Happy 4th July! The future of independence

We’re living in interesting times. We are seeing faster change than ever before, and we get to decide the next few steps humans make towards the future. What a privilege! On this day more than any, it is a time to celebrate freedom and independence, but we must appreciate their value if we are not to risk losing them..

I wrote in 2016 that we need to make sure we preserve independence of thought, and two years on, that seems even more important as people retreat into bubbles. If existing tensions between opposing bubbles continue to increase, conflict is increasingly likely. Indeed it is not uncommon to hear people  fools state how ready they already are for it, gearing up for a fight for their flavor of civilization. If we can’t dismantle the bubbles, then one way of living peacefully side by side after the conflict might be  to consider a dual democracy.

Dangers to freedom and independence are many and diverse.

Increasing surveillance presents a different kind of danger. As AI becomes ever more powerful, our activities and thoughts will be monitored even more intimately and in more detail. Information gathered can be used to manipulate you, and the tools there are already pretty sophisticated. Philosophers have always discussed free will, but it will be under increasing attack. Preserving independence of mind will become more difficult.

Large global corporations and wealthy individuals also have a lot of control via the ability to build, rent or buy these control mechanisms, with blatant advertising at one end and sophisticated bots at the other, and that’s only today.

On top of that, we also have ceding more and more power to activists, who bypass normal democratic due process to enforce change by threatening and bullying people into submission. Mob rule is already threatening democracy and the rule of law. Terror of being attacked by online mobs on twitter or Facebook also causes self censorship of both actions and words, and soon increasing surveillance could extend that to thinking. Many people already feel they are losing freedom thanks to this sort of mob rule. As often noted in such debate, 1984 was not meant to be a guide book.

AI can up-skill activists to make them even more effective. A less unlikely threat from AI is an AI uprising, though it’s possible that we could implement AI-based governance, with AI’s threatening us with all sorts of consequences if we misbehave, Forbin Project style.

A more futuristic independence issue is space based groups. We recent saw Arcadia anoint its first chief. Will we see Mars colonies declare independence? Probably, but when?

We see seemingly contradictory demands for independence too. Californians sometimes talk about becoming independent, but many Californians also want to remove border controls and effectively let anyone walk in. In fact, a lot of people across the USA and Europe support having open borders. Old-fashioned warfare between countries can result in a rapid change of governance and culture, but such wars in the West are thankfully unlikely for the time being. However, over decades open borders could greatly change demographic and democratic makeup and culture as effectively as an invasion, albeit very gradually. That may very well bring welcome change – America has been a highly successful collection of diverse immigrants ever since the second Indian ancestor set foot there – but from a strictly independence point of view, is it not still a challenge to Independence if you give away control to others, however gradually?

Globalization by definition cedes local independence to belonging to global communities. The people witnessing the Declaration of Independence all those years ago probably never imagined that one day people might see themselves not as Americans but as part of a global community, eager to wipe away borders and let people everywhere roam where they want, under some sort of unspecified global order. Who will control it? Who will write and enforce the rules? A globally scaled European Commission? That is how the EU sees itself, as a model for future world government, and there are 500 million Europeans. Will the USA become just a colony of a distantly run empire again?

Just a few thoughts. I’m done.

Happy 4th July!

 

A Scottish Nightmare has begun. Someone needs to wake them up.

Fifty percent of Scots voted for the Scottish National Party, which some people consider Stalinist – I confess that I am no authority on Stalin, so I had to look it up but it does seem to tick a few of the boxes so it isn’t an entirely unjustified label. However, in response to recent comments, I feel obliged to clarify that it only ticks a few of the comparison boxes, even those traits at a much lesser degree, and there is certainly no comparison to be made with the nastier side of Stalinism. I actually quite like Nicola Sturgeon and Alec Salmond apart from their politics and I can’t imagine either of them in such a light.

I do feel sorry for the other half. There are very many fine people in Scotland, many are my friends, and they deserve better. But as the old Scottish saying goes, ye cannae overestimate the stupidity of the man in the street, and they turned out in droves to vote in the SNP.

Now that the election is over, the SNP wants another independence referendum, or at least Salmond does. Prior to that they want full fiscal autonomy and the government is already hinting at that, in fact you could well argue that the SNP is playing right into their hands, leaving themselves at the very least open to a detailed re-revaluation of the Barnett formula and its certain demise, along with repeal of Scottish votes for English matters. But the real problem ahead is Scottish finances will not survive independence without very major changes so if they do get their second independence referendum and tribalism hasn’t subsided enough for clear thinking to win for continued union, Scotland will be in deep trouble. I’m no economist but even a toddler soon learns that if Mummy has no cash left, sweeties become less likely.

