The first piece is how pensions work, and what’s gone wrong with them. In our state pension (I’ll say a little about private schemes at the end), we don’t “save up for our retirement”. When we started the system after the war, we needed to pay retirees immediately. Pensions have therefore always been met each month out of taxes paid by workers that month. At any given moment, there is only a week or two of funds in the government’s “State Pension account”.
While that arrangement solved an immediate problem, it created an enormous structural problem. When the pension scheme was started, life expectancy was about 68. Now it’s about 82. And birth rates started falling in the 1960s, meaning that more and more pensioners incomes are being funded by fewer and fewer workers. The result is that the average person born in 1956 now takes out around £290,000 more in retirement income than she paid over her working life.
The plan for addressing that problem was to grow the economy each year by an amount sufficient to generate enough tax receipts to keep funding the expanding retirement bill. And for most of the 20th century, while we benefitted from a global hydrocarbon and nuclear energy system that for decades doubled in size every 7 years, that plan worked.
“Net Zero” puts an end to that.
The United Kingdom is still the 12th largest manufacturing power in the world. For many years Britain was the leading manufacturing power in the world (the “workshop of the world”) – but starting in 1875 (the Trade Union Act that gave unions the power to obstruct the entrances of places of business, and at least partly prevented unions from being sued) the British government started to attack British industry – whether their policies were intended as attacks, or whether they acted out of ignorance, I do not know.
Some countries may, perhaps, be able to get along even though the import much more manufactured good than they export – for example Australia exports a lot of food and raw materials (ironically including an awful lot of COAL) – but the United Kingdom is not one of those countries.
The United Kingdom, due to the immigration of tens of millions of people in recent decades, now has a population of almost 70 million people in a country half the size of France (people are rather surprised by that that – they think Britain is bigger than it is, perhaps due to the projection that maps use giving this impression).
The United Kingdom imports a lot of food and raw materials – and with farm land being destroyed for housing estates, roads and warehouse for imported goods, this situation is going to get worse.
The United Kingdom will not say the 12th largest manufacturing power if it follows policies of higher energy costs (“New Zero”) and yet more labour market regulations (“Worker’s Rights”).
There is already a deficit in manufacturing trade – and such policies will make it worse, dramatically worse.
As for the idea that “invisibles”, “financial services”, “the City” can carry on squaring-the-circle, we here have examined the Credit Money dependent “city” (controlled by Credit Bubble banks, Pension Funds, and so on) often enough – we do not need to go into all that yet again.
An economy of almost 70 million people can not be sustained by creating money from nothing (nothing at all) and playing book keeping tricks with it.
If British manufacturing is further undermined – then, yes, the pension system will collapse.
But it will not “just” be the old who will suffer, the poor and the sick will also suffer – suffer terribly.
Indeed eventually the vast majority of people will suffer – suffer very much indeed.
As for C02.
It is an invisible gas which is vital for plants – and without plants there are no animals, including no people. Presenting C02 as something evil – is insane.
Also the United Kingdom produces about 1% of world C02 “emissions” – even the total destruction of the United Kingdom would make no real difference to C02 “emissions”.
I got frustrated (it is a hot day) so when my comment did not appear, I typed it out again – too quickly, hence more than even my normal level of typing mistakes.
I apologise for that.
Either we get rid of net zero, or net zero gets rid of us. I hope that this Labour shower experience a few blackouts as soon as possible.
Net Zero can’t endure. Sooner or later, when the idiot class politicians have screwed the country up enough, when our economy has been trashed, and the (formerly) comfortable middle classes are starting to feel the pinch, along will come a new generation of populist politicians.
They will point to the arguments that many of us here at Samizdata already know –
– Modern temperature records are unreliable.
– The ‘expert’s’ predictions never come true.
– The 1930s were probably warmer.
– There is a Meteorological Industrial Complex (hat tip to Ike).
– Britain’s emissions are negligible in the grand scheme of things.
The populists will explain how we are poorer because of Net Zero and how we could, with the stroke of a pen in the ballot box, go back to those heady days of central heating in winter, foreign holidays in summer, and on-shored manufacturing jobs by the bundle.
They could sell the dormant dream of freedom with personal cars and motorcycles for all. Of warmth, of comfort, of cheap and abundant power whenever it is wanted. Of a life off a leash.
It will be a happy dream and an uplifting message – A vision that is all things to all people and impossible to argue against.
The alternative cannot endure, so it won’t. Personally, I cannot wait.
In the future, you will own a gas boiler and a motorbike… and you’ll be happy.
JohnK and Windypants.
There is not going to be a General Election for five years – there is a massive leftist majority in the House of Commons.
Indeed it is the biggest leftist majority in the House of Commons in British history – something that many people have not yet fully grasped.
