What do you think?
|
|||||
|
We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people. Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house] Authors
Arts, Tech & CultureCivil LibertiesCommentary
Economics |
Is Britain heading into an era of open strife?August 15th, 2025 |
 108 comments to Is Britain heading into an era of open strife?Leave a Reply |
Who Are We?The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling. We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe. CategoriesArchivesFeed This PageLink Icons   |
|||
All content on this website (including text, photographs, audio files, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
|||||
See David Betz recent round of the Podcasts
Disappointing the interview pretty much ends after the prediction of civil war. I’d like to know what he means more by civil war. Outright warfare between two or more organised and armed armies? Who will be the ‘sides’? Where will the weaponry come from?
I think an increase in civil unrest is extremely likely in UK. There are things the government doing everyday that seem to be goading increased civil unrest. However, in the near future, unless the state disintegrates or there is a coup d’etat, I’m much more sceptical of the civil war narrative.
Indeed. Much worse times are coming but it is by no means clear what shape that will take.
Is it overly cynical of me to think that they included the civil war line so they had a clickbait title?
Prof David Betz of King’s College, London, was mentioned at about 11:00 in the video.
This video from Andrew Gold is a deeper analysis of his (Betz’s) unsettling concerns:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hf0VKszbn7Q
A shorter version, also with Andrew Gold:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3fI_OrAnoE
Betz is careful to point out that it is difficult to say what shape the conflict will take, but is clear that conflict there will be.
I could be wrong but I just don’t think the British people have it in them to engage in something as brutal as a civil war (especially since they gave up all weapons in a hope of peace). I think there are factions within Britain that are more than willing to engage in violence to achieve their political ends, but they are not the factions that you or I would want to have power.
You gave up your guns without a complaint, you gave up your freedom of speech with barely a sigh of sadness. You genuflected to the crazy left in your schools and institutions — to the point that it was ok to cut off the genitals of little boys and the breasts of little girls: and barely a peep of resistance. I have long contended that Britain’s goose is cooked.
Maybe you have a distant hope with the rise of Reform, and perhaps your left will disintegrate under its own internal conflicts. But four years is a long time, one cannot imagine how much damage will be done during this administration.
And as I have said before, civil wars rarely make things better. French revolutions are much more common than American ones. And even the English civil war resulted in the installation of a brutal tyrant, the only salvation being that his son was too much of a dick — literally — to take over.
There is a scene in “The Crown” where Mountbatten is discussing with a group of uppity ups the overthrow of the Wilson government. Although, as far as I understand, the scene is totally untrue, his analysis is still good. The institutions of Britain make revolution a practical impossibility.
I’ll predict open sniping between groups within 6 months – once the weapons shipments start to arrive and be sold throughout the society.
Not civil war so much as sporadic armed hostilities. Criminals will begin to die more often. Marches and demos will become dangerous.
Your government will attempt to tighten its control to stop this. It will make things worse.
Fraser:
No-one in Britain who owned guns gave them up willingly. They simply had to obey the full force of the law.
Post-1783, are there any major examples of successful armed uprisings against the US government? The Confederacy had a good run but went down in a blaze of glory. The Whiskey rebellion, John Brown, the NYC draft riots, Timothy McVeigh, all got pretty easily suppressed.
@JohnK
No-one in Britain who owned guns gave them up willingly. They simply had to obey the full force of the law.
You might be right, but I assure you that were such a law passed here (assuming that it could get past the 2nd amendment) some people would give up their guns, but a LOT of people would not. There would be a lot of “oh that gun? I lost it/it was stolen”. A lot of guns buried in old barns. A lot of sheriffs refusing to enforce the law. A lot of “from my cold dead hands.” And, I suspect, a lot of ATF agents and gun owners killed in shoot outs. So probably quite a few “cold dead hands”.
You have to remember that there are probably more small arms in private hands in Texas than there are in the whole British military and police force put together.
It wasn’t that long ago that the Irish were trying to drive out the English.
Fraser:
The constitutional right to keep and bear arms makes the American situation entirely different. Owning guns is common in the USA, not in the UK, where only about 1% at most own guns. In the USA I believe it is in the order of 20 to 30%. Numbers matter. Politicians realise that they do not get votes from citizens whose property they have just confiscated. Even the worst Democrat gun banners have to pretend they just want “common sense” gun controls.
People might refuse to hand in guns, but that’s rather hard if they have been registered, and to be honest there is not much point owning a gun hidden somewhere that you cannot use.
Modern politics being what they are in this world, as opposed to 1776 here or 1642 there; I rather expect more of the terrorist model; with terrorist atrocities being committed by the government with the full force of the State. by whatever coalition of insurgents arises, and by your Muslim invaders/rulers. It is not going to be pleasant for a few generations in britain or in Western Europe. It is time to get yourselves, your loved ones, and your assets to somewhere you see as safe(r). Speaking personally, I wish to emphasize that warning to those of Jewish ancestry [practicing or not].
@JohnK I take your points, but I was thinking about our discussion when I listened to this press conference where the Sheriff of Santa Rosa County in Florida talked about an incident where some multiple repeat felon broke into some homes, and one of the home owners shot at him. The Sheriff says they aren’t sure who fired the shots, but they should come forward: they aren’t in any trouble, but he did want to let them know that every other Saturday they have a gun training course so that next time they might shoot a bit more accurately and save the taxpayers a lot of money.
So, yeah, you are right, Americans do indeed have a very different attitude toward guns.
“People might refuse to hand in guns, but that’s rather hard if they have been registered . . . “
Just as an FYI, the Firearms Owners Protection Act (USA federal law) makes it illegal for the national government or any state in the country to keep any database or registry that ties firearms directly to their owner.
We don’t have gun registration. (The states of New York and California are currently maintaining a pre-existing database of registrations – this is being fought in court.)
There is something going on in Britain, something that I’ve not seen in the thirty-plus years I’ve lived here. Yes, we had the National Front, then the English Defense League. In the 1990s we had the football hooligans. But these were skinheads, thugs, and bovver boys in their Doc Martins and waving their St. George flags.
This is something different. Look at pictures of the protesters; there are wives and mothers there. Look at how many are wearing the Union Jack as a cape.
There’s also a change in language. “Patriot” and “patriotism” used to be mostly an American thing. The British didn’t go in for that sort of thing. In fact, the words were frowned own. But they’re appearing more frequently in Britain.
Something is changing. I don’t know what it is or where it’ll lead, but it’s interesting to watch.
In the USA I believe it is in the order of 20 to 30%
That’s a conservative estimate. The true percentage is probably a good deal higher.
I live in an open carry state. Which means you can wear a firearm openly on your hip and you don’t need any permission from the powers-that-be. No registration, no carry permit, no firearms ordinance ID (“FOID”) required. No certification for completing a firearms safety course. No notifying any law enforcement agencies.
And bobby b is correct: there is no firearms registration, no firearms ownership databases. None. Nada. Zilch.
I’m just speculating, but I would say that the vast majority of households in my state have at least one firearm on the premises, probably more.
Recall Yamamoto’s observation, made to Japan’s military leaders before the Pearl Harbor attack, that they should put aside any thought of invading America because they would encounter “a gun behind every blade grass.”
That’s truer now, far more, than it was in 1941.
When the “Civil War” (however you define that) kicks off your uniform will be your skin colour and to a lesser extent your politics and behaviour (Refugees Welcome Here banner holders, as an example).
As for the percentage of people holding Firearms and Shotgun Certificates, the English Home Office does not make available the numbers but for Scotland, which has a population of 5,479,700, there are 25,223 Firearm Certificate holders (therefore 0.46% of the population) and 43,790 Shotgun Certificate holders (0.799% of the population). It is not stated how many firearm certificate holders also hold shotgun certificates so there are likely to be less than the 0.799%.
https://www.scotland.police.uk/about-us/what-we-do/firearms-and-explosives-licensing/
https://totalpopulation.co.uk/country/scotland
I think that those percentages will hold for the rest of the UK, England in particular.
The Police know exactly who possesses firearms of any description and at the slightest hint of civil disturbance, will confiscate them, very likely without compensation.
Only the criminals (both in uniform and freelance) will possess firearms and both categories are extremely happy with the situation.
Anyone that is serious about starting something, or responding if someone else does so, is going to see to it they have weapons. So far, the police do not seem to be having much success preventing criminals getting their hands on them; I recall a report to the effect that a European manufacturer of blank firing replica pistols was producing a model for the British market adapted to accept a silencer – because a lot were being modified to fire live ammo, and British murderers like silencers.