Already, many of the wealthier Scots are planning to leave because of the threat of high taxes, especially property purchase tax. It already has hints of Greece. When rats start leaving a ship and are taking all the food with them, it’s time to worry.

The SNP wants to take care of poor people and the old, give people lots of nice public services, and generally provide lots of free milk and honey, paid for by the state. Well every party would like to do all those things, but some realize the state can’t necessarily pay for infinite levels of services. Some live in the real world and figure out what is realistic and how to pay for it, and then they spread the load across the whole population, making sure that no-one has to pay so much they can’t live in dignity, and taking the money needed as fairly as possible according to ability to pay.

The SNP understands that richer people can afford to pay more, as does every party, and they understand better still that less well off people want richer people to pay more, or indeed all of it if they can vote for that, but they don’t seem to understand the reality that if you want to keep money coming in, you have to make sure you don’t take so much off the people that make the money that they walk away.

It is very easy for Scots to walk away; indeed many do already. If people have to emigrate to a country that uses another language or has a very different culture then they will stay longer and accept higher taxes. If they can just move next door to another part of the UK with hardly any change, fully accepted and fitting in easily, then there is very little penalty and the extra taxes simply can’t be punitive. Worse still, looking at the apparent anger and hostility of late in Scotland, the SNP seem to have created an aggressive anti-rich culture, where the wealthy are seen as the enemy by many. That can’t make it a pleasant environment in which to enjoy the wealth you’ve earned, knowing that many of the people around you hate you simply because you are wealthier than they are.

Many of the wealth generators will therefore leave Scotland if the SNP continues to increase taxes on richer people to pay for more and more public services and benefits for the less well off. That would all happen if they get total fiscal independence without hefty subsidies from the English.

But the main goal for the SNP is independence. They’ve come up with all manner of means to get cash, but none of them stand up to even casual inspection. I’ve argued in previous blogs that Salmond’s dream of getting lots of wealth from wind farms isn’t infeasible. If all of Scotland were to be covered in farms at maximum density, the energy generated would only be equivalent to coal use in England, so it can’t finance an entire economy. Here’s some of the detail:

Scottish Independence. Please don’t go.

and

https://timeguide.wordpress.com/2014/03/10/scottish-independence/ discuss some of the financial consequences of separation.

If Scotland separated from the rest of the UK, there would be a strong incentive for Westminster to use the opportunity to greatly reduce the size of the public sector to reduce costs, and to bring many of the remaining jobs away from Scotland to reduce unemployment elsewhere (jobs perhaps for the Scots migrating to England). This would help massively in reorganization and efficiency improvements while reducing unemployment in England and Wales (Northern Ireland is trying to reduce its dependence on public sector jobs).

Separation would also mean losing the subsidy received from England, which the BBC calculated at £3000 per head. Unless morons are appointed to the English side of the separation negotiations, Scots will also take with them a share of the national debt, currently £1.6Tn, or £4.5Tn if you include public sector pension liabilities. Since a disproportionate number of Scots work in the public sector, it would certainly be hard to argue that they should be paid by a foreign power, so Scotland might even take a larger share.

So an independent Scotland run by the SNP would start off with massive debt, immediately lose £3000 per year per person subsidy, see massive rise in unemployment as surplus public sector jobs are withdrawn and others relocated to England, and see many of the entrepreneurs and the wealthy migrate South. Young people will see the clear choice. They could stay with no hope, any attempt to better themselves squashed and scorned by resentful people seeing their benefits being reduced after many promises of milk and honey, and having to pay very high taxes in a rapidly crumbling economy. Or like many young Scots today, they could take the train south to a much more realistic promise of prosperity and freedom, where they can become rich without being forced to feel guilty.

With too few people left in Scotland, on too low incomes, unable to pay the bills, the services they so loved would soon stop too, however resentful people become, however much they complain and however much they demonstrate and shout and scream. There simply won’t be any money left and those have the means to escape will do so. The kids can demand sweeties but Mummy won’t have anything left in her purse.

Independence is a field that looks a lot greener to the Scots from the other side of the fence than is the reality. The problem now is that they’ve bitten the hand that feeds them too many times and most of the English don’t care any more if they go.

There is an even worse potential outcome, though thankfully an unlikely one. If the SNP closes down all the nuclear establishments as they promise to and reduces defense spending across the board to save the cash they want for other things, they will have precious little defense in their own right against the increasingly aggressive Russians. They can’t simply assume that England would still defend them after an unpleasant separation. Nor can they assume that they would be given a place in either the EU or NATO. On the other hand, a Stalinist government updated to the 21st century might not find it too hard to just become the most Western annex of Russia. By then the Scots would be used to poverty and oppression so well that it might not make much difference.