Oops! Boycott Germany!

[klapse]

Money is worth nothing if you don't have, and wont get, a stable economy. Greece has no foundation for that now. ... Now In 3 years they will be have repeated the process yet again.

This is correct. The EU countries and institutions should never have bailed-out the Greek government after they defaulted on 1/2 of their debts in 2012. And yet another bailout consisting of money sucked out of the european public won't fix the Greek economy.

There's still hope that the deal will be rejected by the Greek parliament or the parliaments of the creditor countries.

 

[comradekingu]

I dont see why it wouldnt, i think the public voted against (?) and if the parliament agrees, the sitting government effectivly is worthless and has to do the opposite of the foundation they were elected on.

Basically the opposite marionettes. Before it was government officials funneling money into public projects against their function, now it could be the government elected in opposition to it has to allow privatization of everything.

Next time they will get a market-liberalist government having to run plan-economy to keep the ship floating

 

[rygD]

Consumer boycotts are only effective at one thing- tooting your horn in your Twitter circle-jerk and pretending anyone gives a damn about your "outrage".

My Doom movie boycott is for reals. 

I have seen it at least twice.  Sorry if I ruined your boycott.  Since I don't know how it works with movies, is it only things like buying tickets when it was being shown, and buying it to watch at home, or can you not do anything where it is involved, such as watching it on TV.  

If you have cable/satellite tv, wouldn't paying for a package that includes a channel that has shown Doom a few times interfere with such a boycott, even if those boycotting it never watched, but did have cable?

 

[TrashyMG]

I have seen it at least twice.  Sorry if I ruined your boycott.  Since I don't know how it works with movies, is it only things like buying tickets when it was being shown, and buying it to watch at home, or can you not do anything where it is involved, such as watching it on TV.     If you have cable/satellite tv, wouldn't paying for a package that includes a channel that has shown Doom a few times interfere with such a boycott, even if those boycotting it never watched, but did have cable?

Don't see how you watching it voids my pledge to not watch it.

Well the petition I signed mentioned not to watch, buy or directly support it in anyway... I haven't had any form of Cable TV or Satellite TV service for about 15 years now... so I didn't directly go out of my way of avoiding channels that play it, but looks like I have anyway.

 

[rygD]

I have seen it at least twice.  Sorry if I ruined your boycott.  Since I don't know how it works with movies, is it only things like buying tickets when it was being shown, and buying it to watch at home, or can you not do anything where it is involved, such as watching it on TV.     If you have cable/satellite tv, wouldn't paying for a package that includes a channel that has shown Doom a few times interfere with such a boycott, even if those boycotting it never watched, but did have cable?

Don't see how you watching it voids my pledge to not watch it.

Well the petition I signed mentioned not to watch, buy or directly support it in anyway... I haven't had any form of Cable TV or Satellite TV service for about 15 years now... so I didn't directly go out of my way of avoiding channels that play it, but looks like I have anyway.

Would it help with your boycott if you illegally downloaded it, or bought bootleg copies, but never watched it?  If I were to believe the MPAA (and RIAA, etc.) then "stealing" it, sharing it, and watching the illegal copies would have a bigger impact than your boycott.

Aside from trying to profit off of a big part of video game history, the film actually features a small part of video game history (that is being "played" incorrectly).  I own a differently branded version of the device/game that was shown.

 

[TrashyMG]

Would it help with your boycott if you illegally downloaded it

Maybe if tell someone else to download it and distribute it, I wouldn't want the bits to mingle with my other files on my home server. 

 

[rygD]

Would it help with your boycott if you illegally downloaded it

Maybe if tell someone else to download it and distribute it, I wouldn't want the bits to mingle with my other files on my home server. 

Why do you hate it that much?  It is cheesy and doesn't follow the story, but this is also true of other video game movies.  Bad movies can be fun...we are up to Sharknado 3 already. 

 

[TrashyMG]

Why do you hate it that much?

Can't say that I hate it, I've never seen it. I made a commitment not to support it. This was solely based on what I read about it prior to the movie release, mostly based on directions the director took, "The Rock" being cast and such. Right now it's more that I made a commitment and I'm following through with it. 

 

[WizardStan]

If "consumer boycott" does only mean "not buying something", I'm boycotting a bloody lot, like: Apple, Microsoft, meat, eggs, milk, smartphones, most clothes, hiphop, techno, Harry Potter, Steam... the list is endless.

A boycott is more than just "not buying something", it's intentionally avoiding something, typically for political reasons. In order to count as a boycott it has to be something that you would have bought if not for whatever it is that you're mad at the company for.A vegetarian can't really boycott McDonalds, they wouldn't eat the food anyway. I'm not boycotting Ford just because I drive a Chrysler.