My guess would be that if and when it does kick off, there will turn out to be a lot of AKs around, very likely delivered by the same gangs that bring over illegal immigrants.
Then of course there is the DIY option as used by the Polish, Danish and other resistance groups in World War Two – who turned out to be able to make thousands of sub-machine guns under pretty repressive conditions.
@Barbarus
My guess would be that if and when it does kick off, there will turn out to be a lot of AKs around, very likely delivered by the same gangs that bring over illegal immigrants.
I think that is unlikely, nonetheless, insofar as it is true those guns would be in the hands or exactly the wrong types of people. Regular folks would be defenceless. Which is the point I made earlier. Britain does not have the stomach for a revolution, or at least the parts of Britain you’d like to see resurgent don’t. So, if there is such a civil war it will make things much, much worse, not better. And why would they? They are already getting all they want through the political process.
FWIW, in Britain there is, or at least was, a right to keep and bear arms in one of the core documents that form the British “constitution”, namely the 1688 Bill of Rights, arising out of the Glorious Revolution “Subjects which are Protestants may have Arms for their Defence suitable to their Conditions, and as allowed by Law”. Sucks if you were a Catholic or course, but the second amendment didn’t help you much way back when in America either if you were of a swarthy complexion.
Of course since Britain doesn’t actually have a real constitution, this was wiped out post World War 2 by simple legislative action. And of course Dunblane totally finished off this, one of the traditional rights of an Englishman.
If it does kick off, I’m sure we can organize an unofficial Lend-Lease program once again.
@JohnK. I live in Canada and some of my firearms, and those of my sons,became illegal.
It was no problem for us as we had lost them all in a regrettable boating accident just prior to the ban.
How hard would it be to make a STEN? Getting ammunition would be the difficult part.
Look at this.They want the flag of St George, the flag of my country, England to represent hate. And yet, in Birmingham, the flag of “Palestine” is protected… In a city where they can’t even empty the bins… Forget about the flags – what really ought to be hanging from the lampposts is members of the council.
I had little time for him as Tory leader but IDS nails it…
bobby b. is correct that Federal and State governments in the US are enjoined by Federal law from operating comprehensive registries of firearms. However, such registries are often de-facto in place at the local level, and FFLs are required to keep records of all transactions, most of which are now digital, and more and more places are moving towards requiring all firearms transfers to be carried out via a record-keeping FFL. Add to that the great increase in various systems to register, not firearms themselves, but firearms owners ( FOID laws, CPLs (however easy to get)) and so forth, and we are moving steadily towards a comprehensive registry of ‘which doors to knock on when it comes time to confiscate firearms’. After all, when that time comes, the JBT’s won’t be arriving with a list of serial numbers and descriptions – it will be a matter of ‘we know you have firearms and we don’t care how many or what kind, because we’re taking them all’. The good intent of FOPA has thus been craftily subverted.
llater,
llamas
@Windypants – stop thinking along such formulaic lines. Sure, you could make a Sten – it’s mostly plumbing pipe and hardware-store bits. But, as you say, you’ll never find ammunition for it.
Instead, download US DoD manual TM 31-210, “Improvised Weapons and Munitions’, and open up a whole new world.
The US has a rich sub-culture of home-made firearms, known collectively as ‘garage guns’, from the lowly ‘zip gun’, to complex and accomplished automatic weapons. But the most fearsome I have seen lately is constructed from box-store components, all entirely legal and untraceable to buy and possess, semi-automatic, comparable to a 9mm, and costing in total about $50, including material for 50 rounds of operation. Resistance will never arise using Sten guns and other conventional means – it will depend on the unconventional.
llater,
llamas
“Is Britain heading into an era of open strife?”
No.
There’s clearly a subculture of people who *want* this to be true, to justify the bollocks they’ve been spouting since 2001, but no. We’re going to continue to bumble along with the occasional protest and/or full-on fight, in (practically) the same way as we always have. We’ve had plenty of riots, I can think of several off the top of my head including the Battle Of Cable Street, the Notting Hill Race Riots, the Southall Riots, even the Poll Tax Riots and if you wanna get into it, the Mods vs Rockers fights in Brighton (and they’ll be loads others that I can’t be bothered to list)
But no, we’re not about to enter a period of “open strife” lmao
I find that alarming as you are wrong about most things
Fraser:
We do still have the Bill of Rights, and it still has the force of law, but I would not trust any modern British judge to uphold it. They are all left wing creeps.
I just wanted to correct any impression that British gun owners some how voluntarily surrendered their guns in return for nebulous concepts of “peace”. They did not. Their guns were confiscated under the threat of force and imprisonment, and it was bitterly resented by people who had done no wrong, and indeed had followed the law to the letter. America came within a few hanging chads of a gun banning president in Al Gore, who could have got you a gun banning supreme court, so count your blessings.
Lol. You are consistently incorrect, and this is just another one of those times that you are. Thinking that the UK is about to devolve into some kind of civil war is…I. mean, I get it, and you need it to. But it’s massively incorrect.
Yes, because people are pissed off.
Wythenshawe hospital is apparently the NHS’s designated centre of excellence for heart surgery in the NW of England.
Last year they butchered my Dad.
This year they did much the same to my wife.
I have spent a lot of time there and every conceivable surface is plastered with high-end posters saying how great they are because of “diversity”.
Yeah, they can afford rainbow flags but oddly enough didn’t give a fuck that they sutured a 3cm wound in my wife’s groin without any anaesthetic or that the procedure (a PFO repair) was an utter failure with no follow-up. They just shrugged. My wife has had two strokes in the past year and they don’t give a fuck because they can hang banners about how fucking diverse they are. Cunts. Utter cunts.
The only solution to the NHS is when their “doctors” and “nurses” are tortured to death by the public in their absurdly priced car parks by their own means, technology and lack of skill. It has a fitting symmetry.
When more of the public think like me – that the NHS is at best a protection racket – then there shall be blood.
That is the one shift I’d like to see. The end of our national cult.
JohnK,
But at least with Al Gore you’d be allowed a hockey stick…
neonsnake,
I don’t think you realise how fucking annoyed a lot of us are. The only reason it hasn’t kicked-off is that the country is an omnishambles so there is no specific single unifying issue for mass revolt.
Do you think I’m FUCKING NOT?
We are borrowing nearly £150 billion per year and spending £100 billion of that on interest payments on the national debt. The country is going to have a 1976 moment when the markets won’t lend money to the country at affordable rates, and massive cuts then become inevitable.
The country entirely lacks the social cohesion that it once had. (This is the point that neonsnake is missing.) A large chunk of the natives are convinced, rightly in my view, that they live a two-tier-country where there rights, interests and identity always come second. When the cuts come, there will be a lot of very unhappy people. I really can’t see how we can avoid major strife.
Aetius:
You are right. Britain was historically quite a peaceful nation. It was also quite united. But that Britain is fast disappearing. The daily boat arrivals, and their dispersal to hotels, is just a visible and insulting symbol. But the fact is that Britain is not the Britain it was, and the change has been at a pace never before seen in a settled and homogenous society. The leftists try and claim we are all immigrants, and cite the Huguenots and the Jews. This is utter crap. The buffoon Boris let in a million people in one year. London is only a third or less white British. This is insupportable. If there is a civil war, it will have been caused by our ruling blob.
lmao look, if you want to wee in your pants every time you see something you don’t agree with, that’s up to you.
JohnK,
Yeah, we are all immigrants – sort of – I am largely of Irish, Norwegian* and Huguenot ancestory. But I am English. I am not hyphenated-English. I’d pass Norman Tebbit’s “cricket test” if I cared about that game at all. I am though a fan of football and rugby and I pass that test. You should have seen me recently when Chloe Kelly scored that penalty…
This is the difference. My ancestors wanted to be English. A lot (not all) but a lot of our current immigrants are not leaving Karachi or Mogadishu but bringing it with them.
A very large number of my closest relatives are mixed race. Essentially my Great Uncle Harry married an Indian WAAF in Calcutta and they had ten(!) children. They are as English as, well, Brummies can be**. Oddly enough this caused a stir in the RAF at the time. Not because of race but because he was an aircaftsman and she was a flight sergeant.
*Someone with a horny hat had their wicked way with a wench in Donegal like a thousand years ago… Or, like, whatever…
**A bit snide but the Brummie accent is more alien to me than Quenya.
The NHS is also spending more money on compensation for dreadful maternity care than it spends on maternity care.
