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Recently @2rafa responded to a jannied comment of mine on Reddit saying that within 80 years, my homeland and her homeland would still exist and have roughly a similar character to what they currently do but England would not, as its people and its traditions slowly get replaced by les peuples outremers. The original character of the towns and cities of the UK would slowly be gnawed at and eaten away while the institutions, traditions and social fabric dissolve in the alkahest of multiculturalism. She mentioned that it isn't surprising that the native population would fight against it as this replacement basically severs the link between the them and the future.
I agree with that sentiment and I absolutely agree the original character of what made Great Britain truly Great has been lost. But this loss didn't happen thirty or forty or whenever the immigrants started to come in big numbers years ago, rather it happened in the aftermath of the Second World War when the UK dropped its long standing traditions of Classical Liberalism, "an Englishman's home is his castle" and the Anglo developed system of limited government, preferring to go for the expansive and nannying welfare state model instead.
There is a saying that tradition is like a legacy codebase, half of it is deprecated stuff you can get rid of safely while half of it is absolutely mission critical to the project functioning and it's very difficult to tell exactly which bit is which. The UK had over the centuries since the enlightenment created both a social and legal system based on individual rights centred on liberty and freedom and built on a bedrock of Christian values where it was expected that the government would minimise it's interference with what you do with your personal property and take steps to ensure other people also couldn't interfere with it. Charity and helping the less fortunate was very strongly encouraged and the Christian values indoctrinated in everyone since birth meant that lots of people with the means to do so gave away a large portion of their income/wealth to the needy, but crucially it wasn't forced onto anyone. Indeed income tax was first introduced as a temporary measure to fund the British armed forces during the Napoleonic Wars, an existential threat to the country and most definitely not the "lets use it to pay the rent of those who don't have the skills to earn enough to stay in London otherwise" racket that's going on at the moment.
This system generally functioned extremely well, but like all systems there were edge cases where it failed. In a severely misguided attempt since the end of WWII (and continuing until the present day!) successive governments tinkered with this system and slowly removed the things that made the system work (e.g. The Town and Country Planning Act 1947 which gave locals extreme levels of say into what you could build on your own property and is the prime culprit for the UK's current housing crisis), while if anything amplifying the things which were peripheral at best originally and now have become burdens upon society (e.g. how poor people renting in London effectively have the right to get to stay in of one of the only two alpha++ cities in the world and the taxpayer will fund their rent if they can't afford it themselves).
At the point the immigrants started arriving "Great" Britain was already in the process of dying. The things that made it great were being removed slowly the the British themselves. Plus new fads that were counterproductive like the destruction of the nuclear family were being adopted wholesale. It was only a small matter of time before things degenerated to the point where it was necessary to either import immigrants to make up for the collapsing birth rate or accept extreme economic pain for the vast majority of people. Britain choose to do the former. Indeed as Kipling warned a good thirty years in advance:
On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."
What remains of the original culture of the UK are not the things that made it great. Much like how a cadaver (initially at least) still looks like the person when they were alive but has lost that divine spark that made it more than just a heap of flesh and bones what we have at the moment is little more than a poor caricature of what the Great Thinkers of the Enlightenment envisaged the perfect society to be like. It is an ersatz, cargo cult imitation where things as fundamental as the right against double jeopardy are no longer respected (see the Criminal Justice Act 2003).
Now admittedly the specific cases behind why this right was abolished were quite clearly where a guilty person had been acquitted but was clearly guilty after new DNA evidence was discovered and so their retrial led to justice being delivered (and equally, the family of Emmett Till were denied justice due to the Fifth Amendment which protects against double jeopardy in the US) but at the same time this change showed that another fundamental enlightenment ideal, that "you should not create laws based upon a few specific examples, but rather upon general principles" was no longer respected.
As such, the rot had already set in on the inside well before immigrants started coming over in large numbers and changing the outward, visible character and appearance of British society. Hence what they are now replacing is not a culture with hundreds of years of history, but a thoroughly modern creation that for most of its existence has had mass inward migration. This bastardised culture is not worthy of the protection that should have been granted to Enlightenment Liberalism, but unfortunately that is dead and has been long buried, and no amount of effort will ever bring it back. Indeed as a crude mockery of what I consider to be the best societal system discovered yet by man I would prefer if it disappeared as soon as possible. I see modern British culture as belonging to the same class of objects as smallpox and polio - something to be eradicated post haste - rather than that of the Giant Panda and the Snow Leopard - valuable diversity that should be protected by humanity and nourished.