I am, however, boycotting EA: if they stopped being evil (in ways that I define as evil) I wouldn't hesitate to drop dozens of dollars on ME3 and SimCity. I recognize that my boycott is ineffective but that doesn't mean it isn't a boycott.

 

[comradekingu]

You could boycott something to the point of becoming vegetarian. If its activly non-coincidental that you drive something other than a Ford, it could be a boycott, no?

So going against your own will to support something, out of a reason why they are acting partly, against your interests, is a boycott?

I think if EA stopped being evil, they would stop being EA. They clearly have an audience, and chose it willingly, so we aren't the boycott.

The thing i don't get is why boycotting Germany would make them less reliant on claiming back loans issued to Greece, that just seems counterproductive.

 

[Kev2442]

Hold on a second.

I did my best to read and understand what's being said here, but there's something that I just don't get.

As Greece was in a bad situation, few people wanted to loan them money in fear of not getting paid back.

Thus, these few people loaned them with more interests (classic market law : the less offer for the demand, the higher the price) to balance the risks.

But doesn't loaning them with higher rates increase the risk of not getting paid back ? Isn't it a highly vicious circle ?

Why for [insert deity name here]'s sake did anybody who saw that let it happen ?

This is like asking for another shrubbery ! :rolleyes:

 

[comradekingu]

Greece is a little bigger than what can just be allowed to fail right overnight. They are also dependant on a flow of money to operate their government and society, so that there is any turnover to pay back from.

If that stops functioning, you can reconstruct it from the rubble created when it collapses, or you can kickstart it with a loan. But it all has to be sustainable. Austerity isn't great for starting anything, it works for cutting down on excess, but right now its a case of everything grinding to a halt. Only the second option lets investors see any return other than what can be bailed out by other nations finances.

And why are other nations in this circus? Because they need their banks, which definitely are too big to fail.

For example todays talk mentioned 6 billion euro worth in foreign agriculture imported each year, produced domestically that would mean 400k new jobs. Great for them, but consider someone loaning them money to keep buying, importers and processors, transporters being the current jobs, you cant just flick a switch and expect all parties to adjust as quick.

Its not just problematic as the example, its largely illegal, and if it continues, will question the ability of a people whos decision it wasn't, to repay debts racked up by another generation, into _nothing_.

When you stop considering loans to be real, once they question the currency they are made in, you at some point start pretending all is well even though you _know_ it isn't. What happened wasn't that Greece went back to being Greece defaulting on a loan and becoming North Korea (which did it before) they effectively stopped being soverign Greece, and are now pretending to have a government.

So its a big discussion where no party really has a clean sheet, they cant really share their real interests or course of action. And those who can, are tugging each end of an ideological argument.

 

[_wb_]

This whole Greece thing is essentially just a matter of corrupt neoliberal politicians all over Europe (including Greece before Syriza got a majority), who have invented a somewhat complicated scam that has the following net effects:

• public tax-payer money gets transferred to private banks and finance capitalists on a massive scale
• governments are forced (in very non-democratic ways) to implement a neoliberal agenda of privatisation, austerity, tax cuts for the rich
• creating the conditions for perpetual crisis and public budget problems, which means political power is ensured for a small, non-elected club of capitalists (usually referred to as "the markets", whose "reaction" to political decisions is considered more important than democratic elections and mass demonstrations and all that)

This is sadly the situation in the European Union as it is currently conceived. I'm very much pro Europe and pro international collaboration in general, but I'm also very much opposed to this EU.

 

[thatgui]

This ignores the opportunity cost to Germany

Except that with the current minister of finance this would certainly not have happened. And even then, what borked up logic is that? "Why do you complain about beeing mugged by me, instead be thankful, I easily could have killed you!"

There should have been NO bailouts whatsoever.

100% agree, especially as the leading negotiators on the EU side would never took the actions they demanded from greece in their own country, simply out of fear to limit the economies growth rate.

A very salient point. Consumer boycotts are generally just lazy armchair warriors sitting at home and complaining on the internet. Them simply not buying something is totally indistinguishable, unless there are a phenomenal number, from any other person simply not buying for any other reason. A consumer boycotts is a lazy, apathetic waste of time and is in most cases equivalent to doing absolutely nothing- not surprising, since it generally involves you doing absolutely nothing. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess most of the people in this "boycott" probably don't have any significant business dealings with Germany anyway, if any at all... or, maybe they *were* in the market for a new Audi and opted for a Toyota Aygo instead...

I wholeheartedly disagree. Consumer boycotts are the next step after "complaining on the internet". I don't know if it eventually changes something, but if no one starts, how should we know ?


