These new urban systems are simply a way to cram as many people into a small boxes as possible and make citizens culturally flex with their bicycle life and not just seem like a poor peasant. Few give up their personal car because of decades of entrainment. I just think for better or worse, North America is always going to come out with the most selfish (for better or worse) system.
It can be clean tech but we need it to be personal or else we feel like we are declining in standard of living. They don't struggle with these issues in Europe or Asia because Europe and Asia are fundamentally different societies. I don't really see any other way around this dilemma.
Because tech people spent probably 5 years signalling their moral goodness about a wide array of topics, indeed proclaiming these the most important political topics. IT was and still is insufferable.
Maybe a little cynical, but genuinely if any country has got some good strategies for building industry back up after a decline I think we should be stealing their notes. Right now arguably China seems like the only one to me? And I'd definitely favor trying their massive state investment, but I'm not sure if the UK can do that one.
> Right now arguably China seems like the only one to me?
They didn't build it up on their own. They saw opportunity in western businesses who wanted lower wages and less strict environmental laws, and lured them in. The western businesses then moved all their manufacturing to China who then spied on these factories to out-compete the western businesses with "home grown" products they copied.
Also second hand from British friends but the current leadership seems really weird to me. Went back on their election pledges, tacking this way and that for something to do to raise poll numbers.
It doesn't fit together as a strategy to me and I don't see it fixing the economy, but I guess they can talk about it as a success?
The British political class has been collapsing for decades. The population just flip-flops between completely awful unpalatable options, Starmer is just reheated third way Blairism. Brits aren't this stupid and they want optimistic view of future not go on the war path or austerity.
They will slowly cycle out this historical group of parties resulting in painful economic results and poor social cohesion nationally.
Are you aware of the reason Epstein island existed? Do you know about the history of intelligence agencies influence on national governments? Transnational corporate lobbying? (All incompetence. I suppose.)
No dark rooms, armchairs or cigars are needed. Did you guys even read Wikileaks?
Yes indeed. But aren't these all discrete examples, rather than a centralised deliberate process of manipulation of the proletariat?
e.g. corporate lobbying clearly exists and operates, and may be nefarious, but is broadly directed towards the corporate entity's gain, rather than dividing and conquering the masses.
You are still not truly understanding Epstein Island, how is that NOT a centralised hub to subvert democratic processes to divide masses? (Not just the USA…)
Conspiracies are a very common part of business law, people just do not accept that it can happen in the political realm.
Okay, let's roll with the idea that Epstein was somehow involved with (or working for) a country or its intelligence service - which is the commonest conspiracy theory I've read.
So sure, that's probably blackmail and subversion (via kompromat on prominent politicians or business people) in favour of that country's interests, but again that's insolated and self-interested (i.e. in the interests of the particlar country in question). But it's not centralised 'divide and conquer the proletariat' in favour of the (ultra-)bourgeois, which was my original point.
I'm not saying that such things don't exist; I'm just arguing they're not as centralised and targeted at creating divides and unrest amongst the people as the original post suggests, as usually that's not a tactic that results in a beneficial outcome for the group involved. Epstein's putative handlers weren't going "nah, forget infiltrating the mil-tech sector in your country; what we're really interested in is a few headlines about immigration in the UK".
The goal is to create compliant leaders who will not rock the boat too much. These compromised leaders cannot provide their own input into policy decisions, bypassing democratic institutions (elections).
I don't understand how you don't see this as textbook conspiracy or centralised?
Here's some Farage quotes, so you can see that there is no contradiction between the comment you were replying to (him saying it was a disaster is compatible with all this) and him still being a leaver:
“I don’t think that for a moment,” Mr Farage replied when he was asked if the UK would have been better off staying in the EU, the world’s largest single market area. “But what I do think is we haven’t actually benefitted from Brexit economically, what we could have done.”
“I mean, what Brexit’s proved, I’m afraid, is that our politicians are about as useless as the commissioners in Brussels were,” he added. “We’ve mismanaged this totally, and if you look at simple things…such as takeovers, such as corporation tax, we are driving business away from our country.
