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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   25170 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 2024

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J. K. Rowling challenges new Scottish hate speech legislation, openly challenging them to arrest her for calling trans criminals men who pretend to be women:

https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1774747068944265615

In passing the Scottish Hate Crime Act, Scottish lawmakers seem to have placed higher value on the feelings of men performing their idea of femaleness, however misogynistically or opportunistically, than on the rights and freedoms of actual women and girls. The new legislation is wide open to abuse by activists who wish to silence those of us speaking out about the dangers of eliminating women's and girls’ single-sex spaces, the nonsense made of crime data if violent and sexual assaults committed by men are recorded as female crimes, the grotesque unfairness of allowing males to compete in female sports, the injustice of women’s jobs, honours and opportunities being taken by trans-identified men, and the reality and immutability of biological sex.

#ArrestMe is, dare I say it, brave and powerful. At least she's putting skin in the game. It's also pretty well calculated in my opinion.

They can't really attack her for being a right wing extremist when her world famous books are a pretty clear allegory of Racism Bad. She even makes sure to target India Willoughby, who is apparently anti-black. Rowling has an enormous pot of money for expensive litigation and automatic worldwide attention on her. It's hard to righteously defend people such as

"Fragile flower Katie Dolatowski, 6'5", was rightly sent to a women's prison in Scotland after conviction. This ensured she was protected from violent, predatory men (unlike the 10-year-old girl Katie sexually assaulted in a women's public bathroom.)"

It's very practical politics to fish out the worst of the enemy milieu to preface one's normative statements. I think Rowling has a good shot at tactical victory - either the govt won't charge her or she'll win in court. On the other hand, only systemic change is going to change the progressive-leaning status quo. You need an Orban or some similar force to drag out the weed by the roots, rather than just pruning away when it grows particularly egregious. Rowling is no Orban, that's probably far too extreme for her.

The legislation is here: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/asp/2021/14/contents

Crimes include 'stirring up hate' by 'behaving in a manner that a reasonable person would consider to be threatening, abusive or insulting' to select groups. Looks like it allows nigh-limitless opportunities for selective enforcement. And a huge drain on police resources, given they can't even investigate all crimes:

Just last month the national force said it was no longer able to investigate every "low level" crime, including some cases of theft and criminal damage.

It has, however, pledged to investigate every hate crime complaint it receives.

BBC News understands that these will be assessed by a "dedicated team" within Police Scotland including "a number of hate crime advisers" to assist officers in determining what, if any, action to take.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-68703684

While Rowling's crusade is admirable, I think what's really needed is a Scottish DeSantis to immediately turn these dystopian laws on the left. The only thing that stops this train is leftists being jailed for hate speech.

By the way, what's up with Scotland? What about their culture has made them go so loony, first with Covid and now with this? They honestly are starting to seem like China with worse food and weather.

They're not China, they're Canada.

Politically irrelevant backwater just north of an actual powerful country. Being "progressiver-than-thou" about Britain is Scotland's national identity. Just another not-really-a country making stupid laws to stick it to The Man (meaning the people who protect their borders and fund their government).

They're not China, they're Canada.

That makes sense.

I do think Canada has better long term potential simply because of their abundance of natural resources and low population density.

Scotland also has an abundance of natural resources and low population density. The SNPs two-faced messaging of "Taking back the North Sea Oil from the thieving English will allow an independent Scotland to have Scandinavian public services with British taxes" and "Independent Scotland will be a green superpower" is darkly amusing.

Taking back the North Sea Oil from the thieving English will allow an independent Scotland to have Scandinavian public services with British taxes

While also not growing the industry:

Late last year in response to the UK Government’s announcement to grant new licences, The First Minister, Humza Yousaf; attacked the decision saying: “This is the wrong decision. I have expressed concerns about this going ahead for some time. We don’t think the taps should be turned off tomorrow, but neither can the north-east have unlimited oil and gas extraction. ”

https://scottishbusinessnews.net/labour-tax-and-snp-policy-on-oil-and-gas-a-threat-to-the-scottish-economy/

It's one thing to believe in a magic money tree, but it's quite another to think that the magic money tree will survive without water.

Maybe this is the correct analogy. I kept thinking that American rural (and often rural non-city everywhere) tends to code red-tribe. And this goes as far as seeing African pure indigenous black having country music weddings on YouTube. Still does not feel like a perfect model but Canada, Scotland, and some Nordics seem to lean more left but I usually associated that with not having black people and being more willing to redistribute/socialism within their own people than wokism.

Northern countries like that have high urbanization and low population density simultaneously because big chunks of the country are basically empty. Even überprogressive places like Quebec and Sweden have fairly conservative rural areas, there’s just not a lot of people there compared to the big cities.

Quebec is more ethnat than both the rest of Canada and France ime. They’re economically more social democratic than Albertans, sure.

What about their culture has made them go so loony, first with Covid and now with this?

Scottish independence agitators and nationalists like to style themselves as far more progressive than evil Tory Britain, but cry that their progressive instincts are being overwritten by the evil Westminster and that if they could only be independent, they could make the country a progressive utopia.

So occasionally they like to try doing progressive-aligned things that are way outside their remit, wait to get rightfully slapped down by Westminster, and then cry about the evil Tories preventing them from enacting progressive utopia, as a way to rile their base and agitate for separatism.