And, yes, that is from The Guardian!
Nick:
I am not sure how much “diversity” we can take before the nation is just torn apart. It is just not natural for the mayor of Birmingham, a Pakistani, to preside over celebrations of Pakistan’s national day as if Birmingham were a Pakistani city, even as his council workers remove union jacks from lamp posts in the few majority white areas. Nations cannot take this sort of provocation without breaking.
I am sorry to hear of your bad experiences at Wythenshawe hospital. I agree about the parking charges too.
Betz mentions kidnapping and murder of figures such as judges or journalists. Maybe a few police chiefs. If public hatred towards figures who blatantly betray us, i can see that happening. He talks of a dirty war. Infrastructure disruption.
We are supposed to be a democracy. The power to change governments doesn’t define democracy. The establishment has figured that power can be negated by having all mainstream parties singing from the same hymn book. So we once again have dictatorship by an elite. A dictatorship of policy through lack of choice. Betz says there is no political off ramp. No choice.
Add to the country going bust, a dunkelflaute one winter leading to a shortfall of electricity, frequency instability, grid shutdown and a dark start, and it will be hell in our cities, before the lights go back on after a couple of weeks.
It just struck me that it is a bit on point that a blog named Samizdata would be engaged in a rather prolonged discussion of the state of the new britain where at the very least freedom of speech has been pretty much made illegal. I do hope the brit-based proprietors have contingency plans if the Zampoliti should take offense at your using what used to be considered part of the rights of Englishmen/women.
Subotai Bahadur
Holy shit, medical care is amongst the *LAST* places you want diversity, it needs to be universally *COMPETENT* medics, *ZERO* diversity. You can’t afford diversity amongst provision when its people’s lives on the line. Leave your diverse workforces to cleaning or fast food outlets, where the worst that could happen is a dodgy tummy or a mucky window.
Kevin Baker at The Smallest Minority has a post on this:
https://www.smallestminority.org/2025/08/will-there-be-a-revolution-in-britain/
Similarly, Stuart Fillingham (a motorcycle youtuber based near Hull) has something to say about the Police:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z03e30E0PmQ&pp=0gcJCa0JAYcqIYzv
Finally, although I would NOT repeat NOT try to download this information from the internet in the UK, look up Philip Luty and his designs for home built submachine guns. There are a lot of them on this blog:
https://homemadeguns.wordpress.com/
And Philip Luty’s designs:
https://homemadeguns.wordpress.com/?s=Luty
Again, this is “For Information and Educational Purposes Only”.
Me? I got the hell out of the country more than 15 years ago and am glad I did.
I have no firm opinion actually so I can’t be “incorrect”. That is why I asked “what do you think?”
The current system is unsustainable & rapidly delegitimising itself, but does that mean civil war? Dunno, it certainly means pressure is building like I haven’t ever see in UK before. But I do not know how that will manifest when things kick off.
As Ayn Rand put it, “they don’t want to live, they want you to die.”
Civil war is far too organized of a concept. I predict you’re going to see a large increase in inter-group weaponry, though. I have acquaintances in that business who seem to be viewing the UK as an up-and-coming business opportunity.
Civil war is far too organized of a concept. I predict you’re going to see a large increase in inter-group weaponry, though.
A civil war doesn’t necessarily have to involve the native English population. Think about a city like Birmingham with two well-established ethnicities. These are not groups with a propensity for peaceful co-existence. On a smaller scale clashes between pro and anti Eritrean government supporters in London have shown that when you import diversity you also import its long-standing conflicts.
The phrase “fighting aged males” has become part of everyday language. Their numbers dwarf those of the army and police forces. As if we didn’t already have enough to worry about should their taxpayer funded lifestyles be threatened they’re not going to take it lying down.
The intellectual corruption of the courts (including some juries) is very concerning – for example Lucy Connolly gets sent to prison for “for all I care” tweet – but a Labour Councillor who crossed London to address an angry mob telling them to “cut the throats” of their political opponents, is found “not guilty” even of a minor charge.
When there is no justice in the courts – people become desperate, and may turn to violence.
Priorities in evidence.
Who were the jury in the case of Mr Jones? Mr Jones being the Labour Councilor who crossed London to tell an angry mob to “cut the throats” of their political opponents – yet was found “non guilty” even of a minor charge (he as not even charged with Incitement to Murder).
They were not free speech absolutists – if Mr Jones had been a white person calling for the throats of black people to be cut, they would have found him guilty in a heartbeat.
So who were the jury? Was this anti white feeling in the jury – or were they white “liberals” like the people who convicted a police officer of the “murder” of Mr Floyd – knowing (knowing – yes knowing) Mr Floyd died of drugs he willingly consumed. Several police officers were sent to prison – by a judge whose every statement seems to the language of Critical Theory Marxism, and Officer Chauvin was cut up (which seemed to greatly pleased the “liberals” – one wonders how they would like it if theyh themselves were cut up with knives).
“Liberals” (who are not liberals) or “Progressives” hate, despise justice. They believe in “Social Justice” (the opposite of justice) which means that the guilty should be found not guilty, and the not guilty should be found guilty.
Society can not survive under such a principle – as we can see from such things as the looting of shops.
Sure.
Look, the video is based on nonsense; it’s representee of the sort of people who shit themselves every time they see someone with a kebab. I’m, personally, not that cowardly, so it doesn’t bother me.
There is an enormous subculture of people who, I think, are *really really* upset that life as we know that has largely continued as was, including being able to get a fucking chicken tikka masala on a Friday night, and so are now advocating now for civil war. Cowards, all of them.
neonsnake,
You should be on Britain’s Got Talent. Your fine rectal muscle control is clearly good enough that you can literally talk out of your arse!
This has nothing to do with kebab shops, Indian food or Turkish barbers. It is to do with an unprecedented number of migrants who are not coming here to be British but to make their parts of Britain like the home country. Ever been to Bolton? It looks like Kabul on a rainy day.
But it’s not even really that alone. Someone like Keir Starmer is on the horns of a dilemma*. One horn is he is terrified of a “race” war. The other is he is a boil-in-the-bag Human Shites lawyer. He is trying to tread a middle way of appeasement hence the idiotic prsion terms Paul Marks mentioned) and the entente tres discordial with France over moochers. He is the coward.
*he should be on the horns of a much more ferocious beast.
So who were the jury?
At the last census 30.8% of those living in Smaresbrook were born outside the UK.
I used to know the area quite well. It must have changed a lot.
My guess (FWIW) is that Yes, there will be increasing open strife; but No, it will not escalate into civil war, because at some point Starmer will resign and call a general election. There is a precedent: the Winter of Discontent.
Since i am not sure about that, i must be even less sure about what would happen next; but IF i am correct in the above, then the likely outcome would seem to be a Farage premiership.
What would happen next, depends on what sort of leader Farage turns out to be.
I might already have remarked here that Trump has proven that no special intellectual talent is required to solve the problems faced by English-speaking countries, and Western countries in general.
What is needed is (a) commonsense and (b) much more rare, the solar-system-sized Ego required to put up a fight against the Deep State. I am not sure that Farage has both of the above qualities, but that looks like our best bet at the moment.
neonsnake – 14 centuries of conflict with Islam was not over food dishes (and other conflicts are even older). As for cowardice – there is no penalty for repeating the lies of the establishment (indeed the liars are often rewarded for their lies), whereas people who tell the truth face the risks of losing their jobs, and fines, and imprisonment, and other persecution.
Snorri – why should Labour call a General Election? They have a vast majority in the House of Commons. If Sir Keir vanished – he would be replaced by some other person (perhaps even worse than him).
In 1979 tbe position in the House of Commons was very different.
There will be no election till 2029.
How can someone ignore what is happening in so many Western nations – especially in England.
But the opinion polls indicate that neonsnake is not alone – many people are blind to what is happening, and scream abuse at people who try to warn them.
The truth is terrible – so we should understand that some people, indeed many people, choose to look away.
Paul Marks at 4:59pm and 5:18pm…well said, Paul!
Paul:
True. But it is also true that Callaghan had to deal with only a few months of Discontent, not 4 years.
I don’t know, but it seems unlikely to me that this situation can degenerate into a civil war, and yet Starmer keeps saying: crisis? what crisis?
And if it does NOT degenerate into civil war within 4 years, then no problem. Unless Starmer finds a way to rig elections, somehow.
— As for neonsnake, nobody can sneer at his attitude better than Brendan O’Neill.