Just yesterday ethnicity estimates for the 2021 UK census were revealed. As expected the percentage of the UK that is white British fell from around 81% to 75% since 2021. Given the continuing high migration that this country is now basically reliant on - the recent budget depended on very high levels of inward migration to be balanced, lower migration than expected in the next few years will create a short term fiscal black hole that will be very painful to British society, see what happened when Truss and Kwarteng tried to borrow with abandon- and the higher birthrate of immigrants it is practically a given that the Replacement is going to happen come hell or high water. British culture and the country character will continue to change over the coming generations and it will be best for the natives themselves if they just go with the flow rather than trying to fight an inevitability.
Well, if you want Limited Government then I hear Somalia is a great place. You can even buy arms in open air markets with minimal regulations. Perhaps you can sense my dripping sarcasm, but I have little patience for these kinds of arguments. Taxes can go up and they can go down, but what - or rather, who - made Britain were the Anglo-Saxons.
This type of argument is the right-wing version of the blank slate.
And who unmade Britain?
It seems like we should pay attention to the arguments those Anglo-Saxons were having amongst themselves, and explain the making or unmaking of Britain with a focus on the political questions they saw fit to focus on, like that of taxes. After all, one Anglo-Saxon's vision of the desired society can be radically different from another's.
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I frequently see Somalia trotted out as what a limited state might look like, but surely you can see why people who prefer a limited state don't find that compelling? Setting aside that the reference is outdated and Somalia has a government with explicit power over just about everything, "limited government" and "collapsed government" are not synonyms. Outside of the most fringe libertarians, people that favor limited government are not suggesting that there be no government to enforce contracts and maintain general public order. Rather, the claim is that governments shouldn't have the powers flexed during Covid or shouldn't be reallocating half of the economy.
Regarding blank slates, I'm inclined to note that the demographics of Somalia aren't what some of us would consider conducive to being the sort of place I'd like to live. I might even go so far as to note that I expect any local unit that has a sufficient number of Somalis to become the sort of place I would not like to live in short order.
I’m wondering- do you think a society that’s 80% Utah Mormon or Japanese or whatever other high performing group, and 20% Somali, would be a bad place to live?
I mean, based off the demographics, I’d expect it to be a pretty nice place to live, but probably with some neighborhoods to avoid.
Probably fine in the short run. I just looked at my current Census tract and a couple neighboring tracts and found that they're approximately 80% white, 10% Asian, and a scattering of everything else. If that shifted to 20% Somali over the next few years, I would take it as a strong signal to sell and relocate - I would not like the odds of the neighborhood retaining the characteristics that made me select it with that population shift and I would expect the population to continue shifting further. Currently, there are no neighborhoods to avoid within walking distance of me, so a shift to some neighborhoods to avoid is a noticeable worsening.
Let’s assume this is a stable society- some town in Oregon or whatever that’s had those demographics for 20 years. Does it seem like the sort of place you’d be willing to live in, assuming your work offers you a transfer with relocation assistance and you have the ability to make friends there or nearby.
Sure. I'm kind of skeptical of the sustainability of the arrangement, but I would not rule a place out based on a large Somali population. Minneapolis remains one of my favorite American cities despite their issues with Somali corruption (and more American-based violence).
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The opposite argument comes up in these circles on occasion - or it used to, back when more vivid leftists hadn't yet been driven off as much. Some guy or another would argue the more milquetoast defence of communism, where clearly the problem isn't the ideology, it's what the likes of Stalin did to influence it, and that without such a legacy it'd all be totally fine. The counterargument is an easy one: it keeps happening. Mini-Stalins pop up wherever some communist republic appears. It doesn't stop.
Somalia is for sure a fair critique in the same vein: it keeps happening. Call it CHAZ or post-Qing China or what have you, but pointing out that places with limited or smaller governments are uniquely prone to petty warlordism is entirely a critique that the stronger sorts of Libertarians should think of addressing with a better call than 'that's unfairrrrrr'.
Are you talking about supporters of "limited or small governments" or just anarchists? There isn't any sort of unified state over all of Somalia, small or otherwise.
Also, I don't think that someone like David Friedman wants a transition like Somalia in the early 1990s. I think he'd say that, under those circumstances, a small but effective government would be better.
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I have my issues with limited government types (namely that they're frequently hypocritical or at least self-deluding), but this is really only a critique of the far end of the spectrum. Most people who want limited government don't want a government that limited - they still want publicly funded police and fire departments, infrastructure they use, courts, schools, etc... When they object to "big government", they're generally objecting to the welfare and regulatory state (or at least parts of it) and infrastructure they don't use.
Reductions to the welfare and regulatory state might increase social disorder to some degree, but there's clear historical example that it's not enough to render states nonviable.
I agree that's fair! The words 'stronger sorts of Libertarians' did a lot of work in my post.