Unfortunately, over the years of this process, they've picked up a load of true believers who actually believe that Scotland is significantly more progressive than the rest of the UK, so you get things like this. (It's also really easy to be "progressive" on someone else's dime. If they successfully lost their subsidies from the rest of the UK, they'd not have nearly as much cash to splash on such things.) Although odds are in this case, this law is just First Minister "Hamas" Humza trying to criminalise criticism of him by the back door, because he already cries racism and hate crimes any time anyone does.

“Hamas” Humza

You want to elaborate on that? For someone with no knowledge of UK politics, it sounds like either a terrible scandal or a lazy smear. Which is it?

Ah, sorry; he's been accused of considering himself First Minister for Gaza rather than Scotland due to wanting to divert Scottish government funding to Gaza because he has family members there. Nevermind that such a thing would be completely out of his remit as FM. He spends a ton more time talking about Palestine than he does about Scotland as of late.

See, this is why center-left people don't feel like allying with the right, despite our increasing frustration with the regressive far-left. I dislike their attitude of wanting to define reality and outlaw disagreement, but I just know that if the right gets into power they'll do the same, but harder. As an example, I have several friends who are as frustrated with the far-left as me, but who support palestine. I disagree with them about this, but I don't thing they should lose their job over it! And nor are they just getting what they're dishing out, no, now we have to take punches from both sides.

Even for cases like Claudine Gay, at least my personal conclusion is that she got her job through politics and lost her job through politics. Scientific competence was only involved as a cudgel to beat her with when it was convenient. This is a disgrace for one of the most renown universities, and the only winners of the whole affair are the people who want to control science with politics. Yes if it was up to me she shouldn't have gotten the job in the first place, but I see little indication that the right would do anything better. In fact I don't even have to look back very far to get right-wing movements such as the moral majority.

I see the far left picking fights with damn near everyone. The right, on the other hand, very rarely targets the center left- it’s usually the activist left that winds up in our crosshairs.

The most important figure of the American right spent a large portion of his winning 2016 presidential campaign demanding that his center-left opponent be locked up.

And walking back the moment he won. For which he was repaid by having actual made up charges thrown at him to try derail his political campaign.

Right does target center-left (in US) on abortion, immigration and gun control, though.

In speech? Granted it’s a pretty major disagreement but on policy questions but actual center left rhetoric on those topics(eg ‘safe legal and rare’) doesn’t attract much ire from the right.

See, this is why center-left people don't feel like allying with the right, despite our increasing frustration with the regressive far-left. I dislike their attitude of wanting to define reality and outlaw disagreement, but I just know that if the right gets into power they'll do the same, but harder.

I tend to regard actually existing, present threats as more relevant than an equivalent but hypothetical threat.

I have several friends who are as frustrated with the far-left as me, but who support palestine. I disagree with them about this, but I don't thing they should lose their job over it! And nor are they just getting what they're dishing out, no, now we have to take punches from both sides.

This is quite relevant to the UK. Our existing terrorism laws are so broad that throwing the book at Palestinian protesters would lead to tens of thousands of arrests and lengthy prison sentences. To say nothing of England's not-quite-as-strict but still menacing speech laws. But this hasn't happened. When vexatious edge-case imprisonments for terrorism happen, they happen to far-right non-terrorists. Similarly, the only time the police have chosen to start cracking skulls for our current wave of Hamas-related protesting is when there were right-wing counter-protesters. And this is to say nothing of the experience in 2020-21, where lockdowns de jure criminalized all protest, but de facto only criminalized anti-lockdown protests and one specific anti-police protest. As for our counter-terrorism efforts, Prevent is more interested in browns under the bed, hallucinating right-wing extremism where it doesn't exist while doing its best to ignore Islamism.

The threat that the right will fall down a slippery slope is not as strong an argument as the observation that the left already fell down it and hit the spike pit at the bottom.

Yes if it was up to me she shouldn't have gotten the job in the first place, but I see little indication that the right would do anything better.

I don't understand. The right would not have given her the job in the first place, thus completely comporting with your ideal. What's the problem?

See, this is why center-left people don't feel like allying with the right, despite our increasing frustration with the regressive far-left. I dislike their attitude of wanting to define reality and outlaw disagreement, but I just know that if the right gets into power they'll do the same, but harder.

This seems to imply that you have the following preference cascade when it comes to jailing people for speech:

  1. No one uses this power
  2. Only the left uses this power
  3. Both sides use the power
  4. Only the right uses the power

Whereas my cascade is this:

  1. No one uses this power
  2. Both sides use the power
  3. Only the right uses the power
  4. Only the left uses the power

The left defected in a major way by inventing this super weapon. For the right to now hit the "cooperate" button just ensures further defection from the left.

As a center-leftist, you seem to want the right to not actually fight against the left. This is in effect ensuring far left victory. Instead, in my opinion, you should tactically support the right when they are weakest.

Edit: I read your comments below. Maybe you are actually doing in this in which case I apologize for the misreading.

The left didn't invent this super weapon though. Assuming you are talking about governments creating laws regulating speech. It's been around for about as long as governments. Same with what we call cancel culture today, its entirely recognisable as the same behaviours in early societies around shunning, shaming and sub-judicial social sanctions.