Snorri – I agree with you that the situation is unlikely to develop into Civil War, which is one of the reasons there will be no General Election before 2029.
Whatever his other faults James Callaghan was a patriot (he was not intentionally, intentionally, doing harm) – Sir Keir and the rest of the establishment are not patriots, to them the harm they do is not a bug – it is a feature. To do harm is why they do what they do.
And vast amounts of harm can be done in four years – without there being a Civil War that would threaten the lives of the establishment.
GregWA – thank you Sir.
Paul – what do *you* think is happening? I mentioned kebabs and chicken tikka masala, and you jumped immediately to “14 centuries of conflict with Islam was not over food dishes” – obviously not, but why did you jump there?
Whether you feel comfortable in sharing how you feel about the current state of affairs has little to do with what I’ve posted. I’ve never hid my feelings on the current state of the UK’s “freedom” – it’s been eroded for many, many years, and I think Starmer is an absolute fucking wet-wipe, which I’ve stated again and again. But Boris, Sunak, May, Truss et al (and etc and etc) were certainly no better. Starmer’s so-called Marxism is best expressed not as Karl, but as Groucho (I have principles, and if you don’t like them, well, I have others).
@ NickM
Not recently, no. But I grew up in East London and spent a significant part of my adulthood living with Muslim lads in the same house, and with working in areas with large Asian populations (East Ham, Walthamstow etc). I did not feel unsafe in those areas, or in that portion of my life. On the contrary, I felt very looked after, as my employee’s mothers’ appeared to compete amongst themselves to bring me in the best food and to make sure that I was well-fed.
Obvs your mileage may vary, and whatnot, but I’ve literally lived in and worked in a lot of the so-called “no-go” areas, and my experience does not match, in any way, what I see being bandied about.
Unless the security services split and/or dissolve I think civil war is very unlikely. They have the vast majority of weapons and still have a sizeable force of well trained people. And there’s the not insignificant fact that there are several US airforce bases in Britain.
Even if one or more set of malcontents started smuggling weapons in they wouldn’t be able to challenge the military. Seems likely they’d soon be subverted from within by intelligence agencies as well.
Perhaps there are some differences in definitions here. When I think civil war I’m thinking Roundheads v Cavaliers, Union v Confederates, Reds v Whites, CCP v KMT etc. Some people think more low level and less organised disorder equates to civil war. I definitely don’t think increasing lawlessness and violence is good at all. Don’t think it equates to civil war as such. As per above if there is state breakdown and/or splits in the security services then things may be different.
Consider Belfast – and to a lesser extent Northern Ireland as a whole. If that wasn’t a 30-year civil war, I’d like to see a real one. Two sets of folk living yards from each other, illegally tooled up with automatic weapons, explosives, the lot. And they were banging away at each other – and killing just as many innocent civilians again – based on the nuanced grievances associated with a dying religious argument from 400 years ago.
And these daft buggers were all the same colour, and spoke the same languge too. Having a murderous ruck is only a couple of atrocities away. One of the potential segments of society that may get their fingers burned usefully hang out together and live together in easily identifiable areas. Just like the Falls Road and the Shankill.
It really isn’t that far a leap from here to disaster. (NB Officer, if you are reading this, I do not endorse or advocate. I merely describe a parallel from recent history.)
What would happen if the government ran out of money? Surely they can’t keep living beyond their means and borrowing forever? When government employees stop getting paid aren’t they going to be a bit upset?
The British government can never “run out” of pounds sterling because it is now a fiat currency which can be created at will. A five pound note is worth five pounds because the British government says so. What they cannot control is what a five pound note buys. It is the Zimbabwe dollar problem. Their government could print as many Zim dollars as they liked, but eventually they “ran out” of zeros to put on the notes. The British government would know that hyper-inflation would be the result of unbridled money printing, but in extremis, they may just do it anyway.
What would happen if the government ran out of value? That’s probably a more apposite question. Money is just a proxy for value.
(Take away its value, and government is merely power.)
Sort of, yes.
Money – properly understood – is a matter of priming the pump, as it were. All it needs to do is to do *enough* for the person on the receiving end to be able to pay for a months’ worth of food, shelter (etc, etc). It’s not about a store of value (me: presenting a picture of a pixelated Bored Ape: behold! A store of value! obviously bollocks)
“Money” was – as it was first conceived – was an IOU (no-one thinks that barter was a reasonably sizeable amount of any economy, for all the obvious reasons)
As best as we know, the first instances of “money” (as we now call it) were IOUs. Over time, that turned into coins, or salaries, etc, based on taxes, salt etc, and largely were government based. (Taxation is Theft is 100% factually true, obvs) – but over time, “money” turned into coinage and the like.
What we know – beyond any doubt at this point – is that under no circumstances whatsoever was “money” turned into a store where people put off future consumption – that’s a total myth. Pete The Peasant was *not* storing up his collection of gold coins under his bed in order to purchase an acre or three of land – instead, those acres were granted by the state, backed up by the vast powers of the army/police. Again, not up for grabs, this is literally just what happened.
So, this leaves us with the inevitable conclusion that money should absolutely not be tied to “something” (eg: gold), because that’s silly; but with the obvious conclusion that “money” should be advanced purely as a thing to “prime the pump”; which is where mutual banking and the like comes from.
Sort of, yes.
Money – properly understood – is a matter of priming the pump, as it were. All it needs to do is to do *enough* for the person on the receiving end to be able to pay for a months’ worth of food, shelter (etc, etc). It’s not about a store of value (me: presenting a picture of a pixelated Bored Ape: behold! A store of value! obviously bollocks)
“Money” was – as it was first conceived – was an IOU (no-one thinks that barter was a reasonably sizeable amount of any economy, for all the obvious reasons)
As best as we know, given all the research available, the first instances of “money” (as we now call it) were IOUs. Over time, that turned into coins, or salaries, etc, based on taxes, salt etc, and largely were government based. (Taxation is Theft is 100% factually true, obvs) – but over time, “money” turned into coinage and the like.
What we know – beyond any doubt at this point – is that under no circumstances whatsoever was “money” turned into a store where people put off future consumption – that’s a total myth. Pete The Peasant was *not* storing up his collection of gold coins under his bed in order to purchase an acre or three of land – instead, those acres were granted by the state, backed up by the vast powers of the army/police. Again, not up for grabs, this is literally just what happened.
So, this leaves us with the inevitable conclusion that money should absolutely not be tied to “something” (eg: gold), because that’s silly; but with the obvious conclusion that “money” should be advanced purely as a thing to “prime the pump”; which is where mutual banking and the like comes from.
neonsnake – good money has to be more than a medium of exchange, it needs to be a store of value. Gold and silver did not become valuable because they were used as money – they were used as money because they were valuable, because people choose to value these things – and for very good reasons (the uses of these commodities and their characteristics). Money should be something that people value before and apart from its use as money.
As for allowing government, bankers, or anyone else, to make “money” out of nothing (something of no value) and force people to accept it and use it – such as policy is, to use your own word, “bollocks”.
neonsnake – if you refuse to see what is going on around you, the decay of this society and the threats to what is left of this culture, I can not help you, only you can help you. You are the only person who can open your own mind – should you decide to make the effort.
Society has become a very fragile structure, and as the Beltway snipers of 2002 showed, the impact of random attacks rapidly disrupted even the simplest of aspects of living. It seems to me that today any civil disturbance on anything approaching this scale might easily, in a heightened state of social tension, swiftly spill over into broader and perhaps sectarian warfare. As for whether this is a true civil war is hard to calculate, for as the adage has it, the first casualty in war is the truth and we can be sure the media channels will be incomplete either by being propagandised or restricted. The fractured and localised reporting would never tell us we were at war, and it might take years before the full story emerges, and would as always be subject to the winners writing the history books.
Trouble might well be confined to a few unrelated events, seemingly unconnected and ultimately not able to change anything much.
I do not think the British nature is keen on the idea of civil strife—we don’t do uprisings. But not everyone arriving here sees themselves as British, and in all fairness we have no idea what military training some newcomers may have had. Getting one’s hands on a weapon is pretty much impossible for many, let alone knowing how to use them. As always, ammunition supply and viable targets makes the prospect of war limited, mobility could rapidly be curtailed (petrol deliveries would be soon shut off) and in any event, who rules afterwards and with what intention is a question no one can answer.
My take then is civil war on a grand scale is unlikely in the UK, but I do hold to the idea that native Brits will instead increasingly like the idea of separation from areas considered ‘lost.’ Some urban centres may be abandoned or confirmed as being the property of certain groups. In this way direct fighting is avoided.
