Without the state

Democracy is not a one time event.

The idea that democracy stops when you get the decision you like is getting more prevalent unfortunately. I say that regularly in response to comments on Facebook, although it never seems to get through. Only yesterday some ignorant low life tried to tell me I'm refusing to accept a democratic decision because I am critical of St Boris. The same low life also told to go to Europe if I didn't like it here.

I'm 74. I was born here, and I have lived here all my life. My father was born here and served in North Africa in WW2. He was nearly killed in Sicily. In a bizarre way that could well have saved his life, since his regiment took part in the Normandy Landings. My Grandfather was born here and served in France in WW1. He was injured too but survived. My uncle was born here and took part in D-Day. I could go further back too, so I’m not going to have some ignorant #### (insert your own choice of epithet – this isn’t so far a sweary blog) try to tell me I don’t belong here.

The reality is the opposite. The behaviour of this buffoon (on this occasion I don't mean Boris Johnson) is not democratic. It is not patriotic. It is a betrayal of everything my Father, Grandfather and Uncle put their lives on the line for. It is a betrayal of everything he claims to be standing for! It is him and people like him who are undermining democratic processes. It is him and people like him who are undermining the rule of law. It is him and people like him who are enabling and encouraging the growth of racism and xenophobia.

Do not let them get away with it.

Challenge them at every opportunity.

Do not give up.

Another really worrying aspect is the overlap between Brexiters and the COVID19 deniers. It isn't 100% by any means, but enough to be concerned not just about our political and economic future, but literally about our very existence. I've no doubt that we will eventually got on top of this Pandemic, but we also need to learn from it, because there will be another one.

There is little sign though of any capacity to think rationally and logically in either the loudest Brexiters or the COVID19 deniers so the chances of any learning taking place are slim. (It occurs to me that the only Flat Earther I've ever come across in the wild was also a Brexiter...)

A final story.

Ten years after my father was nearly killed in Sicily he almost died again, seriously injured in an industrial accident that with hindsight was probably due to cutting corners by his employer. Leaving the EU also means leaving the umbrella of their worker protection and Health and Safety rules. Tories have already started demanding we cut back on them and on environmental standards.

Don't let them have their own way.

Past generations fought to get us here. We owe it to future generations to go forward, not back to some fantasy of the Empire.

An end to free movement

Up to now this has been a Brexit free zone, but inevitably as I disengage from Facebook, that must change.

A frequent mantra from the leave side has been the call for an 'end to free movement of people'. It's worth deconstructing that statement to expose the illiberal elements behind so much of the Leave campaign.

The argument is of course couched in terms of stopping 'them' from coming here and taking our jobs. There is no evidence of that in reality, but we'll pass that by for now. Creating the idea of the 'other' is one of the first steps of dictators and would-be dictators everywhere. That 'other ' doesn't even have to exist of course, but if you have a visible target it makes it so much easier. That's what's behind the hyperbole of the leavers as they endlessly and angrily froth at the mouth every time any of the 'little people' has the temerity to speak up.

But we'll pass over that for now, too.

What none of them are saying is that the end to free movement cuts both ways. As we stand, anyone in the EU has unlimited ability to trade, work or study anywhere else in the EU - that's over 500m people and a collective economy worth around $19m representing about 22% of the world economy. The UK economy makes great use of that facility - watch any news item about medical or scientific research and you will see them. According to a report produced by the British Academy some 40,000 non-UK EU staff work in UK universities. These people are critical to maintaining the high standard of UK Universities in international league tables. Looking the other way, research by the Royal Society (pdf) indicates that almost 70% of active UK researchers in the period 1996 – 2011 had published articles for which they were affiliated with non-UK institutions, indicating that they had worked abroad at some point during that period. Some of those researchers may have moved for relatively short periods, but UK-based researchers also move for longer periods: 21% of UK-based researchers worked abroad for a period of two years or more during the same period.

All of this is at risk. In January it was reported that over 2,300 EU academics resigned from British universities in 2016-17,  a 19 per cent increase in departures compared to before the EU referendum, and a 10 per cent rise from 2015-16. It seems likely that this applies outside academia too. The government recently published (pdf) an analysis showing all Brexit scenarios would hurt the economy while a separate report from the Bank of England, warned economic output in the U.K. could drop by as much as 8 percent if Britain drops out of the EU without a deal in place, compared to expectations had the U.K. stayed in. That compares to a 6.25 percent drop during the 2008 financial crisis.

