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SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC SUICIDE Umair Haque: Why Britain Is Collapsing — And What Happens Next Brits Are Unwitting Subjects in a Grand Socioeconomic Experiment And It’s Destined to Fail 
Original article: https://eand.co/why-britain-is-collapsing-and-what-happens-next-13a5fe7d48f4 Peter Burgess COMMENTARY TO DO ... This Umair Haque commentary is spot on. I want to expand on the many points that Umair describes. This is not a two minute task !!!!!!!! Peter Burgess | ||
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Why Britain Is Collapsing — And What Happens Next
Brits Are Unwitting Subjects in a Grand Socioeconomic Experiment Now — And It’s Destined to Fail Written by Umair Haque September 29th 2022 Watch Britain, my friends, and shudder. Over the last few years, something remarkable— remarkably gruesome — has happened: Britain’s taken over from America as the world’s preeminent example of social collapse. Sure, there are poor countries who are…doing badly. But no country in the world comes close to falling as far and fast as Britain. Hence, it’s Britain week, here, I guess, because there’s a lot to talk about, for those who want to understand the future. What do I mean? You can’t fail to have noticed what one London radio presenter memorably called the Catrusstrophe — Liz Truss, the new PM, and KamiKwasi Kwarteng (so the joke goes)…did something astonishing. They blew up their own economy. When I say blew up, I mean it. That’s a lesson that Brits are failing to understand. The damage is done. The future is almost sealed in stone, and Britain’s is wrecked. I’m going to get to all that in just a moment. Let me put the bigger theme up front, though. Brits are now part of a Grand Social Experiment — one that’s doomed to fail, and it’s going to destroy their society as it does. That’s not a joke, it’s not hyperbole, I mean it, and it’s as plain as day to see coming. Britain is now about to become the most far right wing country on the planet, at least economically speaking, and the damage that’s going to occur is going to be incalculable. Let’s take all that step by step. What happened after KamiKwasi and the Catrusstrophe…blew up their own economy? After all, the Bank of England had to step in to the tune of $65 billion…because the nation’s pension funds were about to collapse. People’s pensions have literally gone up in smoke. That’s because there was a fire-sale on British bonds, in which pension funds invest heavily, and then borrow against, to invest even more. When they go down, margin calls get made — big ones, and pension funds were about to literally go bankrupt, unless the Bank of England stepped in. These clowns blew up the entire nation’s pensions. So if you think I’m kidding about Britain collapsing, think again. This is the stuff of banana republics. It’s not just me. Every single organization and institution and good economist in the entire world is aghast, and they’ve literally warned this government that what they’re doing is crackpot level stuff. That fire sale? It was because the budget borrowed $500 billion for…tax cuts…for the rich. Too far even for the markets, which said, “hey this is the kind of thing that happened in Latin America in the 90s…bye bye, pounds.” Not just me. The IMF literally warned them. Even right wing economists like Larry Summers, the guy who loves to bail out banks, warned them. Britain’s own best economists, like Danny Blanchflower, were shocked, and warned them too. What happened next? Well, KamiKwasi and the Catrusstrophe finally appeared in public…to double down. On their plan. Even though it had just blown up their economy. Which had just had to be saved by the Bank of England. The mind boggles. What exactly is going on here? There are three possibilities.