NS: “What we know – beyond any doubt at this point – is that under no circumstances whatsoever was “money” turned into a store where people put off future consumption – that’s a total myth.”
Okay, this one went right over my head, so I’ll ask you to explain further.
For my own part, I have “money” – both intangible electronic tics in some accounts, and a safe with some gold coins and rocks – which I accepted in exchange for tasks I did that were of value to someone earlier, and which I now keep so that I may buy and consume things later.
Say someone wants to pay me with their apple crop. I can’t eat 5000 apples before they spoil, so I accept a stored value – money – that allows me to buy the apples fresh as I need them.
How does this fit in with what you meant?
Mongoose – today I visited the Siege Museum in Londonderry (the 1688-9 siege), some 84% of the Unionist population were driven out (by arson and murder) of certain parts of the city 50 years ago, and from the walls one can still see a Unionist area in the outer city, with a banner on it – “Still Under Siege”.
However, the conflict in Ireland is not just about religion – after all my grandfather’s name was “James” Power (his family were from deep in the South – Waterford), a Catholic name (Catholic in Irish terms – because of James II), there were many Catholic Unionists – a lot of them were killed in the World Wars or were murdered (but not all).
As for the conflict between the West and Islam – Islamic Law offers three choices. Conversion to Islam – but it must be sincere conversion (not a token conversion – to be a “hypocrite”, to pretend to be a Muslim without fully embracing Islam, is punished by death). The second option is death. The final option is to pay the infidel tax – but this is not just a simple payment of money, it must be done in a ritual way that shows humiliation, and the various Islamic laws concerning infidels must be accepted – including in relation to their children.
The groups in English towns and cities have shown what this means in practice. But this would not have come as a shock to past generations who understood Islam vastly better than the modern establishment does – or pretends not to understand. Gladstone or Winston Churchill would have no great difficulty in understanding the situation.
For people who want to understand money – Carl Menger and Ludwig Von Mises did the work that you need to study. For example, Ludwig Von Mises “Theory of Money and Credit”.
@Paul Marks
good money has to be more than a medium of exchange, it needs to be a store of value.
They are the same thing. It is a medium of exchange because it is a store of value — you store the value temporarily so that you can exchange it for something else.
Gold and silver did not become valuable because they were used as money – they were used as money because they were valuable, because people choose to value these things – and for very good reasons (the uses of these commodities and their characteristics).
The first part is true the second part isn’t. Certainly gold and silver became valuable because people valued them, however, that was not at all for their utility.
Gold and silver were used as money because they were rare and hard to obtain. It is the fact that you cannot just make more of it and that it takes a lot of work to mine more of it, that makes it useful as money. This is why, for example, Spain’s New World Empire, where they brought vast quantities of gold to Spain from the New World, it didn’t make them rich, in fact it almost destroyed the country — because they undermined the very quality of gold that made it useful as money — namely its rarity.
Another important property of gold/silver is that it was easy to measure. The third property of money beside store of value and medium of exchange is “unit of accounting”. You can easily determine how much gold you have with a simple balance scale (and various ways to determine its purity such as measuring its density or more common hard to fake marks of purity), which could be done very easily with very simple equipment.
Oh, and since BobbyB is talking about storing apples, of course another important property of gold as money is that it is stable — it doesn’t break down or react with anything. You could not use, for example, sodium or wheat as money — they aren’t stable enough.
The actual utility of gold, especially back in the day, was pretty limited — namely that it was pretty and I suppose ductile. It has higher intrinsic value today, but the money value of gold and to some degree silver, usually outstrips its investment value.
It is a notable thing that the US Constitution puts the right to coin (not print) money comes from the weights and measures clause.
@neonsnake
Pete The Peasant was *not* storing up his collection of gold coins under his bed in order to purchase an acre or three of land – instead, those acres were granted by the state
Sure, because land was controlled by the state. But he did save up his coins to buy a new ox, or plow, or build a brick oven, or buy a share of the local inn or many of the other capital investments that a person of his station was able to make.
Storing value for capital accumulation is one of the primary purposes of money.
@Paul Marks
I know that, Paul. (I am one generation nearer the action than you are.) But when the Guinness has flowed on a Saturday night and young bucks are on the street, and it’s five years after the start and we are all angry, and everyone has loved ones or friends in the ground, the orange ones just play the green ones. The nuances of history are lost.
It is the politics of violence, of course, and there is very little nuance when politics meets violence. And the gangster scum of the earth move in and you have prolonged conflict for profit and power.
We just saw btw an attempted gangster meeting in Washington DC!
Fraser Orr – some good points, I was including aesthetics in usefulness, but I did not say so – and I should have done. So I apologize for that.
As for land – it was normal for land to be bought and sold in England even in the Middle Ages, see M.M. Poston “Medieval Economy and Society” and Alan MacFarlane “The Origins of English Individualism”. In Scots law (old Scots law) even titles of nobility went-with-the-land – so when someone bought an estate they bought the title as well.
In France slavery was ended and almost all serfdom ended as well – back in the Middle Ages (not in 1789 as the history textbooks incorrectly say) – Louis X ended these things, only King for a couple of years and died at the age of (I think) 26.
mongoose – yes the dead call, the spilled blood calls (a little like the Hatfields and McCoys – and Old Man McCoy never forgave, he said he could not, as it was up the women and children the Hatfields had killed to forgive them, he could not do it for them).
As you know real Irish Nationalists despise Sinn Fein/IRA, because Sinn Fein/IRA have sold out to the international agenda, Sinn Fein/IRA do not give a damn about the Irish nation – the Irish people.
Neither do the big political parties in the Republic (they sold out years ago – on mass immigration, on abortion, on everything) – although some newer political parties do care. It is very hard to break through the family voting traditions – which, as you know, go back the the Civil War more than a century ago.
Political parties in the South such as the Irish Freedom Party have things to say (about some things) that are worth hearing – but there is many generations of voting tradition to break through.
What I’m referring to here was mainly the (mis) conception that “money” as we know it today – coins, paper, etc – was invented to solve the barter “double coincidence of wants” problem.
The common conception is that we used to have barter economy – “I’ll give you five thousand apples for helping to herd my sheep” – and then we realised that was unworkable, so we invented “money” to get over that problem. Because, quite rightly, you’d say “Uuuuhhhh, as much as I might like an apple pie, roughly 90% of those are going to rot before I can use them!”
Adam Smith was (I think?) the first, or at least most famous, person to posit that we invented money to solve this problem. Menger did it again in the late 19th Century, but the issue was that they didn’t *know* what we did, they just speculated; and were wrong, albeit probably with good intentions.
Which is fine, and the invention of “money” (shiny metal!) seems an elegant and common sense solution. The problem is that there’s zero evidence that this happened – they were not historians, so fair enough.
What we *did*, as best as we can tell, was invented credit and IOUs.
Firstly, no economy was based on “barter” – it existed on the fringes, sure, but no economy had barter as it’s *main features*, for all the obvious reasons.
Instead, we went “cheers for your help with my sheep, here’s a credit, you can call on me for apples whenever you need until it runs out. Also, Dave The Blacksmith recognises these same credits, so go see him when you need a new chopping knife.” The actual way of recording credit was many and varied, as you’d expect, from knotted ropes to wax tablets, but it was the primary form of “exchange” for ages (And…every now and then, we had a debt jubilee, because it was feasible and unwanted that vast inequality could arise. In the Bible, it was every seven years, for example)
So “money”, as a unit of exchange, was invented firstly as credit, and was backed by nothing whatsoever other than trust and reputation, and the nagging feeling that if you didn’t pay your debts (in the form of like exchange of whatever you produced yourself), you wouldn’t be able to use your own credit, and would possibly be shunned.
Then the state got involved, and invented “money as we know it today” – gold nuggets, silver coins, etc etc. Primarily because it could then tax us *in that currency*, and it also renders us “legible” (in the James C Scott sense from Seeing Like A State), and forces people into the *state-defined* market economy, because you need gold nuggets, silver coins etc to pay your taxes. One of the reasons I’m *so* against gold-buggery is that it’s a net reduction of freedom – not that fiat money isn’t, but gold-buggery has many of the same issues. People should be free to create and use their own alternative currencies, based on whatever they want – I’m a fan of LETS systems, for instance – but as it stands, one still has absolutely unavoidable taxes, so at some point you need to convert them to the currency of the realm – in my case, pound sterling for my council tax.