Best estimates for British citizens in the rest of the EU are that there are between 1.8 million to 3.6 million British people living part-time or full-time in the EU27. This is imprecise because of the difficulties of reconciling data from 27 different countries with different definitions (so much for the EU juggernaut) but even the lowest is significantly higher than the suspiciously precise ONS estimate in April 2018 of 748,900, although much closer to the UN estimate that had been previously accepted of 1.22m. The difference lies in the fact that thge ONS definition only includes people living elsewhere in the EU for 1year or longer. This excludes seasonal workers, second-home owners, students and other mobile individuals who move backwards and forwards and who, having exercised their rights to freedom of movement, are as likely as any to be affected by Brexit. I'm a case in point - in 2000-2005 I earned  a substantial part of my income from contracts in Ireland, based in the UK, but travelling regularly to Ireland for meetings and site visits.

British residents in Spain appear to be a significant issue. This paper concludes that "there are some frail, vulnerable people that may fall through a support gap, whereby they are no longer the responsibility of UK welfare services, yet not fully recognised in their new country of residence..." Depending on the outcome of Brexit many of these people may find themselves forced to return to the UK, a country they may have left decades before, possibly impoverished and requiring significant social care. The implications for an already stressed adult care system in the UK are unknown.

You will hear none of this from Johnston, Rees Mogg or their ilk. What you get is magical thinking , self-delusion or meaningless empty phrases (pdf).

In real life though:

You have to believe in facts. Without facts there's no basis for cooperation. If I say this is a podium and you say this an elephant, it's going to be hard for us to cooperate.

Barack Obama

As Obama said in the same speech, the denial of facts could be the “undoing” of democracy.

“People just make stuff up,” he said. “They just double down and lie some more. Politicians have always lied, but it used to be that if you caught them lying, they’d be like, ‘Oh, man.’ Now they just keep on lying!”

 

 

The decline of Facebook

Facebook usage declined in 2018 for the first time ever - at least in the US. It wasn't just a small decline either, but back to 2015 levels from 67 percent of Americans aged 12 and older to 62 percent of that same audience. This drop is seen in every age and gender demographic as well. It’s not as if only young people, or older Americans, or women are using Facebook less. Every studied group is using Facebook less. That's still a huge number of course, but it is significant. I'm not in the US but I'm a good example I think of why this decline is happening.

Their lack of real concern for privacy coupled with the refusal of Zuckerberg to answer questions in the UK about alleged interference in the UK referendum via Facebook (and possibly also in elections via Cambridge Analytica) came together to build a real suspicion of the whole platform. Of course I never trusted them fully in the first place, any more than I trusted any other giant corporation, but now that distrust is active, based on things I suspect they did, rather than passive and based on general suspicion about lack of action on their part.

The other factor in my case, that led me about a year ago to leave almost all the groups I'm in, was a substantial number of disturbing and distressing examples of racism and antisemitism dropped into ordinary discussion threads as if of no consequence. Add to that the increasing numbers of only just literate posts on almost any topic and the apparent inability of too many people to read more than a sentence without missing the point just led to a general stepping back.

I realised that my use of Facebook was also a factor in my failure to keep up this blog. It was easy to post a short paragraph or a link, but also too easy for vituperative arguments to erupt over nothing in particular or over some alleged slight in the choice of a word or phrase leading in the end to as much time being taken, but much less fruitfully, over that paragraph as would have been the case over a couple of thousand words in a blog post. I didn't reach as many people of course, but if a reader can't follow an argument over the equivalent of a page or two of text, they are quite frankly not my target audience anyway. We need to find a way to reach those people but I'm not the one to do it.

Length is not of course a guarantee of meaningful content as the vapid outpourings from the likes of Boris Johnson demonstrate. It's at times like this that I miss the likes of Christopher Hitchens

Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the Supernatural and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you.

or my old blog contact Norman Geras

We should be, without hesitation or embarrassment, utopians. At the end of the twentieth century it is the only acceptable political option, morally speaking. I shall not dwell on this. I will merely say that, irrespective of what may have seemed apt hitherto either inside or outside the Marxist tradition, nothing but a utopian goal will now suffice. The realities of our time are morally intolerable. Within the constricted scope of the present piece, I suppose I might try to evoke a little at least of what I am referring to here, with some statistics or an imagery of poverty, destitution and other contemporary calamities- But I do not intend to do even this much. The facts of widespread human privation and those of political oppression and atrocity are available to all who want them. They are unavoidable unless you wilfully shut them out. To those who would suggest that things might be yet worse, one answer is that of course they might be. But another answer is that for too many people they are already quite bad enough; and the sponsors of this type of suggestion are for their part almost always pretty comfortable.

I can't claim to match either of these greats, but for the future expect me to spend less time on Facebook and more time writing or blogging.

What's wrong with UK libertarians?

