I am sure that capitalism was not the recent problem. I predicted the current economic problems at a political meeting just before the Blair Government got into power for the second time, and got laughed at. Ho Hum. Not that I'm embittered, no not at all. At least my family remember (and I keep on trying to big it up even more). Any way the basic problem was political mismanagement both of the market and of the Governments own spending. All the western governments were being naughty little boys and girls, spending what they didn't have in ways that even the basic understanding of humanity would show would not work. It was not a question for the markets as to who was good, but who was least bad.
The best shaggy dog story I have later heard since then about this was a wonderful play on radio 4 about the problem of sub prime goats. If you get the chance listen.
If you are a politician ( Political Philosopher )and are daft enough to believe in Fairness ( It depends what you take behind the veil of ignorance ) then what do you do with those who do not believe as you do?
If you are a politician and you know your society is based on cheap energy and cheap food and you, your colleagues and predecessors have not invested enough in the development of cheap, sustainable energy sources and the distribution of that energy, and you have let your population expand when you know world food is going to get more expensive, and it will become harder to grow food in your own country, then what do you do?
I am afraid that as the stresses grow a police state will be the only answer the Politicians can come up with.
The question is how will they sell it to us. If you pay protection to the Mafia you are protected. If you pay it to the state ????
I am a white middle age guy, fat, with health problems, and children. I have been in the last two years knocked to the ground more than once, blocked from going down major roads more than once, insulted in public more than once - all whist going shopping and for no apparent reason other than either ignorance of common courtesy in a public place or because of another groups self interest. When I and a West Indian lady and her child in a pram in Tesco's were knocked down by a group of yet another ethnicity should we have responded (the child in the pram took some comforting). When I and my wife were knocked out of the path of yet another different group rushing through Ikea should we have responded.
I am unsure what it the best answer, but fear more a local version of Yugoslavia, Syria, Rwanda, Iraq, etc if the politicians are as incompetent with civil society as they seem to be with economics and basic reality
Perhaps we will meet on the barricades after all
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