——-
Then, in terms of it being used as a “store of value” – this is a bit more tricky to explain, but I’ll do my best.
Another myth around “money” – and I’m now talking about gold nuggets, bits in a computer and so on (ie. what “Money” has come to mean today) – is that people defer consumption, make coffee at home, save up, and use that to buy products or capital goods (Fraser mentioned a plow) which in turn allows them to save more money by being more efficient, and increase their wealth slowly until they’re millionaires.
I shouldn’t have said “no circumstances whatsoever”, that was a touch…exuberant on my part…but in the main, it’s not true. People don’t buy a tractor, they lease it. They can do so confidently because they get favourable rates on loans because they know the owner of the bank (or whoever). Or, the loan is from a parent, with paltry rates of interest – if any, or if they even need to pay it back. Or so on. And whilst everyone is going to now scramble to talk about their mate’s friend’s cousin Stephen who started a business from his garage with nothing more than the shirt on his back and a squeegee mop he scavenged from a dumpster, those examples are only sticking in your memory *because they’re so rare*.
In terms of regular consumption, yes – absolutely it’s paid for with an amount of money that you’ve saved by not spunking it on whatever’s yer poison, but in terms of genuine, over-the-odds wealth – generally (with exceptions) it’s not made by cutting down on avocado toast (or, “deferring consumption” as your economists would put it) and cancelling Netflix.
(That was a bit long and maybe a bit rambly, but I wanted to answer as best I could)
It should be pointed out that the corruption of the legal system in the United Kingdom goes back before conflicts about religion-ethnicity-and-race.
For example, it was thrust in our faces in the case of the people who helped George Blake escape from prison.
George Blake was a Soviet agent – a traitor, the people who helped him escape from prison (and get to the Soviet Union) were from “the 100” a faction formed within CND (the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) by the philosopher Bertrand Russell – a philosopher who described himself as a “liberal” or even a “Whig” when he was actually a Collectivist who wanted all land and business to be owned by the state.
The individuals who helped the traitor Mr Blake escape from prison did not deny what they did – they boasted about it, publishing a book boasting of their evil actions.
The state was forced (by the book) to prosecute them – and many people (including me) condemned the jury for finding obviously guilty people “not guilty” – but examining the trial carefully it is plain that it was more than the jury who were corrupt, it was the prosecution and the judge as well. They throwed the case – allowing the defense council to make political speeches and not really offering counter arguments.
Basically the state wanted these vicious scumbags to be found “not guilty” – because, even back then, much of the establishment were pro Collectivist scumbags themselves – at least partly so.
Indeed one can right back…..
In 1939 the United Kingdom declared war on National Socialist (socialist – but “the wrong sort of socialism” – more Fichte than Karl Marx) Germany over its invasion of Poland (I think rightly so – indeed a much stronger line should have been taken years earlier), but the Soviet Union (the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) also invaded Poland in September 1939 – without any declaration of war from Britain or France. And the Soviet Union also conquered Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania without a declaration of war from Britain or France, took over part of Romania – still no declaration of war, and invaded Finland aiming at its conquest (the Winter War) – no declaration of war from Britain or France.
Even back in the 1930s – Marxism had influence in the Western establishment (sympathy for its supposed aims – if not more than that), most certainly including the United States.
In 1933 the American government officially recognized the Marxist Soviet regime – in spite of knowing (yes KNOWING) that this regime was murdering millions of people. People such as Mr and Mrs Roosevelt drooled over Stalin (again – they knew, they knew, what he and other Marxists were doing) – and the “intellectual” establishment did not see anything wrong with this.
In the 1970s there was the vile spectacle of “conservatives” such as President Nixon and Prime Minister Heath crawling to Mao – possibly the largest scale mass murderer in human history (something they were well aware of).
The moral corruption of the West did not start recently, it started a very long time ago – and it goes to the very core
Well, it’s complicated. Ny wife’s wedding ring is gold and it is worth more to me than it’s value in gold (October sees our 20th anniversary) and I think our twenty shared years is worth more than a small piece of gold (it was not from the Mr T collection). So that’s one thing.
But what of more abstract gold such as ingots that don’t have any sentiment attached? Well, gold has an enormous advantage as a store of value over almost everything else. It lasts… People dig-up Roman hordes all the time and those (aside from their archeological “value”*) still have an intrinsic value. Because it’s gold! And gold matters. Smaug knew it, Paul Marks knows it, I know it. Does my Mastercard? Kinda – for now. Will it be worth a darn thing when Baldrick’s great, great, great… finds it? What do you think?
Anyway, screw gold! I’m off to start a Mithril-Rush! I’not digging. I’m selling shovels!
*My brother is an archeologist and not a rich man. Not a poor man but he ain’t discovering Indiana Jones stuff… His long-term girlfriend (I hate the word “partner” in this context) has a “savings account” – whenever she’s flush she buys gold.
A) congratulations! And quite right, in what you say about the symbolism of that!
B) You’re getting into the difference between subjective and objective meaning, but for now, let’s just say congratulations and leave it at that.
neonsnake – again if you want to write about money I would urge you to read the work of Carl Menger and Ludwig Von Mises on this matter.
Just at it is not wise for a person to write about a period of history, for what we used to call the Middle Ages concerning England and other lands, without researching the subject – so it is also unwise to discuss economics without researching the subject. Although your statement about the state allocating land was correct in relation to, for example, the Islamic world – where such things are the Edict of 877 AD, which admitted that a King of France had no legal power to take land from one person to give it to another person did not imply – but you did not say you were writing about the Islamic world or some-periods-of Imperial China (another example of despotism) you implied, although you did not formally state, that you were writing about lands such as England – and not just to such despots as William the Conqueror who really did take land from most (although not all) land holders.
The oath of Henry the First to uphold the ancient laws (in 1100 – if my memory serves) was, in large part, a promise that such despotism (land theft) would not occur again – his marriage to a direct descendant of Alfred the Great was also a clear sign of break with the idea of rule-by-conquest. Indeed his youth (he was the youngest son) worked in his favour – as he was not old enough to take part in the crimes of his father (his elder brothers, who were not born in England – as he was, could not clearly make that statement).
Still the laws were still open to review by the standard of natural law – natural justice, hence the outlawing (note that it was stated that buying and selling human beings had always been unlawful – it just had not been understood, the law was found – not made) of buying and selling human beings (which had been tolerated in Anglo-Saxon England). Bracton, a century later, outlined how this way of judging the laws is done – it is not done by the whims of individual judges (and Parliament did not exist at the time) – there are laws of reasoning (moral and legal reasoning) that should be followed – to find (not make – find) the law.
Still, I have got side tracked – back to economics, which (yes indeed) is a different subject from history.
If you want to write about money it would, again, be wise to study the subject first – and I would (again) urge you to read the work of Carl Menger and Ludwig Von Mises on this subject.
As for your specific points – both myself and others have already explained why they are not valid.
Leaving aside the matter of the infidel tax (which is a lot more than a monetary payment – as I have already touched on) the key economic (economic) difference between the Islamic world and much-of Christendom was the relative (relative) greater security of private landholding in much of Christendom. In the Islamic world neonsnake’s statement about the state allocating land is (just about) correct – it was vastly less correct in Christendom, indeed this was the key economic (economic) difference between the two civilizations.
Even in the early 1800s North Africa and the Middle East was less developed (and less populated) than it had been under the Roman Empire. This lack of security for private landholding was at the heart of that difference with Europe (other than the Balkans under the Ottomans, or Russia under Ivan the Terrible and other despots).
In the far east there was a contrast between China and Japan – in China a ruler really could take land and “reallocate” it on a whim (although wise Emperors did not do that) – it was rather more complicated in Japan.
Westerners did not really introduce this idea (the idea that it was wrong for a ruler to take land and give it to someone else) into Japan – because it was already known there (although Japanese are normally too polite to point that out).
It is not lying to not interrupt a Westerner who is claiming that Westerners introduced various legal and moral ideas into Japan – polite silence is not lying.
Most certainly there were horrible abuses in England, Japan and other lands – but that is a very different thing from the moral and legal principles not being known.
Something can be known – and still violated.
For example – the repeated judgements that slavery was unlawful in England – this was not a single judgement in the 1770s, it was repeated judgements over centuries.
I have indeed read both, Paul. Human Action is probably worth reading.
