Britain's decline was inevitable.
Discussion
cardigankid said:
I am certainly not blaming everything on the attitude of public sector workers - the whole situation is too complex for that - but it has been expanded as a means of creating jobs, it grows by the empire building principle, and the idea of comparability with the private sector is totally misguided. It is not in any way the same animal, and most importantly the figures do not HAVE to balance because they will never go bust as such. That is not the same as saying there are no financial constraints.
I would love to see a mechanism for sovereign bankruptcy. I don't know why they didn't do this with the whole silly third world debt thing a few years ago. Give asset ownership to the creditors.It would give us a new age of empires as creditors became defacto colonial powers, with all the skill and knowledge transfer that goes with that. Development for the third world, profits for the first world and cold showers for the grungy charity freaks who think handouts are the answer to everything.
AJS- said:
cardigankid said:
I am certainly not blaming everything on the attitude of public sector workers - the whole situation is too complex for that - but it has been expanded as a means of creating jobs, it grows by the empire building principle, and the idea of comparability with the private sector is totally misguided. It is not in any way the same animal, and most importantly the figures do not HAVE to balance because they will never go bust as such. That is not the same as saying there are no financial constraints.
I would love to see a mechanism for sovereign bankruptcy.
bosscerbera said:
Britain is fubar, there's no question about it. Our predicament is the worst in the world in my opinion but, by varying degrees, our major trading partners are in similar boats. Those not in substantial debt need those who are to be their customers. It doesn't work.
This is where economics starts to wander into the realms of philosophy. Really, what the hell are we playing at?
Etc.
An excellent post BC - and kinda what I was driving at in my OP of this thread. We have become the victims of our own system. I still believe that much of the detail mentioned on this thread is, while interesting, perceptive and valid, largely irrelevant in the final analysis.This is where economics starts to wander into the realms of philosophy. Really, what the hell are we playing at?
Etc.
Society on a local and global scale is dynamic. Just because we have enjoyed a period of a couple of hundred years of comparitive prosperity does not mean it has to last, or even that it will last. Our economic and political system has worked quite well in some respects for two centuries, but that is a very short period of time in the grand scheme of things.
It may now be time, for the reasons I mentioned and others cited on here, for the balance of economic and political power to shift. Our systems appear to be failing, and it isn't as a result of specific decisions, but more as a result of a system that never could be sustainable indefinitely.
(I note also that one poster said "there's a whole universe out there" - to my mind this is actually the key to human development. The sooner we start to expand outwards from our home planet and begin to utilise the solar system the better. We are getting perilously close to exhausting the potential of this planet. The global population is currently 6 billion. (The global population grows by the equivalent of the entire UK population of 60million every year). By 2030 it will be over eight billion, and while we remain solely dependent upon Earth, our resources and land space are, by definition, limited.)
anonymous said:
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Thanks Alex.
I think the questions/agenda need to move beyond trying to poke the debt genie back in its lamp. On the subject of growth, I put something in the "be very afraid thread" questioning growth as some kind of holy grail - the thought was triggered by a G20 announcement that they'd do everything in their power to maintain growth. Why? To service the debt? Because we are slaves to rather than masters of a great 16th century money expansion wheeze?
(
Hopefully we innovative Brits have something the Martians would like to buy. Perhaps benefits folk could knit Clangers. That would help. Or maybe China will lend us the money to send our administration and its benefits chums to another planet? The tickets might be cheaper than supporting them on earth.)derestrictor said:
It may seem like a rather banal, trite issue to refocus upon but I think Alex mentions the pertinent issue behind all of this - overpopulation.
Well, in many ways everything ultimately comes back to this.I recall reading some years ago that "experts" stated that the planet was theoretically able to sustain a population of 10 billion, and that the human population would, once reaching this figure effectively stabilise. I don't recall what the detailed reasoning behind this was/is, but of course if the planet were to sustain such a vast population there would have to be a worldwide redistribution of resources including food and water of course.
And for that to happen there will have to be a global shift in government - toward a single government world with semi-autonomous regions.
