BrExit as Bellwether: End of the Industrial Age
Although biased towards capitalism, this single sentence tweet by Christopher Hayes captures the choice that fuels cold and hot conflicts around the world. Issues as diverse as terrorism, Islamophobia and misogyny are symptoms of this underlying conflict.
The people of Britain called the bluff of fear-mongering politicians while having little understanding of the forces that made them uneasy. Those who know — economists, philosophers, aristocrats and statesmen — have long been marginalized or have consciously abdicated their responsibilities.
For far too long, politicians have conjured fear and hatred to mask the siphoning of wealth from the poor to the rich. Demagogues like Nigel Farage or Donald Trump may not be more clued in, but they ride that hatred and give it a political voice.
How did the politicians become puppets? How did we reach the point that most economic legislation is written by lawyers of corporations with vested interests in the long-term effects of such laws. How can our representatives in legislatures not even read through those bills, and why are their debates vacuous and little more than grandstanding? Instead of discussing the benefit of public policy to the public, why is the public fed even more fear?
How we got Here
Man was born free and the great religions alternately liberated and regulated mankind, laying the groundwork for civilization. Three ruling roles emerged: the King, the Shaman and the Merchant. The King was sovereign and above petty commerce. The Merchant ran the economy and financed the king. The wise Shaman legitimized the rule of the King and gained the trust of the subjects by ensuring that they were not exploited by the Merchant to a degree that they rebelled against the King.
This balance of power continued for thousands of years. With the industrial age, the roles evolved into new names: The King gave way to Presidents and Prime Ministers, and the role of the Shaman gave way to the Bishops and Imams and Rabbis and Pandits, and then, finally to the media and academia.
The benefits of industrialization to humanity were real and the Merchant needed political help to maximize economies of scale and the King obliged. Marx the Shaman pointed out inherent inter-class economic conflicts of industrialization and the Merchant grudgingly accommodated his insight. Other Shamans urged minimum wages, acceptable working conditions, and even throwing money from helicopters to avoid recessions. And the people were happy and the realm was prosperous.
Unfortunately, industrial capitalism gave way to finance capitalism and the politicians mistakenly thought of it as the continuation of industry. They let the finance capitalists write the laws, and then forced the Shaman to force these laws down the throats of the subjects by making them afraid. Very very afraid.
Where we Are Now
The feudal lords and captains of industry were rooted in countries and communities. They have now been replaced by stateless and faceless interests that rule through CEOs who have to be paid ever-higher salaries to dissociate from communities and carry out financial atrocities. Post-modern governance is all about keeping these genies happy.
These multi-national interests threaten political parties and do not pay taxes. The citizen is financing government, being lied to, and having economic opportunities outsourced to other states and countries. Those other states are also bullied and made to bow in similar fashion.
This is where we are now:
When the citizens speak out, they are ridiculed and clamped down. Not listening and not doing the people’s will is the new politics of all parties. Naturally, the only way to avoid rebellion while oppressing people is to make them afraid and feel controlled.
Crime is down, incarceration is up. Wages are down, bring in more immigrants and outsource more jobs. Housing is not affordable, immigrant Muslim women wear the niqab and have more children. Healthcare is not available, buy more guns because Obama is Muslim. Electricity is unaffordable for the poor, privatize it and make the poor pay five times more by begging for coins to feed the meter.
Don’t hate the financier who threatened the prime minister into selling water and electricity plants to him and his friends, hate the immigrant.
Maybe immigration was for the industrial age, not the financial age.
Leverage and Expectations Replace Profit
The venerable industrialist made a profit. Supply, demand, costs and profits set prices, and our economists are still stuck in this time warp and teaching this 150-year-old economy to students, while MBAs and CFAs learn the unregulated tricks of the real finance-driven economy.
Corporations in most industries are already bought out or being bought out by private equity and leveraged debt. Profits are set by analyst expectations that are mostly based on the ability of corporations to pay off compulsory debt and pay shareholders. When competition slows profits, leveraged buyouts re-establish oligopolies and are sanctioned by the King under threats of relocation to other countries.
Every leveraged buyout costs every citizen pennies every time the citizen goes to buy something made in that industry. This is not industry, this is not commerce, this is the extortion of money from poor people while not providing them equivalent economic opportunity. The King allows it and the Shaman is silent, all the while screaming : Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid, of Everyone but the Financier.