Menger probably isn’t, given how much he got wrong, specifically in the Methodenstreit, about the value of marginal utility, given how little he paid attention to existing power structures and institutions. Waste of time and effort, honestly. Bohm-Bowerk, unfortunately, repeated his mistakes.
neonsnake – I apologize for assuming you had not read these writers.
However, if you hold that Carl Menger was wrong about the War of Method and you hold that Bohm-Bowerk is also wrong about this – then you are saying there are no objective laws of economics, and, come to think about it, this would explain what you say about many economic matters.
Sadly this means there is nothing more discuss – we are enemies (rather than just opponents) Sir. And I mean no disrespect by the use of the word “enemies” – quite the contrary.
For clarity – no, I wasn’t talking about the Muslims or Chinese, I was *absolutely* talking about the Enclosure Acts (and others) enacted in England; the land of my birth and heritage. You may, indeed, take that as a formal statement.
This is hard one. Like, how *actually* familiar are you with the “War of Method”, as you call it?
For example, Menger’s pure economic theory is basically useless, unless one ignores all historical context – which is obviously a mistake. His theory of marginal productivity is useless the moment you strip away property rules as they actually exist today. Time-preference is a concept that is only relevant when one considers vast inequalities of wealth, for another example. The Methodenstreit was utterly riddled with errors of the above lines – it totally fails to into account existing power relations; which raises all sorts of questions about your understanding of it.
I don’t have an issue if you haven’t properly read it – I, for instance, have only briefly breezed through Marx because I’m not a Marxist and have food to cook and shirts to iron and whatnot – but I don’t pretend I have a total understanding of Das Kapital (Nor am I especially interested in doing so) – but I would prefer if you say that you’re not familiar enough to discuss.
The German Historical School, whether in its Marxist form or in its proto Nazi form, is mistaken.
The “historical context” basically means the existing state interventions (it does not invalidate economic law – see later on) – although it could also mean natural disasters and so on (for example no economic policy would have worked in 535 AD and a few years after it – due to the years without the sun and the terrible plague), but state interventions do not contradict the objective and universal laws of human action (including economics) indeed the terrible effects of undermining private property (especially in land holding) and voluntary trade, illustrates the terrible effects of violating economic law.
A recent YouTube film gave the example of five words in the Constitution of Tanzania in 1964, the honest and well meaning independent government pledged to “prevent the accumulation of wealth” – by which they meant private wealth.
Their policies did precisely that – and, of course, they reduced the country to economic collapse.
Nothing to do with corruption or with wanting to reduce the country to economic collapse – just the logical
outcome of their policies in line with economic law.
As for discussions – discussions rely on a common frame of reference, you can have really intense arguments within a common frame of reference – you do not need to agree (you can interpret the basic principles very differently), you can be very harsh opponents in discussion
But without a common frame of reference (basic principles) discussion is pointless.
For example, discussion between non Muslims and Hamas, and other such groups, is pointless. Such groups destroy you – or you destroy them. Because there is no common set of moral principles.
This does NOT mean that you do not respect them.
*nods*
you’re really not very good at this, are you?
Enclosure Acts – in only one county in England was the majority of land enclosed by Act of Parliament. Northamptonshire.
And even in Northamptonshire this was not a matter of aliens taking control of the land more directly – the people who took more direct control of the land were already the local bigwigs.
Trying to hand over land to village communities was done on the largest scale by Czar Alexander II – it is often forgotten that the Mirs (village communities) did not exist in large areas of Russia, before he created them in these areas. Although in wide areas of Russia individual ownership of land was the norm and continued to be so – Free Peasants of the North, wide areas of Siberia, and so on.
The Mir policy failed – which is why Stolypin allowed individual peasants to opt out (taking their land with them) of the Mirs in the 1900s.
If that had been the policy from the 1860s, rather than after 1905, Russian history would have been much better.
Do not mistake me – Alexander II was right to end serfdom, but the Russian spin on this (village land ownership) was a terrible blunder.
Mexico after the 1910 Revolution is a well known disaster – again village community land ownership was pushed, especially in the 1930s. The policy was a failure – to put the matter mildly.
In Israel communal land experiments were massively pushed and subsidized – but no more than 5% of Jews ever opted for them. And after the subsidies started to be cut (the 1970s) the decline of these experiments accelerated.
Neonsnake “you are not very good at this are you”.
That sort of response is part (part) of why it is pointless to talk to you.
neonsnake,
Whilst I thank you for your kind felicitations I do think I also made it obvious that gold has an intrinsic, object value. You might note my reference to thousands of years. Yes, of course, that ring is of value to me and my wife beyond that but to anyone else it’s value is something that can be objectively assayed.
Why is gold valuable in and of itself? It is very useful. It is extremely malleable, extremely conductive of both heat and electricity and it doesn’t corrode amongst many other qualities. The Apollo astronauts wore more gold than the Queen of Sheba. And that was not to bling the affair.
I am a Quaker warden (yeah, it surprised me!) and this gaff is well run. The gardens are great (OK, I could do more, but…) and our (by which I mean the Quaker’s) paved area is in excellent shape. The same can be said for local pubs which are usually owned by Robinson’s – a brewery in Stockport that dates back to 1838. It is still a family concern – now sixth generation. The roads and paths (owned by the council and or the Highways Agency) would disgrace Mogadishu. I have lived here for 19 years. I used to believe in private ownership. I don’t have to believe anymore because now I just know.
Sure, because you either don’t know, or are ignoring it.
How much land in England is the product of the Enclosures acts, as a percentage, up until the end of the 19th Century? Tell me a precise number (and I *do* know what that number is, to a second decimal point). You’re deflecting with the Mirs or Mexico – and talking, for no good reason at all, about the Mirs or about Mexico.
Seriously, just give the number. It’s not hard to find.
Do you need a calculator to do the 27k acres vs the 6.8million, or should I do it myself?
I hesitate to step into the middle of the discussion between neonsnake, Paul Marks, NickM and others, but have a digression question. There seems to be a clear consensus that Human Action is worth reading, and there is disagreement on the value of reading Menger or Bohm-Bowerk. It looks like one bone of contention is the actual historical record–what actually happened. Therefore, I would like to ask each of you to suggest one or two historical books that you particularly recommend as being particularly helpful, even if only tangential to the questions so far. Thank you.
Neonsnake – I have the numbers at home (I am presently in Ulster) for each county in England, and in only one county is it a majority of land enclosed by the Enclosure Acts (Acts of Parliament). That county is Northamptonshire – the one I live in. In, say, Kent the percentage is just about ZERO.
You are also confusing the issue – the Enclosure Acts were not really about changing ownership of the land, they were about changing land use where inefficient strip farming still existed.
The alternative would have been to keep that system (and a tiny bit of it does survive – in a small area of Leicestershire).
With a rising population such a decision, to keep the strip farming and open fields over a large area of England, would have had rather unpleasant consequences. You could not have the agricultural revolution with the old land use system – although, yes, that system only ever covered PART of England.
As for peasant plot farming in general – it was kept in large areas of Ireland (again nothing to do with land ownership – the peasants did not own the land), this turned out very badly in the late 1840s, but there had been many warnings long before the 1840s that this was a bad system. Indeed there had been famines before – the system did not work well (to put the matter mildly).
Like manufacturing, farming needs to be a large (commercial) scale – otherwise you have famines. Although “large commercial” does NOT mean “Corporate” (Corporate farming is not good – it tends to be too short term, not looking to future generations).
Russia had great difficulties with food production under the “Mir” (village ownership) system. which covered large parts of Russia – due to the blunder of Alexander the Second.
Stolypin was quite right to let peasants opt out of the Mirs and buy and sell land.
If what was done after 1905 had been done from the 1860s (when serfdom was ended) Russian, and WORLD, history would have very different – vastly better.
There was even a bit of strip farming and other such in part of the United States – in part of what is now Massachusetts, indeed it was more radical (far more radical) than anything in England.
What was done in the original colony was a sort of commune – but it quickly collapsed into starvation.
It was not the Indians “Native Americans” who saved the colonists – it was the decision to abandon the communal system that saved them.
There are some weird ideas in Massachusetts even today – for example if you go on the “Freedom Trail” in Boston they do not take you to see a gun shop (what 1775-1776 was actually about in Lexington and Concord – the right to keep and bear arms) – they take you to see a government school.
The government school system in Massachusetts was created in 1852 by Horace Mann (although there had been some laws pushing people into local town schools – laws that were not really enforced) – in imitation of the Prussian system of education created by Frederick the Great.
What this has got to do with liberty, other than with crushing it, is not explained.