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I would describe the Soviet Union as a much more central example of "communism" than Somalia of "limited government", but I suppose the problems we'll bump into are the exact definitions of things like "communism" and "limited government". I would be more than satisfied with a United States federal government that took approximately the fiscal role of 100 years ago, and I don't buy that this involves a swift descent to total anarchic collapse.
Well yes, because the federal government could disappear outright and most of the population is not looking at a total anarchic collapse, although interstate conflict might mean some people are in for a bad time and the poorer states would probably have a declining standard of living.
I'm not sure if this is intended as argument or addendum. Yes, part of the reason that I think the federal government is excessive is because American states are already large, powerful entities that can handle the vast majority of governing problems themselves. The federal government should handle external-facing issues and internal coordination problems between states, but generally take a hands-off approach to policies and spending that are intrastate matters (in my view, of course).
Maybe I'm misreading others, but I think this is much closer to the median position of American people that would describe themselves as favoring limited government than Somalia or Ancapistan or something.
A little of column a, a little of column b. The patchwork that replaces a disappeared federal government is unlikely to be predominantly libertarian(major land powers usually aren’t), and the federal government retrenching wouldn’t cause the same issue but as California shows, states are perfectly capable of overregulating, overtaxing, and overspending all on their lonesome.
Most states aren’t Florida or Utah. Federal regulations will just get replaced with state regulations that are more obviously one sided if anything.
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Well except there are countless examples of very limited government and places succeeding. I’m very unfamiliar with communist countries not be totalitarian hellholes.
Warlordism might be a fair critique of David Friedman but…not of classic liberals who see a vital role for the state but one that is heavily limited.
What are the best examples of very limited governments succeeding?
I certainly agree that there have been governments which didn’t provide much in terms of social welfare but grew the economy quickly. But AFAIK most of the examples of libertarian success stories were not actually libertarian, they were just pro-business.
United Kingdom, United States, Swiss, Hong Kong, Netherlands, etc.
They might not all be that way today but they they all at different times experienced significant growth under a classically liberal framework.
I interpreted "stronger sorts of libertarian" to basically mean right-anarchists.
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"Warlordism" is another term for "autocratic government that isn't internationally recognized". It's not as if warlords can't take your money and call it taxes.
It's a frequent critique of anarchocapitalism (anarchocommunism, too, for that matter) is that their systems just reinvent the government expect with some different characteristics (enough to allow ideologues to term it "not government) and in a worse format.
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Somalia-the-meme was a civil war between a half dozen competing governments, many of which were fundamentalist Islamic. And that was still an improvement in most QoL measures over the previous socialist government.
Interesting, have you lived in Somalia during this period?
I believe the situation was that the Islamic fundamentalists defeated the powerless, corrupt, ‘democratic’ government which did nothing but accept bribes from warlords, brought meaningful improvement to the public for a few years, and then were overthrown by Ethiopian military intervention.
I’m not sure where anyone’s getting that it was an improvement over the previous socialist regime; it seems clearly to have been an improvement over the ‘democratic’(read US backed and corrupt) regime which replaced it.
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"If you like to keep warm, you can jump in a bonfire."
It worked for Sam McGee.
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Who among us hasn't wanted to, on some cold winter day, sit in the fireplace and let the flames lap at our flesh?
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Singapore is actually a great place and their government is significantly more limited on the tax and spend side (well, they have a ton of social housing, but that's a good thing). The UAE is also pretty good with a very limited government, Dubai has effectively run out of oil and they still do extremely well because of government fees on transactions. You don't have to choose the literal worst option.
Yeah, and it's also a place that is 75% Han Chinese, thereby proving my point. Demographics will always trump whatever laws is on paper, libertarian or not.
Total overstatement. I feel the need to drag out the trope of East/West Germany and North/South Korea.
Don't know about Korea, but at least for Germany there were some notable differences even before the split after WWII. To name a few:
the east was much more agrarian than the west, although there were of course many industrial centers like Halle, Berlin or Breslau/Wrocław but these were much more spread-out than in the west
politically, the east was dominated by the protestant Junker class, the descendants of the feudal nobility that conquered/colonized the east, while in the west industrialist families like the Krupps had the most influence, with a much more mixed religious background overall, as most German Catholics lived in the areas that were to become part of West Germany
in terms of cultural history, the west was largely congruent with the core German territory since the first time there was something like Germany, while the east was a colonial conquest taken from the territory of the relatively unorganized Western Slavic tribes like the Sorbs or the Pomeranians that were stuck between Medieval Germany and Poland. Go back in history far enough and I guarantee that anyone whose ancestors have lived in Eastern Germany for a while will have a lot of Slavic ancestry, this is completely unusual for Western Germany outside of regions that have received heavy Polish immigration in the Industrial Age
I can't find a good map to illustrate this, but the most notable political thing about the territory of DDR - and I mean the specific territory - was that even during the pre-WW2 times they were the strongest area of support for the left parties, ie SPD/USPD/KPD combined. In the West German territories the Centre was a force, while the areas annexed by Poland were the ones where the Nazis had their most hardcore base of support, but the left dominated most of the territories that would end up forming the DDR.
