal Conspiracy to decide where it want’s to go on the DD issue. You talking about theoretical capitalism is not where you should be at right now.

I think.

Yes, I know, I am annoying piece of shit.

I don’t think you need perfect competition for this to be a reality.

If, for example, John Smith gets the minimum wage rather than the £2.50 his labour is really worth - washing dishes in a restaurant - the Government has conferred an economic advantage on him at the expense of someone else. John as an economic actor can now make decisions that he wouldn’t have been able to had he been receiving only £2.50 (his real economic worth.)

Of course this is at the expense of John’s boss who has disproportionate costs compared to the value added to his business. That’s what I mean by anti-Darwinian.

Having said all that I quite agree that this whole system is, and has been for some considerable time quite rotten and it’s not helped by the ludicrously wasteful tax credits system we have (another dazzling NuLab project brought to you by El Gordo)

In an economic world where we have perfect competition, yes. But we don’t, that’s the problem.

And before anyone says all we’re doing is exacerbating the problem, I’d just point out that the system is ruptured deep in the heart of modern capitalism, not simply where the poor are trying to make an extra buck an hour. The sub-prime distaster is simply the latest example.

Yeah, the minimum wage is like soooooo anti-darwin.

I do hope not, simple solutions are usually wrong. Evolutionary solutions are often right. Creationism, of course, is a simple solution.

Ehhhh…..no.

Those two bits are easy. Stop being left liberals and start being classical liberals. Works for social justice and equality as well, as long as you’re not defining that as equality of outcome.

There, that was simple, wasn’t it?