This is f*****d up.
Look at the idea of a society and somewhere near the centre is the idea of a bunch of people in the same geographical country, speaking dialects of the same language, using the same currency, paying taxes to the same Government, sharing often ineffable ‘values’, ‘attitudes’ or ‘behaviours’, and with some minimal idea of co-operating to make each others’ lives better. Add in some criminals, psychopaths, screw-ups, misfits, alienated souls, cheaters, grifters and shirkers, but not too many, and you have something we would recognise.
Societies have a background level of dysfunction and cacophony, because people have conflicting aims, different abilities, diverse work ethics, and odd ideas about how much they need to work to pull their own load. Plus there's the class / caste stuff and the whole Us and Them thing which people seem to like, as well as behaviours and attitudes from dark corners of the human soul. Add in changes in fashion, technology, prices, salaries, and the blizzard of sales pitches and uninformed BS masquerading as advice and education, and there's enough to make anyone older than about thirty-five feel like the-kids-these-days... Most of that does not count as dysfunction, unless it actually interferes with the smooth functioning of the economy, or starts producing too many people with justifiable reluctance to take part in the institutions of the society. Too many tax-paying non-participants can skew a society the wrong way.
How much dysfunction makes a breakdown?
Some of the many ways a society can screw up are:
Failing to provide jobs with a future for its young people
Putting the way of living of ordinary parents beyond the means of their children
An inadequate or overly ideological education system
Having rules that hinder the development of a thriving economy
Failing to take care of members of the Armed Forces (1)
Failing to provide an efficient and effective Police force and justice system
Allowing petty criminals to go un-punished (2)
Failing to keep its borders secure (3)
Having too much wealth accruing to too few people at the expense of the ordinary worker (4)
Failing to re-train its workers to keep up with economic change, and especially hiring outsiders in favour of re-training (5)
Allowing inflation to get too high for more than a year (6)
Raising taxes that are wasted by inefficient management and poor policy-making (7)
Being distracted by activists agitating for extreme policies that affect small proportions of the population (8)
A Civil Service that forgets it works for the taxpayer, rather than for another Civil Service (9)
Class warfare (10)
And of course, the Big Three... Attempting to invade Russia, occupy Afghanistan, or stem the spread of a virus by Lockdowns.
(So-called 'Advanced Economies' can add: failing to get food on the shelves, petrol in the pumps, water from taps, gas from the Mains, electricity from the Grid, buses at the stops, trains in the stations, phone signals from towers, data down the Internet, GPs in the surgeries, doctors and surgeons in the hospitals, money from one person to another...)
I'd say... four or more and your society has collapsed in a heap on the floor, and someone needs to call an ambulance.
Was there ever a time the UK dodged most of these screw-ups? It wasn't bad between 1954 (when rationing ended!) to 1990, even if there was double-figure inflation in the 1970’s and million-plus unemployment ever since, but after the Maastricht and Lisbon Treaties, it starts to roll downhill slowly. After about 2010 the speed picks up, and by 2016 the cracks are spreading as the media / academic / activist / Human Rights Industrial Complex declared class war, in retaliation for the Brexit vote, on the ordinary taxpayers who paid their salaries.
Four years of that, and faced with a bad case of the flu in February 2020, British society started to crack, and in March 2020 collapsed in clouds of dust. What we’re seeing now are people wandering around in the rubble, pretending that everything is OK because, well, they're still getting paid. And they have Mondays and Fridaysoff working from home.
This is the aftershock of the collapse. Most of the same things are still wrong. Nothing much has changed.
It is not some short-term temporary aberration. It was a long time coming, and it will be a longer time leaving.
(1) The treatment of discharged soldiers with disabilities is a scandal. As is the accommodation they have while serving.
And of course, the Big Three... Attempting to invade Russia, occupy Afghanistan, or stem the spread of a virus by Lockdowns.
(So-called 'Advanced Economies' can add: failing to get food on the shelves, petrol in the pumps, water from taps, gas from the Mains, electricity from the Grid, buses at the stops, trains in the stations, phone signals from towers, data down the Internet, GPs in the surgeries, doctors and surgeons in the hospitals, money from one person to another...)
I'd say... four or more and your society has collapsed in a heap on the floor, and someone needs to call an ambulance.
Was there ever a time the UK dodged most of these screw-ups? It wasn't bad between 1954 (when rationing ended!) to 1990, even if there was double-figure inflation in the 1970’s and million-plus unemployment ever since, but after the Maastricht and Lisbon Treaties, it starts to roll downhill slowly. After about 2010 the speed picks up, and by 2016 the cracks are spreading as the media / academic / activist / Human Rights Industrial Complex declared class war, in retaliation for the Brexit vote, on the ordinary taxpayers who paid their salaries.
Four years of that, and faced with a bad case of the flu in February 2020, British society started to crack, and in March 2020 collapsed in clouds of dust. What we’re seeing now are people wandering around in the rubble, pretending that everything is OK because, well, they're still getting paid. And they have Mondays and Fridays
This is the aftershock of the collapse. Most of the same things are still wrong. Nothing much has changed.
It is not some short-term temporary aberration. It was a long time coming, and it will be a longer time leaving.
(1) The treatment of discharged soldiers with disabilities is a scandal. As is the accommodation they have while serving.
(2) Pretty much like a large Democrat-run city in the USA from 2019 onwards.
(3) Looking at you, Angela Merkel. Also the UK Home Office.
(4) This is a serious problem in the USA. Less so in the UK.
(5) Every company and government ever. On the other hand, workers need to be prepared to accept re-training.
(6) Weimar Germany and Zimbabwe at the top of the league, with the UK in the 1970's at the bottom.
(7) 40% of UK taxes goes to the NHS. We can't see our GP for four weeks, and unless you are actually bleeding out in front of the staff, the operation will be a year hence, and postponed twice.
(8) How the exact **** did Stonewall get to pronounce on the suitability of anyone for anything?
(9) For about thirty years, the British Civil Service thought it worked for the EU. It still wishes it did.
(10) This is a thesis in itself I will sketch in another post.