Five years is more than enough time to destroy this country – given the vast size of the government already (yes I know – 14 years not doing anything about that).
The conclusion is brutally obvious.
It is very likely that this country is going to be destroyed.
The best that one can say is that at least our fate will be a terrible warning to other nations – by observing what happens to us, they may be warned to not go down the same road. And thus we may, in a weird way, help them save themselves.
Paul:
What is the saying about there being a great deal of ruin in a nation? Well Labour are going to put that to the test, and we can but hope that five years is not enough. We survived Hitler, maybe we can survive Starmer and Miliband.
he alternative cannot endure, so it won’t. Personally, I cannot wait.
I hope that by the time I reach my dotage, the insanity will be such that the political consequences, for the Millibands and the rest, will be brutal. There are a few “buts”, however.
A concern I have is that if or when blackouts and cuts occur, Labour will spin it as being a bad accident, “not our fault”. And Labour will calculate that some if not all affected voters are stupid enough, or deluded enough, to buy this excuse. Remember all those opinion surveys showing widespread support for lockdowns? I do. Yes, we make a lot of noise of a pro-freedom sort on this blog and other hangouts, but a lot of the “normal” public think people like us are weird and a bit mad. And so the blackouts, shortages, cold homes and declining economy will be something to be endured for some time before politics intrudes. Maybe it will be spun as the pain we pay for our guilt at creating the Industrial Revolution and its aftermath.
Blackouts killed Edward Heath’s Tories in 1973-4; they also did for Gray Davis, former governor of California, in the late 1990s (Arnie S. won the state governorship in the aftermath); here in little Malta, where I am, regular power cuts are causing the current, very corrupt, government a lot of trouble. There have been serious power cuts in South Africa, which has badly damaged the ANC-led government. So if you cannot keep the lights on, it is usually pretty terminal for whoever is in office.
It is all very difficult to know how all of this will play out in terms of timing, though. Remember, the next GE must be in 2029, a year before the supposed ban on sale of new ICE vehicles takes effect. That means car manufacturers and the like will need to start figuring out now if the ban is viable, likely, etc. It is going to wreak havoc on supply chains, factory construction and refurbishment. We don’t know, but can perhaps guess, how well or badly the rollout of car charging points will be. And I assume that the Labour-run councils across the UK will impose taxes on EVs, and congestion charge zones will not exempt EVs. How big an electoral issue that is not clear. The Ulez extension was very controversial, but Khan won a handy majority in London.
It is difficult to be optimistic that things will be turned around, but maybe Milliband’s Green ideology, more than anything else, will be the killer mistake of Starmer and his colleagues.
At the moment, I think it is all like one of those slow-motion programmes of crash test dummies flying through a car windscreen. It is going to happen, the deed is done, and all you can think of next is what the results tell us.
Paul Marks – “An economy of almost 70 million people can not be sustained by creating money from nothing (nothing at all) and playing book keeping tricks with it.”
Unfortunately the impression one gets is that far too many people – including many of those in Parliament – think that covid lockdowns and the associated money printing “proved” the opposite.
Paul Marks and JohnK.
There is, as Adam Smith observed, a great deal of ruin in a nation.
Allow me to compare, for a moment, my country, Britain, with Venezuela. Since the turn of the millennium, Venezuela has led the way in self-inflicted ruination. Only yesterday was Maduro declared to have won the recent election, and today, the country is tearing itself apart. It looks, to all the world, that Venezuela has a bit more ruin left in her yet.
Not to be flippant about Britain, but even in the doldrums that we currently find ourselves, with colossal debt, sky-high taxes, crumbling infrastructure, offshored industry, poor educational standards, creaking health services, mass immigration, and Ed sodding Miliband’s hand on the levers of power, I still believe Britain to be a better place to be than Venezuela circa 1999.
By this metric, Britain has at least 25 years of ruin in her.
At this point, I’d like to quote Orwell.
I cannot begin to tell you how much I hate relying on outdated notions of class to make a point (But, Windy, didn’t you refer to the middle classes in your last post?), but permit me an observation.
It has often been commented on these boards and elsewhere that there is a tendency for working-class people to be slow to make a decision but to be resolute and unshakable (and invariably correct) once that decision is made.
I’m fortunate that I can observe this phenomenon on a daily basis.
Try to find a cross-section of working-class people who still support the Covid lockdown policy. At best, you might find the cautious chap who thinks the first lockdown was a sensible precaution. I’ve yet to find anyone who still supports lockdowns 2 & 3. Furthermore, if a government proposed lockdowns for a similar future virus, the results would get very ugly very quickly.