From a leftist point of view they are repurposing an already existent super-weapon for their own purposes. I don't think they should be, but I think they are correct in the view that they are picking up a weapon that has already been used many times in the past in many different places. Including within the UK, from the Ministry of Information, to blasphemy to prior restraint to political censorship to the Profumo affair, super injunctions, saying British soldiers should go to hell getting you fined, or saying murdered police officers deserved it getting you jailed and so on.

Like it or not the UK has a long history of being much more authoritarian on what can be said than the US. Most often historically used against anti-establishment voices in general.

This isn't a new weapon. So creating it can't have been a defection. Though using it might still be of course depending on your pov.

Interesting. Can you give an example post WWII of leftists being jailed by rightists for political speech in the UK?

I am aware that the UK is not a free speech zone, but I wasn't aware of anything coming close to what's happening now. Perhaps I'm misinformed.

Jailed doesn't happen often for speech, fined and community service is more normal. In 94 LGBT protestors (including Peter Tatchell, protesting an Islamist group) were arrested for having placards, and took 2 years to be acquiited. In 98 Tatchell was found guilty under a law from 1860 outlawing protest in a church for mounting the pulpit to give a speech opposite the Archbishop of Canterbury. In 2012 Azir Ahmed was fined and sentenced to community service for speech about soldiers who should go to hell. In 2012 Barry Thew was jailed for 8 months for wearing a T-Shirt that approved of cops being murdered.

Whether you would call them leftists I don't know but, being pro LGBT, anti colonial (or neo-colonial) use of soldiers and being ACAB, seem pretty left coded.

To me these examples seem vastly different in scale and scope to what is being proposed with the new law.

8 months for a t shirt?

And note Rowlings comments are bring said not to contravene the law, so it may be narrower than you think.

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I think jeroboam's claim is that high-profile cases of leftists being jailed for hate speech would cause SJers to realise what a bad idea the laws are and undo them - the lesson of "I never thought the leopards would eat MY face".

I think that this claim is false because my read is that most SJers would react not with "oh shit this sucks, guess this gun's a bit dangerous to have available" but with "how dare they defile our gun and use it on us, we must destroy them so utterly that they can never use it again"*. But still, it seems to be coming from an assumption of Free Speech Good.

*To ironman this argument: a lot of the more-wingnut SJers believe that they have already essentially bet their lives on winning the culture war; that failure already means they literally get executed. This means that there is actual zero capability to deter them from escalation; if they win, then you can't punish them, and if they lose, (they think) they'll be killed either way, so the only thing that matters is P(win). And to be fair to them, in the main situation where I see them losing (voter base existence failure due to nuclear war) I would fully expect my prime political activity to be yelling "please no White Terror" for the next few years. But that's something of a special case due to the suddenness and the lopsidedness of power in the aftermath.

For Claudine Gay I feel like “politics” is a bit of a euphemism. It’s truthy but the politics in question is that on the lefts social oppression pyramid a black female sits at the top. If you say politics, Chris Rufo says DEI, and redneck Billy says because she’s a black female they all mean the same thing. And it does seem correct to say she was thrown out on politics. Turns out rich Jewish donors can go head to head with modern leftism and win politically when they feel they are being hurt. You can call it politics but you would be equally true to say she was fired for being antisemitic. All are politics and this case the Jewish vote not liking antisemitism was stronger than the lefts oppression wheel politics.

That's my point though. Universities should strive for academic excellence and political independence. However, it got increasingly taken over by leftist politics, got (mostly correctly, then) labeled an enemy by the right, and is correspondingly now a target. I've been a critic of this process from the start, precisely because this was the only logical outcome. Nevertheless, as far as I can see the right has always been more interested in using the same tactics of silencing and outlawing disagreements, just now for their position, than in restoring some semblance of academic excellence.

Nevertheless, as far as I can see the right has always been more interested in using the same tactics of silencing and outlawing disagreements, just now for their position, than in restoring some semblance of academic excellence.

This is probably just the nature of politics as a tribal competition. If your team controls a set of institutions or part of society it's in your political interest to use that power to suppress dissenting voices and advance your agenda, which is what most people care about. I think the best argument that increasing right wing representation in universities will benefit free speech is less that right wingers care more about free speech in principle and more that by establishing a rough balance between political factions neither side will be able to completely stifle the ideas and opinions of the other (or get professors fired if they don't like their research etc).

See, this is why center-left people don't feel like allying with the right, despite our increasing frustration with the regressive far-left

If the center left had proven even vaguely able to resist this sort of thing, the Right would also find them to be a more attractive option than tit for tat. Or would not have needed to get involved at all.

People like Rufo & DeSantis exist because attempting to appeal to universal principles or allowing the academy to police itself has utterly failed. A lot of this stuff (especially in America, in the UK the Tories take a lot of blame since they were in power) happened under their eye. They not only refused to do anything about it, they often attacked both right and left critiques of it.

And then, when someone goes "too far" in response, they lament that there's no partner for common sense and sanity and they definitely would have done something if not for those crazies who made it too tense to get involved.

Yeah, uh-huh.

I mean, I push hard enough against left-wing orthodoxy both in person and online that I'm regularly reflexively labeled right-wing, and I have the same frustration as you with plenty of other allegedly centrist politicians who fall hard for the "no enemies to the left, all enemies to the right" fallacy. You're really throwing this at the wrong person, sorry.