Let’s come back to Brits, for a moment. Brits are still severely underestimating how much pain is on the way. When I talk to Brits, they imagine that this government will go away shortly, in a couple of years time, and then the next government will be saner. All that’s probably true, but it matters a lot less than Brits think, because the damage is done. This is a lesson of social collapse people fail to understand well — they believe in reversion to the mean, but don’t quite grasp how much damage fanatics can do permanently in very, very short periods of time. What do I mean? Brits are about to get blown up, right along with their economy. Interest rates are set to skyrocket, because when currencies crash, they have to rise, to reward investors more for holding said currency. That means that every kind of debt gets more expensive — way more expensive, fast. How bad is it going to be? 40% of British mortgages have already been taken off the market. To put it another way, the size of Britain’s mortgage market just halved. Because of course now, banks are panicking — they have to calculate just how much more to charge people, suddenly, and the figure’s going to be immense. The precise amounts don’t really matter. Britain, at this point, is a poor-rich country. Its household income is half of what America’s is, and America’s isn’t great to begin with. Brits live in debt, like Americans, because they can barely make ends meet. And as interest rates rise, you know what’s going to happen? Brits are expecting a house price crash — but that’s the least of it. People will go broke. They’ll default on the debts they can’t pay, now that interest rates have tripled, quadrupled, in the space of months. Credit cards gone, student loans into collections, cars repossessed — and the biggie — homes foreclosed on. Next comes a mega scale debt crisis for Britain, because the last thing beleaguered Brits can afford is what’s on the way — every kind of bill skyrocketing because the government blew up the economy. All of that raises two questions, which are what I really want to talk about. Why did the government blow up the economy — and how come Brits are already so poor? The reason that Brits are poor is very, very simple, and yet it’s taboo — Brits can’t admit it. Their living standards have been stagnating for more than a decade now — because they’ve elected a string of utterly disastrous governments. After the last financial crisis came Cameron, who instituted austerity, and then unleashed Brexit. Then came May, who doubled down on both. Then came Johnson, who tripled down on both, And finally…here we are…a nation in the hands of leaders so incompetent, so foolish, they literally caused a run on their own currency and broke their own country’s pension funds. Why did this string of leaders leave Brits poor? Because they refused to do what’s obviously necessary in a stagnant economy: invest. In anything. Look at America: Biden’s investing in everything from clean energy to chip factories. Excellent ideas. This is how you stop being a poor-rich country, made of a handful of ultra wealthy, and a giant underclass with no future — you revitalize the base of the economy. But Britain was seduced by a kind of black magic. Nationalism. And it exemplifies how nationalism becomes a vicious cycle of idiocy, too. How so? You see, what happened in Britain was something like this. Instead of understanding that they were making the wrong choices, Brits were hypnotized by nationalism. Brexit came along — and demagogues emerged from the woodwork, crackpots, idiots, lunatics — people who nobody knew rocketed to household fame, like Farage — and they did something remarkable: they blamed scapegoats for the woes of the average Brit. And Brits didn’t just fall for it. They ate it up as eagerly, like it was the most delicious stuff on earth. Think back to the days of Brexit. Do you remember them? I do. Brits began to hate…Europeans. Europeans…who’d lived, by now, in Britain, alongside it, in friendship and peace and harmony. But Brits were bombarded by disinformation and misinformation, which said that Europeans were the cause of their lives going nowhere. How could that be? What did Europe and Europeans have to do with Brits electing leaders who refused to invest in anything — and did shockingly foolish things like close down hospitals? Should a society that wants to grow ever close down a…hospital? Today, in Britain, you might wait hours — ten, eighteen, nobody can say — for an ambulance. That should make concrete the problem of underinvestment — and how severe it grew. I can’t think of a society anywhere else on planet earth — not even poor ones — that you wait 18 hours for an ambulance. What’s the point at that point? If you’re really sick — heart attack — you’re dead, and if you’re not really sick, just injured, you’ve probably called a cab. But all of Britain’s systems are like this. Nothing works. Yet nothing works because that’s the way Brits wanted it. Seduced by nationalism, they accepted the cheap thrill of hate as a substitute for a working society. And it’s crucial to understand how that works. Giving people scapegoats is something that triggers the reptile mind, the lizard