From: Hallam-Baker <hallam@ai.mit.edu>
Date: Mon, 16 Sep 1996 06:19:49 +0800
To: Steven Weller <cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: SPL -- Suspicious Persons List
In-Reply-To: <51foeg$5ea@life.ai.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <323C563B.4A7B@ai.mit.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Steven Weller wrote:
> 
> >Perry E. Metzger wrote:

> >>
> >> Yes, we could be a workers paradise like one of those lovely European
> >> countries with double digit unemployment and all. Too bad we didn't go
> >> in for democratic socialism while we could have, eh?
> >
> >Perry, hate to burst your bubble but unemployment in the UK _trippled_
> >in the first eighteen months of rule by that great socialist Margret
>                                                     ^^^^^^^^^
> >Thatcher. One third of UK manufaturing industry went bankrupt in the
> >only large scale application of Freedman's ideas.

> I think she was a little bit Tory. Conservative, maybe? Right wing? Funded
> by industry? On kissing terms with Reagan? Socialist, no. Or was this an
> attempt by Doctor Sarcasm at wit?

Its difficult to know what the US definition of "socialism" is.
Particularly
on Cypherpunks. I would consider it reasonable to call Thatcher a
statist
and authoratarian which many on the list consider to be the definition
of socialism.


> Actually the UK is now way ahead of the rest of Europe in terms of
> deregulation, low labor costs, efficient manufacturing, etc. Germany and
> France are now up the familiar creek because of their too-socialist
> policies. But there are those who say that Thatcher's slash and burn
> approach was appalling.

I would prefer to have the ecconomic figures for any European country
over
those of the UK. At the start of the Conservative rule the UK was the 
second biggest ecconomy. Today we have just been overtaken by Spain.
Italy and France overtook long ago.

With the exception of the UK the politics in Europe are much more left
wing than those of the states. Excluding Major there is no European
head of government to the right of Clinton. Its not really a case of 
"too socialist" as the natural rotation of power amongst the parties.


	Phill