You still seem willing to prefer as allies the left-wing orthodoxy over the right-wing ("See, this is why center-left people don't feel like allying with the right, despite our [...]", emphasis mine) so I think you are indeed the right person.

If you want to know, my last vote went to the FDP, which is the german libertarian party. Unlike the US, the FDP is not consistently on either side, but has coalitioned with both sides (currently it's in fact part of a broad left-leaning government). Myself I'm not even a straight-ticket FDP voter, I've considered the CDU (originally center right, though nowadays probably just pure centrist), due to their family-first focus which I find appealing, and the SPD (center left), since I'm in favour of broad redistributive policies if done right. My vote ultimately went to the FDP however since it's the closest thing to free-speech absolutism on the menu and because they currently appear to be the party most concerned with imo common-sense concepts such as "having a functioning economy".

Privately, at work, and online, I primarily push back against left-wing orthodoxy since it's quite common among my acquintances.

Nevertheless, and yes this is precisely what I mean, if you try to force me into a binary left-wing orthodoxy vs right-wing orthodoxy, both enforced equally, I'll choose the left everytime. The right needs to be significantly less orthodox for me to consider it.

The FDPs milquetoast false-centrism position on the coronavirus response, and it's involvement in the current German coalition as that government seeks to disrupt, harass, or even outlaw political opposition in the AFD, makes me skeptical that they'd be a good match for your claimed political goals.

Of course, the centre-right refusing to ally with the right pretty much defines the entire current German political climate, not just you in particular.

What you call milquetoast false-centrism, I'd call regular centrism. I know Corona is your hobbyhorse, but the FDP was if anything overly critical compared to the center (which suits me, since I also was on the critical side).

On the AFD, the FDP is explicitly on the record as being against the Verbotsverfahren. Privately, I've argued multiple times that the AFD has a point, and that as long as the german political establishment is unwilling to tackle the dysfunctional, barely existent border and immigration politics, they will only get stronger. This is reasonably close to the stated position of the FDP, though I suspect that being libertarians they're more in favor of open borders than I'd like, but unfortunately we don't have a topic-based voting law.

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I feel I should note that there is such a thing as "being neutral", and thus that RenOS' note that he doesn't want to ally with you is not the same thing as declaring alliance with your enemies.

You might consider neutrality naïve, and you might very well be right, but you can't just treat naïveté as malice - not if you want to be intellectually honest, anyway.

I probably was harsh, and RenOS rightly accused me of venting my frustration here.

But I don't think my OP implied it was just malice. There are many reasons (few of which I respect) for this behavior on the part of the actual left-wing liberals who're now disillusioned.

If I had a problem with your post, I'd have replied to it. It was Nybbler's "You still seem willing to prefer as allies" that pinged my "objectionable inference" radar.

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I feel I should note that there is such a thing as "being neutral"

It's an awfully one-sided neutrality that supports the left when it agrees with the left, and refuses to support the right when it agrees with the right.

We see that in the United States a lot. People who, when asked, are closer to Republicans than Democrats on most issues but still vote blue.

Voting is more about tribal affiliation and personal purity than about issues.

Voting Republican gives some people the "ick". So even though they hate homeless encampments, drug overdoses, crime, and broken public schools, they still vote for far left candidates in their city election.

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The other side to it is that the right wanted Gay fired precisely because she was a DEI hire and the right doesn’t want DEI.

I mean, presumably the fundamental reason you don't feel like allying with the right is because you're center-left. If you were center-right instead, you'd probably feel more comfortable with the right!

I don't think there's much point in speculating what a rightist censorship regime would look like right now, because the right doesn't have the power to enforce those policies on a national scale and I don't realistically see that changing any time soon. So I'm fine with just trying to push back against leftist censorship for now, and if rightist censorship ever gets out of hand we can cross that bridge when we come to it. (Of course, part of the reason why I'm comfortable saying that is because I'm apt to find the right's policies more hospitable in the first place - someone of a more leftist bent might say that current leftist censorship is really no big deal after all, but rightist censorship is a lurking omnipresent danger that we must be on constant guard against).

For what it's worth I think I'm about as close to a free speech absolutist as you can get. I don't think anyone should be punished for supporting Palestine, or questioning trans ideology, or anything else. But if I have to make a choice, I'll go with the side that is less censorious on the issues that are closer to me personally.

I don't think there's much point in speculating what a rightist censorship regime would look like right now, because the right doesn't have the power to enforce those policies on a national scale and I don't realistically see that changing any time soon.

I do. It's called nuclear war. I don't, y'know, want nuclear war, but it's pretty obvious that the small-town conservatives comprise a much-larger percentage of the population immediately following one because nobody nukes farmhouses or small towns.

Assuming that nothing flips the table is potentially assuming your way out of reality.

In a post-nuclear world, do you really think issues of free speech and wokeness at Harvard will be primary concerns? I’m pretty close to a free speech absolutist, and that is a value I hold pretty dear, but even I wouldn’t expect to care about it much at all in the immediate aftermath of a nuclear attack.

Might I gently suggest that in case of a nuclear war the finer points of hate speech laws and college campus environments may no longer be a particularly urgent concern.

(this doubles as a reply to @Lewis2)

I quoted what I thought was wrong; the idea that the right will not have the power to do censorship any time soon.

