That isn't my point. Even when you were dabbling in tuning you had the security of your priesthood in your back pocket. You praise the virtues of insecurity and free markets without having to face the realities yourself.

 

Even if my wife who has never worked in the public sector and who was made redundant four times in two years wouldn't carry any authenticity for her similar views in your eyes because she was married to me with my 'priesthood'. It seems you are convinced by your own disillusionment so there is nothing I can say that you won't twist to suggest I am someone who denigrates or demonises the poor from the position of a mock capitalist. You dismiss my open market activities as dabbling because I was running multiple roles (tuning was a small minority) yet they stand alone as something that many would I hope be pleased with. Now I see that I will not attempt to persuade you otherwise and wish you well. I do hope you find some optimism from relocation or employment that is fulfilling to you if that is what you need, or whatever other means you feel might provide it. I would say that you haven't succeeded in showing me any kind of higher path if that was your intention, you just sound negative about everything, and I feel your attitudes displayed on a wider scale will keep people dejected, powerless and poor.

 

John, why are you wasting your breath? As an experienced GP you should be able to see all the tell tale signs ie Knight's move thinking, emotional nihilism, paranoid delusions, feelings of persecution, even hallucinations (he accused me of being a vampire in another thread!)

Are you able to section him over the internet?

 

I think it's delusional to think that one's experiences and subjectivity can be made universal; what might work for me might not be so great for someone else. I think John is trying to locate failings of a Capitalist system within the persons of certain social groups too. To be honest in our society there isn't much to do - from my POV - but to try and earns lots and get ahead, but to turn that into a political philosophy which seeks to harm people (under guise of 'incentives') 'for their own good' is bloody arrogant and wrong. The middle class or bourgeois experience doesn't universalise, the classical economists were wrong about the nature of capitalism - freedom is certainly a zero sum game to an great extent, because we always claim it at someone else's expense - even if total wealth isn't zero sum. Emancipation is always robbed off someone else.

 

I think you just need to grow a pair and stop crying like a small girl

 

I thought IDS was brilliant on Radio 4 this morning. I will keep voting for them.

 

I think you misunderstood my point. It's about you preaching markets and commence whilst living within the ecosystem of what is basically a Guild (medical profession). What you believe has emancipated you actually didn't.

 

I have to say that I'm with TDW on this one.

Doctors enjoy the benefits of a successful businessman without the risks; put simply, doctors are heavily overpaid as are many public sector workers. They need paying well as its a skilled and responsible position but well into six figures? No. £70k is about right.

Same with senior council workers and many others; our local council leader is on £250k yet is largely hopeless.

We could save millions correcting inflated salaries; we pay them, we say they are too much. Or maybe pay nurses properly?

However I don't think MPs are overpaid; it's an absolute sod of a job to do.

 

Not overpaid - really?

 

Nope; I know one. Huge responsibility, endless character assassination, very responsible position. And likely to get booted out at any moment.

 

What are you on about? How can you say doctors earn the same as a successful businessman? What does a successful businessman earn? I didn't know there was even a definition of one.

As 'for being heavily overpaid', do you really believe this? First of all the avge income of a consultant starts at about £80k, it won't rise to over £100k until about 10 years later (so age 45-50)

Do you honestly feel that the guy who does a cardiac transplant, or cuts out your brain tumour, or safely removes the cancer from your wife's breast or runs the paediatric intensive care where your child ends up when it gets meningitis is not worth £80-£100k??

As for 'no risk', you want to come and walk a week in my shoes Mattee and you'll know what risk is.

Personally I think I am well paid rather than over paid, I'd like to think my patients get their money's worth from my experience, skill and compassion

 

Yeah I'm not sure that bog standards GP's are paid too much. What I am concerned with is the way they seem to be able to cheaply buy in effect licenses off the state to provide GP health care, an almost risk free activity in which we end up basically paying rent to a few GP owned partnerships to provide NHS services. Of course it will all probably end up owned by (private equity?) corporations and most GP's will be turned into employees with their feet in the flames. They won't like that.

Anyway my original point was that medicine being a profession is organised more like a guild than a 'free market' commercial ecosystem. This applies whether it is private or publicly provided. It is what Max Weber calls 'social closure'.

 

It can't be a freemarket commercial ecosystem because not everybody can 'have a go'

The only way it could be freemarket is if anybody could set themselves up as a doctor. But this is no different to any other profession that requires qualifications and revalidation by a governing/regulatory body ie barristers, architects etc

 

Our £400k loan would support the idea of a cheap buy in? Risk free would exactly describe the crap I did today, or that sometimes I do not pay myself so I can pay the staff? It is surprising the stuff that people that are clueless think they understand.

The successful businessmen I know make me look poor.

 

Not aimed at you, but the very same attitudes are shown by those better off towards those at the bottom of the working ladder.

People generally are very quick to make judgements about others, when the reality often is, that they don't know what a day in the life of the other person is like. Not everyone works in life or death jobs, but it doesn't necessarily mean what they do is easy, or it makes them an underachiever or to be looked down upon.

Sorry to go off on a tangent.

 

Sorry John but you are buying rentier rights, that is the right to extract rent from the public by owing an essential public service. It's like the schools that will end up in private finances hands, the taxpayer ends up paying a group of people money for doing nothing but owning something the public used to collectively own anyway. Nothing changes except an extra layer of burden is imposed on the public.

 

Lisawrx, I have ill advisedly continued to respond to tdw and frustration has set in. It isn't good for me or the topic of this thread to continue, he and I are never going to agree and I have nothing to gain from further attempting to justify myself.