brain. People love it — but some nations are especially susceptible to it. Britain — who knew? — was one of them. Perhaps the long history of empire made it so — whatever the reason, Brits feasted on hate. The Brexit period — at this point, running on ten years — was only about hate. Nobody presented any form of an idea to rebuild a collapsing society — instead, they just offered Brits someone to hate. And Brits loved it. “Not all Brits,” some will cry. True, but…? We’re speaking at a social level, and the point is that enough Brits were dazzled by the adrenaline rush of hate — and lost their rational, sensible minds. All that was left was the reptile mind, the lizard brain. And you know what happens when it goes into overdrive, spasming in hate? A society begins to die. Why? Because the entire point of nationalism is deconstructing social systems and institutions. Now, instead of being for everyone, or anyone, they’re just for the “true” and “real” people, the Volk. Think about it. What happened during and after the Brexit period? The only thing that happened in Britain politically was that its organizations and institutions turned Volkisch. They didn’t plan for the future, or invest, or come up with an agenda for surviving the 21st century. Nope, their only purpose, at this point, was ejecting and marginalizing and disempowering those who weren’t “real” enough Brits. Hence, the “hostile environment” which was literally policy. But hostility isn’t really a policy, it’s just stupidity. Can you eat it? Will it feed your kids? Will hostility put food on the table, or money in your pocket? Of course not. And so here Britain is. Do you see the link I’m trying to establish yet? Let me make it crystal clear. This is the Britain Brexit made. This was always the endgame. Brexit was nationalism as grand social project. And it could only end in one place: A Grand Social Experiment. Because in rejecting internationalism, cooperation, being a good neighbor, a member of the European Project — all the precepts of modernity — and dialing the clock back to 1930s levels of isolationism, rage, bitterness, hostility, and hate, Britain also became a country in which no political sanity was possible. How do you “get Brexit done”? It’s impossible. Flatly so. Britain’s a net importer of everything it needs to survive, from food to clothes to energy — and all that used to come from the EU. Who’s going to fill the hole? Nobody. Nobody’s willing to — see America turning Britain’s trade deals down. Nor can anyone, really, at least at the same price, with the same ease, in the same way. You can’t “get Brexit done,” now or ever. The hole is too big to fill, and that only leaves two choices, one, don’t fill it, or two, fill it up with something new. All of which means that a Grand Experiment must be conducted, because that’s the only option left. The world didn’t come knocking at Britain’s door — just like many predicted. Instead, Brexit didn’t work out, and now the choices are: admit the mistake, or go even further, into the last untrammeled wilderness of hard right-wing nationalism. And because Britain still isn’t ready to admit it made a mistake, only the latter choice is left. What do I mean by that? When I say the damage is done, it means something like this. Liz and KamiKwasi aren’t backing down — even though the entire world of intelligent economists is begging them to stop — because they have a plan. And this is just the beginning of it. Tax cuts for the rich, funded by mega-borrowing? Just the tip of the iceberg. The rest of the plan is to turn Britain into a dystopia out of a JG Ballard novel. It goes like this — create 40 “zones” which are run by corporations and hedge funds, basically. There, democracy and the rule of law doesn’t apply. I’ve discussed this a little bit, so bear with me if I repeat myself. There, everything from hospitals to rights are determined by the highest bidder. The idea is to create “special economic zones” like Shenzhen, where anything goes. People living in dorms, no labour standards, campuses which the eye of democracy can’t see into. Sound dystopian? It is. Britain is now the patient in a Grand Social Experiment. Brits don’t understand it yet, but they had better begin to. Think of past Grand Social Experiments: communism in Soviet Russia, American style laissez-faire hyper capitalism. See a theme there? That’s the thing about Grand Experiments: they usually fail. Because they’re fantasies, dreamed up by fanatics and ideologues. Where did the Grand Experiment Brits are now unwitting subjects in come from? From America — its most fanatically extreme right wing in fact. This has been the fever dream of America’s “libertarians” — the people who don’t believe there should be a government at all. To create zones where there isn’t one. In America, this philosophy made inroads — and places like Kansas and Texas adopted it, privatizing everything in sight. But even they stopped short of creating zones where there was no consensual democracy, no rule of law, nothing but power and money, at all. Even they didn’t have cities and towns run by corporations and hedge funds. How bad is it? America’s fanatical right didn’t get as far in America…as it’s