Indeed, one would not need to worry about "wokeness at Harvard", because my whole point is that Harvard would be a smoking ruin. I would be concerned about White Terror, both immediately (in cases of supply-chain interruption and government disruption causing hungry chaos, I don't imagine that being the HR lady would do wonders for one's survival chances) and in the months and years to follow.

I consider myself primarily a pragmatist, not ideologist, so I can see myself allying with a broader right coalition in principle, if I had the impression that I can fit in under a live and let live paradigm. In particular I'm probably more center than left, so it's not even inconceivable that I'll someday identify as center-right. But nevertheless, I just do not have the impression that free speech absolutism is really something the right is dedicated on (nor the left, which is key to my frustration with them, but at least I agree with them on more other things). Currently I do push hardest against left-wing orthodoxy because it's the only realistic threat to me at the moment since the right-wing has no power whatsoever in science, but I have no illusions that life would be better under the thumb of the right.

I think what's really needed is a Scottish DeSantis to immediately turn these dystopian laws on the left. The only thing that stops this train is leftists being jailed for hate speech.

I'm not sure it would stop it. True, communists became suddenly more keen on the "bourgeois values" of freedom of speech and academic freedom during the McCarthy years, but e.g. the reaction of most religions in most time and places to oppression by another religion has not been "This shows the importance of freedom of religion" but rather "This shows how important it is to impose our religion on people."

A leftist reaction to jailing leftists for hate speech might just be, "This is why DeSantis types must never have the powers we have invested in government." This can lead to either democratic optimism ("demographics is destiny" "reality = education = a liberal bias" etc.) or just old-fashioned authoritarian attitudes.

I would say it's less about Scotland and more specifically about the Scottish National Party. The Holyrood parliament doesn't have to deal with grown up issues, like deficits, foreign policy or immigration. They are guaranteed a constant subsidy from England (or more accurately, London). After the failure of the independence movement, they need to redirect their grandstanding elsewhere or the public will ask what their purpose is.

As for COVID, that was clearly a case of the SNP purposely trying to distinguish Scotland from England. Their model of governing for years has been to create distinctions where none need exist, to be different for difference' sake. For COVID that meant copying the government in Westminster, but being more restrictive on every axis.

Britain's a deeply broken country IMO, drowning in decline. Scotland has effectively permanent SNP leftist-progressive govt. Traditional heavy industry left, north sea oil is depleted. There's not much growing of the pie, only taking someone else's share - SNP policies lean in that direction.

Real GDP per capita: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.KD?locations=GB

You can see the trend line of growth has fallen off since 2007 - and British growth is concentrated heavily around London, I expect things in Scotland are much worse than the country as a whole.

Potemkin villages: https://twitter.com/PrisonPlanet/status/1761798659396518342

Warships being scrapped: https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/britain-to-scrap-two-royal-navy-frigates-say-reports/

NHS spends twice as much on legal payouts due to their horrendous maternity service than maternity itself: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/maternity-payouts-twice-cost-of-care-times-health-commission-svdhsjhqk

If you've seen Clarkson's Farm you'll appreciate how hard it is for anyone to build anything, even if they're a global superstar. Everything is very expensive and takes forever, for no good reason. The UK border is totally out of control, despite being an island. Plus there were the Pakistani child rape gangs that operated for years because police were too scared of being racist and covered them up.

If I could buy puts for countries, I think puts on Britain would have the most alpha. Everyone thinks 'oh it's a P5 nuclear power, they invented industrial civilization, it'll be fine'. It's really not fine in the UK. I think it's systemically broken. Every single institution broken, incentives broken. I know Dominic Cummings is a contested figure here but he did work in the British govt for some time and I think he was driven a bit mad by the cosmic horror of it all, he wrote these essays about how everything was broken and the leaders were clowns:

https://dominiccummings.com/2014/06/16/gesture-without-motion-from-the-hollow-men-in-the-bubble-and-a-free-simple-idea-to-improve-things-a-lot-which-could-be-implemented-in-one-day-part-i/

https://dominiccummings.com/2014/10/30/the-hollow-men-ii-some-reflections-on-westminster-and-whitehall-dysfunction/

(for the juicy horror stories skip down to four stories in the second link)

growth has fallen off since 2007

Okay, I snorted a little at this one. Anything else happen after 2007 I should know about?

All in all, it’s hard for me to see the British situation as unusual. Dysfunction yes, disaster no. A distinct shortage of car bombings. Even the foreign threats seem so tame compared to the 20th century!

Eh, this is a bit too doomer in my opinion. Sure, the UK is doing worse than the US (and will probably continue doing worse than them) but it's absolutely not the highest alpha country to get a put on. Many many Western European countries have the same problems we have but even worse, plus they don't have English either acting as a draw for high end immigrants (which the UK disproportionately gets compared to the dregs that end up in Europe). I'd take out puts on France, Spain and Canada before I took them out on the UK, perhaps even Germany before the UK (their demographics are down the toilet, average age is approaching 50).

Planning and building is absolutely fucked but I have hope that when Starmer takes power later this year he'll swiftly liberalise the system: it's basically the only way left to stimulate growth as even he now realises the government can't just spend their way out of this crisis.