“Arguably, now we’re back in control, we’re regulating our own businesses even more than they were as EU members. Brexit has failed.”
Why do people vote for populists that inevitably will just do the bidding of the rich and powerful? That man is such a disgustingly clear example.
The same thing is true in Sweden. People vote for the party that blames the immigrants and then goes on to rule with the liberal conservative part. They all know that during the time they claim is the downfall of Sweden, we have more than one third of state tax income and had the worst privatisation of schools worldwide,
. Yet the problems with schools and healthcare is immigration.
It's not "blaming the immigrants"--that is such a gross oversimplification and distraction. No, the immigrants were pawns, and the predictable outcomes caused by having too many immigrants, as well as those who profited off of that situation--they are ones that the anger is directed towards. A lot of countries, the US included, were on a sustainable path, and then BOOM, the influx of illiterate people, totally dependent on government handouts threw a wrench into everything. Our schools are ruined. Our neighborhoods are ruined. Prices of necessities are through the roof. Healthcare and insurance, literally everything is pricing the middle class out of existence. Yet somehow it is "wrong" to assign blame! The immigrants are merely a symptom of a vast betrayal.
That may be the perception, but it's still not how it happened.
All of the currently-rich nations had a multi-generational baby boom*, long enough for their systems to assume and become dependent on that population growth.
* babies being the most extreme example of "influx of illiterate people, totally dependent on government handouts", though people only objected to them in the UK when I was a kid when it was single mothers producing them
Families started to have fewer kids, but the systems still presumed and needed more people to avoid stagnation. Japan chose stagnation instead of welcoming as many immigrants as it needed, and "the lost decade" became a plural: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decades
> Healthcare and insurance, literally everything is pricing the middle class out of existence.
I assume from this that you're American? That's basically just America that has this problem. Healthcare and health insurance is fine in most other developed (and developing) nations, even e.g. here in Germany in those few years where it took on around a million asylum seekers.
Influx of illiterate people, sure. But then it is an even worse thing to cut taxes and cutting the budget for SFI (Swedish for immigrants).
The school results are worse. Even here the claim is that it is the immigrants' fault. The privatisation of the school system in sweden has led to increased segregation of the school system. Private schools can be found in areas where they get "easy students". Yet they fail to deliver any better results than public schools. Which is amazingly dumb. The state pays private schools (they are open for anyone and have no tuition fees). The schools can then let less money go to tuition and more to the share holders/owners, while being able to claim that they are just as good as schools with all the tough students. By all measurements they should be much better. It is such an enormous failure.
And who do we blame? Immigrants.
And social mobility is going downwards. Not nearly as low in the US, but I want to think that we at least still believe in the value of hard work.
People don’t vote for populists by accident, votes for populists are a symptom of elite failure to build a society that works for everyone while writing their columns, appearing on their panels, or staffing their NGOs. There's a whole class of politicians in Britain who treats politics as a posture, not a practice - and believes people are too stupid to see through it.
> There's a whole class of politicians in Britain who treats politics as a posture, not a practice - and believes people are too stupid to see through it.
IMO, many of the UK politicians themselves don't realise how out of touch they are, both with the people and with the systematic reality of the world in which they exist. (Thinking back to David Davis on Brexit, saying they had a good idea what Czechoslovakia wanted from negotiations, despite it having ceased to exist in 1992).
I don’t see any change coming until politicians stop seeing public opinion as something to be managed and placated. The lesson taken from Truss seems to have been broadly to never try anything bold again to fix the economy.
"People" is a collective, "Farage" is one person. For people collectively to change their behaviour does not require 100% of the individuals to also change their behaviour. Not even when the singular person is also calling the thing a failure.
It can be clean tech but we need it to be personal or else we feel like we are declining in standard of living. They don't struggle with these issues in Europe or Asia because Europe and Asia are fundamentally different societies. I don't really see any other way around this dilemma.