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Notes -
Let's discuss democracy, and the decay and potential recovery of two anglo-origin democracies.
South Africa is clearly having a rough time at the moment. Anemic growth, mass joblessness, the spread of slums, ultraviolence on the streets.
The party largely responsible for this the ANC has a declining vote share but still commands the loyalty of a plurality of the electorate. In addition, most of the parties opposing the ANC are not exactly free marketer reformers of the type that might rapidly turn some of these issues around. Since Apartheid ended more than 20 years ago and these trends are deepening, it seems that the decay has not swayed most voters away from the policies that caused the issues.
A friend of mine said that he has full faith in the UK (Great Britain) to recover fully from its current woes, because one day voters will wake up and see that governance is terrible and getting worse, and they will vote for the opposition who will fix things.
Certainly, some of the parties in the Yookay are trying to fix things through structural economic and social reforms (Reform, Restore), but the plurality of voters including young voters favor parties that would either deepen or continue the issues (Greens, Labour, Muslim Indie Bloc)
Note: from the perspective of this poaster the main issues facing the UK are: Low Skill Immigration, Economic Stagnation, Integration of Non-European Migrants, Crime
So I ask the Motte: Do you believe that in anglo origin democracies that enough decay will have voters seek out parties with effective fixes for the issues, or merely cause voters to slowly rebel against the incumbents?
Have you considered that the people voting Green or Labor simply have other issues they consider important?
Take crime, for example. Most crime statistics actually reflect what the police is doing, not what the criminals are doing. Murder rates are often taken as a proxy because most murderers are not competent enough to make it look like a natural death, so we can hope to get a numbers which are roughly independent to police efforts.
The rate of murders in England and Wales (1.148 in 2021 with 684, which has decreased since then) seems roughly comparable to other European nations. Even if a decent fraction of it was committed by immigrants, there is certainly no nationwide epidemic of murder.
Of course, there is also climate change (which the right should care about if for no other reason than that it will lead to more immigration, unless you like living in the kind of state which will shoot unarmed kids trying to get in), the rents being too damn high (effectively limiting upwards mobility for the bottom half of society), the stupid AI race which at best might lead to the median person becoming economically obsolete and at worst to paperclips, and lately an increasingly unhinged US which can no longer be relied upon to lead the free world, and relatedly energy insecurity resulting from their misadventures, to mention but a few.
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