I'm actually putting my money where my mouth is: with the upcoming tax year and renewed ISA allowance I'm strongly considering investing the money in a FTSE 250 ETF instead of the standard S&P 500 one I usually buy (deep down part of me already knows I'll regret this, but who knows, also the usual disclaimer: this is not financial advice yada yada).

I'd take out puts on France, Spain and Canada before I took them out on the UK, perhaps even Germany before the UK (their demographics are down the toilet, average age is approaching 50).

I'd be somewhat inclined to go long on Canada (over a longer time frame admittedly) purely based on geography - with all that habitable land and and the natural resources that are going to get more accessible as the planet warms it's hard to think things could go seriously wrong for them.

with all that habitable land

It's not really that habitable, though. Most of Ontario (and Newfoundland) is bedrock, Quebec is bedrock and French, most of Manitoba is bedrock or underwater, the Maritimes are nearly dead of neglect (to the point the Canadian government will pay you to leave under certain circumstances), -30C isn't meaningfully different from -40C for AB/SK and their cities are already expanding as fast as their construction crews can go, there are no logistics for expansion into the territories, and it's illegal to develop the areas of BC that aren't just solid rock already.

Are those things fixable? For BC repealing the ALR is coup-complete, and for the Maritimes, while it's certainly possible to turn it into another megalopolis, it's going to be very expensive even though it is technically possible with existing technology (but critically, not Canadian technology).

And here I felt stupid for holding some VGK to diversify away from the US. FTSE smells of regret and cold mushy peas.

Britain's a deeply broken country IMO, drowning in decline. Scotland has effectively permanent SNP leftist-progressive govt. Traditional heavy industry left, north sea oil is depleted. There's not much growing of the pie, only taking someone else's share - SNP policies lean in that direction.

Real GDP per capita: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.KD?locations=GB

This is indeed the crux of the issue, but it's also true for most of Europe. Britain's main difference here is we don't have bad unemployment figures to go with it. Instead, we have the peculiar combination of US very low unemployment but EU bad wage growth.

I know Dominic Cummings is a contested figure here but he did work in the British govt for some time and I think he was driven a bit mad by the cosmic horror of it all, he wrote these essays about how everything was broken and the leaders were clowns:

Dominic Cummings is not some outside figure diagnosing the problem. He, being pro-lockdown, was a contributor to it.

I’d offer a limited defense of this country.

The UK’s growth trend since 2007 is largely because the UK was one of the fastest growing major economies in the previous decade, and because of various second-order effects of the US dollar being highly depressed from the late 90s until 2008/2009 and then surging in value until now. For a brief moment the UK’s nominal gdp/capita was even slightly higher than the US in 2007, again because of an FX quirk after the dotcom bust and mid-2000s oil bubble sent the dollar cratering. The fiscal problem is, as others have said, obvious and has long been obvious. Brits expect continental European social democracy at American tax rates. It isn’t possible and has never been possible. Therefore the UK will continue to run high deficits and struggle with poor public services. It is what it is, but it isn’t collapse-tier really. Every major party has acknowledged it in private, there just aren’t any palatable solutions.

The immigration problem is significant but France and Sweden’s problems with immigration and Islamism are still much worse. As a percentage of non-European immigrants, the UK has fewer migrants from the Islamic world than almost anywhere else in Northern Europe, including France, Germany, Benelux and the Nordics. Again, a collapse is more likely elsewhere (probably France). The UK is closer to the US on the “pace of being destroyed by mass immigration” scale than worse-off countries elsewhere in Western Europe, and more likely to end up Brazilified than Lebanonified.

Warships being scrapped: https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/britain-to-scrap-two-royal-navy-frigates-say-reports/

32 year old warships being scrapped. The biggest problem for the British military is America’s snail-level pace at building F-35s which means that it will be 15+ years after the two aircraft carriers came in before they have enough planes to operate them as intentioned.

I know Dominic Cummings is a contested figure here but he did work in the British govt for some time and I think he was driven a bit mad by the cosmic horror of it all, he wrote these essays about how everything was broken and the leaders were clowns

The core problem with the British civil service is that it’s run by figures like Cummings who believe issues are a result of stupidity or inefficiency instead of deep-rooted political realities (like the tax situation I describe above, and views on planning among the electorate) that can’t be changed by putting a few smart autists in power in Whitehall.

The core problem with the British civil service is that it’s run by figures like Cummings who believe issues are a result of stupidity or inefficiency instead of deep-rooted political realities (like the tax situation I describe above, and views on planning among the electorate) that can’t be changed by putting a few smart autists in power in Whitehall.

He says the opposite, that the culture of government is deeply broken. A few smart people can't fix it without full control over staffing, hiring and sacking - they need to break the power of the Civil Service and recruit a new class of elected politician educated in a fundamentally different way.

The culture of government wasn’t the primary problem though, it was a banal economic issue that requires telling the public something they don’t want to hear and then fixing it knowing it will cost you the next election, and likely the one after that.

Cummings would be shocked at how little difference replacing the bureaucracy made; the bulk of expenditure isn’t on stereotypical faceless bureaucrats inefficiently faxing documents around large office buildings, it’s on pensions and healthcare.

