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The strange case of Britain’s demise

economist.com

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Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#341

Post by skippyboxedhero »

klelatti wrote: post #218
skippyboxedhero wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I mean Solvency II amongst other rules. There are many others (pension regulations are even worse). Let me help you with complexity (financial regulation doesn't happen to be particularly simple, it won't yield before your mighty intellect because you had a thought, you have to do the work). Er no, the reason Solvency II exists is to bailout govts (and insurance companies, it is a tacit way of decreasing competit…

Actually key parts of Solvency II (Matching Adjustment - drafted by the U.K.) specifically favours corporate debt over government bonds which is in part why actually U.K. insurers don’t hold much government debt at all. Really odd that you should get this so wrong.

This isn't the case. Solvency II treats govt bonds as essentially risk-free, corporate bonds are not treated as risk-free, and there are substantial capital requirements for non-bond investments. UK insurers have substantial holdings of govt debt (really odd that you should get this so wrong), they are one of the largest non-govt investors in the market (obviously).

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#342

Post by throwaway2037 »

gman83 wrote: post #253
dignick wrote: post #145

Like in the US, democracy in the United Kingdom is faltering. Our first past the post electoral system means the Tories can retain power with a third of the (active) electorate voting for them. Labour believes first past the post serves them well, but it doesn’t, because they would have been leading a coalition government in the last several elections under Proportional Representation. Instead it requires Labour to b…

Proportional representation also has its problems. Look at the Netherlands, which has 17 different parties in parliament and led to it becoming increasingly difficult to form coalitions, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021%E2%80%932022_Dutch_cabine...

I'm confused when you wrote "becoming increasingly difficult to form coalitions". Mark Rutte has been PM since 2010. Wiki says: "On 2 August 2022, he became the longest-serving Prime Minister in Dutch history..." Without specific examples that demonstrate a trend, the term "increasingly difficult" is editorial-speak. Also, look at NL economy for last 30 years. Looks pretty good compared to any other highly developed country. That is very difficult to do without a high functioning govt.

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#343

Post by asdadsdad »

foobarian wrote: post #323
rr808 wrote: post #138

I think its just a return to normal service after a spectacular period in the 90s and early 2000s. Back then everything was close to perfect, economy, music, politics UK became the best at everything. Now its kinda back to how it was in post war era which is fine but not great.

I think it's worse than that, it feels like the end of the exponential part of the massive growth S-curve that started after WW2 with rebuilding, tech breakthroughs, the transistor, electronics, computers, globalization, etc. Now all that is finally in steady state and the structures that built up around the growth are falling in on themselves. People try to blame whichever government is currently in power or whateve…

Agree, and it's sad because indeed Britain in the early 2000s was the coolest place to be. I mean, if they had stayed in the EU it'd still have a lot of its appeal. Now it's just a sad island with tough immigration and not much to offer. London used to be the kind of place young Europeans would head to, without plans. Now not sure whey are people going.

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#344

Post by tjpnz »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #180
prof-dr-ir wrote: post #35

As a former inhabitant of England, I always thought that those in charge suffered from a uniquely wide 'competence gap' which I would like to define as the difference between someone's self-perceived competence and someone's actual competence. (The term is probably useful more broadly...) Maybe it is the historically class-based society alluded to in the article, but it always stunned me how those at the top, and in…

I'd like to suggest you take a look at almost everything done in power by George W. Bush, Donald Trump, François Holland, Paul von Hindenburg, Silvio Berlusconi, Brian Cowen, Jair Bolsonaro... the list could go on... and compare and contrast and then ask if this is subjectively a phenomenon truly unique to the UK. Bad leadership of the type you describe has shown itself in every country in the World at some point. th…

>It all points to a need for the UK to be rid of the Tories for a generation or two

Bollocks to that. I hope this will be the Last Tory Government.

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#345

Post by kibwen »

6547586970 wrote: post #299
SturgeonsLaw wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious to see what HN's opinion on mandatory voting is. We have that in Australia and the sense is that it tends to dull the extreme fringes of the party platforms since they need to broadly appeal to the mainstream.

I'm always going to be against adding more force and coercion. People are way too quick to reach for that as a solution to every purported problem. I also think many of the people who are forced to vote will do so with the least effort possible and will keep voting for the same party they (and probably their parents) have always voted for without thinking too much about it or doing any research.