The Shaman is clueless or even afraid: No economist predicted the 2008 financial meltdown but the citizens noticed that the fantasy economy of the financier could bring down the real economy of industry and labour. The people have not been silent since, and the Shaman is struggling to make them even more afraid.
Take away their Internet! No, says the Shaman, how will we make them afraid?
Humble request: revoke the doctorate degrees of every economist and do not grant these useless degrees any more until they know what they are doing.
Financial Crimes of the Rich and the Poor
The Merchant’s threats continue, corporate taxes go down, and now the citizen has to directly finance the King. The King cuts off venues for citizens’ complaints about the financial crimes of the rich: the King hangs up the phone, doesn’t reply to emails and slows down the courts, denying justice to millions of poor in Britain. Any bureaucrat with a conscience gets shunted aside, and his department budget is gutted by one of 17,418 amendments to the King’s budget bill that were written in the corporate law offices of a corporation that the hapless mandarin deigned to offend.
Perhaps, this is worse than the rule of feudal lords, where one could just walk up to the manor and make a complaint about the financial crimes of the merchant. Risk of loss of life and limb is now replaced by risk of loss of mind and soul.
The King’s financial governance is solely for the Merchant. The financial government for citizens— the banks and the credit bureaux — never fail to record the financial crimes of the poor, and when grown-up children are reluctant to lend money to pay for heating their parents’ apartment lest their credit scores get affected, we see depravity eye-to-eye.
Economies of Scale and Specialization of Labour (Free Trade)
The two most provable theories of economics are: production at scale costs less and specialization of labour benefits the economy, and by extension, so does free trade between countries. The mavens of economics will preach this to you no end.
However, the simple truth they fail to tell you is that this does not work across disparate jurisdictional boundaries.
“Oh, the model does not accommodate that complexity.” Really, when will you build that model? “One of these days.”
Britain as Bellwether
These huge oligarchic corporations of the Merchant need some manpower: The sons of the brave and chivalrous British are emasculated and pressed into servility where the only trait worth having is conniving chicanery. Eccentrics and the principled are piled into jails or marginalized by joblessness.
Similarly, the noble and gracious British woman prides in being a ladette and an object for moneyed middle-aged men. She has been conditioned to accommodate moneyed men for free, so why should she not make money off it? Feminists question post-feminism.
Yes, take back your country and the chivalry of your men and the honour of your women. Britain was a nation of nobility, honour and eccentricity.
Children in their teens are pressed into labour. Education is dumbed down and university made unaffordable. The Shaman says, “We need compliant workers, not thinking scholars!”
Take back your learned history.
When families break down as men and women compete with each other for survival instead of complementing each other, let us promote homosexuality and households of one. The Shaman says, “Does the Archbishop of Canterbury have the temerity to speak out? Oh, we will force the House of Lords to force the Church of England.”
Take back the Church that bears your country’s name, and take back your God.
The Merchant says, “Native English are troublesome. Decrease the population that speaks English and is aware of its rights, and bring in docile immigrants to work instead of the people who know British history and values.”
But hey, hold on, weren’t we hating immigrants? Oops, this is where the whole charade blew up! In the United States with Trump, and in Britain with Farage and BrExit.
New Role for Britain
British people are some of the most articulate and politically keen people in the world. It is not a co-incidence that we still live in the Age of the English. They may not know why they voted ‘Leave’ but they did the right thing.
Even when the British colonized others, they stood out among European powers as colonizers with the most sense of justice and fair play.
I salute Britons: Take back your country, take back your culture, your language, your faith, your industry and your values. The world needs it once again. You were bullied by America and the EU and America through the EU. You led the world — you can again lead the world in ideas, justice and fair play. To do so, you must be who you are, and not simply consumers and fearful subjects of an increasingly remote King.
Congratulations, you are on your way to re-discovering yourself.
End of Immigration
And it is time for British citizens of other nations to re-discover themselves. Some of the slaves brought from Africa to America went back to Liberia and Sierra Leone after more than 10 generations. Most immigrants to England do not exceed two generations, so think long and hard about the value of your British ‘citizenship’.
It is time for immigrants to return home or live with the guilt that their future generations will be mulatto citizens. No one needs your labour any more. In the knowledge economy, you can work from anywhere. Your cousins in India and Pakistan and Romania and Latvia are not doing too badly. Go and build your ancestral countries and your culture. Learn your ancestral language. Immigration is just a vestige of the Cold War and the requirement of labour for Britain’s industrial age. You thought you were English? Guess what? The Industrial Age is over!