British healthcare is not run excellently: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/maternity-payouts-twice-cost-of-care-times-health-commission-svdhsjhqk

https://unherd.com/2020/09/lets-be-honest-the-nhs-is-awful/

https://www.themotte.org/post/829/friday-fun-thread-for-january-12/178889?context=8#context

If the country was governed well, everything would improve, health included. There are ways to do more with less. They could've managed HS2 properly for one thing. And when was the bureaucracy replaced?

They can’t manage HS2 properly for the same reason that California can’t built HSR or that infrastructure projects in all Anglo countries cost 5x as much as they do anywhere else, namely common law and restrictions on eminent domain that allow more challenges and more legal action. Only parliament can solve it but they don’t want to because the people don’t want it; Boris Johnson proposed planning reform and people in deep-blue Tory constituencies flipped to the Liberal Democrats in protest at the idea that local small town councils would no longer be able to veto any construction. Not really a bureaucracy problem.

The NHS is awful because the UK spends much less, both absolutely per-person and as a proportion of GDP, than other wealthy nations. Everything is done at the cheapest price, because of the tax/spend conundrum I discussed. The people won’t accept more taxes and won’t accept privatization, so there it is. Again, it’s a people problem, not a state problem. The compromise that the UK has (mediocre public services and moderate taxation levels) is one the public have selected. There are no administrative solutions, no magic sauce in the bureaucracy that can fix it. It’s just basic math. Either taxes go up or services get worse, the public will accept neither.

The UK is closer to the US on the “pace of being destroyed by mass immigration” scale than worse-off countries elsewhere in Western Europe, and more likely to end up Brazilified than Lebanonified.

Uh, the US’s largest states are white minority, gen z is the last white majority generation, there’s no functioning border, and we have more immigrants than births every year.

Now I don’t think a Hispanic majority- or plurality or whatever- is a death knell, but ‘control of immigration’ is not an American strength.

Yes, but fundamentally the US probably isn’t going to experience major ethnic conflict because of immigration. Latinos are mostly Christian (either devout or secularized catholics), quickly adopt American dress and have high intermarriage rates by the third generation. Most of Central America moving north will manifest itself in, long term, a lower performing population, higher inequality, more corruption and crime, and general civilizational decline, probably. But there will be no grand clash of civilizations, thus Brazilification.

In much of continental Europe, non-European immigration is overwhelmingly Muslim. Assimilation is limited, cultural identities strong. Very few German or Austrian second-generation Muslim immigrants consider themselves German or Austrian, for example. They conceive of themselves as having a strong, separate identity. This makes Lebanonization that descends into open ethno-religious conflict much more likely in countries like France, Sweden, Germany etc.

The UK sits kind of between the two. Immigrants are a lot more diverse, with large Chinese and Indian (Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist) contingents, many African Christians from former colonies (France’s former colonies are largely Muslim, by contrast) plus a large number of additional groups from all over the world who speak English (eg. Filipinos are the third most common nationality in the NHS after British and Indians). Islamic immigration remains high, and there have been terror attacks, the grooming gangs scandals and so on, but it is a smaller proportion of the total than in continental Europe. Most non-Muslim groups also have relatively high intermarriage rates.

I think the UK is therefore more likely to Brazilify than to Lebanonify.

Something I've never been clear on, which I think you might be able to explain due to your (astoundingly broad and deep!) geopolitical knowledge:

What exactly does "brazilification" mean? I've seen it used enough and I'm familiar enough with the popular perception of Brazil that I think I've picked up the "vibe", but I find myself wondering if there isn't more to it than just "extreme inequality and crime, favelas in every city where the wealthy never go." Is there a racial component in Brazil, or is it just a socioeconomic thing? Is there a specific historical path that is necessary to count as brazilification?

Brazil has a racial hierarchy but it’s in denial and likes to pretend that there’s a ‘Brazilian’ race instead of many races which could all be Brazilian, in order to cover up the massive drag of high human capital demographics subsidizing lower human capital ones which then proceed to repay them with crime.

It started decades ago as a progressive economics term to argue that rising economic inequality risked America looking more like much of Latin America, where the top 5% live like Americans while the bottom 90% are poor. Over time it was adopted by the right in light of ongoing mass immigration, keeping some of its original meaning but adding the idea that Brazil is also poorer, more corrupt, more violent, more dysfunctional. On the internet right the Brazilification thesis stands in contrast to the ‘Balkanization’ or Lebanon scenarios in which ethnic tensions crystallize into hot conflict. Brazil, by contrast, has little significant racial strife of the kind far rightists sometimes predict in the West’s future.

Got it, thanks.

Ah, appreciate the clarification. I’d thought that Britain’s immigrants were highly Pakistani or unassimilating Hindus; sort of like France or Germany. A comparatively small number of Pakistanis in a context of mostly assimilating migration from throughout the former empire is a meaningful improvement over that assumption.

If I could buy puts for countries, I think puts on Britain would have the most alpha.

You'd better make sure your put-writer has enough money (and will survive) to actually pay out, or you're not the one making alpha.

If I could buy puts for countries, I think puts on Britain would have the most alpha.

Can't you just buy puts on a UK-focused index fund (Vanguard page)?

Having lived in quite a few European countries and knowing British history in some detail, I would put it this way: the UK had a period of great comparative success across a huge range of fields (prior to about 1945) where European countries they didn't outperform economically (France, Germany) were outperformed militarily/diplomatically, and the UK developed a fairly "laissez faire" type of imperialism that had some definite advantages over Belgian rapaciousness, French assimilationism etc.

