Almost insta-ordered this book today. Perfect topic, perfect investigation. YES, I want to read this.
Having learned from past mistakes, I quickly checked the author's bio (colonialism?! ah, ffs) and the brief description of the book.
Hopkins argues that, instead of following the free-market policies of its mentor, the United States, Britain should draw on its own history of social democracy and borrow from its neighbours in Europe, where communitarian principles continue to be upheld.
Aaaah, no -- DEF FUCKING NOTAaaah, no -- DEF FUCKING NOT
First of all, the U.S. did not employ anything resembling free-market policies, not in the '80s, not today. Second, deregulation and privatization are emphatically not what's gone wrong in Britain.
An oversize state, a culture that embraces decline and degeneracy, a constitutional failure of fixing or doing anything productive. Britain's only growth industries are porn, soccer and, increasingly devalued, stuffy old universities
Having lived in Britain for ~5 years, I have some sense of how this crumbling former world empire doesn't work. And no, privatization and deregulation ain't got nothing to do with it. A culture of "oh well, too bad," "oh, let's just patch this serious problem; maybe better tomorrow."
I used to joke back in the 2010s that it was incomprehensible to me that this retarded, broken, can't-fix-shit country once ruled the world.
Fav example of everything that's wrong with the UK:
This is an (stupidly overpriced) water bottle, wrapped in a comfy blanket. What you do in the fall and winter months is that you boil water before you go to bed, fill this up, and take it under the blanket with you. Why? Because British houses are routinely leaky, poorly built, underheated, and cold as flying fuck. Plus, heating is expensive (not really), and most Brits just accept that suffering inside your home is preferable to paying a few quid for heating.
Only time you're ever warm in English winter is when you're taking a shower.
And instead of doing anything about that (we Nordics know a thing or two about keeping our hearths warm and insulated), everyone just gets themselves waterbottles to snuggle with! My point here isn't that they're nice and comfy, it's the collective cultural misstep of not fixing the underlying problem.
Another from my collection:
This is from a large train station at a major British city, a week or so after the clocks changed in the fall. It's situated pretty far up, meaning you need a ladder to get up there. And instead of, you know, moving the clock back one hour when you're up there, you do the same work but put a sign saying that it's wrong. And leave it like that for weeks.
Broken society, broken people.
Yeah, look at this insane free-market, hollowing out of the state:
IFS has an even more beautiful chart
Like, at no point nowhere in the publishing process did an editor say "hm, let me fact-check the basic premise of the book."
Fucksake, nobody can do their shit properly #1479596
The clock story is fascinating. I wonder if it's coz they don't have anyone on staff who actually knows how to operate the clock. Maybe there's only like a handful of old timers in the whole agency who know how to do that anymore
it's probably outsourced to a Polish-run (obviously...) business, needing seven rounds of bureaucratic approvals but no funds available for such extra expenses until next municipal budget meeting.
I say obviously because
a) only immigrants do manual labor (the doing of things)
b) Polish people actually work and know how to do shit.
plus: I have a hundred of these examples stashed away in folders somewhere
Is this right?
no, probs not. I'm being a tad facetious
It must be broken!
Den, do you think that if Britain stays on the rainbow lanyard, liberal elite, net zero train, they are heading for an even worse future?!
yes
People get stuck in their narratives very easily. Government's share of the economy did go down in the 80's...before trending back upwards for the past 40 years.
It does seem like there's a disturbingly large fraction of the population who now simply take as given that capitalism is responsible for society's current failures. I hear the term "late stage capitalism" bandied about a lot.
What neoliberalism abandoned was the idea that government had a valid role in the productive economy and finance.
Banking was deregulated removing almost all restrictions upon what purpose fiat debt originated capital funding could be directed toward by private profit motivated banks.
This has resulted in huge sums of fiat debt directed into non productive purposes - primarily housing and asset price speculation.
At the same time the idea of government investing in core infrastructure which could be expected to stimulate private sector productivity was rejected. Strategic infrastructure and productive capability was outsourced to private providers who were believed to be capable of more efficient provision- but in that process huge sectors were outsourced to foreign providers- often China.
China was building its economy on a state capitalist model where key services and skills were deliberately provided capital and resources by government to build the most competitive manufacturing economy on earth.
Western designs and technologies were copied and built in China.
The west lost the ability to produce most manufactured goods and increasingly services.
Private capital has no incentive to look at and develop a strategy for the overall benefit of a nation- private capital serves its shareholder investors.
If refining rare earths is not profitable in the near-medium term it will not invest in that.
If a process can be outsourced to a cheaper provider in China private enterprise will quite logically outsource to that provider.
This China won the trade war and now the west and its neoliberal experiment show, by their failure, how dramatically the wealth of nations is tied to the quality of their governments and their ability to work with industry to protect and preserve the wealth and security of a nation.
It is true that UK pleb homes are ice boxes for most of the year now and the once functioning society has been destroyed.
Academia now lives in a vacuum of senseless, illogical, ideological capture. So, you got moronic people like this pandering to the very same socialism that exists to sell books.
Nobody really believes it. The UK didn't 'lose the plot' it was taken away.
Wow. The clock story is sad.
Oh they fact-checked it. They made sure there were no facts.
probably yeah
The British Empires global monetary dominance only ended finally as a result of the Suez Crisis.
When USA, now dominant militarily and in trade refused to back the British against the Egyptian nationalisation of the strategic canal.
An empire no longer able to control significant trade routes was clearly no longer a dominant entity and so the 'good as gold' British Pound was dumped by central banks and traders globally, being replaced by the USD.
It was around the same time the CIA got involved in removing the democratically elected government of Iran to install the useful puppet shah who would not nationalise UK and US oil interests in Iran.
During the transition from British imperialism to US imperialism there was considerable co-operation between the ascending and descending empires.
It is interesting that today as the US empire is declining that its 'Suez Crisis' equivalent may well be the 'Hormuz Crisis'.
Empires get tired, over extended, outdated and superceded.
Their arrogance built upon 'extraordinary privilege' tends to prevent them seeing what is happening...until its too late.