Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The gathering crisis in the UK

antipope.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 183 posts

Re: The gathering crisis in the UK

#81

Post by usgroup »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #5

"Brexit has delivered some deregulation, though: notably, the Conservative government ditched EU standards on effluent discharges, resulting in the (private) water companies discharging raw sewage into almost every river, and the seas around the UK coastline. So it is no longer safe to swim in UK waters." Holy crap! "the Bank of England are forecasting 13% inflation towards the end of the year." And we thought things…

I don’t think so —- it’s all a bit hyperbolic . Yeah tough times but most inflation forecasts have it going doing to near 0% by the end of 2023 — guy needs to breathe.

Re: The gathering crisis in the UK

#82

Post by wffurr »

colechristensen wrote: post #44
ceeplusplus wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And we thought things were bad in the US. That inflation is mostly driven by energy costs, which are a direct result of European policy failures on nuclear and fossil fuels. The US is mostly a net neutral producer/consumer of fossil fuels and energy, which is why it's insulated from the impacts of Russia cutting off gas.

Yup. A big thing in past decades was energy independence. The US actually achieved it but it didn't get the attention that griping about not having it got.

I mean sort of. If fuel prices are still at the whim of global markets, does it matter if the country is a net importer or not?

Electrification with domestic electricity supply seems like it would provide much greater security. Though there's still the global markets for all the electronics and materials and such for renewable generation.

Re: The gathering crisis in the UK

#83

Post by ajb »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #55
klelatti wrote: post #45

I think Brexit has allowed a sort of nihilism to creep into U.K. politics. If you can live with a policy that has such a demonstrable adverse effect on the economy and so many other things then why worry about the impact of other policies. The standard approach for the government now seems to be to look for short term wins in the tabloids and ignore the long term. And this is on top of the huge distraction that Brexi…

> The standard approach for the government now seems to be to look for short term wins in the tabloids and ignore the long term. Was this ever not the case?

There's a useful distinction between lying and bullshitting: liers know what the truth is and want to convince you it's something else, bullshitters don't even care (or potentially, even know) what the truth is.

Governments often did things which failed and then tried to paint them as wins. They also often went for short term wins. But they were real wins (in the short term) even if they failed to get them. I think it's new to have a government run by someone so thoroughly a bullshitter that they don't care about the actual effect of their policies, just how the announcement makes them look. Because, fundamentally most politicians, that get to the top positions, actually want power and to do something with it, even if it's not something you'd agree with.

Re: The gathering crisis in the UK

#84

Post by reb »

rayiner wrote: post #49
reb wrote: post #4

It’s eerie how similar the issues facing western nations are and how intractable the disagreements over solutions have become. Desperate balkanization coming for many, I think.

What’s remarkable is that everyone recognizes that “the disagreements over solutions have become” “intractable” but thinks the solution is to handle more things at the federal/EU/UN level.

Close cooperation has many benefits and the further dissection of nations has significant costs. I don’t think it’s surprising people aren’t rushing toward what comes next.

Except for the accelerationists, of course.

Re: The gathering crisis in the UK

#85

Post by AnimalMuppet »

Victerius wrote: post #38
swader999 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Central planning across a large geography failed miserably and killed hundreds of millions in the 20th century. I'll take hundreds of localized solutions/experiments any day thanks.

The United States government has been extremely successful as the central point of authority of the 50 states. Central planning has been extremely successful in lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in China, and making China a superpower. And, I shall add, a superpower that's now remained in existence (73 years) longer than the Soviet Union did (70 years). I'm all for local experimentation, but not f…

The United States government does very little central planning.

And, you point out the (economic) success of China, and then complain about countries not doing anything about the climate crisis. Have you looked at China's CO2 emissions? Yes, they bootstrapped their economy. The environmental cost has been pretty steep, though...

Re: The gathering crisis in the UK

#86

Post by stu2b50 »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #74
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> From an energy security standpoint being net neutral or better is good but is the US insulated from fossil fuel prices? The US as an economy is mostly not effected by fuel prices anymore. But the average US consumer is - that's probably the important part.

But the average US consumer is a big part of the economy - if they're effected, then how is the US economy not effected?

If the US consumer is buying from US producers, then it is just money bouncing around domestically. You could argue that from a birds eye view, the US economy as a whole, at least on a national scale, is minimally affected.

That being said, I can't agree with the parent post, it's not that symmetric.

Re: The gathering crisis in the UK

#87

Post by jacquesm »

usgroup wrote: post #81
UncleOxidant wrote: post #5

"Brexit has delivered some deregulation, though: notably, the Conservative government ditched EU standards on effluent discharges, resulting in the (private) water companies discharging raw sewage into almost every river, and the seas around the UK coastline. So it is no longer safe to swim in UK waters." Holy crap! "the Bank of England are forecasting 13% inflation towards the end of the year." And we thought things…

I don’t think so —- it’s all a bit hyperbolic . Yeah tough times but most inflation forecasts have it going doing to near 0% by the end of 2023 — guy needs to breathe.

Those people have better crystal balls than mine. I would be very wary of such optimistic projections given the current situation.

Re: The gathering crisis in the UK

#88

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

dragontamer wrote: post #68
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The standard approach for the government now seems to be to look for short term wins in the tabloids and ignore the long term. Was this ever not the case?

* The 1800s of the USA were marked by a large, government program to invent pocket watches to solve the issue of trains crashing into each other. * There were additional long-term government projects, such as ARPA's Network (aka: the internet). * Strategic supercomputer initiatives as well. * The debate over USA's social security is all measured in the year 2040 or later. People constantly use social security as an e…

Just because you demonstrated some long-term thinking in the future does not mean the US government was not short-sighted in the past.

I don't know if it it was or not, but a few counter-points is not proof.

I am sure you could find millions of counter-points that the US and the UK are currently long-term thinking (even though I think most of us can agree that isn't the subjective truth).

Re: The gathering crisis in the UK

#89

Post by pphysch »

willyt wrote: post #43
pphysch wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, every important organization (nation, religion, corporation) does PR. Its normal and healthy to have some public image management when competitors may try to destroy your image for their own gain. This is a far cry from having a coordinated disinformation campaign to cause political instability in a foreign country. The evidence of Russia doing this to any effect with Trump or Brexit is extremely scant and circu…

Wasn't one of the main leave campaign organisations (Leave.EU?) funded by Aaron Banks who recently lost a libel action against a newspaper that accused him of receiving funds to pay for this from the KGB? EDIT: found a source https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-61782578

This is exactly the poor standard of tangential & circumstantial evidence I'm talking about. Read the decision carefully.

Re: The gathering crisis in the UK

#90

Post by jacquesm »

rayiner wrote: post #49
reb wrote: post #4

It’s eerie how similar the issues facing western nations are and how intractable the disagreements over solutions have become. Desperate balkanization coming for many, I think.

What’s remarkable is that everyone recognizes that “the disagreements over solutions have become” “intractable” but thinks the solution is to handle more things at the federal/EU/UN level.

There is nothing remarkable about that. Large problems require large entities to solve them, the kind of hole a country or state can dig itself into requires the next level up to dig it out again.

This is precisely why problems that affect the whole world are so hard to solve: we are not that well organized at that level, there are no sanctions for bad actors that are effective and with veto power and various power blocks not in alignment with each other the stage is set for a lot of misery.

It's not like we can appeal to the union of planets to bail us out.

Post reply on HN