To lead back to my original point around Net Zero, I am starting to see that same surefooted reasoning towards Net Zero that I see towards the Covid lockdowns. When the media tell us that we are living through the hottest July on record, yet many people are sitting at home with their heating on, I believe people are becoming less uncertain in calling out what they are seeing as climate nonsense. This position will only firm up when the energy bills get higher and they are expected to junk perfectly workable boilers in place of a heat pump or are compelled to buy an EV.
All storms must pass.
“It has often been commented on these boards and elsewhere that there is a tendency for working-class people to be slow to make a decision but to be resolute and unshakable (and invariably correct) once that decision is made.”
I am convinced that the route to better governance lies in getting people whose jobs interact with reality on a daily basis into positions of power. We need more people who fundamentally understand that reality imposes a discipline upon us, and must be respected, rather than people who (because they deal almost entirely with data manipulation) have come to believe that reality can be twisted by the power of their own intellect. A lorry driver will have a better ability to understand the constraints of reality than a lawyer does.
Perhaps the most simple way to achieve this would be to pass a law banning any person with a degree from any position of power within politics or the Public Sector.
Paul,
Soviet statistics aside, both food consumed and sewage produced suggest a population closer to eighty million, which, if true, means the indigenous population is down to about two thirds and falling, and already treated as a troublesome minority by the government. I also doubt Starmer’s government will last five years, but I could be wrong.
As for the failure of net zero, this would clearly be the fault of the far right. The worse the better, as the man said.
While it is true the populace wanted lockdowns, that was after they had been told two barefaced lies by the government, thad COVID would kill them and lockdowns would save them.
Jim said:
I’m convinced that the “route to better governance” lies in giving up on the idea of “governance” in the first damn place. At least, as most conceive it.
The messes we’re in aren’t because of the people running government; we’re in these messes because we hit on “government” as a solution to our problems, most of which are entirely intractable. You cannot square the circle of “People ain’t acting right…” with legislation or coercive government force. Doesn’t work, wrong paradigm entirely.
The more control you reach for, the less you have. You want to run the world, to make it better? You are the problem; the world is not amenable to such improvements; you are not God, with his supposed omniscience and omnipotence. You cannot change human nature with a law or a memorandum. Stop trying.
The fallacy here isn’t that we’ve put the wrong people into power; the fallacy is that we’re giving anyone this power at all. It’s a mugs game; I could make you emperor of the world tonight, and then tomorrow? The world will be the same, and you’ll still be emperor, issuing ineffectual edicts to the tides and whoever is foolish enough to listen to you.
The problem here is the idea that any of this crap is at all governable, in the first place. It isn’t. Quit trying, live with the world as it is, and cease looking for some utopian BS that will never, ever eventuate… And, which would likely be a nightmare if it ever did.
From someone who was making fun of libertarianism, that’s a pretty succinct endorsement of the essence of it. 😉
“The more control you reach for, the less you have. You want to run the world, to make it better? You are the problem; the world is not amenable to such improvements; you are not God, with his supposed omniscience and omnipotence. You cannot change human nature with a law or a memorandum. Stop trying.”
There’s always going to be someone at the top of a group of human beings, whether thats the strongest caveman in the tribe, a king or emperor or a democratically elected Head of State. There’s always going to be a power structure above the mass of people, whats important is trying to make sure that the people who get into those positions are not bat sh*t insane enough to think they can change human nature etc etc when as you rightly point out, they can’t.
Just saying ‘I want a libertarian/no power structures type utopia’ is not going to cut it, any more than saying ‘I want a Socialist Utopia’ will. In fact I’d say that the former is as much against human nature as the latter. People are hierarchical, its what they do, and how they find contentment – the vast majority don’t want to be in charge of anything, many not even themselves and will happily hand over control of their lives to another entity, be that a person or the State. You may like being the master of your own destiny in a free for all, most people would rather live within a system of rules, even if that constricts them quite a bit.
Its pretty obvious from the history of human existence that people in large groups arrange themselves into power structures, with some in charge of things and the majority not. Its just how things seem to work out, given human nature. Ergo given we are always going to have power structures above us, perhaps its best to try (to the extent one can on a modern democracy) to control the type of people who rise to the top.
Jim.
I have to disagree, I’m afraid. I’ve always seen libertarianism as a tendency rather than a gospel.
A socialist has several variations on a theme running from Marxism to Communism via Leninism, Trotskyism, Maoism and many other catechisms of wrong.
By contrast, a libertarian is less inclined towards dogmatism.
Libertarianism starts with asking questions such as “Can we remove x, y, and z competencies (or, indeed, incompetencies) from being the state’s responsibility?” Or, “How can we reduce the state’s power slightly more?”
There are few libertarians, and none I know of on Samizdata, who desire a state with zero power. We generally support laws that enforce private contracts; we typically support the existence of a judiciary; and we (usually) support a single military to protect our homeland. Each of these can be best exercised through a centralised structure.