Some might argue that we are seeing the first tentative steps toward such a shift - no opposing superpowers, increased co-operation between countries, the UN, a reduction in the number of dictatorships etc. And that perhaps this global financial meltdown is another step toward a new and improved system of co-operative governance.
anonymous said:
[redacted]
The expert Thomas Malthus predicted famine and pesitlence due to overpopulation in the early 19th century. Yet food has got cheaper in real terms since then, diseases are more under control and life expectancies are longer. There's tons of room left, most obviously in Russia and Canada, but elsewhere too - fertile land with fresh water that could sustain literally billions more people. There is at some level a limit on just how many people the planet can sustain, but we're a long way off it.
We might have to start using space more efficiently, but my approach to this would be more market based than creating a global government. Scrap farm subsidies, building controls, planning laws and migration controls I think we could sustain double the present population.
AJS- said:
We might have to start using space more efficiently, but my approach to this would be more market based than creating a global government. Scrap farm subsidies, building controls, planning laws and migration controls I think we could sustain double the present population.
Definitely a place I don't want to live!AJS- said:
We might have to start using space more efficiently, but my approach to this would be more market based than creating a global government. Scrap farm subsidies, building controls, planning laws and migration controls I think we could sustain double the present population.
That's a pretty bold step.I wonder what a virtually unregulated world would look like? Would it not be akin to anarchy?
To my mind, it is lack of effective regulation that has got us into the current mess. Regulation, intelligently applied, has to be in the collective interest surely?
What you are suggesting would lead to massive exploitation, an increase in the gap between rich and poor, collosal damage to vital areas of natural resource (ie chop down all the rain forests to build new shanty towns) and huge population movements as people followed short term needs rather than focussed on longer term development and planning...
Surely?
For amusement and interest only, if you consider standing room (!) then every 1.5 billion of global population requires ~90 square miles of space. Almost totally useless as stats go, except that it's possible to do various extrapolations on that basis, using whatever amount of space you consider an individual or average family needs.
On the resources and sustainability angle, current 'thinking' is inaccurate if it's based on the flawed assumptions in a Wackernagel calculation, and most of it is. Bear this in mind when you next read about how many planet earths we are consuming from the surface of one planet earth. Already sussed back in 2002: http://www.reason.com/news/show/34831.html
On the resources and sustainability angle, current 'thinking' is inaccurate if it's based on the flawed assumptions in a Wackernagel calculation, and most of it is. Bear this in mind when you next read about how many planet earths we are consuming from the surface of one planet earth. Already sussed back in 2002: http://www.reason.com/news/show/34831.html
anonymous said:
[redacted]
Bit of a pain to row a boat to the main land to feed everyone every week though wouldn't it?Good thread AlexKP.
I don't have any answers for this discussion. I do think though that there aren't as many fundamental systemic problems as we think there are. There are a number of areas however where we have applied modern and mostly unproved theories to fix things that weren't broken.
for one thing de-regulation of industries where regulation had been imposed over centuries is dumb, Banks for example were a service industry and we new that and made sure that they were regulated in such a way that they didn't lose OUR money, which we seem to be forgetting was whose money they lost.
The fact that generally the blips on the financial (banking)horizon happened every 200 years or so (south Sea Bubble, great depression) but now happen every 5 years, Russia Crisis, DotCom bubble, Sub Prime) is not a sign of the systemic problem but a sign of a problem in one quarter which needs to be addressed.
And before people start complaining that I'm attacking bankers I think the rethinking of regulation should apply to many industries, eg, Trains and Tubes, communications and broadcasting.
There has been little evidence that the de-regulation has in any case actually improved competition or quality in any of these industries.
Blimey, shame Britain can't export negative thinking - we would all be millionaires!
1) conflicts - to drive exports of machinery, electronics and arms. Check.
2) epidemics - to drive pharma industry and exports. Check.
War and pestilence is what is needed. We should be OK.
Wiki so to be taken with a pinch said:
Britain is the fifth largest trading nation in the world. Machinery and transport, manufactured goods and chemicals are Britain's largest export earners. Since the 1970s, oil has contributed significantly to Britain's overseas trade, both in exports and a reduced need to import oil. BP is one of Britain's biggest companies and one of the three largest integrated energy companies in the world.
The UK's pharmaceuticals industry is the world's third largest exporter of medicines and is second only to the United States in the discovery and development of medicines, including five of the world's top 25 best-selling drugs.
Britain is also a major supplier of plastics, aerospace producsts, electrical and electronic equipment. Britain is responsible for 10 per cent of the world's export of services, including banking, insurance, stockbroking, consultancy and computer programming.