As you might excpect from the blog title, I have something more than just a passing interest in the idea of libertarianism. I don't claim to be libertarian, or anarchist, but I do believe the state is far too intrusive. So, over the years I've followed a number of libertarian or libertarian leaning blogs.

For some reason however, I find that most of the UK based blogs degenerate after a while into illiterate hysterical paranoia and conspiracy theories, nastiness, misogyny and worse. I'm not going to name names, I don't want to have to spend hours deleting abuse and threats from the comments, but spend a few minutes looking around and you will see what I mean.

So, if you can recommend somewhere that isn't just rants about Marxist Obama, please include a link in the comments. Any abuse that does sneak through will be deleted, and the offender will be barred without warning.

Lunacy compounded...

Republican Congressman Todd Akin seems to have some peculiar ideas. Asked whether he would like abortion to be banned even if the pregnancy was the result of rape he replied: "It seems to me, from what I understand from doctors, that is really rare.  If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."

Quite what he means by 'legitimate rape' I'm not sure, but even setting that nonsense aside this seems a clear demonstration of the scientific ignorance of the religious right in the US. No doubt we can expect more nonsense like this from Romney and Ryan as the presidential election progresses. 

Libertarianism and the environment - revisited

I recently came across a brief review (in The Philosopher's Magazine) of a book by the philosopher Roger Scruton, Green Philosophy in which he claims (I haven't read it yet) to be setting out a green conservatism.  According to the Publisher's blurb this is based on the premise that the environment has up till now been the undisputed territory of the Left. I don't necessarily agree with that, but even if it were true, that is because the Right has abandoned the field. (I hate these simplistic labels, but for now Right and Left will do).

Back in 2006 I asked myself why so many Libertarians hate environmentalism. At the time I came to the conclusion that faced with the possible need for substantial state action, they preferred to simply deny there was an issue of concern in the first place.  Scruton's book appears to be an attempt to reclaim some of that ground. 

If this is to succeed, then there needs to be an end to the absurd hyperbole that calls Rachel Carson a mass murderer, Richard Attenborough a hater of humanity and which denounces  Greens generally as evil (while without a trace of irony complaining bitterly when similar claims are made about 'climate change deniers'.)

I'm not holding my breath...

Related articles

• This bastardised libertarianism makes 'freedom' an instrument of opression (guardian.co.uk)
• Why libertarians must deny climate change (guardian.co.uk)
• Environmentalism poses a problem for libertarian ideology (mattbruenig.com)
• How conservatives can help to tackle climate change | Roger Scruton (guardian.co.uk)

God is love they tell me...

These are from the Fox News Facebook pages after they interviewed an atheist. This last quote I suppose demonstrates knuckledragging stupidity more than it does Christianity, but all the comments listed here bear a striking resemblance to the sort of stuff we see from Islamic fundamentalists all the time. I don't think they are being ironic though...

(via Butterflies and Wheels)

Atlas Shrugged the Movie...

I freely admit to have never read Ayn Rand's doorstop of  a book 'Atlas Shrugged' . To be honest the  sheer repellent awfullness of 'The Fountainhead' was enough to make sure I never went near anything by her again. I was thus, underwhelmed to say the least, by the idea that anyone would waste good money on making a film from anything she had written.

I know it is possible of course to make good movies out of bad books - and believe me even if Atlas Shrugged is 10 times better than The Fountainhead it is still a bad book - but the reviews don't seem encouraging. The Randites of course love it and pop out of the woodwork to heap venom on any critical reviewer.

I still think this is probably a good summary though:

‘There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.'

Men from the Moon walk amongst us!

The ultimate TSA stupidity

Over 300 National Guardmen carrying M4 Carbines, M9 pistols - oh, and the gunners had M-240B machine guns.

What do the TSA confiscate? Nail clippers...

Image via Wikipedia

http://www.redstate.com/erick/2010/11/18/another-tsa-outrage/

The conversation went something like this:

TSA Guy: You can’t take those on the plane.

Soldier: What? I’ve had them since we left country.

TSA Guy: You’re not suppose to have them.

Soldier: Why?

TSA Guy: They can be used as a weapon.

Soldier: [touches butt stock of the rifle] But this actually is a weapon. And I’m allowed to take it on.

TSA Guy: Yeah but you can’t use it to take over the plane. You don’t have bullets.

Soldier: And I can take over the plane with nail clippers?

TSA Guy: [awkward silence]

Image via Wikipedia

Me: Dude, just give him your damn nail clippers so we can get the f**k out of here. I’ll buy you a new set.

Soldier: [hands nail clippers to TSA guy, makes it through security]

This might be a good time to remind everyone that approximately 233 people re-boarded that plane with assault rifles, pistols, and machine guns–but nothing that could have been used as a weapon.