What do you do, if something goes against the grain for you ? You do not complain, you do not boycott it, what else is there ?

So, quite to the contrary of having sold the 'real assets of greece' to the rest of the europeans, they get 86 billion of crisp new euros in exchange for putting maybe 40 billion up in collateral, which they of course keep if they pay off the loan, but if not they can probably take back any time they really want to. That means the greeks can walk away from europe with at least 366 and probably 406 billion euro of other people's money - 85% of which has been footed by european taxpayers in one way or another -  and nobody can do anything about it.

If it were that easy they simply would have declared their debts non existent and would have moved on. Renationalizing state property that was thrown out a dime a dozend won't be that easy for the greek government as long as they rely on the drip (which will probably never end if the new "iron lady" is left at the helm) and even after that it would be hard.

Anyway, it's not Germany's fault.

Oh it is, my dear, it is (not Germany alone though but it was a driving force behind it). Your analogy fits quite well for that: marriage in real life is usally very non romantic, with both parties having rather mundane motivs: the european monetary union, wasn't made solely based on economical reasoning, for a huge part it was also for political reasons (and for certain person involved it get them the chance to leave a footprint in history). Of course it was known back then, that the figures Greece (and Italy, Spain, France etc) were "fishy", but it was ignored (for whatever reasons). Otherwise almost no country would have met the criteria and lowering these would have resulted in a currency no one had any trust in.

 

[Binky]

What I don't understand is why people keep calling these bailouts "loans". As far as my definitely-not-an-economist understanding goes, Greece hasn't a hope of ever being able to pay back these debts to any meaningful degree.

How can economy recover with impossible debts looming over it all the time?

Its like the student loan problem, but worse in pretty much every way.

 

[Klumpen]

How can economy recover with impossible debts looming over it all the time?

You can ask that about Germany too, the debts this country has since WW2 can never be paid back because the German economy already struggles paying back the interests for it for 80 years now, still they are throwing money around at countries that are about to get the same fate.

It's just a method for controlling a countries economy and quite common. In the end it's all just virtual bullshit.

 

[KickAss]

How can economy recover with impossible debts looming over it all the time?

You can ask that about Germany too, the debts this country has since WW2 can never be paid back because the German economy already struggles paying back the interests for it for 80 years now, still they are throwing money around at countries that are about to get the same fate.


It's just a method for controlling a countries economy and quite common. In the end it's all just virtual bullshit.

its all about a country's predicted economic strength and reliability in a certain amount of time, be it short term or long term.


unfortunately national economics may well be a tad bit more complex than business economics.


basically greece's economy is dead since many many years. it cant compete with other EU members. theres also other states close to that predicament. luckily this was part of the basic design of the EU. because the different member's economies were also very different before. besides: the european trading union and the european currency union are different things...


i do believe, that greece gained a lot through the EU (probably not as much through the EURO), because supporting the lesser efficient economies was the initial plan.


if greece was not (or soon wont be) part of the EU, it still could not compete. it could exist and trade with its own set of rules, yes, but the EU rules in place are already very beneficial (at least in the case of greece).


back in 2010 i studied in thessaloniki/greece. thessaloniki is the economical capitol. the crisis was already in full extent, but honestly, ppl didnt care. at least common ppl on the streets. ppl who actually owned money started to transfer their money elsewhere pretty early.


the desastrous situation greece is facing and seemingly struggeling to seriously cope with since many years sure isnt germany's fault. nor is it the fault of the EU. it is, of course, the fault of a multitude of things of which most lie, you guessed it, in greece.

 

[comradekingu]

They still cant fix that with the "help" of the eurozone, and that was a known premise when they were allowed to join.

I heard on the radio that the national debt of industrial countries average at about 100% of GDP, while for impoverished nations, struggling to pay it back, even if its just a meaningless figure to the industrial ones, lie at 30% or so.

Even having many years worth of production "saved up", its still just eaten by high levels of expense to run things, and its not like much of the labour could be replaced either.

Very virtual this currency is.

 

[Caine]

What I don't understand is why people keep calling these bailouts "loans". As far as my definitely-not-an-economist understanding goes, Greece hasn't a hope of ever being able to pay back these debts to any meaningful degree.

Because the politicians need to sell the fact that they are privatizing the national debts. "We're going to transfer Greek debts to all of you" doesn't make you very popular as a politician.

 

[levi]

As far as I understand it, Greece is expected to be able to pay back those 'loans' in theory at least; meanwhile they'll still be paying off interest on it for the foreseeable, so if they were simple transfers, there'd be no mechanism to work out what the interest should be.