Proportional voting doesn't have to mean tyranny. Make the very first option on the ballot "I don't approve of any of the candidates here", and if it wins another election is held and nobody from the prior ballot is allowed to be listed.

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#346

Post by throwaway2037 »

dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #313
gman83 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proportional representation also has its problems. Look at the Netherlands, which has 17 different parties in parliament and led to it becoming increasingly difficult to form coalitions, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021%E2%80%932022_Dutch_cabine...

Yes voters should just buckle down and vote for a big left/right party. Voters are getting too much democracy for their own good!

Agree. Look at democracies where two parties dominate. The choices look awful. Where is the center represented in UK and US?

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#347

Post by kibwen »

gernb wrote: post #304
Silhouette wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that in many Western systems the people who gain power aren't democratically elected. In a real democracy the big challenge should be how to protect minorities from the tyranny of the majority. However most of us aren't even getting that far because the people who gain power often don't even have the support or even acceptance of the majority.

You said > In a real democracy the big challenge should be how to protect minorities from the tyranny of the majority But isn't that exactly what's happening? The minority (red) won against the majority (blue).

The grandparent is simplifying. The goal of a democracy is to respect the will of the majority while respecting the fundamental rights of the minority. If you're not doing the first step, respecting the will of the majority, then your democracy has already failed. A tyranny of the minority is strictly worse than a tyranny of the majority.

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#348

Post by narcindin »

TapWaterBandit wrote: post #273
akiselev wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s only one meme in British politics seen more often than Malcolm Tucker quotes: “It’s Corbyn’s fault!” It’s febrile at this point.

> It’s febrile at this point. Not really sure what you're saying here. Did you mean to use the word "juvenile"?

Probably [facile](https://www.thefreedictionary.com/facile), here meaning superficial, reductive, or weak.

Edit: Actually probably what the UK ppl are saying

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#349

Post by throwaway2037 »

TapWaterBandit wrote: post #288
SturgeonsLaw wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious to see what HN's opinion on mandatory voting is. We have that in Australia and the sense is that it tends to dull the extreme fringes of the party platforms since they need to broadly appeal to the mainstream.

It is hard to disentangle the temperament of the populace from the voting system. The UK and all former settler colonies (Canada, Australia, New Zealand) all have very stable politics and that generally appeal to the median voter. None of them really have any extreme political incidents in living memory that I can think of. (maybe a few extreme incidents by their own standards but on a global standard they are still…

"former settler colonies". US and South Africa do not count? How about Latin America vis-a-vis Spain and Portugal?

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#350

Post by roenxi »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #326
roenxi wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democracy is remarkably robust and people fighting is not an indication that it is faltering. The UK has a long and proud history of tenuous balance between different groups that are all on the verge of doing violence to one another, the current era is remarkably peaceful and cooperative. People are undercalling the effects of a multi-decade campaign against energy security in favour of environmentalist goals. The dr…

Absolutely none of that is true. The UK has the highest energy prices of any country in Europe and - not coincidentally - its energy companies make the highest profits. The UK could have promoted renewables, and did for a while. But the current government - like you - is actively hostile to decentralised solutions that work, and prefers to promote corporate choke points over energy supply that have put the entire pop…

> It's not even an energy poor country.

Looking at the tabulated data [0], in 1965 the UK was roughly 200% the European average for per capita energy consumption. Now it is ~75% of the same. It has dropped in absolute terms too (dropped to ~75% of the 1965 figure). In fact, on a per-capita basis the UK is neck-and-neck with China. Nearly, actually it is slightly behind.

It looks a lot like an energy poor country.

> That's not the fault of windmills and solar panels, and it's disingenuous to suggest it is.

I'm not suggesting that. I assume it was decades of policy where people were asking "how do we kill off our cheapest source of energy", consistent with other western states. The UK - like everyone else - should have been focusing on how to secure cheap fossil fuels, how to bring down the cost of nuclear energy and loosening the regulatory state to accept that energy is needed despite NIMBYism. If the market says wind and solar are cheap then build those too, but only if they are cheap enough to make stand-alone economic sense.

Instead I suspect policy attempted to achieve an unachievable level of environmental non-interventionism and look like they are paying the price.

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-energy-use?tab...

POSTSCRIPT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:UK_electricity_production... - mission success! Fossil fuels being phased out without a ready replacement. A country becoming energy poor in one graph. Of course there'll be some political tension with these sort of fundamentals.

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