about to in Britain. In Britain, the fever dream of the most extreme of the extreme right is now coming true, economically speaking. And it’s the only place in the developed world where it ever has. The utopian fantasy of no government whatsoever, no society, no rules, no democracy — but entire cities and towns turned into “zones” that are sold off to the highest bidder, who rule it for the sake of nothing but profit and power. That’s all coming true in Britain. I want you to see how bizarre and shocking this really is: in America, Biden’s investing in chip factories and clean energy — but it’s in Britain that the dream of no government, zones where law and democracy “don’t apply,” is actually coming true. Kansas and Texas privatized a lot — but they didn’t go all the way. Energy, even water — sold off. But roads, schools, the idea that the law applied to everyone, democracy itself, these things remained. Imagine a place where nothing is owned publicly, because there isn’t any government, and there isn’t democracy, a place with no law, institutions, governance, at all. Imagine Texas or Kansas on steroids, taken to the maximum. This is what Britain’s about to become. This is the agenda its government has — and its literally the only one it has. That is why Liz and KamiKwasi are doubling down: this is just the beginning. They don’t care if they blow up the economy: like so many utopians before them, that’s just fine, because it only helps the revolution along. So what if the economy’s gone? We’re building another one, anyways, a paradise, and it’s nothing like this mundane reality. It doesn’t take a genius to see how it’s all going to end. Texas and Kansas are failed states within a failing state. Going just halfway to the utopia promised by the fanatical no-government right left them shattered wrecks. But going all the way? Well, nobody’s gotten that far. I guess if you don’t count Somalia, that is, which is more or less what really happens in the absence of government — warlords and criminals take over. Brits need to begin understanding all that. When I say the damage is done, it means the above. You see, this government has a solid couple of years in it. And that’s more than enough time to do all the above. Make it happen. Sure, the next government can come along and “undo” the special zones, and say, hey, guess what, this is a town again, not just a corporate fiefdom. But by then, the economy will already be wrecked beyond belief. People will have gone broke, unable to afford their mortgages and bills and so forth, which will cause unemployment, defaults, bank failures, and the vicious cycle will accelerate, as it usually does. And as all this is happening, a government hell-bent on creating the furthest right-wing fantasyland on the planet…isn’t likely to do anything but watch it all happen, and grin, because, well, great…now you’re broke? Head on over to the “special economic zone”! Plenty of jobs there! Hey, I hope you don’t mind living in a dorm, having no rights, and watching democracy from the outside. Damage…done. All that, though, is... predictable. The part I really want to emphasize? All this is an inevitable consequence of Brexit. Brexit couldn’t “get done” because Brexit can’t get done. Nobody in the world is going to step up and replace Europe, because Britain has next to nothing to sell, and because, well, Europe is Europe. Unless you think a Kia is a Porsche, or Wisconsin makes excellent cheese, it’s never going to happen. Brexit was a delusion, a lie. And the only way that it could end was in a Grand Social Experiment, where the true believers believed in their own Big Lies, at last. The most toxic form of nationalism to strike a rich country outside Trumpism, Brexit had only one conclusion. You see, Trumpism could be unwound — but Brexit can’t. Brexit sparked a kind of chain reaction that had to reach its conclusion. Nationalism leading to collapse, by way of the hardest form of right wing fantasy there is. Because the choice being made, the only next ones were: admit it was a mistake, or keep on doubling down, into even more extreme forms of harder and harder right wing nationalism, right down into crazy-town fantasy-lands so extreme even America’s never tried them. So here Britain is. The endgame of the last decade or so has arrived — a decade of willful folly, rank ignorance, explosive stupidity, a decade of feasting hate. The only place left to go is take it all the way to the extreme now, to attempt the most economically right wing thing a nation has ever tried in the modern era, something so fanatical, grotesque, and foolish, that it’s the economic version of the Handmaids Tale. This is where Big Lies take you: the most fanatical of the true believers are the only ones left, and they get to work, building ideological fantasylands, and hence, if everything collapses, so much the better, because now you have more ashes to build on. The question isn’t: is it going to work. It’s whether the world understands, now, as Britain collapses, how heavy the price of nationalism really is. Umair September 2022
| The text being discussed is available at | https://eand.co/why-britain-is-collapsing-and-what-happens-next-13a5fe7d48f4 and |