(also @Syo)
Maybe these maps help: SPD, USPD, KPD; for comparison NSDAP, DNVP (monarchists, revanchists and hard conservatives), Zentrum (Catholic centrists and conservatives).
Looking at these, I agree that there is a trend, but it's not that strong and centered less on East Germany as a whole and more on Saxony* in particular, especially for the KPD votes. Both Nazis and DNVP were pretty strong in Brandenburg, Mecklenburg and Pomerania, all three of which would become part of the DDR.
*Funnily enough, my parents always called the Saxons the 5th occupying power (besides Russia, the US, France and the UK), because chances were high when talking to a representative of state power like a policeman in East Berlin you'd be spoken to in Saxon dialect. EDIT: I just found this article from the early 60s that investigates this cliché via a statistical deep dive quite like the debates about Jewish overrepresentation elsewhere in this thread. The result: while strongly overrepresented among the chief leaders of the DDR, Saxons are actually underrepresented in various important committees and positions.
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I can't make out the territory which would in 1945 find itself behind the Iron Curtain, on these maps of results of German elections from 1920-1930.
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China is over 90% Han Chinese, but I far prefer Singapore to it (and the Chinese state has higher taxes and government spending etc.).
You find similar clealiness in Hong Kong Indian markets.
People tend to adapt really well. There's nothing unirradicable in Indian culture or DNA that makes them inclined towards bad hygiene.
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I don't actually know. LKY was a great man (far far greater than me, if I could achieve the level of greatness he had in his pinky finger I would die happy) capable of performing magic tricks well beyond mere mortals. One factor that may have contributed is the onerous fines for public littering. I've been to plenty of houses back home that are really clean on the inside but are on a very very littered street so it's not like South Asians are hardwired to be dirty (equally I've been in plenty of unclean dwellings back home, but these were usually the homes of the middle class and below) but I feel it's more of an mentality thing where people see the outside as "not their property, not their problem" and either freely litter or don't agitate to create a situation where street cleaners come by regularly/people are educated to not throw their rubbish away. Plus the lack of public trashcans can be a contributing factor, here in the UK there's like a trash can every 100m in most cities while back home you can spend an entire day out without seeing more than two or three, which means people are just naturally more inclined to throw their trash on the street since the alternative is carrying it the whole day.
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How many Singaporeans do you actually know, and have you ever been there? I can't comment on the tax situation, but it seems to me that in pretty much every other domain Singapore is close to being the opposite of a small government, and rather like the perfect pervasive micromanagerial state. (Most recently, they were basically location-tracking everyone at all times under the pretext of COVID contact tracing.) Moreover, they manage their ethnic patchwork by mandatory quotas in government and even public (in Singapore, this is a sizeable chunk) housing, and by less outside-legible policies that seem to be directed at gradually whittling down the ethnic identities of everyone to food, dress and a handful of festivals. Hardly the Anglo right-winger's paradise it is made out to be.
I've been to Singapore and count quite a few Singaporeans among my close friends. The UAE is also quite micromanegerial as a country, to start a business you need to pay thousands in fees (fees like this are how they fund themselves given that there is no income tax) and of course there is the whole Islamic morality thing you have to adhere to (not an issue for me, may be for some westerners).
My point on limited government was geared towards the taxation aspect, Singapore is pretty damn big in the social control aspect of government (chewing gum bans, car licences costing 10s of thousands of dollars, mandatory military service, mandatory forced saving for medical bills etc.), but that isn't really something I mind too much when the policies align reasonably well with my personal views.
Correct. It's most definitely not an Anglo liberal paradise, but that's fine. It was meant to be an example of a place where you could have small (taxation wise) government but still be very successful. I still wouldn't mind spending my life there because at least they have a coherent, consistent vision for society that doesn't depend on extracting wealth from a small productive class and spending it on everyone else.
Places like Singapore are also really easy to enter or leave, so if you don't like how the government is doing things, it is easy to go to somewhere else. That's one reason why so many people and businesses have been relocating from Hong Kong to Singapore recently.
Singapore is like a country club. It tries to attract rich and talented people by rules for being clean, pleasant, and orderly. Shame about the horrible weather.
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