Even John Locke (far from perfect – but there are no perfect men) said in reply to William Penn’s suggestion (back in the 1680s) for a government school system in Pennsylvania, that it would be a terrible idea – crushing independent thought and nipping dissent “in the bud”.
This is why Frederick the Great created such a system in Prussia in the mid to late 1700s – he liked the idea of uniformity of thought and obedient subjects.
In spite of the (government created) Great Depression of the 1930s would Franklin Roosevelt really have got 60% of the vote in 1936 without the government schools making people look to the government for XYZ?
I do not believe so – indeed I think that if Franklin Roosevelt had, for example, tried to steal all privately owned gold and violate all contracts in 1833 (rather than 1933 – after the state worshipping schools were long established), he would have been tarred and feathered – and hung from the nearest tree.
If money is not independent of the state, is not an actual commodity (such as gold or silver – but other commodities have been used) that people choose to value before-and-apart-from its use as money, then all other liberty eventually dies.
Make sure that the land is under the control of individuals and families, and make sure the money is a real thing (not the fiction of government and pet bankers).
One problem in England was the Tudor (16th century) legislation aimed at PREVENTING landowners “enclosing” their land – in some areas of the country this forced landowners to go back to Parliament to get Acts of Parliament to get round the Tudor legislation.
Tudor period economic ideas were dreadful – the only good thing was there was really no Civil Service to carry them out. Otherwise people (under a certain income) would have been forced to follow the trade of their fathers (very Emperor Diocletian) and not allowed to even move from their native parish. If all the statutes that were passed in the Tudor period (including under Elizabeth the First) had been enforced, England would have been totally crippled. Even as it was, the (much later) industrial revolution was in areas such as Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire – because these were areas were the Tudor regulations were most weakly enforced (indeed not really enforced at all).
Then there is John Hales – who as well as being an anti enclosure nut-case was also a defender of Debasement – arguing that it was “greed” (greedy landlords and greedy merchants) that caused inflation, not the debasement of the coinage.
Never trust an economist whose first name is “John” – John Hales, John Keynes (J.M. Keynes), John Kenneth Galbraith…..
I’ll save you the trouble – it’s 21.25%, in England. So over a 5th of the land was stolen from the people who worked it, by parliamentary measures – whether directly or indirectly. The efficiency or inefficiency is not the issue here, but rather how it was enabled – theft directly or enabled by the State of the times. There are many studies showing that large-scale agriculture isn’t as efficient as was believed back then (again, I refer you to Seeing Like A State, as an example of this), and indeed the smaller-scale commons-based strip-farming served to deter against famines *absent state or feudal intervention* by more libertarian-minded peoples.
The Mirs are an interesting example – you’ve bought them up a few times now as an example of failure of a commons-based system.
Why did the Mirs fail, in your view?
(and please bear in mind that I’m *very* aware of the payments they had to make post-1861, as well as being very aware of the quality of land given to them by their previous landowners, both of which are key parts to consider)
As for this, I presume you are referring to the Pilgrims in Plymouth? Where, they were saved not by instating private property, but by literally reinstating the commons-based use-and-usufructuary system used in England at the time? Whereby they – instead of having to send “home” money to the Adventurer’s Guild (ie. working on “private property”, which nearly killed them), they instead rebelled and instigated a system more like a system whereby they were able to work their own lands, for the common good? Which saved them?
If it was 21.25% it was not “stolen” – why do you think these people were paying rent? You can not steal land from people who do not own it. It was mainly a matter of taking more direct management of the land – replacing the crazy open field strip system. True there was also common land for grazing – but some of that is still about.
Had that system carried on the growing population would have ended up starving to death.
By the way neonsnake – your account of what happened in the colony in what is now Massachusetts is inverted.
It was, not was not, private property that saved them.
As I have pointed out before you are not an opponent, you are not taking a different interpretation within a common moral framework, you have a different framework – different fundamental principles. Different and opposed principles. That is not an opponent – that is an enemy, and I mean no disrespect by that.
To impose your system you would have to kill people such as myself – but that is fair enough, I am not a pacifist myself.
I repeat: Why did the Mirs fail, in your view?
You’ve brought them up a few times.
The Mirs failed because individual people and their families did not own the land – village ownership was inefficient, and this led to famines in Russia (although nothing like on the scale of Soviet times – but then the Soviet Marxists were starving people on-purpose).
Stolypin was quite correct to allow peasants to opt out of the Mirs – if only this had been done in the 1860s rather than just after 1905. Even Mr Putin, an admirer of Stalin, does not defend Stalin’s policy of destroying the “Kulaks” – i.e. the individual farmers (and their families). By the way this was also the policy of Lenin (Stalin invented nothing) – he was clear that what was called “War Communism” (the destruction of the private ownership of land – the foundation of a decent society) would return when the regime was strong enough – the New Economic Policy was a temporary concession.
In Nazi Germany they tried a compromise – individual farmers would own the land, but they would not be allowed to sell the land, and they would farm under state direction.
I reject that compromise – on both practical and moral grounds. It was an inefficient farming system – and it was morally wrong to interfere with the right of farmers to sell their land. If you can not sell land – you do not really own it.
For a modern example of the Mirs – see some of the American Reservations where there is tribal ownership of land, it is an awful system. And it is had time – putting the land under elected tribal councils was established in 1934 – more than 90 years ago now.
If it was going to work (in Pine Ridge and so on) – it would have worked by now.
The father of Prime Minister Sharon (in Israel) was part of one of these communal farming experiments – he left because it was insane.
Endless discussions – like a Parish Council, no disrespect meant to my colleagues.
He did not leave with any land (he was not allowed to take any land with him – he had to buy land elsewhere, very difficult in Israel where most land has been state owned under various Empires for a very long time) – he just left, with nothing, because he could not stand it any more.
Henry George pointed out (having observed what happened in California) that as the population goes up, land becomes more expensive and it becomes harder for someone to buy a farm.
This is quite true – but it has been known for thousands of years (hard to see why Mr George thought he had discovered something) – and the response of Henry George, namely a big tax on land, does not make any sense – it seems to have been based on some of the mistaken ideas of David Ricardo which (on land) were refuted by Frank Fetter – in the late 19th century.
Pushing both the Labour Theory of Value and a false view of land are, sadly, the terrible legacy of David Ricardo.
Will it lead to Civil War?
Well in California much (most?) of the land is government already – and the remaining “private land” is so controlled by regulations that it is rather like National Socialist Germany (in this respect).
But Texas is another matter – Texas is mostly private land, and yet the people coming into Texas from Latin American nations have been indoctrinated with “Land Reform” (land theft) ideas – so that might (might) lead to Civil War at some point – although land taxation in Texas is already quite high (at least compared to Alabama and so on).
Britain?
Britain, well England, is so overpopulated (due to massive immigration) that it is hard to see how any policy can work – especially as manufacturing is also not doing well (to put the matter mildly).
A nation that can not feed itself – and has a deficit in manufactured goods as well food and raw materials, is going to have a bad future.
As for relying on “The City” – with its fiat money and Credit Bubble finance, well that is not going to turn out well.
America is going to see the collapse of New York City (now dependent on “Wall Street” financial industries) – but will, I hope, survive the collapse of New York City.
Hard to see how England survives the collapse of London – London also now dependent on the “financial industry”.
And that crash is coming.
When the welfare benefits can no longer be afforded, or do not buy anything, and there is no land to farm (in relation to the bloated population) and not much manufacturing (I think the United Kingdom is number eleven or twelve in manufacturing now) – what do people do?
Perry was wise to go several hundred miles away from this – it is not bravery to stay in a dangerous situation that you can NOT help with, to put yourself in harm’s way without any hope of doing good is stupidity (not bravery).
If I was a wealthy man (I am not) I would also have got out.
So: no, basically. The Mirs system was set-up to fail when Alexander II crumbled and allowed the land-owners (the feudal lords) to dictate, in all practical senses, the terms of the Emancipation. The result of this was to “give” the serfs substandard lands, firstly; and then to saddle them with onerous payments back to the landowners – largely at way above market value – saddling the Mirs with enormous debts and hamstringing them from the outset. They also enclosed previous common lands (where serfs would previously gather wood, etc), putting them under more pressure.
A mixed communal/village-level allocation of lands (very much including “personal plots” as well as strip-farming for family-level cultivation, as was the most common outcome when people are left to decide for themselves without outside interference) is by no means a guarantee of success, of course – but hamstringing them in this fashion is a virtual guarantee of failure.