Throughout the rest of your post, you are correct in saying that humans are hierarchical creatures. Still, it is inimicable to that premise to seek to reduce any influence that the hierarchy holds over us.
That, I believe, is the essence of libertarian thought.
@bobby b, who said:
I think you missed the care with which I capitalized Libertarian, meant to refer to the party-as-it-is. Which manifestly ain’t living up to the spirit of its ideology.
I am also not “making fun” of them, either… Given that I consider the majority of the avowed Libertarians I’ve run into as being a bunch of immature dumbasses that live in an idealized dreamworld of sophomoric “…if only(ies)…”
The problem with Libertarians and their official party is that they fail to recognize the reality that there are times and places for everything, even political philosophies. You’re between a rock and a hard place, forced to fight an existential war as WWII was, for example? You don’t hold hard-and-fast to your idealized principles, you do what you have to do in order not to go down screaming in in front of a mob of raving morons motivated by whatever propels them towards you. You fail in that? You cease to exist.
My take on all these things is that there are times and places for nearly all of them. Despotic tyranny? Even that… What else is the parent to the three year-old toddler? Communism? How else to describe household economy for a nuclear or extended family? The military, a near-perfect socialism?
All of these modes are appropriate where and when they are suited. The problems come in when the idjits get bound up in it all, and determine to apply the specific rules to generalities, where they’re simply not applicable or suitable.
Anyone as rigidly thought-bound as the vast majority of the Big-L Libertarians is dangerously naive and foolish, not to be trusted in any position in public life. That many of us find their basic philosophies attractive and worthy? Immaterial. The problem is that they’ve taken up an axe to do a saw’s job, and there are times and places where that is utterly without merit.
If you’re in a lifeboat, one that is sinking? You have no time or faculty to indulge in specious concerns about rights and democracy; you either take charge and do what’s necessary before the damn thing sinks, or you follow another who might be imperfect, yet is acting adequately to prevent you and the rest of the benighted occupants of your craft from drowning.
Times and places; the ideologue, of whatever bent, is incapable of recognizing these facts. I don’t think I’ve ever met a “Big-L” adherent of the Libertarian sect who wasn’t a committed ideologue, all too willing to carry their political philosophy out to the illogical and ridiculous extreme. Small-l types, who are like me, at least moderately pragmatic, have more sense than to carry things out to the point of idiocy.
I really wish there were a political movement out there that I could get behind, but the problem with all of them is that they’re all too prone to developing and then following idiotic straight-jacket philosophies, simply because the idiots who go in for that sort of thing generally lack sense and any sort of pragmatic outlook on life. To be political is to make up one’s mind that one first time in life, and then stick to whatever BS gets shoved out by the general ruck of party adherents and call it good. It’s a piss-poor substitute for actual observation, consideration, and careful action; three things notably absent from the vast majority of political “thought”.
In that case, take this all as my happy agreement with you. As I said, big-L Libertarians are NORML with pretensions.
Problem is, people who instinctively dislike and mistrust bigger government tend not to be very enthused about – or good at – forming big parties, organizing and recruiting, and then running big government. That’s all like organizing a big dinner party for autistic people. It’s against their nature.
I concur, the US Libertarian Party is a delusional & parochial band of utter cunts no less bonkers than BLM or JSO.
Perry – are you suggesting that the Libertarian Party candidate for President of the United States, who believes that Israel is guilty of “genocide”, Mr Putin is fighting against Nazi bioweapons labs in Ukraine, and the People’s Republic of China is an innocent victim of American aggression, is not the brightest genius to ever enter the world?
Rour le Jour – the situation is indeed a mess, but I do not see the government of Sir Keir Starmer leaving office in less than five years. After all they can blame any problem on “the Tories”. And I do not see Labour Members of Parliament giving up the pay and perks of office before they have to – “we are massively behind in the polls and have just lost the local elections – lets call a General Election!” – that sort of extreme stupidity is not something that I would attribute to Sir Keir Starmer.
It was almost-as-if the former Prime Minister, both by when he called the election and how he conducted the campaign (for example walking out of the D. Day memorial ceremonies – even Mr Biden had the presence of mind not to do that), wanted the Conservatives to lose, and “lose big”, in order to get some “problematic” people out of the House of Commons (“problematic” for the international authorities).
However, “never attribute something to a conspiracy when it can be explained by stupidity”. And the person making these decisions was the same Gentleman who thought that the creeping age restriction for buying cigarettes, “this 35 year old person can buy the cigarettes, but this 34 year old can not, and never will, – because he was born the year before” was a good idea.
WindyPants and JohnK – you are both less gloomy than me.
Let us hope you are correct and I am wrong.