So in order to progress we need:The UK's pharmaceuticals industry is the world's third largest exporter of medicines and is second only to the United States in the discovery and development of medicines, including five of the world's top 25 best-selling drugs.
Britain is also a major supplier of plastics, aerospace producsts, electrical and electronic equipment. Britain is responsible for 10 per cent of the world's export of services, including banking, insurance, stockbroking, consultancy and computer programming.
1) conflicts - to drive exports of machinery, electronics and arms. Check.
2) epidemics - to drive pharma industry and exports. Check.
War and pestilence is what is needed. We should be OK.
Edited by Bushmaster on Saturday 21st March 12:53
anonymous said:
[redacted]
I'm not sure it would lead to that. "Intelligently applied" regulation is the key term there, and I don't see much evidence of this anywhere in the world to be honest. Planning and building controls tend to mean if it's worth building a house, it's worth building 100 houses, so you get crowded pockets then big empty spaces in between.
Britain is already considered densely populated, but think of this: On pure land mass/population there is approximately one acre of land per person in the UK - 94,526 square miles = 60,496,640 acres. Every man, woman and child could have their own acre of land. The average household is 2.36, so without changing that we could leave more than half the country completely untouched, and if you cut it a bit smaller and gave everyone only half an acre each, which is still perfectly adequate for a house and garden, then we could fit the whole of the UK population into 1/4 of the country, in nice detached houses while leaving the entire lake district, Scottish Highlands and quite a bit besides completely untouched.
Apply the same to Spain or France and we could all be farmers, let alone Canada and Russia.
Of course I'm not suggesting actually doing this as a policy, but it does sort of put overcrowding in perspective.
anonymous said:
[redacted]
One of my earliest posts on these boards about this subject was about the rich/poor gap, which I can see widening if the current policies get to play out. The concentration of capital is already in the hands of a small minority. Many more people are seeing their wealth, or at least perceived wealth, wiped out by the current mess. The stats have been posted somewhere on PH already from a media article about losses sustained recently - trillions of pounds, anyway.When asset values fall, it's the "equity" element that people lose, leaving them only with the debt. Debt exceeding asset value is accelerating. The cheap assets won't be affordable to the indebted, only to the few who have capital. That will widen the rich/poor gap.
Industrial technology is empowering, but only for those with the capital to possess it. And the whole point of that technology - from a cost-justification point of view - is that it's cheaper than employing people. Government regulation has made employing people more expensive which makes innovations that displace people easier to justify. The motive running through this is money. Businesses want and need large numbers of customers to love them - but employ large numbers? Only the barest minimum and doing a good job of this makes prices lower ...so customers love them.
Businesses employ less and less people, technology-driven industry can serve an awful lot of people. That also widens the rich poor gap.
The paradox of this is that the unemployed cannot be customers. Government regulation to help people retain their jobs, seemingly however useless they are, has the unfortunate side-effect of making people less employable and very attractive indeed to displace with technology. Whichever way you look at it, the government attempts to 'bribe' employees with 'rights' to keep jobs, or bribe them with handouts if they don't have one - a government dishing out bribes like this, gets the vote. Whichever you look at it, if you don't want to employ somebody, you'll end up picking up their tab through your taxes.
Somewhere in that balls-up the answer may lie - we are economically interdependent. 'Economically' is an optional word, interdependent is a given. Motives other than economics do exist, we don't get paid in money for everything we do for somebody else. Sometimes we do things just because we can, or because it makes us feel better. Such idealism is laughable in these times because money - and bear in mind money doesn't truly exist - is like a quasi-religion. But 'the money idea' is man-made, a choice. Think of another?
Bushmaster said:
YOu have seen the results of those 'overcrowding' experiments where they add more and more rats to the cage, right?
Yes, but I'm not saying let's all live in council flats. Quite the opposite really.Overcrowding is a localised problem in certain areas. It's more a result of the distribution of population than the size of the population relative to the available land. Same with water shortages, at least in most of Europe, and with congestion bottlenecks.
When I lived in Northumberland and worked in Newcastle I could drive the first 20 miles without stopping for traffic once. The next 5 miles would be a queue of flowing traffic and only the last 5 or so miles into the city centre would be anything a Londoner might consider busy.
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