The UK had a period of relative decline in 1945-1979. This was only relative (this was a period of mostly solid growth) and with some exceptions (UK unemployment rates were low in this period, even compared to e.g. the US).

The UK had a concerted and successful effort to combat relative decline from about 1979-2007. This took different forms, e.g. Thatcher had great confidence in Victorian institutions, practices, and values; Blair had a huge love of America (especially Clintonian America) public service modernisation, and wanted the UK to lead the EU into a modernist, progressive, American-style supra-state; Major was somewhere in between, with a strange sort of quiet iconoclasm in favour of "ordinary people" that ranged from the clever (getting rid of stupid regulations on everything from employment agencies to service stations) to the absurd (the "Cones Hotline").

For various reasons, I mostly blame Brown and subsequent UK politicians, and of course the UK voters to whom they pander. For example, the UK has a great edge in financial and business services. UK business services are one area where the UK still does great, partly due to language, partly due to regulation, and partly due to agglomeration in London/South-East England. What do UK politicians and voters love? MANUFACTURING. Steel. SHIPBUILDING. It's like a tall, scrawny but fast kid wanting to play rugby and set weightlifting records rather than basketball and netball - admirable, but stupid. So the UK overregulates and taxes its financial sector (as well as the occasional kick to its oil sector) and then wonders why its economy underperforms.

Similarly, the UK voters hate paying taxes at the levels of European countries. So they have the opportunity to e.g. save more of their own money for retirement, taking advantage of the huge long-term gains that private investment can make relative to pay-as-you-go state pensions. But they also want state pensions at European levels (no Boomer left behind) so politicians have introduced an unsustainable pensions uprating scheme that has meant that, despite significant spending cuts in some areas (welfare, education etc.) and despite tax rises to about peacetime highs, the UK public finances are still shit. This is not how a serious country deals with an ageing population.

And there's the UK national religion, the NHS, a healthcare system designed to save the UK Labour party from the wrath of doctors in the 1950 election, which voters think (a) should be improved, (b) should not be changed, and (c) should not cost them personally any more in taxes or fees. I suppose there are some religions with more absurd origins and principles...

Scotland is the beak of the UK ostrich: deepest into the sand it has buried itself.

I have lived in Germany, Austria, Netherlands, France, Italy, Greece, and other places. These countries all have their own chronic problems and a similar lack of ambition in dealing with them. For me, it just stands out more in the UK (and more recently in the US) because the Limeys used to have some leaders and an electorate who were serious about tough changes. For all her faults, Margaret Thatcher was about the closest the West has come to a Lee Kuan Yew figure: someone who really thought, "If a policy is too popular, then we are being too careful."

Just responding to the manufacturing point, I don't think British voters particularly fetishise heavy industry so much as they feel that the return of these jobs will allow these poorer regions in the midlands and north to thrive again. This probably isn't going to happen but until politicians can figure out a more realistic way to revitalise those areas they have to promise something to get people from these areas to vote for them.

the return of these jobs will allow these poorer regions in the midlands and north to thrive again.

These jobs are never coming back. The UK manufactures more today in real value terms that it ever did in the past, but automation means we need fewer and fewer jobs each year to support this manufacturing. This trend is not going to change and if anything is going to accelerate (see how Tata is closing down their old labour intensive steel furnace and replacing it with a more efficient highly automated furnace that's going to pump out a lot more steel with a lot fewer workers). These towns and regions are dead and will stay dead. People need to realise this and move on.

(see how Tata is closing down their old labour intensive steel furnace and replacing it with a more efficient highly automated furnace that's going to pump out a lot more steel with a lot fewer workers)

I thought the steel plant was profitable and produced very good (ie. difficult to replace) steel but was being shut down for burning coal and is being 'replaced' with an electric one that will use mindboggling amounts of a scarce resource while producing inferior steel to the existing plant?

Looking at it in more depth you seem to be right. Also the electric arc furnace seems to work by taking scrap steel as input instead of iron ore like the blast furnace does. This changes my view of the project significantly, I'm now much less in favour of the change. I wouldn't even call the new thing a steel producer, it's more a "steel recycler".

Just responding to the manufacturing point, I don't think British voters particularly fetishise heavy industry so much as they feel that the return of these jobs will allow these poorer regions in the midlands and north to thrive again.

That's part of it, I agree. The LKY solution would be to build lots of houses where there are jobs, so more people can escape dependency and joblessness. If people complain about losing the green belt or excess urban density or the loss of the beautiful Essex countryside, then you're doing it right.

Also, in my experience Brits consistently conflate manufacturing output with manufacturing employment. Thatcher's policies led to a boom in UK manufacturing, just not UK manufacturing employment: https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/10/22/1413987501531_wps_2_SPT_Ben1_jpg.jpg

So if you ask a Brit if they think that the UK produces more today than in the days of coal mining, Ravenscraig etc., they'll think, "Certainly not." This is partly because they conflate manufacturing with "a man's work" i.e. something dirty and smelly you do with your hands (but in public).

Of course, this sort of sentiment is almost universal, but for a while, the UK had the leaders and the electorate to plough forward with tough, realistic decisions.

One thing I feel certain LKY never dealt with was the problems of rural areas.

Yes, it's an extrapolation from his approach in other areas.

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